Settling back into normal Shanghai life

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Another week has gone by and already time is flying along....already my apologies for not blogging. Along with my new fellow Grade 3 ICE Teacher, I am trying to do as much forward planning as possible. I keep remembering back to this time last year and just how manic this time between now and Christmas was. With this in mind, I am planning-tastic! Yesterday, we were able to go into our new classrooms and start making them look wonderful....well as best as we can with the resources we have anyway. I am very keen to keep a classroom as a changeable feature and move the children around every so often.

Sadly, we started back at school last Thursday, so we spent the best last day of holidays ever! We had heard about the Mandarine City outdoor swimming pool but had not managed to make it there until now. Wow! What more can I say....the photos tell it all, it was absolutely amazing....swimming up to the bar, sunbathing on the sun loungers and dipping into the pool when it got too hot. Sophie and William had a great time playing in the water with Daddy, Sophie is becoming a right little swimmer! Ms Jo joined us for the day and I think we both felt very much like we were on a tropical holiday for the day!

We had a very quiet weekend, trying to conserve energy and save some pennies! Sophie and William attended a cookery workshop on Thursday and Friday, arriving home with self-made pizza and tortilla chips. Apparently, the burrito was too tasty to bring home! This week, they are attending a Chinese summer camp where they learn language in the morning and Chinese arts in the afternoon. I was welcomed home with news of their new friends and the songs they had sung....they were more than excited to go back again today!

Ian starts work on Thursday (about time too!) then both William and Sophie get to meet their new teachers on Friday. In the meantime, I will be busily working away at continuing to ready my classroom and plan our coming weeks. I am very excited about my new class, ICE is gonna rock!!

Apologies for not posting this yesterday, but I have a few little things to add.....our ever adventurous children have been amazing in settling back into our Asian lifestyle. William started Taekwando classes on Monday and thoroughly enjoyed it. Karate is not available outside of his old Kindergarten so we decided on Taekwando at a very close Korean school where the teacher is a 7th Dan (apparently that is super cool!). Sophie is hoping to start tennis classes next week with a few of her friends.

The weather is absolutely searing here......we are spending hours preparing our classrooms in such heat, traipsing up and down the stairs to the printers and resource rooms, dripping in sweat...very attractive! We shall all be pleased when it cools down a little by the end of September.

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