Easter break...

wow... time really went by so fast.. it's end of April now. We haven't been doing much in the month of April... as DH was in China for 3 weeks and Matthew was on Easter holiday. We did some visit at Annecy, east side of France. It was a pretty town with mountain surrounding a lake. The weather was good and we had a good time. here are some pixs:

Field trip to the pottery workshop

The school had a field trip today. They visited a pottery workshop or rather a museum at the countryside, about 40 mins drive. The teacher and the assistant together with 16 little ones and 5 parents had a fun time at the museum.

The guide explained about the different type of pottery, how they come about, the process of making pottery and some ancient artifacts. All these are done in French. I could understand most of it but those 4 almost 5 years old french kids got plenty of questions for the guide and was talking non-stop. I don't think Matthew can do that...it's pretty interesting.

At the end of the tour, all the children were given a chance to make somethings out of clay... Matthew as usual not into crafts making, simply refuse to do it or perhaps because I was around. He is usually very uncooperative when I'm around which puzzled me!

They did a picnic in school after the trip...(they usually either eat in the canteen or lunch at home)

Here are some picture of the little ones:

8th Wedding Anniversary!

I went for chit-chat group this morning. The topic today was about wedding/marriage. This group of ladies are the mums from Matthew's school with a mixture of mainly French and American with a few others from England, Japan, India, New Zealand and of cos Singapore. I enjoyed this group as they talked about different things/cultures in their countries in French and English. It gives me the opportunity to speak and hear French.

Anyway, back to the topic - wedding. In the group, we shared about the different traditions in the respective countries about how they prepared the wedding, the making of the wedding gown and some brought along their wedding albums. Unlike us, most of them don't have an album like those taken in the studio. They would only have their photos taken on the wedding days itself like in the olden days either in the park, studio or church. I didn't have my album with me but only a few pictures. I love my photos, they looks great and till now... I still have great impression of my big day!

We had just celebrated our 8th wedding Anniversary 2 weeks ago at Bordeaux. It seems like we had just gotten married yesterday and now it's into 9th year of marriage. God has been graceful to us. He had great purpose for us in our lives of expatriation ever since we got married. It has been a wonderful experience.

Pictures taken at Bordeaux

March update!

Matthew has started taking kiddy gym classes (age 3 to 6) every Wednesday since Sept. He was a little reluctant initially and cried for a few times (esp. after a vacation break). But after insisting for a while, he finally likes it now! He can do “stunts” like somersault and balancing on beam. He enjoys it more and more and looks forward to it. They do lots of jumps and rolls, balancing and stunts that looks easy but not so for the little ones. I'm so glad he's happy to do it now!

His first gym "competition/show"





Matthew dressed up as a dinosaur for the school carnival.



Matthew enjoying "F1"

Vacances L'hiver

During the winter vacation, we went to Rome in Italy. Yes I know, most people would go skiing this time of the year and there's plenty of snow this year but it was way too expensive that DH decided to give it a miss this time round. What a waste but again Rome wasn't that bad either.

The weather wasn't that fantastic but it could be worst but thank God - it wasn't that bad. The trip started with us travelling on Friday nite after school and work. As usual, the traffic was bad. It jammed for about an hour or more on the autoroute even before we hit Lyon. By the time we got the the hotel, it's closed to midnite... plus it's freezing cold!
The next day, we woke up with the ground full of snow. Our car was covered with a thick layer of icy snow. It's a pity it didn't last too long and we didn't manage to take a picture of that!
It's really a long way to Rome! I'm still wondering how did DH manage the 12 hours drive? and how did we manage to ride for 12 long hours IN the CAR! It will only take us an hour to fly from Lyon and it's not that expensive... but again with our sleeping habit and Matthew, taking the car is definitely a much better choice for us. (we took our pillows with us for all the trips we had made)

Anyway, Rome was overall a nice place to visit. As usual, many places to visit...too many good choices. We didn't visit all the places but only those "more interesting" ones. With Matthew and me, DH can't go many places in a day, so he decided to visit only one or 2 places at the most per day. He was quite upset on the first day as he thought we could walk more and covered more places! But very soon, he realised that we were all too tired after the long journey, so decided to head back to the hotel and took a 2 hrs nap. We simply just fell asleep - so soundly and deeply.

The hop on and off bus is really good for me who can't walk too much in a day due to my backache and knee problem. We took the bus and went to different places without having to walk too far. DH's inital plan was to walk to all the places that we are going to visit but failed as it's really too tiring for me!

These are some of the places we have visited: