Flying Again...

Yup, we are flying back to Singapore again to attend my sister's wedding end of November. 3 times in 2.5 years!!! This is really too much for me. Most of the wives envies me but I am not excited about going back at all. I really hate the flight journey... got to leave home at abt 5am, reach Paris at 8 and wait for connecting flight at 11, then stuck another 12 hrs in the plane. Argghh, this time J will just sent me to Bordeaux Airport only and I am going to do the transit with Shannon... Great! Of cos I can do it myself but I prefer to follow blindly behind J and do nothing...hehehe

J will be joining us in Singapore 2 weeks later as I need to help my sis with some of the wedding preparation and also sending Shannon to some "crash course". She will be 5years old in 5 mths time and she still doesn't know her ABC and Phonics well. It's common for French as they start learning ABC next year but to Singaporean, the kids are expected to know their ABC when they are going to K1 next year!!! Hopefully, she can pick up something and I can start coaching her when we are back in France.

Oh ya, whenever we tell Shannon that we are going back to Singapore, she will make sure that she will be able to come back as she regards France as her HOME. Anyway, we will be flying tomorrow and now I am already looking forward to the date to come back here again... LOL...

Shannon's Class Photos..

The French Women on the right was the Teacher Olivia and the one on the left is the Class Assistant.





We were given an folders that consists of Shannon's Photo taken in the school 3 weeks ago.

Halloween 2009

We brought Shannon to Auchan for a free face painting in the afternoon to attend a Halloween gathering at our friend's house. She was so excited when she saw the booth and requested for a purple butterfly to be painted on her face. We taught her how to say "Purple Butterfly" in french and she started to recite "Papillon Violet" when she was queing up for her turn. Hehe

After the face painting, we tried to look for a costume for her because I didn't really see any that fancy me previously. As it was the day of Halloween, all the costumes had almost sold off, thus I decided to go home and dressed her up with whatever we had at home. :P



In the end, I used our Chinese Qipao bought during Chinese New Year. I pinned a few spiders on her clothes, tied a long devil's tail on her waist, put on a devil hairband and messed up her hair. Voila! A Devil in a Chinese Qipao...LOL



After taking some food at the gathering, we brought the kids to neighours' house for Tricks or Treat. The first house visit was a disappointment as the french neighour literally ignore us. However, we continued to look for other neighours and decided to visit our Singaporeans' neighbour instead. Well, after visiting a few houses, we decided to go back as the streets were really dark and quiet. We distributed the sweets to the kids and let the kids played in the garden instead.

Overall, we had great fun that night. This is the first time that I really dress Shannon up for Halloween night and I can see that she enjoyed the night too. ^^

Sleeping By Herself

We bought this bed for Shannon upon her request sometimes in August. J wanted wean off the co-sleeping and asked her to choose a bed that she love. And she chose the above which cost almost SGD 1 K!!!

I remember the first day she slept on her bed, she actually went up and down the bed for a few times finding excuses of washing hands or need to pee. After about spending 2 hours in her room, she decided to sleep with us and told us that she is too young to sleep by herself. (LOL)

Then J and myself take turns to sleep with her in her bedroom for a few times. After she fell asleep, we would go back to our room but she will definitely joined us in our bed if she woke up in the middle of the night. I am fine with it as I feel that she would definitely wanted to sleep by her own when she grows up so I should treasure this moments. However, we constantly remind her that we would give away her precious bed since she is not sleeping it.

3 days ago, when all of us was about to sleep, she suddenly said that she wanted to sleep in her princess bed. We left her in her room with the door open and the toilet's light shining in her room and went back to our room. And TADA, she successfully fell asleep and even she woke up in the morning to pee, she will go back to her bed and continue to sleep.

Last night, she fell asleep in the living rooms and we have no way to carry her up the bed and thus she slept with us again. She said that she will go back to her bedroom tonight and I hope she mean it.. hehehehe

Sushi & Monopoly

One of the Sunday, we decided to make some sushi. Shannon tried the sushi she made and began to eat non-stop. ^^

At night, we took out the Monopoly which came with Mcdonald Happy Meal and started playing. It is a simple version of Monopoly which Shannon can understand and she played with us happily. J was the first person who went bankrupt and I was the second, thus Shannon was the millionaire for that game! :P

Baking Cake With Shannon

* Two Little Sweeties *

While waiting Irene to buy lunch at McDonald's yesterday, I took some photos of Shannon & Avril...

Seasons Changing = Falling Sick

After the Lantern Festival Celebration, Shannon had fever that night and the following night. I brought her to the GP on Monday and he said she had throat inflammation. After taking medicine, her fever went away thus I brought her to her first Music Lesson on Wednesday.



The kids can only start learning piano at 5 years old in France. Thus, we can only let them go to elementary course conducted by the private music school. The course fees was 99Euro per year. They will get to know and learn to play with all kinds of musical instruments found in the school. In the later part of the lessons, they will learn about music notes and at the end of the course, the instructor will advise us which musical instrument to let the kids begin with for the next year.

Since her fever never come back after 2 days, I decided to let her go back to her school on Thursday. Well, the moment I brought her back from school, her fever shot up to 40 degrees and we went to see a PD on Friday. PD said she might have lung inflammation and ask me to observe her for another 2 days before he prescribe antibiotics for her. Her cough seems to get worse on Friday and she had high fever once a day for Friday and Saturday. Luckily, her fever didn't come back on Sunday but I decided to bring her to the PD again and this time round, he prescribed the antibiotic. After taking the antibiotic, her cough was under control and fever was gone and she resumed her 2nd lesson for Music on Wednesday and school on Thursday.


2nd Music Lesson

Lantern Festival Celebration 2009

Last Saturday, we had a Lantern Festival Celebration at my house. We invited 6 other families to join in the fun, every family brought some food to our place for potluck dinner.



Right after dinner, we had riddles for adult to guess prepared by Meizhen & Clara. Everyone went to the lanterns hanging outside and chose a riddle to answer. Well, the riddles were kind of difficult for us.. we had a hard time solving it. For those who solved the riddle, they got a small gift from Meizhen & Clara.



After the riddles, Serene hosted another game called "Deal or No Deal". Everyone had to contribute $5 to enter this game and the player who was picked gets to win a prize of $0.01 to $60 euros. Our professional Serene Leong even bought a set of props for this. I was picked 2 times and won a total of $16. It was fun but unforunately the game could only be played 5 times cuz it had to end as it was getting late. The remaining cash was given to Roy who was luckily picked by the host at the end of the game.



After the games ended, all the kids put on their jacket and carried paper lanterns in the garden. There were no fantasy/electronic lanterns sold over here. All we had were paper lanterns we bought 2 years ago but the kids still enjoyed carrying their lanterns round the house again and again. :)

How was your lantern festival this year? :)

Mooncakes Making

Last week, we went to Stehpanie house to make some Snowskin Mooncakes. Ingredients were provided by Dawn who just came back from Singapore few weeks ago. It was successful this time as we had the right ingredients and most importantly there was Meizhen Shifu to guide us along this time. :P

Kid Parc & Caterpillars

Last Sunday, we went to Kid Parc again. It was a beautiful Sunday, not too hot nor too cold. As usual, Shannon enjoyed the rides and when we about to leave, we saw something on J's tyre.



Take a closer look!



It was Caterpillars!!! And when we turned around and look at the tree beside us...



Tons of caterpillar queing to crawl up the tree! J had to use a branch to take off the caterpillars before starting the car. We wouldn't want to transport it back to our garden. -.-"

Baby Danse Resumed

New school term started and Shannon resumed her dancing lesson as well. The dancing lesson will be on Friday weekly. I picked her up from school at 4:40pm and rushed her to the dancing lesson at 5:15pm. In fact, I have a hard time keeping her awake during the 15 minutes journey. I gave her some biscuits and water to drink in the car to keep her awake but she always almost fall asleep during the last 5 minutes of the journey. Luckily, whenever we reached the dancing school, she will become alert and start enjoying her 1hr session. :P

Swing Swing

We bought the above Swing for $69 euros at Leroy Merlin Bordeaux last Saturday. It was definitely a good buy as the usual price was $149 euros. J spent about 2-3 hours to fix up the swing and now Shannon had a small playground with swing and slide in our garden!

Back To School

Summer holidays ended and Shannon went back to her Maternelle (Preschool). She was not enrolled in the same class with Avril and Brayden. They were all separated into different classes.. Avril and Zavier (who joined the same Maternelle this year) got in Moyenne Section, Brayden in Moyenne et Grand Section and poor Shannon got in Petite et Moyenne Section. Funny right? "Sigh"

I was quite perplexed about the arrangement as she will still be stucked in Petite Section for the first half morning session. Well, being a Kiasu Singaporean mummy, I asked J to called the school principal to ask for a transfer to Avril or Brayden's class. To our dismay, our request was rejected as the principal said they will be learning the same thing even though they are in different class.

According to the research I have done, information on French Education is as followed:

The weekly timetable covers 24 hours, with the day organised by the teacher around varied activities and communication exercises. There is generally no specific timetable for lessons, which are left to the discretion of the teacher.

The learning priority at nursery school is language development, which is carried out through four main areas of activity:

Living together;
Physical activity;
Arts and science;
Imagining and feeling.

All pupils in the grande section of nursery school are expected to start learning a modern language, which is continued with vigour when the child continues into primary and secondary education.

However, we were all brought up in Asian KS style and we just can't help comparing what our kids are doing in the 3 different classes. I am still feeling uneasy and fustrated to let my girl continue in the Petite et Moyenne Section but there is nothing that I can do..

Summer ...

Wow.. it has been weeks that I last updated my blog. August was really a busy month for us.. We had plenty of outings, gathering and Mahjong sessions weekly. Getting really lost where to start... thus I will do a summerize most of them into one post...

I brought Shannon to the Kid Parc for about 3 times in August. Following are some of the photos taken during the outings..

Shannon trying out the new attraction(Flying Saucer) in the parc with Daddy

As the weather was really warm on certain days of the week, we would usually visit our friends who had their swimming pool set up and let the kids enjoyed. Shannon loves swimming so much that she was always the last one to get out of the pool.




Videos on how Shannon trying to swim...

Assumption Day 2009

It's Assumption Day in France yesterday. As usual, we went to Archacon Beach with a group of friends for the annual Fireworks Display.


As we were early, we had a walk on the beach and took some photos with the sand scuptures we saw at the beach.


At about 7pm, we took our dinner at one of the restaurant along the beach. This was the second time we had visited this restaurant. I always wanted to go back for their food but was really disappointed this time. The food was served within 10 minutes after we placed our order which means it was kind of pre-cooked.


After dinner, we spent another 2 hours on the beach waiting for the nightfall. The kids enjoyed themselves running around and playing with the sand.. Finally at 1030pm, the fireworks started...

The show ended about 15-20minutes later and we could see that everyone stood up immediately and headed back to their car. As usual, we only managed to reached home 1 hour later due to the heavy traffic.