Settling in

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Sorry for our delayed blog this week readers, I am afraid our team TB has been hit by illness and tiredness and a touch of the cold weather! Yes, you will be pleased to hear that we have at last succumbed to autumn....2 days ago we had to find our cardis and socks, although during the day it remains really quite warm.

School work meant that last week was a very busy one for me, as it was assessment week and reports all in one! I have to say my class is excellent and I am really proud of their hard work. Not only this, but we also started our new unit of inquiry, which is all about Migration. This is a brilliant topic to do in a place like Shanghai as 95% of the class have migrated from somewhere, most of them from different countries. We have guest speakers coming in to talk about their own stories and the students will be aiming to produce their own storybook by the end of the 6 weeks. We are focusing on geography at the moment which the kids love, but as those of you who know me will understand, it is not my strong point and I am learning most of it with them!

Ian made the very hard decision last Monday to leave his job. He has been finding it increasingly hard to find time to start his MA Thesis and decided he would do this full time, and be able to concentrate on learning Chinese also.

We had another lovely family weekend, we went for dinner with some friends on Friday evening which was fabulous, we had barbecue on the balcony and jacket potatoes.....just the kind of food we have been missing! Saturday morning saw us at a kids party for one of Sophie's friends which was out of this world. Her entire class were invited to an indoor play area and it was amazing. They had face painting, nail painting, tattoos, arts and crafts and party games....party food was Papa Johns pizza and the cake was massive!

Saturday afternoon we went back to the Fabric market to collect a few items (tee hee!!!) and Ian took an original Paul Smith shirt to have copied. He did a great deal on bartering and managed to negotiate it being copied for about £8! We will keep you posted on how it comes out but we are very excited as you can imagine! We went out for dinner with our friends Suzanne and Mark, with Emily and Nathan at our favourite Western place, Blue Frog, and eventually came home at 9pm!

I was a bit poorly yesterday morning, but we managed to venture out to do a few chores and then Ian and Sophie went back for her next pottery class, where she created a vase on the pottery wheel! When they got back, I went out with my friend Nazli to her hairdresser and had my own exciting experience at a Chinese hairdressers and had all my hair cut off! I had a similar experience to Ian with the wonderful head and shoulder and arm massage, followed by the hair wash in the chair which resulted in the same mushroom effect...and eventually 45 mins later I actually got my hair cut! I am really pleased with it and will post a photo when we get around to taking one when it's not 10pm at night and I have had a mad day at work...so watch out tomorrow!

Well, sorry for the non-excitement, but things are clearly settling down here for the T-B family....which is really quite nice for a while!

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