Day 77

Yesterday was fun! Despite being bogged down with a cold. The school did a trip to Tai Po, to one of the nature parks, for a family picnic day. It was a really good opportunity to meet the parents- and endear myself to them before the parents observation next week heehee. They put on lots of activities for the children like bread making, face painting, balloon animals, and puppet making. I took a video of a group throwing a monkey around:

I did spend a lot of the time being bored, because there's only so much I can talk to the children about in their limited English. I talked to a lot of the parents though, and I had lunch with the other teachers. They kept offering me food and I felt really bad for not eating much but I had no appetite at all. Here's a picture of me with a girl called Ingrid and her mother. She's got really good English and she's pleasant as long as she's getting her own way.

The other picture is of a girl called Olive, who kept running up to me and showing me her balloon dog then running away again but forgetting to take her dog with her. Then she'd climb to the top of the climbing frame, jump down and run back to me and jabber away in Cantonese. Her helper looked like she was having a nightmare trying to keep up with her! I did find that strange- a lot of families here have Filippino helpers who look after the kids, cook and clean- and they brought them with them to the picnic. I suppose they are part of the family though.

We got back from Tai Po around 3:30pm and I was absolutely shattered and looking forward to a lie down, when I was told that we had to have a meeting about the trip. Grrrr! The meetings are always in Cantonese so I'm not going to have a clue. (un)Fortunately for me I had Cat interpret for me so I couldn't have a sneaky nap at the back. I eventually left about 4:45pm.

On the way home I popped into the dentist. Thought I'd have to make an appointment for next week but I got one straight away! Turns out I do have an abcess on my wisdom tooth. The dentist cleaned it or something and has give me antibiotics. He was a really nice dentist, really gentle and explained everything to me. If they abcess keeps reacurring I'm going to have it removed which will cost me $1600 (£100). That's nearly half a months wages! Luckily that time it only cost me $200.

I was going to tell you all about today but I'm far too tired. I'll do it tomorrow. We're planning on giving the apartment a really, really good clean. The bathroom is disgusting- as is the kitchen. It's not wonder we're getting cockroaches really when the washing up gets left for days. Good night!