Alpacas

After our wonderful trip to Rome (see the post below this one), we spent a couple of nights in an air b'n'b in Grantham, which is half way between London and Newcastle to drive.  We went there to meet up with our friends Andy and Lucy and their little boy George, who we have been friends with since working with Andy in Germany. The house we stayed in was gorgeous, and it was attached to a pub, where we spent our evenings, eating excellent pub grub and playing quizzes against each other.  The weather was terrible, so we only ventured out once, to go to JandJ Alpaca Farm to feed the alpacas.  There were so many of them, and they were so super cute.  They had lots of baby alpacas too, which were very fluffy.  I'd love to own an alpaca or two!

This week we also had several online lessons with our students.  All but one of my students are in Shanghai now, so I was chatting to them early in the morning, which was the afternoon for them.  this week, for me and my students was just about making sure they were coping OK with the work their class teachers had set them, and letting them practice speaking in English, something that many of them can't do because their families don't speak English.  It was so lovely to see their smiley faces, and it made me realise how much I miss them. 

I'm not sure i'm going to make it back to China before we officially leave in April.  The situation with the virus is just too fluid, and ever-changing.  I'm not sure how we are going to get all our stuff back from our apartment.  I really wish i'd bought more of the important things back with us, but then again we only thought we would be back for a couple of weeks.  School is now closed until further notice, and all of our flights have been cancelled, going back to China and then our ones for moving home in April.  We're doing our best to get the cats back mid-march, which is the earliest they are allowed to fly.  They seem to be doing fine in the cat hotel, but we do miss them terribly.