My Cheeky Beauty!

Thought this was a wonderful photo - I wish it were a little less blurry though - I need Andrew to take a look at the setting on my camera as I keep getting lots of blurry pics at the moment!
We've been having a good time recently although we are DESPERATELY waiting for payday on Tuesday!!
Last weekend we went for a free meal down south - did I mention that already? Our school caterer, an American lady who runs her business from her own home was asked to start selling some of her homemade cakes, pies, deli goods at a very exclusive expat shop called 'Kemchicks' and she had her opening ceremony so all the staff were invited to go there and have a free lunch. Very nice. Then many drinks were consumed at 'Bar Becks'!!

Last week was spent getting to know my new Grade 5 class - all 16 of them... I have the biggest form class in the school!! (It's a hard life!) The kids are lovely and I have my new class website up and running if you are interested in taking a peek:
www.njisgrade5b.blogspot.com
The school is down on numbers and things are still very unsure about what is happening with the school lease and whether we'll stay open or not....we are of the general opinion that we should prepare to start job hunting though and will probably sign up very soon to go to the Bangkok job fair in January.....sigh.

This Friday we had a staff party after school at ours which was great fun (pics above) and today we took the girls to this fantastic new play land at Mall of Indonesia (2 hours completely supervised play for 5 US dollars) so Andrew and I went shopping and then joined friends for coffee at a fab little coffee shop, aptly named 'The Coffee Tree'.
This afternoon friends Ricky Jane and Tyla, and Robyn & Craig joined us for an afternoon at the pool and then a poolside BBQ. Very nice!!
Back to school tomorrow.

Poor Annalise is being given at least an hour of homework a night - in English, Maths, Bahasa Indonesian & Mandarin. She also has exams all this week in things such as spelling and grammar - that's a joke. How can they expect a 4 year old to do that?!! But they do! Crazy. Also, as she missed the whole of July's school, she has been made to stay at school an extra 40 minutes per day to catch up.....needless to say, she doesn't enjoy it and I am feeling incredibly guilty and a bad mum for not being able to give her other school options. All I am able to do is tell her not to worry about her homework if she can't do it or doesn't want to do it, and put up with the notes coming back from school. She is a clever little thing and wants to 'be the best' but I am worried she'll burn out.

My finger is slowly getting better. I now just change the dressings everyday myself and I think it's healing beautifully. Not sure if it'll look like a chunk was taken out of it or not when it's properly healed.....we'll see! For the time being, it is covered 24 hrs a day in dressings so isn't being given much time to 'breathe' but I also don't want to look at it (!) and it still hurts a little when any pressure is applied to it.
It'll be OK.