Cats

It's been a bit of a hard work week, last week, finishing with me getting a cold over the weekend, and then waking up absolutely fine on Monday morning. Typical.  Matt had an evening out on Friday after work.  I had a Junior School social at Pistoleras, but I only stayed for one drink, as I was already starting to feel unwell by that point.  We did manage to get out for lunch on Saturday, with Andy and Becky to a burger place nearby.  There is a huge shopping mall a couple of stops on the metro from us that we hadn't been to before.  It's really nice, and is definitely worth exploring more in the future.  There are loads of restaurants there.  We were meant to go to an engagement party in Puxi in the evening, but I was just feeling too unwell.  

On Sunday, we managed to get to the cinema next door to where we live to watch the new Fast and the Furious movie with the Rock in it.  We will watch anything starring the Rock - doesn't matter how rubbish it looks.  This one was just a mindless action movie, but was fun.

During the week we had the Roadshow, where the heads of out school group come to brag about how wonderful we are.  This year, it wasn't quite as braggy as normal. In fact, we got called an 'average international school', which was mildly insulting.  A bit of a different tone from the previous years.  It went on until 5.30, so everyone was pretty tired after.

This week is set to be a busy one too.  Everyone else in the office is sick now too (definitely my fault), so we are working hard to support each other.  We have several late nights after school for various meetings, including this evening, which is the CCA (after school clubs) fair. I have to have an Archaeology club stall, which is always popular.

The cats make life better in so many ways. They are little rays of sunshine, and always make us smile with their funny antics and cute meows to say good morning to us.  We have had them for nearly 2 years now, and we just found out that it's going to cost 4000 pounds to get them back to the UK in April.  Still, they are worth every penny!

Week 1 of School

I don't particularly like the first week of school (even if in this case the students were only in for 3 days).  Our lessons can't start properly until the teachers work out what they are doing, so we end up just flitting around classrooms, trying to meet our students.  Then, you get the kids who can't speak a word of English and that's always quite tough, at least in the beginning. They learn very quickly, but for a couple of weeks at least they just look like rabbits caught in headlights.  That was what this week was like at school.  So, busy, but also really boring.

We've been having early nights, and keeping to ourselves really this week, just to make sure I don't have another wobble like last week. Things seem to be fine on that front, so far.

Friday night was the welcome BBQ at school, which was nice. We had a good catch up with our friends.  On Saturday, we had a quiet day, then Adam came over for a curry in the evening and the boys watched some football on TV, while I went for a Godiva ice cream with Becky at the Life Hub over the road.

Today, Matt is playing cricket with the kids team, to make up the numbers so that they had enough to play.  I'm having a general tidy-up, bits and bobs, play with the cats kind of day.

Birthday Time!

Last week we were back to work!  Well, Matt was back the week before than for a couple of days, but everyone started again in full on Monday 5th August.  It was a busy week, with lots of sorting out in the office.  Everything gets completely packed up at the end of each year, so they can repaint the rooms, or sort the floors out, or do various maintenance work.  Nothing happened in our office, but we still had to pack and unpack.  We have moved our desks around, so that we now sit facing each other.  I face Ellie, which is nice, but it also means that I have my back to the door, so I have no idea who is walking in.

I had a bit of an incident medical-wise on Friday morning. Not a seizure, but something definitely happened, so Matt took me home almost as soon as I got into work.  I just slept for most of Friday, but by Saturday I was fine.  We had a quiet day on Saturday, relaxing and watching 'The Wire', an excellent series that we are watching for the second time.  It was just nice being home with the cats really.

Sunday was my 31st Birthday! Yay!  I opened my cards in the morning and my presents - Matt got me some gorgeous earrings, and Becky and Andy got me various cat themed stationary bits and bobs and a candle.  Then a Jaguar (posh!) came to pick us up to take us to the Westin brunch.  The brunch was the quietest I have ever seen it.  There was a hurricane on Friday night and Saturday. Lots of people near the coast were evacuated.  Someone I get my business cards from sent me a photo of his window with an octopus stuck to it!!!  I guess he lives near the sea!  We just had strong winds and lots of rain here, though it didn't really affect us too much at all.  A few branches came off trees in our compound, but it didn't stop us from wandering out on Saturday to Lean for a bagel.  

Anyway, it meant that the Westin brunch was very quiet indeed.  Only about 50 people in total.  They hadn't even opened the second floor of food, because there were so few people.  We had a great table on the main floor, with a good view of the acrobatics and dancers.  The food was delicious as always, and so was the champagne.  Matt had his usual pink grapefruit gin.  It was nice just going the two of us, as we're normally in a group.

We had a chilled out evening, watching National Treasure 2, so quite a quiet birthday really, but in a good way. Nice and relaxing.  School starts properly from Wednesday, so we're in for a busy week!

Louise and Ben's Wedding / Returning to China

It's been quite a busy week really!  We landed from Johannesburg at Heathrow on Saturday morning (after not sleeping well for me, and Matt hurting his neck by sleeping in an odd position on the plane).  Tony was nice enough to pick us up from the airport, which was great.  We had a couple of hours rest when we got back to Matt's parents, before Matt headed off to watch West Ham, and I headed to Windsor, since it was then the day before Louise and Ben's wedding.

