Blog

Branching out

29/9/2021

JD and I have been knuckling down to some serious Lego building lately.

I started out trying to make a zebra but it very quickly insisted on being a black-and-white bird!

JD was inspired to recreate "Branch", one of the characters in his favourite film - "Trolls". Without any help at all from me, he managed to work out the colours, the pose, the eyes and the hair, all from memory! I only realised how accurate it was when I Googled a picture of the troll in questions. Just forgot the ears!

So much for litErature!

27/9/2021

Art attack

26/9/2021

JiaJia and I challenged JD to an Art Competition last week (to get him off the iPad for an hour or two!). We decided to all draw the same thing (JD chose one of his aeroplane toys) with the best sketch winning a prize [L to R below: Jiajia's, JD's, mine]. Who won, do you think?

JD's schoolteacher is fully aware that Jiajia has a Masters in Art and JD's English is fluent, so she often sends us details of Art/English Competitions for us to enter "for the glory of the school". The painting below was a JJ/JD joint effort for Teacher's Day!

Ma's song or mahjong?

23/9/2021

A rare glimpse into Ma's previous life as a professional, and fairly famous, Beijing Opera star in Shanghai.

You'd think she might now enjoy participating in one of the multitude of park-based dancing groups that attract so many old people in Kunming, but she dismisses them as "amateurs" and prefers to spend her time gambling with her mahjong friends.

Letting it slide

21/9/2021

We took JD to a huge play centre yesterday, meeting up with a couple of his old Kindergarten classmates and their families. The kids had a blast, exploring all the rides and activities for over 3 hours [JD coming down the slide, top left].

Fire the spellchecker

19/9/2021

Running the class

17/9/2021

My University lessons are back in full swing after an unusually long, but very welcome, two month Summer holiday. This was one of my classes earlier this week doing a "Running Dictation" exercise...

The Chinese Government have been rolling out a series of education reforms over recent months to "reduce the burden" on young students in China. These include banning online tutoring with teachers based abroad, removal of western printed textbooks, regulating after-school and weekend training classes and reducing homework and exams in Primary Schools. However, JD's school seem to be largely ignoring the "less work" parts. Completing his daily homework is taking longer than ever. He didn't finish until after after 10pm on Monday/Tuesday, though Wednesday/Thursday were "only" 8.30pm [see below]. Crazy.

Miss steak

15/9/2021

Qualified? Many??

13/9/2021

E(vil)-bike

11/9/2021

So-so Lego show

9/9/2021

Our ever-changing Lego display, featuring kit and scratch-built models made by both JD and I.

Camouflage?

7/9/2021

Decisions, decisions...!

5/9/2021

So hard to choose!

Art for art's sake

3/9/2021

JD's latest paintings

Nails on cows?

1/9/2021