Supply, Suzhou and swimming

John and Jo arrived at the beginning of November and found me midway through eight days of supply.  They went off and explored some of Shanghai, ordering curtins and a suit, and meeting Sam for lunch, whilst I taught year 1 and learned about disecting eyeballs! 

On one outing the need for coffee was so great that John was seen in a MacDonalds!  They also had some lovely weather which Jo made the most of.

William and Oliver had the good fortune to have a couple of days off when Grandpa and Granny were with us and we went off to Suzhou, a town near Shanghai famous for it's silk, gardens and canals, for two days.  We travelled by bullet train, completing what would have been a two and a half hour car journey in 25 minutes!

After checking in at our lovely hotel we set out to explore the area nearby.  Unsuprisingly we stumbled accross lots of couples having their wedding photos taken.  This has now become such a common sight for us to see!








We spent the next couple of days exploring old Suzhou.  There are many Chinese style gardens to explore and we chose the largest, the Humble Administrator's garden.  There were lots of hollow rocks and secret pathways and despite the number of people they were quite peaceful.

This was followed by a meander along the main canal in search of a cup of tea and hairy crab for lunch.  We stopped for tea first in a primely located hut on the canal and then continued our search for hairy crab. 

Hairy Crabs are a local delicacy only available at this time of year.  In the top hotels you can pay up to £40 for a crab but if you go local you can find one for £5!  After cracking, sucking and generally getting very messy we decided that the crabs were tasty but you didn't get much from them.  Oliver and William tried it and said they liked it but they were far more interested in looking at the body parts!  Bizzarely our lunch for six people came to only £3 more than our cup of tea for six!

Each day after having a morning exploring we returned to our hotel and spent the afternoon in the pool and jacuzzi. 

We were lucky enough to have a suite with a fab bath which we could all fit in!

William and Oliver loved watching the TV in the bath!

In the evenings we had supper in the club lounge, where the boys enjoyed picking their own food from the selection of canapes and we all tucked in to the free flow drinks!

The morning after we returned to Shanghai, William and Oliver took part in their first swimming gala.  They have only been having lessons since September but the swimmming instructor felt it would be good for the class to experience a gala.  As they are all 5 they were in the youngest catagory and were entered for the 10 metre freestyle dash!  William and Oliver were in separate races.  They began the race in the water and got to swim 10 metres in to the arms of 16 year old girls who then carried them to the side!  I think the boys in the race appreciated this more than the girls! 

All of the participants won medals and when Oliver took his in to school the next day, he told the class that he had beaten everyone including William, despite the fact they were not in the same race.