Whoever created the words for the months of the year - did they not consider how difficult they are, 1. because they are all so bloody similar, and 2. because August has the same beginning pronounciation as October, but with completely different spelling, no wonder my poor grade 2s were a bit confused.

We got there though, and most of the kids remembered the months of the year by the end of the lesson. What I was even more impressed with though was they remembered the first 6 months that we had learnt two weeks previous, go me - I imparted wisdom on them.

Not all my lessons were smooth though this week, in one grade 2 class a child threw up, then was made to sit in for the rest of the lesson and take part. In my grade 4 class at Shazitang one kid had a nose bleed and two other kids had a full blown fist fight, luckily not my job to break it up, but the kids didn't really wanna be taught after that, they wanted to talk about the fight and couldn't get there attention back, the assistant was out the room trying to shout at the boys who were fighting so she couldn't help. I got through it all though, with no visible scarring.

It was rather cold the beginning of this week, so the air cons have been put on full blast trying to heat us up - however if you put all three bedroom air cons on along with the living room one, it overloads and switches them all of, very handy. This has happened on a few occassions now, mostly to the boys though. Us girls did one better - we blew the fuse to the entire flat and every flat on our side of the building. Or so we have been told, I'm not sure how much I believe it though.

Anyway - on a very cold night we spent over 12 hours with no heating or electiricity, and upon waking we still didn't have them, and discovered there was no hot water either, yeah!!! It did give us an excuse to go to bed extremely early, 9.30, as there was nothing to do, and the boys apartment (who had electricity and heating) wouldn't let us stay the night in their flat. We'll remember that if you guys every want a favour .

Had another Kung Fo lesson this week - I rock at it, have so much fun doing it. I could even remember, unlike everyone else, the steps to the previous moves that we had learnt. This is one of the only Chinese things that I appear to be any good at. The Mandarin lesson that we had this week was awful, I really struggle with pronounciation and the four different tones, it really doesn't help to have the class swat sitting next to you, tutting and moaning everytime you say something whether right or wrong. He SUCKS at Kung Fo though, so I can take pride that I am better at one thing.

On Friday we met the new families that are taking us out for the weekend, it turns out they are all my students, from one of my grade 5 classes in Shazitang. There were 9 kids this time taking us out, so Jessie and Jerry were my kids for the day (both girls). On the Saturday we met up at 9 o'clock and went of to "the window of the world" which is a massive theme park - however we didn't go in. We played games outside the park with the families then headed over to the "deep sea world" of Changsha.

Expecting a similar setting as the zoo, we were gladly mistaken. This is much better, still not fantastic, but with much bigger tanks and different varieties of animals and fish - I taught the two kids the names of them, or the ones I knew at least. They had sharks and stingrays, and the kids loved the touching pool, where they could touch turtles and starfish, i had fun there too.

After that we went to the largest restaurant in China - and large it is. It can sit over 5000 people, and has over 2000 members of staff working there. Don't think they were to impressed though with a table of 9 kids and 6 foriegners all of which have their shaddy moments at using chopsticks. Jerry tried to get some cauliflower for me, the first try it landed in my juice - oops. Later Jessie knocked over her juice all over the table and her plate. There were accidents all round the table.

Jerry went home after the lunch, and I went to Jessie's home, to met her sister, which turns out not to really be her sister, when I sat down for dinner with both sets of parents. Before dinner Jessie, Christina (sister) and I went to their dad's work, where there is an arcade room, and bowling. We drummed and danced away on the machines and threw balls at tenpin bowling down the wrong lanes - I lost at every game (I was letting them win, obviously ).

After eating way to much, they ordered dumplings just for me, as I said at one point in the day I liked them, and drinking rather nice red wine, which was French (or so they kept telling me) I eventually made it home, uploaded my photos and fell asleep at 8.30 sleeping right through until 8 in the morning. I clearly needed it, so another lazy sunday now, gonna do my lesson plans soon.

Till next time

x