This is soccer chinese style - the kids were in their chinese outfits for school and just kept playing in them at home with friends.

The boys started a basketball skills thing after school, which seems to be quite good and with a great deal of hilarity we have organised ice skating lessons to start after chinese new year. The ice rink is very difficult to find - among a maze of tiny winding one way streets and we found it by walking and exploring last Saturday. We approached the window which said in english - skating school and with the help of at least 15 people who all came off the ice to watch/translate/join in the fun we have lessons for the kids. It won't matter that the coach doesn't speak english - ice skating is demonstratable!! The boys have also signed up for pottery after school and Claire to computer club.
So they are finding some activities. We have continued to have Claire's friends over to play and the kids went to another family last week also. We have also discovered that some of the security guards at our building are happy to play a bit of soccer on the paving, so that's fun too.

Yesterday we explored around Coloanne - the last of the 3 islands of Macau and it is the recreation island, with beaches, parks and walking trails. We played in the parks, all of which have fabulous facilities - including badminton courts, ping pong tables (bring your own bat and ball) and the usual playground equipment with lots of fitness equipment also. There was a tennis wall, basketball hoops and then you could pay to use the tennis courts and the pool
(when open in the summer). We also walked along the beach and had fun exploring a little. It was a very enjoyable day.

The kids have really settled well into school and are all now quite enjoying Mandarin - Stephen will recognise symbols in the street and tell us what they mean and they will also say hello and a few little things to shop keepers who are all then intent to teach them some more which is lovely. Ruby helped Matthew with his homework on the weekend - he had to do a dot to dot, with all
the numbers in chinese symbols from 1-100. He was OK by himself to 20, but after that needed help. I was glad Ruby was here - it would have taken ages to look them all up in a book somewhere! They are all quite motivated to do their chinese homework and seem to be going pretty well. Certainly there are no
difficulties on the school front. There was no difficulty in settling in to school routine after having a lot of freedom for the last 6 months either. They really seem to love school.