Advertisement
Published: April 29th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Huge apologies for having had a rather extended blog break.....we have had visitors over from UK in the form of my lovely girlie friends, Kate and Rachel. They arrived with us on Friday 2nd April, at the end of a fun day where Sophie and her lovely girlie friends, Roxy and Sarah, had performed in the School Talent Show, dancing to 'I gotta feeling' by the Black Eyed Peas. They opened the show and appeared in fantabulous dresses which I had designed and purchased from the Fabric Market! They didn't win, but had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the experience!
So we came home to await the girls' arrival and it was so lovely to see them. We then emabarked upon 2 weeks of showing them the sights of Shanghai and the surrounding area. We ventured up the Pearl Tower, wandered along the newly opened Bund and eventually managed to find a River Cruise, we went to M&S and to Nanjing Road Market where we were taken up to the top floor and the girls feared they would be zipped into a suitcase full of handbags never to be seen again.........we went to Suzhou for the day which was
rather disappointing, busy and dirty....we hit the town several times, mainly in the hands of party girl Ms Maddi, but also to celebrate Ms Karen's hen night 80s style finishing the evening in KTV, singing karaoke style in a private room with a bottle of gin....and much more. Us girls also went to a delicious new restaurant opened by my friend, Michelle, called MiThai on Anfu Lu, followed by the most relaxing foot massage ever.....unfortunately the poor massage man just had horror upon horror as he saw our feet and took out his knife to chisel away all our dead skin! The girls ventured to Beijing on their own for a couple of days on the overnight train, where they visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and of course, "hiked" the Great Wall!
We were all sad to see them off on 16th April for their flight, but were a little surprised when they returned a few hours later as they had been stranded due to the volcano explosion earlier that day! What timing! Along with squillions of other people around the world, they could not fly home and had to extend their stay for another 2 weeks, only
eventually managing to fly out of Shanghai last night. As we sat there discussing the forced extension to their holiday, we all agreed that the second 2 weeks had been totally different to the first 2. These latter 2 weeks had enabled them to relax and actually appreciate real life in Shanghai and appreciate why we are so happy living here. They have been into school several times, Rachel was recruited to talk to the Grade 5 girls about 'Puberty' in her role as 'Girlie nurse' and Kate was in her element reading with my class. Last Saturday was our school Sports Day which was an amazing day for all of us and the girls were able to help as marshalls in several events. We all had a great time, although the sudden arrival of summer meant there was much sunburn and exhaustion, but a well needed pedicure followed for us ladies while Ian had a snooze on the sofa! William won several of his events, showing off his sporting abilities and Soph had lots of fun coming 2nd in the 5-man ski!
We had Parent-Teacher conferences yesterday where we heard all about how excellent William is at reading...he
is definitely taking after his father who I have to fight for attention with Jane Eyre with.....Will now needs to practice his writing. Sophie has worked hard to achieve her previous goal of becoming more independence and improving her Maths work in achieving 80% in her assessment ......and now needs to work on not talking quite so much....maybe even putting her hand up before she speaks would be helpful. I know, you are all shocked at the target Sophie is working towards, noone would ever have guessed this was a problem!!!!!
So, last night, the girls departed once more for the airport and we have not had a return visit, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that they are well on their way home. Sophie went off for a sleepover as we now have a 5 day holiday. Ian is sadly at work today but William and I are chilling and spring cleaning - getting the summer wardrobes ready and waiting for his playdate to arrive. Tomorrow we have Ms Karen's wedding picnic at the Botanical Gardens to look forward to which is very exciting, and we are all gearing up for the ever-nearing arrival of our good
friends Ms Victoria and Mr Kevin's baby in just 5 weeks' time!
We have now booked our flights back to blighty for the summer and will be arriving on 6th July on our annual visitation to as many people as possible. We hope to be able to see as many of you as possible!
We hope this finds you all well and promise we will try not to leave it so long next time......photos here we come!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.302s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 5; qc: 45; dbt: 0.2191s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb