One Month of School Completed; It's time for a Vacation!

No really, this week is vacation.  All of China will be off celebrating a national  "Golden Week" and we'll be getting the heck out of dodge.  It's been a busy first month of school, I do think a break sounds good.  

ChinaBean headed back to her little preschool at the beginning of September.  Could she be any cuter?!  She attends a Chinese preschool three mornings a week.  If you ask her, she eats rice and soup every day for lunch (which is probably true).

ChinaBean was walking home from school pretending to talk on her wooden iPhone.  She's a woman with a mission.

EBean was very excited to be recognized as her class's Golden Child.  She was honored during the weekly school assembly for her perseverance while trying to write sentences.  We celebrated with the traditional visit to Cold Stone.

EBean has also been taking swimming as part of her PE classes this term.  She loved it!

Nice form EBean!

Girl Scouts has resumed.  This is the start of my 4th year as a leader!  Now I have a better sense of how women end up leading for 20+ years...they must have several daughters too.  LBean is a second-year Brownie and EBean is finally a Daisy.  The poor girl has watched her sister do activities and make crafts for the last three years and she is super excited to be an official member this year.

Our troop has grown so much that my friend Sarah will be leading the Brownies and Juniors and I will be taking on the Daisies.  We have around 21 girls in our lovely troop.

Bridging ceremony.  Time to welcome the new Brownies. 

EBean playing a game at our first meting.

 Each class at the girls' school takes a turn to give a class presentation at their school's weekly assembly.  LBean's class performed at one of the first assemblies and I think it's nice to get it out of the way.  Her class performed a skit, sang a song, and showed a video about endangered and extinct animals.

LBean with one of her closest classmates

Taking a selfie

Class 4D at Dulwich

LBean's entire grade took a 3 day, 2 night school trip.  The kids were bused to Taihu, a lake situated about 1.5 hours from Suzhou.  They took a ferry to an island called San Shan where they learned about ancient temples, hiked a Buddha trail, picked oranges, made s'mores, watched a movie, took a night walk, and lots of other interesting sights.

Packed and ready to go!

Selfie has been mastered.

I was teasing LBean about this picture.  I asked her if she
realized that this was someone's underwear.  She said
that one of her teachers made a joke about the undies being
ancient artifacts!

Let's see, I know I'm leaving out something...homework, after-school activities (knitting & ballet for LBean), lunch-time club (ballet for EBean), violin practice, birthday parties, orthodontist appointments, colds, strep throat for me, and on and on and on.

Maybe we really do need a vacation...