We have pretty much crammed as much as possible into our five hand-luggage cases, changed some money, got passports ready and arranged for a taxi to collect us on arrival in Beijing. Yes there are the many last minute things to get done such as find the battery charger and plug adaptor (where do these things go between trips?) and finally decide what shoes to take, but apart from all that Lawrences are sort of ready for our excursion to China. Well almost.
Rupert volunteered to take on some useful preparation at school, especially as he had Mandarin today. He said he would ask his teacher for useful Mandarin food words so that he could be involved in the grub ordering process and not have to rely on the good old tourist stand-by of pointing and shouting. It should be noted that he has quite a good Mandarin vocabulary so far but that mainly includes colours, names of pet animals and family members. Neither Lexi nor I wish eat a green Grandma holding a cat. He duly did ask and his teacher who kindly put together a very helpful list for him. Great. He was very pleased with himself and I would have been equally pleased with him had he remembered to bring the list home. Ten out of ten for effort, but for execution?
Getting the visa for China was a fraught process. It involved me filling in a seven page form for each of us, printing it off, and delivering it to the Chinese Embassy in KL. When I arrived at the place, inconvenient opening hours of 1000 to 1500, the first official informed me that I needed to provide details of the flights and photocopies of our passports. This was not easy as he told me that the visa office did not have any internet. Getting the documents involved me finding a nearby shopping centre, being told there was no internet café there, asking a second shopkeeper who said there was an internet café, finding the internet café, saying naughty words when I discovered that the internet was not working, eventually getting the stuff I needed, running back to the Embassy and making it back in just in time. Amazingly our visas were ready for collection four days later, all for the total sum of RM790. It was a good job none of the Lawrences were Americans as the Chinese appear to like charging them RM 465 per visa. So much for international understanding.
Yesterday I watched the latest cultural event starring one of our sprogs. Rupert’s class, along with his counterparts in 3L, were performing their end of term play, grandly titled “Master Chef – The Musical.” They had been working on the topic of Chocolate looking at it through history, in its various edible states and learning more than I could believe about The Mayans. The show involved lots of sequences of the real Greg and John interviewing children from 3S and 3L, thanks to their teachers’ skills of video-editing. It then showed four great ways of making chocolate resulting in each way being judged by a year 3 Greg, complete with bald wig, and, in the interests of equality, a year 3 Michelle. In between the chocolate demonstrating and cooking scenes the class sang chocolatey lyrics to a variety of well-known tunes, including Queen and ACDC numbers. Great entertainment. Thanks to Lexi finishing school a little earlier that day both she and I were able to get there in time to see all of the show as well as making sure we listened attentively to Rupert’s crucial one line solo in the first song.
Back to reality with a bump though Rupert has managed to lose his latest school hat.