Blog

Trip or treat

31/10/2016

I took JD to a "Trick or Treat" get-together yesterday organised by an American friend of ours, with about 20 Chinese children and their parents. We visited 10+ flats in their neighbourhood and were duly rewarded with sweets. It was JD's first such event - and mine too!

JD couldn't decide whether to go as Spider-Man or Bob the Builder, but eventually settled for Spidey, although his uncomfortable mask only stayed on for the first five minutes! I managed to freak out a few of the kids with my mask though [see below]. We headed off after an hour or so for a long-promised MacDonald's Happy Meal. Thankfully the recent days of non-stop rain held off for our trip, although the ground was very slippery and JD slipped over three times! He was exhausted by bedtime and fell asleep quickly ...only to wake up twice with nightmares! The joys of Halloween, right?

School skull skill

29/10/2016

Halloween is here again and though I thought I'd escaped the worst of it having left Robert's School a year and a half ago, I've been drafted back to help them this weekend. They have encouraged existing students to bring a friend and want an experienced teacher to give a demo lesson to these potential new students and their parents for an hour before they head to various classrooms for Halloween games with their invitee friend. It means preparing for classes of unknown numbers of students at unknown levels of ability (and, with Ava away on business, hoping Ma can look after JD during the hours when I am busy). No wonder I'm looking dead tired!

Tree men does

27/10/2016

I've never seen JD quite so excited as when he arrived back from school yesterday to find a huge mobile crane squeezed into our neighbourhood path. It's there to remove broken tiles from the roofs and cut down the dead branches of trees. The workmen were quite amused by JD jumping up and down and screaming and it didn't take much persuading for them to let him jump into the cabin for a photo.

Crayon trees unite!

25/10/2016

We are slowly preparing a new, little 11th floor flat for us to move into for 4-5 months while our current house is remodelled and redecorated. The Kindergarten below the new flat's window has a rather bonkers name.

Able to cable

23/10/2016

Ava, Ma, JD and I went to Haigeng Park yesterday for a daytrip. The main reason was for the cable car ride which goes over DianChi lake before climbing steeply up XiShan - the Western Hills.

None of us had been on the cable car ride before, so it was something of an adventure and, of course, JD was very excited to be "flying" above the trees.

The area at the top of the mountain was something of a disappointment, especially as a few hundred teenagers had just arrived for some sort of running/jogging event which involved throwing powder paint over each other. To get away from the noise and crowds, we walked along a forest track which had some nice views of Kunming (despite the smog) and led towards a rather nice temple which had an outdoor sitting area perfect for our picnic. We then visited another temple further along the mountain before heading home, lungs bursting with fresh, mountain air!

School skills

21/10/2016

JD had an Open Day at his school this week. I was working, but Ava was able to attend and watch him participating in various activities. The feedback from his teachers was mixed. On the plus side, he has good fine motor skills, is curious and imaginative, well-liked and humorous. On the minus side, he often can't focus on an activity for more than five minutes and can question the teacher when asked to do something. Having seen some of the less-than-exciting activities the class sometimes get up to, I have a sneaky sympathy with his supposed weaknesses!

Doctor, doctor...

19/10/2016

Wednesdays are my busiest day of the week, with four lessons at a Primary School in the morning and three more at a Middle School in the afternoon. I cheat a bit by planning the same lesson and then tweaking it for the different ages and abilities. Yesterday's theme was "Illnesses and cures", culminating in a doctor and patient role-play. For students who are more used to teachers' droning monologues and chanting information, they rose to the participatory challenge pretty well.

Not another winding car!

17/10/2016

We need more eye-catching headlines like this one!

Missed the target

15/10/2016

Saw this graphic on the BBC website. Nice to know how my team's top scorer is doing, but who on earth decided to chose three almost identical colours??

ZuiHao(=best) ZuiHe photos

13/10/2016

One of our friends took lots of photos on our recent trip to ZuiHe and sent the best of them to me. Gives a nice flavour of our time there.

Flat batt

11/10/2016

A few weeks ago, I got the batteries on my e-bike changed, as the original ones were starting to degrade. After a few days, we rang the mechanic and said that the new batteries were not charging properly. He laid the blame on my charger which looked a bit broken and so I bought a new one last week. The problem continued however and I've only been getting about 25km range from the new batteries (the old ones I'd discarded could manage 35km), So today, Ava and I went to the workshop where we'd bought the new batteries. They said we'd have to contact the battery manufacturers! No way! Ava went into angry mode at that and, after 5 minutes, they agreed to test the batteries themselves straightaway. Sure enough, two of the five were faulty and they agreed to replace them all under guarantee. So now I need to see if I can get the promised 50-60km per charge from them.

A crazy businiss

9/10/2016

They have no businiss spelling it that way! And I wonder what a "Forbidden Band" is? Fun Loving Criminals? Sting? Sex Pistols? Killing Joke? Any other ideas in Comments, please!!

Real progress

7/10/2016

This is the colourful poster I received the other day from the boy I sponsor in Cambodia through World Vision, summarising their annual report into his progress. Sending money to a charity is one thing, but making a personal contact, sending small gifts and exchanging news with an individual makes it very much a reality. Happily, he's doing really well.

The wind-ing road

5/10/2016

On our final day in HuiZe yesterday we drove for a couple of hours up a steep road to the top of a nearby mountain, signposted as "Scenic Mountain Grasslands". The summit was at 4000m, some 2000m higher than Kunming, and the drive was interrupted by herds of goats and views which were worth pulling over for to enjoy properly. The mountain ridges were peppered with huge wind turbines which we eventually drove up close to. At the very top, we found our place in a huge car park and bought tickets for a short bus journey through the mountain grasslands - along with hundreds of Chinese tourists! Still, it was a memorable day out in the fresh air and I got quite sunburnt.

Goat to town

3/10/2016

Ava, JD and I are in HuiZe (pronounced Hway-tzer) for a few days, with two families whose sons are classmates of JD's. HuiZe is about 200km from Kunming, which should be a 2-3 hour drive, but took us over 4 hours yesterday due to frequent tailbacks from accidents on the freeway. It's the hometown of the Sun family, so they are showing us the sights. Today we visited this huge coin in the main square. It's just visible in the the photo above [centre, right] and looms tall once you get close to it. It's there because HuiZe had a famous coin mint a few hundred years ago.

The town is famous for its goat meat, so we are expecting a goat hotpot this evening, hopefully not too spicy!

Hare today, gun tomorrow

1/10/2016

JD is loving his new Lily Rabbit, bought for his half-birthday, alongside the already-owned Peter and Benjamin. So much better than the tanks, swords and guns that Ma-in-law insists on buying him!