le weekend

how many people can you fit on a bike? and this includes 2 children so it's not that impressive.
the hamsters alba and siog
and they say playgrounds are for children!

so back to business... We actually made it to our mandarin lesson on Wednesday, on time and fully prepared. The latter half of the sentence is applicable only to myself but it is an achievement I feel. I can now tell you that I have a cold. Perhaps learning the directions would have been more helpful as I found myself attempting to direct my taxi home on Friday.
On Thursday we went bowling. To begin with, there was nobody else n the place so we let loose and celebrated our strikes and half strikes with victory dances. These victory dances started off as a bt of a shimmy, an attempot at the moonwalk but quickly progressed to something much more animated: The wheels on the bus, the hokey cokey, old macdonald, koo kaka kookaka (i think that's exclusive to our school). All of this was much to the amusement of the staff. Not only were we western, but we were crazy! We stopped by McDonald's on the way home as we hads assumed that there would be food in a bowling alley but it's China baby! and there isn't.
Friday was quite enjoyable really despite being my busiest day.Due to being determined that Will should experience a chinese massage we went to a massage parlour. 3 pounds for 1hour and oh it was good. Dinner included. It was much needed, the lack of a mattress is making me quite tense. I feel as though I am obsessed with the fact that I have no mattress but it rules more of my life than i would ever have guessed! Following this, we had a night out. We met up with some of the other interns which was quite nice. One or two have made friends with some of the staff from starbucks (aplace i may safely assume they spend much of their time) and some fellow westerners they found, also in starbucks. It was nice to spend time with them. One chinese guy of whom i never knew the name and quite drastically resembles one of my P6 students, decided I was his girl and told mike not to steal me....
One late night, followed by an early morning for the extra kindergarten resulted in one tired Seona. I went back to bed as soon as I had finished taking my kindergarteners on a bear hunt. This was kept to the multimedia room which lckily had a sloped seating area for a mountain, a stage to provide a cliff, and a little room off the side for a cave. The chinese word for cave translates as mountain hole. teehee! The remainder of the day was lazy day. Izzie had also been up early taking Will to the airport so neither of us was up for any activity. We went for dinner and nosied round some shops.
Yesterday was a lovely day. To begin with I was very excited to have receiced some post thrust upon me by the guard as i left the school but we spent the day with Aviva, she's one of teh teacher's and she's leaving soon. She's absolutely lovely, she's one of the ones we talk to most. Anyway, we went for lunch with her and one of the K3A students and family. It was a really nice restaurant they took us too (host pays!) it was a buffet and there was alarge variety of food. I got curry, waffles with chocolate, fruit,sushi (Im a pesketarian these days) and other such delicious things. There were also less delcious things which also had to be tried. Namely, crocodile soup served in coconut. It tasted like very salty coconut and it was not nice.
Fun though! Following this we went round carrefour (yes a french supermarket!) where I bought some new bedding and Izzie got a mozzie net soa s not to be eaten alive. I havn't been bitten. Maybe she's tastier than I. The jingle tune here was joy to the world. Immediately I burst into song everytime it played. ah Christmnas carols! We dropped the shopping back at the school and, with Aviva, headed to the arcade. We played on the games and fond this hammer game, the type where you have to hit it as hard as you can,. Well Aviva only went and set a new high score! Thoroughly enjoyable. We also went to the bookshop which sold english books. I didn't purchase as I have quite enough french and german literature to keep me going but it's useful to know it's there.
I came home tired but determined to give my rooma good scrubbing as it had been my intention to do so before such distractions arose. We cooked some soup and had an early night.
Today hasn't been too eventful apart from all the rain. Just a regular day teaching.Actually no, I got ambushed by a group of small boys calling themselves Isobel or Jeanette and pretending to be girls. I have no idea why. Maybe they wanted lollipops from me. I get asked quite often for sweets now.