Relaxation

Today was another relaxing day. I chilled on the couch while Sue continued to unpack until lunchtime. Sue and Mark's friends, Kath and Elliot, and their kids (triplets!) dropped by to see the new place so we chatted with them for a while and ate the cookies that Kath baked. When Mark got back from IKEA, Sue and I headed to Starbucks to use the internet to finalize our flights and then on to Dragonfly for a bit of pampering.

At Dragonfly, Sue and I both had a manicure and pedicure followed by a full body massage - tough life :-). We walked out of there looking more beautiful and feeling more relaxed.

From there we headed home and caught up with Jack, Sam and their mate Clio. Mark had been busy organizing the garage and the study including the wireless internet. Sue and I walked over to the Chinese restaurant to order dinner for the boys and ourselves while Mark headed off to play soccer.

Although not normally a fan of Chinese food, the food we ordered - all vegetarian - was excellent. Clio's Dad, Michael dropped around after dinner to check out the new place so we had a couple of beers while chatting with him and mostly trying to arrange a set-up between him and a girl that we met on Saturday night, Daphne - we'll see how that goes :-)

By this stage I was exhausted again and knowing that tomorrow would be an early start to catch my 8am flight, I headed to bed for my last night sleeping in Sam's bed. Poor kid - think he will be happy to see the back of me as he hasn't even had a chance to move into his room yet!

Half day

Well, today wasn't a full day by any means. By the time I managed to surface it was almost 1pm. Sue and I were both pretty hung over. Poor Mark had been up to 1am with the removalists so he wasn't too sympathetic to our pain - and rightly so!

Sue and I headed to Hungry Horse for some food to try and aid our recovery. Then the rest of the day was pretty much spent on the couch watching TV including a great Aussie movie called "No Worries".

Not such a protective day. As you can see from the photo, Lucy the dog made photo of the day because not much else went on :-)

Roped into moving boxes

Moving day at Mark and Sue's. Conveniently (for them!), I had arrived in Beijing just in time to help Sue and Mark move from their place to another villa in Capital Paradise. After breakfast at "Steak and Eggs" (yes, that is the name of the restaurant), we spent the morning transfering boxes from one house to another and unpacking as much as we could while waiting for the removalists (aka Chinese guys with a truck) to arrive at 2pm. As you can see from the photo, Sue took the unpacking very seriously with dodgy sunglasses on and red wine in hand!

By about 7pm they had done about 3 loads of furniture with a couple more to go. Sue and I headed over to the hairdresser for a wash and blowdry before going out. Mark was kind enough to stay at the house to finish with the removalists while Sue and I jumped in a cab and headed downtown for dinner with some of Sue and Mark's friends ("The Irish").

We went to a Thai restaurant called "Purple Haze" which had amazing food and a good atmosphere. Sue's friends, Dell and Glen, and some of their friends were already at the restaurant. It was a pretty interesting bunch of people, especially the two Claudia's (Polish Klaudia and Mexican Claudia). Klaudia was a professional table tennis player when she was 14 in Poland and came to Beijing when she was 15 on an exchange scholarship to train with the Chinese national team (a Chinese football player went to Poland and she came here). So she's been here for 14 years and speaks fluent Mandarin. Unfortunately, she was badly injured so could not continue but went to University here in Beijing - interesting story!

Dell's husband and one of the other guys in the group run a bar called "The Stumble Inn" where we headed to after dinner. Glen was leaving the Stumble to manage another bar just around the corner from the restaurant so this was his last night. The Stumble Inn was a little bar below ground level. Predominantly full of expats who seemed to know each other, it seemed like a pretty groovy little bar.

We sat there for hours chatting with everyone, drinking and dancing. Sue's friend Dell reminded me alot of our friend Dee - it was kind of spooky.

Before we knew it, it was 5am and we were "stumbling" out of the Stumble Inn to try and find a cab to go home. A funny night!

Shanghai to Beijing

This morning I woke up after a horrible night with indigestion/ food poisoning. Not a good start to the day :-(. I organized my stuff, took some Imodium and headed off with Glynis to the Service Center to organize a taxi to take me to the Maglev station. After saying goodbye to Kevin and Glynis, I took the train to the airport, checked in my bag and headed to the boarding gate to try and recover as well as catch up a bit on my blog.

After a pretty painless flight, I landed in Beijing and despite a bit of miscommunication with the driver, I managed to make my way to Sue and Mark's school (Western Academy Beijing). Sue met me at the gate and we walked to Mark's room where she dropped me off until the end of the school day.

From there we headed to King's pub for a drink with a few of their friends to celebrate the start of their holidays. Sue and Mark had had a big night the day before so it was a quiet couple of drinks before heading home for take-away and foot massages - a great way to end the day.

I fell into bed exhausted!