Christmas Decorations

This is a picture one of my students drew for me this week!

We started off with a very un-christmassy Friday at the Movember Quiz night, which Matt had organised.  I had a lovely team of 6 and we did really well.  If the quiz had just been based on the 7 rounds of quiz questions then we would have won by a long shot.  The trouble was that there were 3 races that we could wager our points on.  We bet very small, only one point on each race, but we ended up coming second overall, losing by 1 and a half points!  If we hadn't bet anything, we would have won!!!  Never mind.  Morally, we took the victory!  It was a fun night anyway, and Matt ended up going out afterwards to celebrate making over 400 pounds for the Movember charity.

Things got very Christmassy from there on  - except the weather, which remained a steady 20 degrees all weekend.  It's now back down to 11. No wonder so many people are sick!

We had the Concordia School Christmas fair on Saturday, which was fun.  Lots of stalls and some hotdogs and nachos thrown in.  We went with the team from Friday's Movember quiz.  It was good fun, but very warm inside the school.  This will be one of the best fairs this year, since our school has changed ours to be a teachers, kids and parents only event, with the students running all of the stalls, and us supervising for 30 minutes in Junior School, and 2 hours if you're in senior school!

Matt and I went to Jamaica blue for a sausage roll and hot chocolate lunch after the fair.  Then Matt headed to Adam's flat to watch West Ham for the evening, and I watched The Holiday - we've working our way through the Christmas movie list, but Matt didn't want to watch that one.  We had already watched Nativity on Wednesday.

Sunday, was the ultimate in lazy-Christmasness!  We started the day with chocolate and peanut butter bagels, with a glass of champagne and orange juice, and spent the day decorating the house in festive cheer, taking photos of the cats in the Christmas outfits (coming to the blog soon) and watching Christmas movies - we watched The Muppets Christmas Carol, Die Hard 1 and the Elf.  We listened to Christmas playlists while Matt made a Guinness roasted beef joint and veg, and Monday evening we're going to have bubble and squeak leftovers.  The perfect, snuggly-cat festive day.

A Chocolatey-Skyscrapery-Marketplacey Weekend!

The photos are in a bit of a mish-mash order today, and range from Sooty turfing Sam and Amy out of 'his' bedroom, to a photo I took of a beautiful golden sunrise when I got up for work one morning.

It was a wonderful week with Sam and Amy - they are probably the easiest guest we have ever had in China!  They required no looking after at all, were happy to make plans that included us, or didn't, depending on the situation, and were just very happy to be tourists in this amazing city.  Plus they bought us chocolate, so there's that to consider!

After the Westin last week, we had a quiet-ish Monday at work, while Sam and Amy did some touristing around the city.  Then on Tuesday and Wednesday they were staying at the fabulous-sounding Disney hotel at Shanghai Disneyland.  It sounds like they had a fabulous time - the Disney here is really fun and has a great parade and fireworks!  On Thursday evening we met them at the Cheesecake Factory in downtown Disney, with Andy and Becky too.  We ordered appetizers to share (as always, we still haven't made it off the appetizers menu), and so there was room for some carrot cake swirled cheesecake at the end of the meal too.  Andy and Becky shared their own meals, and ended up with food poisoning, which was terrible.  Let down by our favourite restaurant!

On Friday night, Matt started getting busy: he had the school sports coaches dinner to attend, so Sam, Amy and I went to Yang's for the best dumplings in Shanghai.  They did surprisingly well with the chopsticks!  This was followed by a trip to The Green Party, a shop in the lifehub, for a nosey around, and then a trip to McDonald's for grey ice cream. Yes, grey ice cream.  Sam wanted some strange food, and that was the best I could do at the time.  Even the cone was grey, yet for some reason the ice cream was coconut vanilla flavour!  Not strange at all!  We ended up in Lean, the bar by our flat for a drink and a chat before heading home.

Saturday was a busy one.  Matt was out all day coaching a football tournament for his club.  Sam, Amy and I went to Tianzifang for a wander - it's lots of little lanes and streets with interesting shops, bars and cafes.  It was very busy!  We then went to the Bund for a river boat cruise, which was very complicated, since we missed our boat time - the dock was really difficult to find and covered in scaffolding and on a different level to the rest of the docks - we were searching for it for a good 40 minutes!  Eventually we found it and the boat trip in the late afternoon sun was glorious.  The weather had got really hot again, so it was 26 degrees on Saturday and Sunday.  It's now down to 13, and we are really feeling the change!

