Century park roller blading and Parent Teacher meetings ahoy!

---

We feel a bit like we are in the UK at the moment due to huge amount of rain we have been having. Luckily yesterday was much nicer and we managed to venture off to our favourite Shanghai park, Century Park. We decided we would try our first outing with the roller baldes, so packed them in some strong bags and headed off on the Metro. It takes about an hour to get there as it is on the other side of Shanghai to us, in an area called Pudong. Whenever we go anywhere from home we have to take a taxi first, which costs about £1.50, then we take an undergroudn train. The metro is great value for money, the most you ever pay is about 50p, so that's how much it cost us to get to Century Park. Ian and I are the only ones who have to pay also, which is great, the children just duck under the barrier for free! We have got used to the metro now and make sure we find the carriage up the end so we can all get seats, especially when we are going a long way.

The park costs £1.00 to get into, but William is free as he is under 1.4m. Not a bad price at all for such a beautiful place. It was absolutely packed yesterday too, it turns out everyone was there to see the beautiful plum blossom. There were huge amounts of people photographing up close and having their pictures taken with the trees. A bit excessive in my opinion, but it was lovely to look at. Once we had passed most of the crowds, we found a bench to sit on and kitted the kids up with their blades and pads. The crowds soon formed again with this spectacle and we had to just take some pictures of the paparazzi watching the kids! It is a great surface to roller blade on and there were quite a few others doing it too. You can also hire bikes, tandems and those buggy bike things too and there is also an electric cart/train thing that goes around but you can't take your own bikes in. Everyone is walking on the road so you have to be a bit careful about not getting run into. This was where we went all those months ago and our friend Emily got knocked over by a mad tandem! Sophie and William quite enjoyed the freedom of being able to keep blading along but got a bit tired as there were a few uphill bits. We didn't realise how long they had been on them until they started complaining about being tired and we realised it had been a good hour! Sophie is getting quite confident, but still refuses to practice stopping....I really can't admit to her that I am the same on mine!! William just falls over and gets up all the time but it doesn't seem to dent his confidence!

We found an ice cream shop once we had put the children's shoes back on and kept wandering along. The park goes in a huge circle and there is a lake in one section of it which we found eventually so we knew we were near the exit again. After we left, we were all quite hungry and headed to the Carrefour supermarket for our tea. There is like a food hall there where you buy tokens and take them to whichever stall you want to eat from. The children and I all decided on Japanese rice and pork cutlet with egg on top, and Ian was thrilled to be able to have the freedom to choose a hot and spicy sizzling mix! While we were sitting having our tea, there was a bit of a cafuffle and a full blown fight started up between a middle aged woman and a waiter type person. The security guards didn't seem able to control her and in the end, 3 policemen turned up to take her away!!!

Last night, Sophie went o her friend, Chloe's, house for her first Chinese sleep over! I took her there at 6pm and Chloe had made vegetable soup specially for Sophie and it smelled lovely. When I got back the house was lovely and quiet and William was happilg colouring on the sofa! He went to bed at about 8pm and we all had a long lie in this morning!! I woke up to a cup of tea in bed at 11am and had a total fright! Luckily we weren't due to collect Sophie until 2pm and so we got up slowly and took William to his favourite hang out, Starbucks, for a chocolate milkshake! He seems to have developed his Daddy's penchant for Starbucks as well as his addiction to ManUtd! We then went to Chloe's house and were welcomed by two little princesses all ready to perform a show for us. According to Chloe's mum, they had been practicing all morning and it was a lovely show! Chloe is a bit of a singer and sang a lovely song from The Little Mermaid. There was a bit of dancing and a game of Chinese Whispers, ending with some confetti throwing! Chloe's mum has a great tactic where she has "homework" sleep overs where the girls have to do their homework before they are allowed to play. Seeing as Sophie is being such a nightmare doing her homework that it is a great way to get it completed, and it was neatly done too! It seems the two girls have a lovely little friendship growing which is really nice.

On Thursday we went to William's school for a parent teacher meeting after receiving his glowing report. It seems he is continuing to be gifted in Math and is a great member of the class, very popular and polite! On Friday, Ian and the children were home as there were just parent teacher meetings at school and I spent the day meeting demanding parents and came out with an even longer list of things to do! We fitted in a meeting with Sophie's teachers in the middle of the afternoon, who were pleased to tell us she is improving greatly and settling down although she needs to focus more on what she is doing and not on what everyone else is not doing! This a bit of a lasting effect from her time in Grade 1 unfortunately, but is getting better. She is doing well in Chinese and being braver about speaking Chinese in her UOI class also which is great. In fact both of the children are progressing well in Chinese and we can often hear them chatting to the ayi in Chinese when we are not around.

Ian is still enjoying his teaching the Grade 1 students and now has a couple of Grade 2 students joining also. He has been extended by another week but is still looking for something for after that. It is possible that he will tutor some Grade 5 students but we have to get that sorted. It is an interesting way of life here that children have even more lessons at home in the evenings and weekends to add to their education. It is normal for children to have a tutor several times per week, sometimes for 2 hours per time. The Koreans are tutored in English and Chinese and the Chinese mainly in English but also Math sometimes. These children don't go to bed until 10pm mostly as the huge amount of homework they have to do means they don't have much time to play. Quite sad but their work ethic is very good for most of them.

On Friday evening we went out with our friends Suzanne and Mark as it was Suzanne's birthday. We went to a lovely little Italian called Trattoria Isabelle, where we had the most amazing, butted drenched garlic toast! We then went onto a cafe called Whisk, which was out of this world! It is a chocolate cafe and serves all kinds of chocolate desserts and drinks. Suzanne had the chocolate pudding, I had the Upside down cake and the boys both had Chocolate Tart. Mark finished it off with a Chocolate granita and I had the homemade pink lemonade which broke up the richness of the chocolate! Amazingly I couldn't finish mine, but the boys helped me out! I did feel a bit like I had eaten all the calories which I had burned off the previous evening at the gym, but it was really yummy!

Another fun packed week awaits us tomorrow...William is off on a Field Trip to a Chinese Old People's Home on Friday to share some "love" and we are starting speech therapy again with him tomorrow. Sophie starts a new extra curricular activity of girls soccer with her favourite teacher, Ms Maddi, although Ms Maddi refuses to let it be called soccer, so it is football really! Before we know it, it will be the weekend again!

---

Comments

[soooze]

great pictures
What a fun day! Glad you got it in before the rain hit today. We laughed when we read today's forecast for 100% chance of rain.