Potato

Olivia is a big fan of Play-Doh (plasticine for the brits). English granny made some home-made pink stuff a while ago which lasted for AGES but, when in Singapore over Chinese New Year, we saw some more and decided to splash out the $3 for her.
She is quite taken with it and calls it Potato. Unfortunately Mummy's tendencies of keeping the colours separate didn't last long and very soon all the playdoh was a mash of yellow, blue, pink and green. Olivia doesn't seem to mind though. She demands 'make fish', 'make duck', 'give eyes' etc, and happily makes flat disks of playdoh and proudly announces 'dog' or 'shark'.
Here she is watching Nemo and cuddling up to the plastic pots. I think that Nemo must have been caught at this point as she is looking quite concerned!

More school

Clearly teachers at school spent Chinese New Year writing reports for the kids. Since the first one pager that I posted about, we have had a DVD with a video of Olivia at school, a powerpoint presentation and another term report. We definitely aren't worried about her progress but it is good to see the things that they are doing at school. This last report has five categories and 14 tasks in each category. Each task has a grade of Always, Sometimes, or Not Yet.
Here is a brief summary:
PRACTICAL LIFE (mostly A, some NY)
Can put her shoes on=Always
Is able to open and close a tap=Sometimes
Can pour with little to no spillling=Not yet
SENSORIAL (nearly all A)
Can complete a 3-4 piece puzzle=Always
Matches two or more colours=Always
Can use scissors properly=Not yet
LANGUAGE development (nearly all A)
Participates in storytelling=Always
Uses 3 word sentences=Always
Can make a negative statement=Always
NUMBER work (mostly S or NY)
Can group objects of same colour=Always
Can count up to 5=Not yet (I don't agree with this one)
Can concentrate for at least 7 minutes on a task=Not yet (and correspondingly she gets Not yet for 10 minutes and 15 minutes!)
EMOTIONAL skill (all A and S)
Can play with other children=Always
Can feel sorry if a friend is hurt=Always
Expresses displeasure verbally rather than physically=Always (yup, that's Olivia!)
Is kind and respectful to other children=Sometimes
Has a favourite friend=Sometimes

We're keeping the reports to put into a folder for her to read when she gets older. It is a little odd to have a school report at age 2 but I do like the things that they are teaching her. She surprised us all last week by singing the entire alphabet from A to Z (got a little stuck around the letter U, but it was mostly intact). Impressive. Now she has to learn to do it in Chinese!

School report

This morning a challenge, Olivia was in full throws of 'terrible twos', she didn't want to get dressed, she didn't want to eat breakfast, she didn't want to go to school. All very frustrating and tiring before even starting a day's work in the office. Bali with the pools and laid back schedule was so much easier! Anyway, when I got to school they handed me a report card from the last few months. Olivia's very first report card from school!

They have noted the dates that she accomplished "understands", "repeats", "says on own" and "mastered" for specific activities such as tidy up, wash hands, numbers, fruit words, body parts, songs, sentences etc. It matches reasonably well to what we see at home, and overall she is doing pretty well with some of the high points being:

• change shoes
• tidy up
• playground
  
• animal words
• speaks aloud
• speaks to the teachers

They also have been writing a few notes each month about general stuff. This is what they said:

• Sept-Very outgoing and willing to work together. Short attention span. Repeats some words.
• Oct-Repeats absolutely everything and remembers words for later.
• Nov-Speaking on her own most of the time.
• Dec-Likes to join in the group lessons. Enjoys the language cards.

The the two final comments on the bottom of the card sum it up!

Sings Happy Birthday
VERY independent

Note that the capital letters in the last comment were their addition not mine! Apparently Carl said he was a model child at school and he thinks that this sounds much more like me than him. Nice.

Singapore (again)

After 9 gorgeous days in Bali, it was time to head back to Beijing. Very sad times. Luckily we had a brief stopover in Singapore on the way back. On Saturday morning we headed out to Singapore zoo, which has a great reputation for happy animals (and, you may know, I'm not a big fan of zoos). Olivia was on great form and the zoo was fabulous. We went to an elephant show and sat right at the front. The elephants were showing us how they work with trees etc, Olivia liked it until one of them did a big poo and Olivia kept calling out "Big poo, Big poo" then "Mummy change you" - she wanted me to change the nappy of the elephant because it did a big poo.
We saw a ton of other (happy) animals including jaguars, polar bears, monkeys, lions, insects, snakes, butterflies, giraffes etc. There was a kids water park which was PACKED with kids (all of whom had bought swimsuits, which we had not). We stripped Olivia down to her nappy and she explored with Carl but was scared of the giant water bucket dumping gallons of water onto the kids. Afterwards we explored the small kiddie zoo and she was fascinated with the bunny "Bunny, eat this!", the duck and the pony. We think that these were her favourite animals at the zoo!

