Here is our Ayi. Her name is Xiao Xiang. Ayi means “Aunty” in Chinese and basically she is our nanny and housekeeper.

One of the big perks about living here is the Ayis. Not only does she do heaps of our stuff for us, she also only speaks Chinese, which is contributing to M and Luki being bilingual.

We got a paddling pool yesterday and the drunken midgets enjoyed splashing the tiles and watering the marigolds.

Luki spent a lot of time getting out of the pool.

Emily was annoyed that I had my hat on backwards.

Dad, why is it like that?

Your hat, why is it on backwards.

Not like my hat. My hat is on correctly.

I’m serious Dad.

Here, let me fix it.

I have it, now i only need to reposition it.

Ah, much better. My work here is done.

The little guy is really getting into playing. He loves to play with M’s flashing ball, pull books off shelves and battle against lounge cushions. I will try to capture him in the heat of cushion warfare next. For now here he is with ball:

Equals no time at all to post. So here is a quick one.

He can be trusted to play without eating everything with 2 meters, so now he can have the magic of a sand pit.

I think she knows she is pretty. Here is our pensive girl.

We are almost finished with out unit on systems and one of the things we did along the way was build robots. The kids were given sensors, motors, wheels, batteries and a “brain” and they were let loose (in teams of three) on the spare parts shelves of the lab to build the best Sumo Robot they could. We had a whole week of building and testing and then we had battle day.

We had a simple round robin tournament where everyone fought everyone else in a best of three bouts extravaganza. You win if the other robot puts a whole wheel outside the white circle, or is somehow disabled. The 4 teams with the highest points then played a knock out style tournament to see which was the best robot. As it happens, Kirby was crowned champion.

Here is a hastily thrown together montage of video snippets from battle day.

Be with you

Luki was viewed by English speakers walking on Monday and Tuesday this week. The early reports of him walking from late last week were in Chinese and too excited to be understood or believed.

He also enjoys bath time and all the things that get done to him therein.

Living in a compound has advantages and disadvantages. The fact that a girl in my class lives across the road from me probably falls into both categories. She (furthest left in the photo) had a sleep over on the weekend and invited three of her friends. One (furthest on the right is also in my class) and another (purple shirt) is in my math class. The fourth is in the class across the hall. *

These girls know M quite well and love playing with her. M loves attention so it works out well for everyone.

*I am avoiding names because I didn’t receive permission to use this photo. That is also why I used a picture where their faces aren’t clear.