Aquariums and Hockey

The penultimate week to half term, and we are certainly ready for the break.  Matt's Gran arrives on Wednesday, so lots to look forward to next week.  This week started off with the birthday of a new friend.  We took him to the Korean BBQ place that we went to a couple of months ago.  He loved it, and it was so delicious!  Our other friend's parents are over at the moment, so they came too.  His Mum said it was her favourite meal of the trip so far, so I'm glad we recommended it.

We also had a birthday in my office.  One of her EAL students who plays the french horn, came in to surprise her by playing happy birthday at break time.  It was so cute!

Matt and I went to the fake market to buy some bits to brighten up Gran's room for next week - the giant fan in the picture below.  We stopped for a lunch of wantons, spring rolls, dumplings and peanut chicken.  Yum!

I also bought some bits to bury for my Archaeology club. We are doing a dig in a couple of weeks time, so I will bury the two bowls, the three warrior figures and the wooden game pieces (Chinese chess).  Matt bought a teapot and some jasmine tea - our new favourite drink.

 On Wednesday night I spent the night sleeping at the Shanghai Aquarium with year 4.  We left after school - I still did my club after school, so was pretty tired before we had even left.  We had the aquarium to ourselves, which was cool, and had a tour and a talk until about 9pm.  Then, the children could decide if they wanted to sleep in the shark tunnel or in the stingray room.  Lots opted for the tunnel, but I went for the ray room because it was much darker.  The children were asleep by about 11 - a couple of teachers got woken up, but I was lucky and managed to get about 5 hours of sleep, on my blow up mattress - not too bad.  The floor of the room was pretty disgusting though, and some little carpet bug bit me throughout the night.  I actually enjoyed the evening, it was the next day that I was dreading.  We got back to school at about 9, and had breakfast, then it was a full day of normal lessons that I had to teach.  I was exhausted by the end of the day!

That, however wasn't the end of the day for me!  Matt and I had got free tickets to the first ever National Hockey League match in China.  It was the Vancouver Canucks Vs the LA Kings.  The Kings won, but we were supporting Vancouver, the underdogs.  Our seats were miles away, but we were sitting with lots of other people from work, so it was fun.  There were free trader cards of players on our seats, and towels with the match details, which you had to swing around in the air at certain points.  The teams had only been allowed into China on the condition that they behaved - no partying, and no fights in the game (fights are lega in NHL and considered a big part of the sport),, so unfortunately, we didn't see any!

A friend from my office, had seats way closer to the action, with lots of spare seats nearby, so we headed down a tier.  Matt talked us in past security, and then we were really in the thick of it.  The atmosphere was great there, and we had such a fun night. 

It took us ages to get home, as our taxi driver went the wrong way, so I didn't get into bed until gone midnight - not great, the night after the aquarium.  

Friday night, as you would expect, was a stay in and order pizza night.  I slept solidly for about 12 hours!  On Saturday evening we went to the head of school's huge house for a BBQ with the rest of the school leadership team. It was a really nice evening - I get on very well with the Assistant Head of Primary, so spent most of the night chatting to her about cats!

Today, we went to the fake market, and have just been relaxing with the cats, ready for a busy week with Matt's Gran, and then a trip to Bejing!

Cats and Cricket

So I may be slightly obsessed with the kittens.  In fairness, I think that's pretty normal for anyone who has had two perfect, happy, cheeky little chaps (yes, I can confirm that Snowball is in fact a boy too).  Sooty is a changed cat from last week.  In the last few days he has initiated so many cuddles, and just purrs all the time.  How wonderful, to have two content cats. They wrestle constantly, and today, I witnessed the first double cuddle on their cat tree - watch out below for the cutest photo of them you have ever seen!  I have been rushing home every day, desperate to see them, and they both seem very happy when I get home.  We are keeping them in the spare room at the moment, while we wait for our giant sofa throws to arrive.  We even managed to clip Sooty's claws this week!  We are cat pros!

This is Snowball's, 'i'm about to pounce on you' face...

... and this is Sooty's 'i'm about to pounce on you' face, moments before he swatted at the camera.  Both were completely unfazed by the camera this week, which is great.

Nap time!

I just can't get over this photo.  It may be my favourite photo EVER.  They are just so adorable!

