Retreating rain, sudden summer.

There's been a bit of a hiatus in the blog, sorry to all six of you who read it. It's been a busy month or so as we moved apartments, down to the second floor, which means we're at tree top level. This gives us a sort of tree-house feel which is nice. Plus it's larger and has furniture from this century which is also nice as our old apartment seemed to be decked out from the ming dynasty.

It has been a relief not to have travelled this season. The plum rains have finally begun to ease, after two months of living in a perpetual waterfall. The summer heat has thickened, although I think we acclimatised because despite being told it was a 43 degree heat yesterday, it felt more like 30-35. With each infrequent breeze the summer is gradually drawn away and term starts up again next week for Mike, the week after for the kids. We have waved off two sets of friends, one destined for the UK, another moving their family onward to a post in Bangkok. Gideon especially has been deeply saddened with the farewells.

Art has been a significant theme this summer. One of the highlights has been helping at a kids arts camp, where they learnt a bit about the violin, participated in a dance and my and my co-leader's role was to look after the arts and crafts. Each morning we had three groups of ten kids between the ages of 4-11. Our projects varied from T shirt decorating to water colour galaxies to photo jars and fluorescent jellyfish. I had paint in my hair most of the time and was completely exhausted at the end. But it was great fun and incredible to see the kids develop the ideas and interpret them in their own way.

Another thing I'm so grateful for was watercolour Wednesdays, lead by Vikki, art teacher at Mike's school. She gave ideas and instruction and inspired me to to keep going with it. Also, the language exchange program has been fantastic and we have covered topics such as space, music, poetry, Chinese Zodiac, rubbish sorting and character. We have our final session this afternoon where we will have an open mic performance instead of our usual structure and eat cake that some of us baked together yesterday, (thank you Abbie for the double choc chip recipe and Mary Berry for the Victoria Sponge Cake recipe). It got messy, as 10 bakers might be considered too many but it was fun and I'm really looking forward to doing some more Chinese cooking with Nostalgia's (Chris') wife. But my final and best highlight has been having the kids in another camp last week (mornings off for me whoop whoop) and witnessing their delight in deepening friendships, recalling bible verses and singing songs about scripture. These precious experiences will, I pray, sink deep into their souls.