An Update from School

Well, we had to bite the bullet and put Charley up to Grade 1.  He was doing the equivalent of Prep again so it really was a waste of  his time and our money :-)  and I think he was actually bored but thoroughly enjoying the social aspect when he didn't have to think AT ALL - Mrs Dann his teacher in Australia will completely understand what I am talking about!!  After exhaustive talks with the Principal we decided that the best thing was for Charley to go up a grade 1.  He will be the youngest in the class but not by much - just a few months - six months max.  The unfortunate thing was that he had started to make some little friends in kindergarten/prep but the grade 1 teacher is mindful of that and apparently the kids made a real fuss of him during the transition last week so I think he is happy.  We are on 10 days holidays right now for the National Holiday and Mid Autumn Festival so we thought it was a good time to make the move so after the holidays he is a big grade 1 boy.  After the three days of transition last week he seems to be quite OK with it all and is looking forward to being in the big building after the break.  I must admit I am happier with him being with Shay - the little kids where he was in kindergarten are separated from the bigger primary kids completely in another building - so she can now be the little mother hen and take him under her wing.  I think/hope it will all be fine.

A Welcome Visit from Friends

We had a lovely visit a couple of weekends back with Charley's good friend from school Ayden and his parents Nicole and Les and brother Ethan.  It was so nice to spend the afternoon with them and the kids had a lovely time catching up.  It was a bit of an adventure for us as we had arranged to meet them at their hotel and they were staying in a part of town that we had not been to before.  Being the thrifty people we are, we caught the metro to the closest station to their hotel or so we thought.  There was also a bit of a stress when we realised I had forgotten the map, Nicole's mobile number AND the address of the hotel.  But we confidently exited out of the metro and walked about two kilometres in the very hot sun THE WRONG WAY.  Amazingly, in this very un-touristy area we managed to find someone who spoke very reasonable English (note to self, I MUST learn some Chinese) who told us we were going in the wrong direction.  We found a cab and luckily Greg has what they call Guanxi on his mobile which is a translation service otherwise we would still be sitting in that cab.  We met up with the Johnston family and got a cab back to our apartment and had a welcome drink or three.  It was a really lovely afternoon.