Today was my last day before I start work sadly, I can’t believe my summer hols are over already. You guys still off in the UK, enjoy it....Priory people take heed! We went to school first thing this morning to check my route to work, it is only 900m in a taxi and a simple route, but I would not walk it in the hot middle of the day sunshine. The mornings will be fine, but we will see about after school. At school, we checked out Sophie’s uniform, which we can collect tomorrow, there is loads of it! Long and [View Full Entry]

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I am writing this offline at about 3.30pm as I have a quiet moment I have lots to write about from this morning already! We are still hoping the internet will be fixed this evening, Ian and I are suffering from withdrawal symptoms! Ian has gone out for a foot massage and the children have decided to listen to their iPods on their beds for a little rest. I keep hearing William singing very now and then, but it is all quiet for now! Sophie and I were picked up at 9am this morning by Lisa (our landlady) and her mother-in-law [View Full Entry]

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I found my USB stick and here are the pics from the free market...not for the faint hearted! [View Full Entry]

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Phew, well I am well and truly pooped as I have just been for a foot massage. It is a very common thing here and everybody seems to go for them. Our landlady took me and dropped me off in this place where no one spoke a word of English and we just communicated by sign language, mainly my yelps of pain! It started with a long foot soak in really hot water - I thought I would have third degree burns at one point! Then while my feet were soaking, I had a neck and shoulder massage which was great. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry we couldn’t write yesterday an sunday, but we did not get our internet fixed up until this evening. I wrote this offline though so I wouldn’t forget anything! Sunday So we are well and truly settled into our new pad and the kids are snug as little bugs in their new beds! We were all up nice and early and got here for about 10am. We had loads of checks to do in the flat as once you are in and have paid the money, it is more difficult to negotiate with the landlord. Luckily our Landlady is really nice [View Full Entry]

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Oh my goodness, we seem to have fitted so much in today! We went to the Expat coffee morning at the Coffee Bean again and met our friends, Suzanne, Emily and Nathan. We met sonme of the people we met last week again, which was nice. They have so many top tips to help us...we need to sort out getting Chinese characters on my mobile. There is a text message service which you send a message asking where a place is and it sends you the address, then you reply with 'c' and it sends you the address in Chinese. Clearly [View Full Entry]

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I was thinking about all sorts of things that you "back home" might find interesting, and I realised that there are all sorts of things about apartments here that are so different, so here goes! Well, the kitchen is always small, there is no oven, only a 2 ring (if you are lucky 3 rings) hob thing, and always an extractor hood. There are rarely any drawers (not sure where we are supposed to put cutlery, I mean chopsticks! There are good sized fridges (for thos non-americans among us!) and then a mad thing called a 'Steriliser'. No, not for baby [View Full Entry]

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So we ventured out into the sweltering Shanghai morning to go and see some bugs!! We made it to Insect Kingdom after a long and traffic jam filled journey in a taxi to meet our friends Suzanne, Nathan and Emily. Mark, Suzanne's husband, has had to go back to the US for a week so we are doing some stuff together. Insect Kingdom was good, there were lots of fish(I know, not insects I hear you cry!), reptiles, snakes, some monkeys (again, insects?!!),a load of tortoises and terrapins, along with some proper horrible bugs which I couldn't bear to mention! It [View Full Entry]

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I know what Suzanne means when she spends so much time thinking about the titles for these....not very impressive tonight, unlike the storm we are still having tho! It started as we were trying to get back from the real estate agent's office at about 6.30pm, which means, yes, we do have a place to live - yippee!!!!!! We found two today actually, but went with the second one as we prefer the agent (she speaks english which always helps) and also we met the lovely landlord who also speaks good english. She has agreed to pay for us to have [View Full Entry]

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Well, we are well and truly exhausted today! We saw some more flats this morning, the first one was on the 33rd floor and was great. William insisted he wanted to live on the roof, even though the flat was on the top floor anyway! It has 3 bedrooms and was really well presented, with amazing views. It was a bit scary though but had a huge indoor swimming pool, gym and aerobics room. We then dropped Sophie and William off for their playdate with Emily and Nathan, which was so helpful. We had to go for our medical examination for [View Full Entry]

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