First week back at school!

I am straight back into school now! Monday and Tuesday were whole school inset days and Wednesday we had just new children in (of which I had 6!). Then the rest of my class returned on Thursday and Friday. I have 22 children and a whole load of different nationalities - I am sensing a display here! Australian, American, British, Hungarian, Indian, Chinese (unsurprisingly I guess!), Indonesian... I could continue! But also a lot of the children have moved from several different countries too, so it is very interesting chatting to them about all the exciting places they have lived in.

The school day is a lot longer than in the UK-the children arrive between 8 and 8,15, and we finish at 3.30. It may not sound a lot but I am used to getting started at about 9, so you can tell the difference! But we always used to say that it was hard to fit everything in each week so hopefully that won't be too much of a problem now! Next week we will start on a normal timetable so I will get a bit more of an idea what we are doing then.

I am still going out when I can to meet the old junior school staff, everyone seems really friendly. I am also going to write a list of everything I want to do in Shanghai as it seems likely that the weekends could just pass with constantly going out! Last night I combined the two...

KTV! For those of you who haven't heard of KTV, it's karaoke... Which is MASSIVE here. The building was the size of a supermarket, with a compete maze of individual rooms and flashing disco nights. I swear they get you deliberately lost so you the idea of trying to find your way out is so off putting that you just stay and sing some more.

We payed 100rmb each (just under £10) to get the room for 6 hours. We scoffed at the idea of being in there for 6 hours... Little did we know!



That 100 each also included 3 BIG bottles of Smirnoff vodka, 20 bottles of coke, 20 bottles of beer and a random assortment of snacks





6 hours didn't look quite so unlikely now!

And yes, here we are 5 hours later, still singing!




We managed to work our way out of the maze at 4.30am, when it was still surprisingly busy! And just enough time left to stop off at the 24 hour KFC for some chicken porridge (or fries, though the porridge was an option) before wandering home in the morning sunshine!

All in all a very cultural evening, but also an incredibly fun one!!

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