Ku De Ta

Luckily our villa was a short, but bumpy, stroll down to the beach. We could see all sorts of exclusive resorts and restaurants with beachfront; it was very nice except that the beach was dirtier than I was expecting. Given that this was a big tourist destination and that labour was pretty cheap, I would have expected the Balinese to tidy up a little more. Plastic bags, bottles, cans etc; I wasn't going to let Olivia play sandcastles in that sand.
One of the places that we had been told we had to go and visit was a bar right on the beach called Ku De Ta (pronounced Coup D'Etat for those of you who speak French). It was definitely was designed for those folks who like to hang out and 'be seen'. Large grassy courtyard, music with resident DJ, elegant tables and expensive food, and then an outdoor section with loungers, umbrellas but no pool. Olivia decided that she had to go for a swim in the fountain! I am sure that they aren't used to small kids there let alone ones that happily swim in the fountain for a couple of hours. Check out the photo showing the dressed up girls entering the restaurant and Olivia just playing in the fountain in her floatysuit. It meant that Carl and I could sit on our prime spot lounger and people watch. We're not too cool for school! Wish that we were there now.

Our private villa

Our final destination in Bali was back to the beach. We had booked a private villa in Seminyak. It wasn't far from the Ritz but was in an area which had bars, restaurants, shops, clubs, etc so we would actually get out and about rather than stay in a resort. Our villa was great. We had our own private entrance, plunge pool, kitchen, living room, dining room, master bedroom and indoor/outdoor bathroom. It felt very luxurious, especially as every morning around 8am the staff would come in and cook us breakfast and then disappear. Only to appear about 30 minutes later to come and clear up. How nice is that?
We had to keep a careful eye on Olivia as the rooms were all situated directly around the pool and we didn't want any unsupervised dips from her. She was very good, but did demand to get in the pool from 7am until 9pm with at least one of us. Luckily the weather was good and the water was warm so we were permanently in and out of the pool.

Rice paddies

Right out the back of our hotel was the real Bali. Local houses, fields of grass (which they use to thatch the houses), and rice paddies. One morning we took a short trek out to see what was there. Green green green, everything seems to grow like crazy. It was also steamy hot and Carl had to carry Olivia - arrgghhhh. We only trekked for just over an hour and then returned to the sanctuary of the pool at our hotel.
The locals were harvesting the rice paddies, and there were many birds hanging out waiting for a feast. There was also a local youth with a shotgun trying to shoot a snake out of the tree above us (we moved on hastily; I am not sure if we were more scared of the snake or the kid with the gun!)

When it rains...

Now it is actually monsoon season in Indonesia now (which is great because it means that the hotel prices are low!) It barely affected us at the Ritz; when it rained, we just moved to one of the covered areas or headed up to our spacious room and balcony to hang out for an hour or so. In Ubud though, when it rained, it really rained! Luckily the timing was such that we were never caught out in the rain and it didn't really stop us doing anything, we just had an extra beer in the bar, or sat on our patio watching and waiting. Ahhhh, holidays. How nice to have time to do that.

Move to the the hills

After 3 days of moving between pools, tennis court, beach, suite, and our private dining room at the Ritz we thought that we should really get out and about and see some of Bali. We headed inland to Ubud which is up in the hills about 1 hour inland. It is a traditional Indonesian town (although still catering to lots of tourists) but is situated right amongst the paddy fields. It is green and very lush, and the locals celebrate a festival practically every day.
Our hotel was like staying within a temple. The locals put offerings out at shrines every day, and not only did our hotel have a shrine near the entrance, one near the restaurant, one near our room, we actually had one on our patio. Offerings are placed daily at each of these. Just small bamboo 'plates' of rice and flower petals, and incense. All part of daily life.
Our room was huge with a four-poster bed, bathroom to fit a rugby team in, and a large outdoor patio and seating area. The pool was practically made just for us, we barely saw anyone else there. They had very cool loungers built into caverns in the walls. And again, the 'staff' were there just for us!

'Wimming pool

These were Olivia's first words every morning. She LOVES the pool. The biggest challenge at the Ritz was trying to decide which of the seven (yes, seven) pools to use. The infinity pool down by the beach was in fact off limits to kids so really she had to choose between six pools; one of which had kiddie water slides. She was always in such a good mood, and slept so well, probably because she was physically so tired from all her running around and swimming. We decided that we could get used to this lifestyle. She did make a few "friends", although one was called Winnie, and Olivia kept saying "Winnie do poo" (meaning Winnie the Pooh) which didn't go down too well with her new friend.
The pool set up was amazing, at one point we had this giant triple lounder and a huge bale (outdoor, open-sided structure, see photo above). There were always waiters on hand to bring us cool flannels, or cocktails, or snacks. And the minute a leaf or a flower fell off a tree, the 'staff' were there to tidy it up. Service was amazing.
Just looking at the photos now makes me want to be back there and not in freezing, polluted Beijing in the office!

Ritz Carlton Bali

Now for some more holiday photos. We've just returned from 10 days in Singapore and Bali, Indonesia for the Chinese New Year break. It was truly a relaxing break for us, the longest since our honeymoon! Our first place to stay in Bali was at the Ritz-Carlton on the southern coast. In true Ritz style, they had thought of everything. The resort was absolutely huge, with 7 swimming pools, tennis courts, golf putting range, 8 restaurants, etc. We were very lucky to have been upgraded to the Club Lounge so we also had free food and drink with a private chef. What a way to start our holiday. Here are some photos of the resort (which we didn't leave for 3 days!).