Anyway, cat-talk aside, it's been a good week, and it has gone by super quick.  We've had 5 weeks with the kids, and only 2 more before half term. I can't quite believe it!

Archaeology club was a success once again, in fact I have gained another child, which is nice.  We were doing Egyptian heiroglyphics and tea staining the paper this week.  The kids seemed to enjoy it.  Next Wednesday, I still have to do club, but then straight away I am off to the Aquarium sleepover with year 4.  We sleep under the stingrays, and then come to school the next day - no showers, and no sleep.  I am not looking forward to it.

Matt was in Maths training all day on Friday, and Saturday from 8-3.  We went to a year 4 teachers house in the evening for an hour.  It was lovely to be invited to a year group social.  I work with year 4 kids, and attend the year 4 meetings.  Each of the EAL staff has a year group, but I am the only one who has been invited to year group things.  Its great, because it is highlighting that EAL is becoming more recognised, and is definitely a step in the right direction for our department.  We could only stay for an hour because we were off to school to watch a classical music cello recital of one of Matt's year 11 students.  It was lovely music.  The boy is very talented!

It finished at 9, but we hadn't had dinner, so instead of heading out with people, we went over the road from school to a canteen type place, and chose one where the seats were around the cooking area, so you could watch your food being cooked.  We ordered lots and it was delicious - shrimp, beef, pork, garlic steamed cabbage (Amazing!), shrimp fried rice, fried egg and some sardine type fish.

Today, I have had another restful day with the kittens, doing some crafting, and pottering about.  Meanwhile, Matt had another early morning, this time to play cricket in the final, and they won!  He has been out for nearly 12 hours, most of which were celebrating!  He seems to be fine, but there will definitely be some sore heads tomorrow for some of them.

Snowball and Sooty

This week has been the first one to go slowly, and it's because we have been desperate for these little bundles of loveliness to arrive. And they finally have!  Let me introduce you to Snowball and Sooty. 

Snowball came from a work friend, whose daughter found her at just 2/3 weeks old.  It only took 10 minutes into my first day at work, before I had agreed to talk to Matt about the possibility of taking her home with us.  When we went to visit her to see what she was like, there was no way we were going to say no!

Sooty has only been on his way to us for just over a week.  A friend in the Early Years department found him, and her friend has been looking after him.  The friend is asthmatic unfortunately, so couldn't be his forever home.

Snowball is a whirlwind of energy.  She loves to play with everything - even toes - and thinks her teeth are playthings at the moment!  She just runs about everywhere and investigates everything.  I can only get her to sit still for a cuddle when she is sleepy!

Sooty was less sure at first.  He has come a long way since Friday night when we brought him home. He is a bit scratchy, bitey and hissy at the moment, but is getting much better.  We had them in the same room at first, but quickly moved Sooty to the spare room as he wasn't happy at all.  He settled down a bit there, and started playing with us, and some balls I got with bells in them.  He LOVES those things!  For his second night with us, we shut him in the spare room, and I got up at 5.30 this morning because he was crying to be let out.  A night on his own clearly did the trick because when I opened the door he was rubbing against my legs, and even purring!  He is letting me pick him up now too without hissing, which is great progress.

The two of them are spending their time playing and hissing occasionally (Sooty, not Snowball)., but seem to be doing very well considering they only met on Friday night.

They are just the most wonderful little creatures.  Very different personalities, but both very funny and cute.  We are so happy that we could give them a home.

Matt is currently playing cricket with school (they won!), and both kittens are asleep.  So cute!

School-wise, it's been another busy week.  I had my first club on Wednesday.  I am running Archaeology Club, and I have 22 kids, which everyone seems to think is huge, and are shocked that I don't have a helper. They were very enthusiastic, and therefore very manageable.  One little chap got rather upset after he had come running in with his dinosaur book only to discover that it's not archaeology (I blame year 3 for calling their Paleontology module, Archaeology!!!), but he perked up when he found out that we would be making Roman shields, Greek pottery, Victorian stained glass windows, and mummifying oranges.  This week we talked about what Archaeology is, and did some charcoal cave paintings.  They seemed to really enjoy it.  Next week (since none of my materials have arrived yet) we will be doing Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

BBQs, Margharitas and Treasure Hunting

What a busy week! (as usual!)