On the boat, I found some chocolate, durian fruit and egg (a bit like custard) flavours of ice cream to satisfy Sam's need for strange food.  Then we headed up Jinmao tower to the Cloud 9 bar on the 87th floor to watch the Bund lit up at night.  It's such an impressive view, and is even better with a sparkly rose to accompany it. Matt met us there.  I was pretty exhausted by this point, so Matt and I headed home, while Sam and Amy went back across the river to see the skyscrapers all lit up - you have to have both sides of the river views at night - they are equally as impressive.

On Sunday, Matt was playing football, and he scored his first goal for the England veterans team, yay!  There is even a video of him scoring it.  Sam and Amy went out to the fake market and then in the afternoon, we all headed off to Zotters Chocolate Factory, for the Chocolate Indulgence Experience Tour!  It starts off with a video about how they source all their cocoa beans and the philosophy behind making chocolate, then we were taken around by a private tour guide, and got to try the raw cocoa beans, and the 100 percent liquid cocoa mass.  Then we got to make our own chocolate bars, which was really fun. I went for a rabbit shape, Matt went for a star, Sam a car and Amy a mouse.  You choose 2 chocolate flavours to go in and then can decorate it however you like.  Then the real chocolate tasting started.  

Matt and I had done the tour before, when we first moved to China, and we felt so sick last time!  We had much better tactics this time, and I didn't feel sick at all.  There was no giggling and we didn't need Subway sandwiches immediately after the tour this time, so it's all good.  I could even manage to try the hot chocolate at the hot choc station - I tried ginger/coconut, chili, and honey/cinnamon.  All were delicious, but the chili one was really tasty!  To end the tour there is a moving platform of about 30 different types of chocolate to try including fish bone marshmallow flavour.  It was actually really delicious!

We got a cab home and tried to go to LaPasta, but it had closed down! So we walked to Da Marcos Italian near school, via Carrefour supermarket, which Amy wanted to have a look in.  The dinner was lovely, but Sam seemed to get sick after it, and spent Monday morning not feeling well unfortunately.  

Anyway, he is feeling much better now, and they arrived safely from the night train in Xi'an and are now exploring that wonderful city.  It's been such a nice week, and it went really quickly!  Only 3 and a half more weeks of school until the holidays! 

The Westin Brunch

Sam and Amy are in Shanghai!!! Yay!

It was a busy week for Matt and I in the lead up to their arrival on Saturday.  We had two training days on Monday and Tuesday, which were very useful for Junior School, and it seems less so in Senior School.  I ended up going home early on Tuesday, with an epilepsy-related headache (all fine after a sleep).  I was feeling pretty run down after our busy weekend in Japan, so i'm not surprised something happened.  I then got a throat infection, so was off work on Wednesday and Thursday.  I was OK-ish by Friday, but determined to push through, so that I would feel OK by Saturday.  I was still unwell at the weekend, and today my voice has completely gone, but Amy picked up a cold on the plane too, so we were sick together!

I had arranged a photoshoot on Saturday morning for a teacher at school, with her husband, 2 year old and their ancient dog, which was lovely.  They live in the building opposite us, so we just did the photos in the grounds, where there is some nice greenery.  It was a fun session, and having the dog added an element that I haven't had before, so that was a nice challenge.

Sam and Amy arrived at about 10.15am, after their night flight, and not getting more than a couple of hours sleep!  I was pretty strict on their napping allowance, as the best way to get over jetlag is just to push through until the evening.  We had a cup of tea and a chat at home for a while, then went to the LifeHub to the Blue Frog for lunch.  Then, on an adventurous whim, we got the train to the skyscraper part of the city for a little wander around.  Then we had a Starbucks by the river, looking at the Bund.  They were pretty sleepy by this point, so we headed home, and everyone had a 90 minute nap, while I edited some photos with Snowball on my lap keeping me warm.  Saturday evening, was pizza takeaway and the movie '21 Jump Street'.

We were up and out by 10.30 on Sunday, and heading to the Westin hotel for their famous brunch.  This was Sam and Amy's birthday presents, so they had been looking forward to it for ages.  It was New Zealand themed this week, so lots of the drinks were kiwi flavoured and green (and delicious).  Matt of course, started his brunch off with the usual grapefruit juice and gin.  The food was wonderful. We had steak and eggs, smoked salmon, mini burgers, curry, pasta, oysters, lobster, caviar, and then dessert.  I had 9 different desserts on my plate at one point - very tiny slices of each, but still!  You've got to try everything!

The entertainment was the orchestra, opera and then some women doing yoyo skills, a man balancing a huge ceramic pot on his head, women spinning 10 different plates each, at once, and a father/daughter gymnastics couple, with some serious core strength skills!  There was even a haka dance at the end.  Very enjoyable.

We went for a short walk to the Bund after brunch finished, and stayed by the river chatting for a while, watching the beautiful golden sunshine on the river.  Then we headed home and watched Men in Black.

Rugby World Cup Final 2019

So, this week we went to the Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama, Japan!  It was a marginally stressful week since last Saturday night.  We had decided before the semi-final against New Zealand that if we won, we would book tickets and go to the final, for a once in a lifetime experience.  We booked flights, no problem, and booked second hand tickets, and were feeling very pleased with ourselves.  We even persuaded two friends to come along too, who then booked their own flights and tickets.  5 hours later we got an email to say that the tickets hadn't gone through properly.  Sunday was a pretty miserable day, spent feeling sorry for ourselves, and wondering if it was worth spending more than 1000 each on a ticket.  By Wednesday, Amy had managed to get 2 tickets from the RFU from the tickets that were returned for resale, so the trip was back on.  Actually, the tickets didn't end up costing too much.  Amy's such a hero!

The weekend was actually great fun.  We left straight after school on Friday, after Matt had spent the day suspending kids for vaping in the toilets!  A rather stressful day for him and the other two who were with us, who are also senior management.

The flight to Nagoya was fine, and we even got extra legroom seats for free.  The flight was only a couple of hours, so it was pretty easy, and the hotel was close to the train station.  The boys ended up having a very late night in the bar next door to the hotel.  I was in bed by midnight.  

Saturday morning, we got the train from Nagoya to Yokohama, where the match was taking place.  We had found an apartment to stay in together, so we headed there to drop off our bags, put our face paint on, and head back out to the stadium. We were there a good 3 hours before the match, so that we could collect our tickets, and get into the stadium, making sure that our friend's tickets were genuine. They were! Yay!  On our way in we were interviewed by an Irish TV channel, but unfortunately, our Irish friends didn't see us on TV.  Being inside the stadium was really fun.  We got some disgusting, cold fish and chips and more than a few beers and Strongbows and just sat around chatting to each other and to other fans.  

We saw Johnny Wilkinson and some other names I can't remember being filmed for the pre-match shows.  The stadium started filling up pretty quickly and then it was match time.  The worst part of the entire weekend was the 80 minutes of match time.  England played absolutely awfully.  A key team member was knocked out cold in the first 3 minutes, but even before that we looked awful.  South Africa's defense was amazing too.  We just had no fight left after the New Zealand match the previous week.  For England, all roads led to NZ; all out training, all our techniques, all our energy led to beating NZ and we just had nothing left to give to SA.  We had a really tough route to the final - Australia and NZ, and SA had Japan and Wales - hardly a comparison.  If we had been against NZ in the final I think we would have won, but SA were just the better team.

We knew fairly early on that we weren't going to win, but it was still very disappointing when we lost.  The England team just looked exhausted.  We stayed for the presenting of the medals and the cup, which was first driven around the stadium in a new land rover - queue marketing moment.  The England team walked around the pitch to see the fans and there was a deafening rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot, which was pretty special.  The bars were still open in the stadium, so we met up with one of Neil's friends from Singapore and spent a couple of hours chatting to various fans from around the world.  

Honestly though, you wouldn't have thought that England had just lost.  The fans were singing and drinking and chatting and congratulating the SA fans on a great world cup, and praising the Japanese for putting on such a good tournament.  It was really fun, even though we'd just lost.

We eventually got kicked out of the stadium and made our way to the station.  On the way we came across a party outside an off license, where fans (especially England fans) were singing and chatting and generally having a great time.  We stayed there until 1am.  I have so many photos of us with random fans!

Then it was off to McDonald's and then a cab back to our flat, with Neil and Will being fairly worse for wear!  Sunday was just a full day of travel, because we had to get the bullet train back to Nagoya (we saw the snowy peak of Mt Fuji on the train from the window), then to the airport, then a 3 hour flight and then another 30 minutes in a cab.  We were back by 7.30pm, but had set out at 9am!  A long day of travel.  It was worth it though. It was a really great weekend, and one we will never forget, even though we lost!