We had a terrific New Year's present thanks entirely to Ruby. We now have 2 kittens in our family. When Doug and Ruby were here, Ruby had a long discussion with a shop owner who had some kittens and discovered that another person nearby had a pregnant cat who might give us a kitten later on. I left my number and a message in chinese from Ruby and lo and behold I was telephoned
on Saturday and asked if I would like to come and get not one but two kittens! Well you can imagine the excitement. They are the cutest and tiniest things you have ever seen - we think only 4 weeks old, but 3 days on and they are confident; eating, sleeping, weeing and pooing; so we are hopeful that they will survive. I think they are both girls and despite that the kids have decided to call them Tom and Jerry! We will take them to the vet tomorrow to be checked out (everything has been closed) and we will also get litter, a tray and a scratching post. They are good climbers as last night when I was washing up they both climbed up my jeans and were at my waist looking at what I was doing, before someone came to rescue them (I had wet rubber gloves on). So at the moment they are in a box and we managed to buy a few handtowels to pad out the box, which need constant washing.

The kids performed in Chinese New Year concerts at school and had worked hard in their Mandarin classes to do so - each of them had a song, chant or story in Mandarin to tell the audience and all the children were dressed in chinese clothes which I had purchased on a trip to Zhuhai (more later). Every child in
the school from Junior Kindergarten to Year 10 performed and it was good to see the huge effort put it. The school too was covered in New Year decorations and the last day or two was a time of great production of new year art, so despite being a canadian school - we have had a very strong influence of chinese
culture which is absolutely terrific.

Zhuhai is a chinese special economic zone, which adjoins Macau - the city is about 6km from our apartment and you just walk across the border - still immigration as I told you before. The main purpose for Macau people (called Macanese) is for shopping. I went with a small group of expat ladies - some went simply to have a facial, pedicure, manicure and back massage - 1.5 hours,
with 4 people helping them for $A15. Maybe when I have looked around several times I might try it, but I looked at the shops and bought the kids their chinese outfits and also bought the coolest electric blue coloured guitar as Matthew and Claire are now having lessons - the guitar was $A15, so if they don't keep up with it, it is no drama as the instrument was so cheap (the sound is great though). There are the usual bags, shoes, cds, dvds and game boys etc, but as we went in school hours and had to be careful to get back through immigration in time, we were only there about 3 hours which really flew by.