myasiababy: A new year, a new post

I am so happy to report I got what I wanted today. We had a wonderful day with friends and their children, at our cottage. The men sat outside cooking on the barbecue and having man-talk, and the women sat inside enjoying good company and drinks. The eight children ran around the house, through the house, around the garden, and through the garden. We even got to play some card games, reminding me how much fun it is to play games with children. It was a very successful start to 2011.

I've also had a few things happen the last month or so that I should write about. The first one is, I started teaching at Kyle's school, as a volunteer mother. It's just one class once a week. It's really a lot of fun. The children seem to enjoy learning English . And now, I will be teaching two classes a week, paid, at the school. I'm really looking forward to it. It should be a bit of a challenge after so many years away, but it is something I love to do.

Ok, next is, I have been trying my hand at gardening (again). I was planning on having an organic garden, but after the incident a few days ago, I really don't know if it is possible in this environment. At 10:30am, I was looking at my beautiful row of brocolli, about break out from the leaf-state it was in. I told myself I should take a picture of it to send to my dad. I had a shower and did a little work. When I came out at noon to get the kids from school, I had to rub my eyes and look again. Every piece of leaf on my broccoli plants were gone. I imagined a giant praying mantis coming in for the attack. Gone, all gone. I had tears in my eyes on the way to school, but on the way home I felt a little anger. How DARE anything eat my hard work? I was tempted to make up a spray and wait for the next bug that came along. After a few days, I am now considering a Net Against Nature. We have an old mosquito net from the four-poster-bed Richard made us a few years ago that I may well cut up in an attempt to protect my future projects.

Kyle is doing very well in school. He consistently gets 100% in his tests, and really enjoys all his classes. He volunteered us for the Christmas show, resulting in the two of us singing a song on stage and then performing four magic tricks. The teachers constantly tell me how great he is, as if I don't know already. Kyle is still determined to move to an English-speaking country, as his true love is reading English (although today he told me he loves rollerblading even more - Uncle Neil will not be impressed!)

Hannah is also a star in her preschool. She loves all her classmates and they all look after each other very well. Hannah is always preparing things from our house to take to school to share with everyone. I think the low student numbers in the school really help the children to settle in and make themselves a social group more easily than the larger numbers in other schools.

Seeing as I haven't posted anything for a long time, I have a lot of pictures to choose from. Here are a few: