Birthday

So I had a lovely birthday.

We went into town, wandered around a bit - bought a couple of shirts at the market, decided against frogs and snakey things for tea!

Then we went to the Crowne Plaza - 5-star hotel, bit like stepping back into our western world. Beautiful air conditioning, delightful food, huge bed and beautiful room - nothing like other Chinese hotels we have been in!
And a swimming pool!

Peter mentioned to the lady showing us to our room that it was my birthday. Next thing we knew a bunch of them showed up at the door with a cake. They came in and sang to me and took Polaroid pictures, and gave me a birthday card with my name printed on it by computer ... and later they called again with a complementary fruit basket.

It was all very pleasant and mentally refreshing.

Now we are back "home" and getting ready to teach holiday camp - not that we feel we have much getting ready to do. Its hard to prepare when you don't know how many kids and their abilities or ages. All we know is that Peter has the top group - oldest and/or best English - I have the bottom group - youngest and/ or least English. A challenge, as they say.

Computer is being cantankerous today, I have had several goes at attaching files ... once I almost got there and my whole email thing just disappeared and it went back to the desktop. Periodically it just freezes and/or turns off - despite the pedestal fan at my feet blowing full blast onto the processor.