Charlee met me at the station and drove me to the De Vere Beaumont, Windsor, which is a fabulous hotel.  It's enormous.  Charlee and I had a 25 minute (not even exaggerating!) walk to find our room - we were miles away from Louise and Alix her other bridesmaid, who were staying in the huge bridal suite.  Lou's other friend Simon was also staying the night before, so the 5 of us had dinner and a couple of drinks and a catch up.  We didn't have a particularly late night, because I was knackared from the holiday and Charlee had been at work all week.  We were in bed by just after 11pm.  We did have an early start on the day of the wedding though - 6am for breakfast!

It was a very chilled morning to be honest.  Louise was very relaxed, and we had a nice time getting our hair and make up done. I took some photos of Lou's jewellery, etc, since her photographer wasn't coming until later on.  Nice and chilled.  Lou had got all of the bridesmaids gorgeous bags with our names on with candles, hand cream and fruit pastilles in them.

Just as we were walking to the room where the ceremony was, all 3 bridesmaids started getting really nervous! I have no idea why, but I was shaking and everything!  I was down the aisle first because, 'I'd done it before', then Charlee, who practically ran down the aisle, then Alix.  I did come over all emotional at one point, which is not like me at all.  Lou just looked so beautiful and happy.  Matt was filming the ceremony for Lou's grandad, and I did the speeches later.  That's the second wedding Matt has filmed now!  We should go into business together!

The wedding was beautiful, and the meal and party afterwards were really good fun.  We were on a table with Lou's friends from University, who I have known for many years.  We worked out that Matt had met them all back in 2011 for Lou's birthday, and we even found the photos of us all looking very young indeed!  Charlee's fiancee Bee came to the evening party too, which was nice. She was lots of fun and it was great seeing Charlee so happy.  Matt spent all of his time while I was dancing, chatting to the groom, and drinking rum.  They hadn't seen each other for over a year, so had a lot to catch up on!  It's great that they get on so well.

Matt and I had to rush off on the Monday morning after the wedding because I had an MRI booked in London.  It was a really horrible MRI. I was in the tube for 90 minutes, including one 5 minute toilet/panic break.  We then met Margaret, Mary, Caitlin and Angie for lunch, then went to the cinema to see Spiderman Far From Home.  My appointment to see the specialist for the MRI results was 6.45pm.  It was very reassuring seeing him.  He said that he doesn't think i've got MS (yay), and that it looks like standard epilepsy.  He found the spot from my birth trauma and said that the lesions on my brain are probably due to that and that the epilepsy has nothing to do with the lesions.  I'll go back in December for another MRI, but for now, i'm coming slowly off my steroids, thank goodness!  Matt went to A&E while I was having my MRI, to get his neck checked out - he got some very strong pain killers and they strapped him up.  There was lots of giggling, as he went a bit loopy on the drugs!

On Tuesday, I spent the day with Mum and Dad (Matt needed to rest his neck/recover from his pain medication high).  We went to The Moon exhibition at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, which celebrated 50 years since the moon landing.  It was a really good exhibition, starting with how the moon features throughout ancient history, leading right up to the space race and then where we will go from there.  Very entertaining, especially a mesmerizing video of the moon phases, which I just couldn't stop watching.

We also popped up to the observatory to look at the (very wet) view)

We finished our summer holiday off with dinner at Pizza Express with the whole family, which was lovely!  It was the only time we got to see Sam and Amy, so we had lots to catch up on and talk about for their visit to Shanghai in November.

On Wednesday lunch time we flew back to Shanghai (back in peasant class unfortunately), with a whole class of year 5 or 6 school children. The kids didn't sleep or stop talking or stop kicking the back of my chair for the entire 12 hours. No sleep for me.

Matt went into work on Thursday afternoon after we had landed in the morning.  He was pretty tired when he got home!  I spent the afternoon unpacking and tidying up.  The cats were so surprised to see us, but then very happy indeed, and they have been all over us since.  We are getting ALL the cuddles and love. We did miss them so much.  Never leaving them for that long again.

Matt was in work all day on Friday, and I was working on editing the photos from Lucy and David's wedding.  I'm nearly finished now, which is perfect as they get back to Shanghai in the next couple of days.  I'm looking forward to handing over the photos.

Saturday was Matt's 31st birthday.  We had quite a lazy day, opening cards and presents, having lunch at Lean, then coffee and donuts at the new place over the road.  There was a bit of a storm in between, which was good because it's super hot and humid at the moment.  It seems to have cooled off a bit today.  Snowball managed to break Matt's birthday bunting by chewing through it, in about 20 minutes.  At least it was between the Happy and the Birthday though!  

In the evening, we went to our favourite restaurant, Sichuan Citizen, with Andy, Becky, Vicky, Adam and Rob for a couple of basil drops and some delicious food!  Andy and Becky got Matt a baseball mit for his birthday, which is really cool (and a lot more complicated than I expected to play with) and Vicky got us both matching t-shirts, Matt's has a white cat on it and mine has a black cat on it!  Matt ended up going to Lean with Adam and Rob afterwards, and got home at about 4am.  I was still awake - the jet lag has finally made an appearance. It always does!  A lazy day today recovering form last night - it was a great night though. Matt really enjoyed himself.