Weekend Fun

Happy 1st of June!
Only 29 more days now of Taipei Living!

Well, I have to eat my hat as Andrew came home at 10.30pm after the Graduation ceremony and party - he chose not to go nightclubbing with the kids as he knew it'd be a busy day and an early start the next day - what a gorgeous man - but I felt a bit guilty that I might have made him feel pressured not to go.

The night went really well, apparently - so great for his 'swansong'.

Suits you sir!
Saturday I was up early, and let the girls and Andrew sleep in a little whilst I packed up the car with all our goods to sell at the fair.
The day, thankfully was dry (until the last 15 mins of the fair when it absolutely bucketed down, but we'd had enough by then anyway), which was such a relief and meant that there were quite a lot of customers!! I managed to get rid of soooooooooo much of our junk and then gave everything left over to charity. The school had organised a local charity organisation to bring a truck along at the end so sellers could dump all the things they had left into it.

Have been trying (very unsuccessfully) to get rid of all my maternity gear - have sold a few items over the internet on a local site and then sold some at the TAS fair last month, and was determined to get rid of it all or give it to charity at this last fair - but BLOW ME DOWN - got home and somehow in our packing up, we'd managed to put all the empty plastic bags on top of my maternity clothes and so we missed them when taking the leftovers to the charity truck, so I'm left with them again!!! Andrew (who is quite happy to be 'done' at two kids said 'perhaps it's a sign!' - but not for another 5 years at least, though, is how I'm thinking!!

I met some wonderful people, including the lady who bought all my romance novels at the last sale for the prisoners she works with here in Taipei - found out she bought all the Danielle Steele books for the Men's prison - suppose they need to get their kicks somehow! She is actually an amazing woman. She volunteers at the prisons and just converses and brings gifts to the expat prisoners (all mostly in there for drugs - 15 to 20 years) and to teach English to the local prisoners.
I also met some wonderful missionaries! A group of young men and women (a couple of the guys were actually pretty scrummy!) - the young men (all must have been in their early to middle 20's) bought heaps of Andrew's shirts and trousers and bought all of his suits. They live in Danshui, which is on the coast not far from Taipei (about 40 mins drive) - what a nice group of people.
I also met a lovely group of Filipino women who were so happy to have found clothes that fit their more 'boobyacious' figures!! (Finding clothes larger than a size 10 here is really difficult. )
And a Malawian family who were counting out their 1NT dollar coins to pay for clothes - I ended up giving them heaps of clothes free as I couldn't bear the fact that they were struggling that badly. And to think I feel poor. I really don't know. It was very humbling.
I managed to make about 7000 NT which isn't bad considering the junk we sold!
Andrew brought the girls along to have fun with friends whilst I was doing the selling and it was a great day by all accounts.

Yoko's Party
After the fair, we rushed home to get ready for a leaving party we'd been invited to at one of the Science teacher's house. (Yoko). She'd very kindly decided to have a party for all us leaving staff - we were absolutely knackered though and didn't feel much like partying, but we got ourselves together and made it, and are so glad we did as it was a wonderful party. She lives with her Chinese in-laws in a 6 story house (that has a lift!) and her in-laws are quite obviously worth a fortune!!!!!!!! Unbelievable house - Andrew described it as 'Rose Red' (Stephen King's famous haunted house) - not because of it being haunted, (well, it could be, you never know) just that it seems never-ending and there are so many rooms and each is decorated and furnished incredibly extravagantly. Just the fact that there is a lift inside a house tells you something about the giganticness of it!!

They also have a 'games room' in the basement and Annalise had her first taste of 'Wii' computer games - she played football and baseball and tennis and her favourite - Boxing!!! She made us crack up though, wiggling her little bottom as she tried to punch!
It was a fab night. Great company, food and fun!

Vegging
Today was spent doing nothing much in particular - we went grocery shopping and that was about it. Oh, we watched the latest double episode of Lost - oh my!! Wasn't it GREAT?!!! And also, we watched the first 2 episodes of 'Torchwood' - a series based in Cardiff about Alien hunters. That description makes it sound crap, but actually is quite good - think I'm going to get really into it.
Anyone with any other recommendations of things we can watch?
Currently we have been into:
Lost
Desperate Housewives (Has anyone see the latest ? Is this season finale the last one ever? It sure felt like it?!)
Brothers & Sisters
House
Grey's Anatomy (LOVE this show!)
Medium
Nip/Tuck

We finally got our flights through today. We leave here on 30th June on Thai Airways and arrive in London on the 1st July. We then leave London again on the 30th July to arrive in Jakarta on 31st July. Had to go through London as couldn't get any cheaper flights going to airports in the Midlands or North. Means we'll have to rent a car I think to get us up to Coventry.

TG 635 Depart 30JUN TPE / BKK 20 / 05 Arrive BKK 22 / 50
TG 910 Depart 01JUL BKK/ LHR 01 / 10 Arrive LHR 07 / 15
TG 911 Depart 30JUL LHR / BKK 12 / 30 Arrive BKK 06 / 05
TG 433 Depart 31JUL BKK / CGK 07 / 55 Arrive CGK 11 / 25

Flight to the UK will hopefully be fine as it's a night-flight (a must with kids) - but leaving for Jakarta is a DAY flight - OH BUGGERRRRRRRRRRR! 11 1/2 hours to Bangkok then another 3 1/2 hours to Jakarta - all in the day. It's going to be horrendous with Juliette on my lap all that way during the day. If it was a night flight, at least she would sleep for the majority. In the day this will not happen.