Halloween!

Verity with her friend Katie. She won a prize!

Our new house

Many expat abodes in Beijing are palatial (or at least they sound it from the sales blurb), ours is more errr serviceable but is conveniently near Theo's school (Lou can now cycle him there each morning), many of the childrens' friends and Annie's pizza.

Holy mountains

Tris & his friend Sam, in front of a mountain with a hole in it - polo should think about moving their HQ to China.

A great place for breakfast!

My school trips were to Kesingland Safari Park or Great Whipsnade but schools have moved on since then; even so, we were a bit surprised to find that Tris was taking a three-hour plane flight to southern China for his first trip at Harrow. Tristan's trip involved watching men fish using cormorants; climbing, caving, kayaking and mountain-biking in some of China's most amazing scenery.

This is the place where Tris had breakfast each morning while on his school trip to Guilin. The vertical mountains are an unusual limestone formation and a favourite of Chinese artists.

Turtles

One of the first places that we went to was Chaoyang Park which is a big park in the east of Beijing (close to our apartment). It contains: The Sony Explora Centre which is a hands-on science experience and one of Tristan's favourite places; lakes where you can hire gunboats and huge inflatable, translucent rolls that you climb inside and make move over the water like a hamster in an ball (Tris & Verity got very hot and giggly doing this); you can fish for goldfish in the pond and you can pay for additional amusements (Theo enjoyed shooting his first air rifle) and we were all stunned by the ride known as 'Battlefield of happiness'.

The Chinese are not sentimental about animals; live fish are sold in supermarkets in containers no longer than their bodies and Verity & Theo discovered a man selling turtles who was keeping them in a very small box. We are sentimental about animals so we bought three, two of which are still going strong. They're actually red sliders or terrapins and they live for 40 years which is, umm, longer than we intend to be in China - we are avoiding this subject at present.

Finding schools

We'd arrived just as term was due to start so we had to find schools at speed. We'd applied for an American school before we left the UK but when Verity and Lou went to visit it they decided that it was just too much on the big smile and soooo cute side. Tris and Verity joined Harrow International - an English school with two sites, one in the city which Tris goes to and one miles out of town where Verity goes. Verity's had just opened, had very few pupils and felt a bit odd when we first went there but she has now got lots of friends and likes it. Tris loved his from the start and it really seems to be working well for him - the teachers are very keen and the Head is the best we've ever met. Harrow had a class for Theo but it only had a few children and we thought it would be good for him to be with more children and to learn some Mandarin so he has Joined Dulwich College Beijing's bi-lingual kindergarten.

Each school had buses which collected and dropped-off the children and, within days they were putting on school uniform, rushing breakfast and disappearing before 8 each morning. It was a shock for Theo because he had only done three mornings a week in the UK and he was suddenly leaving before 8 am and arriving back at around 4 each day; however, we've now moved closer to his school and he has made friends and is much happier.

China - First impressions

We arrived in Beijing on 23rd August to a technicolour dawn ... well, that's how it should have been; in practice, we arrived to a 'technicolour yawn' courtesy of Tris who'd just had a smoothie for breakfast and wasn't feeling well. It was a beautiful day and a huge, modern, deserted airport with smartly-dressed attendants who were very keen to help. That is an enduring impression of Chinese people - they're cheery and helpful.

The roads may be broad but the rules aren't quite the same: 2 Mins after leaving the airport, our driver missed a turn so he stayed in lane, stopped and then reversed down the motorway.

We stayed in a serviced apartment for the first two months (the picture shows the view from the master bedroom) while we found schools and a house. It was a big apartment with marble floors, more bathrooms than we needed; a tiny kitchen with no windows and a bedroom for a servant (called an 'Ayi') which was only slightly longer than a bed, had no windows and no ventilation - cooking was obviously supposed to be done by the Ayi so there was no point creating a comfy kitchen! We decided that we wouldn't be comfortable with someone living in a shoebox and waiting on us.