The weeks just fly by here.  I can't believe it's another week done, and week 4 with the kids about to start.

We have been very busy this week, and very sociable.  On Thursday, we had a BBQ at our complex, which was lovely.  You do kind of forget that there are hundreds of people living in our complex who have nothing to do with the school.  We have people from other schools, from Disney Shanghai and we even have a block that is University housing for New York University, for students studying overseas.  The food was nice, even if the BBQ was slightly odd.  Whole fish on sticks, very hot peppers, slices of potato, and whole prawns were cooking, but not a burger in sight unfortunately.  There was a live singer, and we all got silly light up hairbands.  I love the photo above.  It is of pretty much every new member of staff.  The beer ran out at 7pm and so did the food, so a few of us went to Yangs Dumplings as we were still hungry.  It was a very pleasant evening.

Below is a photo of my lovely office ladies. It was a birthday this week of someone who doesn't like cake, but loves spring rolls, hence the candle in the rolls!

This is Matt at the supermarket, with a really tiny trolly...

On Friday night, I went to a Mexican restaurant for a couple of coconut margharitas with the office ladies.  The rest of them were in a phonics course, running Thursday and Friday 3-6, and Saturday 9-4.  We were very mean, sending this photo half way through their Friday evening learning!

Meanwhile, Matt was in the head's office drinking champagne with the senior management team to celebrate one month on the job.

I met him later in a bar called Blue Frog, where we chatted with a few friends, before heading back to one's flat for pizza and to watch Dodgeball.  A very nice, chilled evening.

Saturday, was the epic treasure hunt, organised by the social committee.  What a great day.  

The below photo was what we saw on the way to the meeting point - a new build of apartments, where they have incorporated trees into the architecture.  China are incredible at building.  It takes a whole to make decisions on building, but once permission is given, they build so quickly.  It was mentioned this week that in the time it has taken for the UK to dither about building a high speed railway line, China has built a full 15 line underground tube system.  Incredible really.  

Notice in the bottom right of the photo, the single bicycle with a huge amount of recycling on it!

So, back to the treasure hunt.  We started off in a gallery area called M52, full of galleries and shops, some quite famous. We were teamed up with another married couple in secondary who I didn't know.  It was actually really nice spending the day with new people, who we got on with really well.  We were given 8 pages of questions and tasks to do throughout the day, and off we went.  There was also a sheet of animal photos that we had to photograph and tick off along the way - some were grafitti pictures, some were restaurant signs.  Lots of tasks were to get photos of every member of the team doing something, which meant handing our phones over to complete strangers for them to take photos...

... a small side note...  weird Chinese photo of the week goes to...this crazy street sign, which I assume is art, but it's China, so you never know.

The below picture is in a gallery called Island 6, which is quite famous.  All of the pictures had an element of moving graphics in them, like this one where the lady danced on the washing line.  There was a picture of a vase too that changed colour if you clapped near it, and a statue of a bear that roared if you went near it.  A fantastic gallery.

These were a few of the tasks - take a photo posing like the lego bear.

Take a photo on 4 floors.  If you look very carefully, we are each on a different floor.

Take a photo with the couple of the bench.

This dog was one of the animals we had to spot along the way.

3 hours in we were the second group to reach the half way watering hole.  This bar was great.  The walls were lined with fridges with beer from all over the world, at very cheap prices.  We ended up staying for an hour and a half, and by then had lost quite a lot of steam.  There were videos we had to do along the way.  One was to break dance in front of a statue.  We did that one, but decided not to do the others, worth 2 points each.  If we had done them we would have come 3rd place overall, but as it was we were 4th, so just missed out on a prize.  It took us 6 hours all in, and we were exhausted by the time we got to the end bar, Cages, where we had been before.

This was a strong contender for weird Chinese photo of the week - this man dragging a HUGE wagon full of chairs!

We ended up getting home at 2am, after 15 hours on the go.  An exhausting day, but such good fun!

Today, we have taken it easy.  We went out for dinner with a couple of friends, just around the corner from our building to a very local canteen, where there was no English.  We ordered noodle soup, delicious dumplings, and beef in a black bean sauce.  Delicious food, that cost us £3 each!!!