Nanny's first week

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Firstly I have to apologise to mum as it appears her first blog was not finished! Unfortunately, she wrote it while I was out at the gym and Ian was having his Chinese lesson, so by the time we came to publish it, it was a bit late and the internet was playing up and so on. It seems you all enjoyed reading about her adventures though, and she will be writing again very soon. I thought I would write a quick message to update you all on the rest of our lives!

It has been a week now since mum arrived and it has been lovely. Getting up at 6am last Sunday was not so lovely, but it was a straight run to the airport and mum was even through and waiting for us already when we got there. Chinese efficiency! Luckily I had warned her that we would be arriving at 8am (giving plenty of time for baggage collection etc) but it seems the flight was early. Anyway, we had a lovely day, the children were so excited and showed Nanny around the apartment, then we popped out for a light lunch and went for a manicure with Victoria. Mum had been going strong but this relaxation sent her off to sleep, so when we came home she had a nap! We met up with our friends Suzanne, Emily and Nathan at Blue Frog for tea.

Mum has been in our school in various classes, and William's Kindergarten too. Our school has been manic this week as we have lots going on. We have our first Student-Led conference on Monday and it has taken some preparation. This is all the rage these days, where instead of a Parent Teacher meeting, students have their parents come in and they show them their work. It's a great opportunity for students to show their parents what they have been learning and for parents to ask questions. As part of the preparation, we had to work yesterday (Saturday) this week. This was not a popular decision and we were not a happy staff body! In the morning we had training where we all looked at plans for next year, then we prepared our classrooms and talked about our next unit in the afternoon. We were all from 8.30am until 3.30pm!

On Friday night, Sophie has gone to a friend's house straight from school and we had collected her quite late, after having dinner nearby. Sadly, it rained really heavily all day Friday so we got pretty soaked. We also tried to look at a new apartment, but the communication barrier got in our way. Ian did manage to look at one yesterday which was very promising though. His Chinese is amazing, he is chatting away to the Estate Agent and is now at the ticket office, booking our train tickets to Nanjing. We are goin on Thursday to Sunday as we have a few days off, so we are all very excited about getting away.

We have woken up to a beautiful Sunday morning, and we are going to be doing some sightseeing today, making the most of the day off! We went for a lovely meal with Suzanne and Mark last night....grown ups out for dinner while the ayi babysat! We went to Taikang Lu and Mum loved it....we had wine outside at a Chilean wine bar, then went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. Add to that the Japanese barbecue we had last sunday and mum is becoming quite used to the Asian cuisine!

Mum will write again soon and let you know how our sightseeing goes.

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