The past week or so has really flown. The girls seem settled in school and they have all made friends, although we are all ready to ditch the 40-minute commute next month in favour of a 15-minute walk. Tamsin has (of course) already made herself known to the PE department by breaking the Y6 girls’ triple-jump record. Sadly she has had to make some choices and not do all the sports, as the commitment required here is much greater than at home. There, she routinely did football twice a week; swimming, fencing, and tennis were each once a week, and everything else – including her favourite, athletics – was once a week or less often, or for school competitions. Here, they require three times a week, so she will swim for fun but not on a squad and is having to switch weapon from foil to épée for scheduling reasons! Tennis has gone but she is starting T-ball (no idea) next week. Maggie is on the foil fencing squad (so much money! So much time! Such amazing fencers!) and in the concert band – she was pleased and surprised that the music department was so thrilled to meet her, then we found out that they haven’t had an oboe in the school for 4 years and it all made sense. Jenny has had her first piano lesson and a swimming lesson, joined a choir, and will also fence. And I will mostly hang about at the school waiting for them to do their activities.

I’ve been doing a bit of work and drinking a lot of coffee and starting to make some friends. I even went out for dinner with some people I am not related to last week. I haven’t explored much, partly because the day is short between those long school runs, even though Cameron is often dropping the girls off in the morning on his way to work – and he is still often one of the first in – but mainly because it has been so darn hot. We must be getting used to it though, because when it dropped to 27 degrees yesterday afternoon we all felt a bit chilly and thought about putting on a cardie or at least something with sleeves.

On Saturday, Cameron took Jenny for her first swimming lesson and I went out for a little local walk with the other two. We found a great bookshop, where we had fun using google translate, and felt very proud when we managed to buy shower gel, which was not very easy to find. The shopping mall was full of octonauts and small children. We then wandered into Xintiandi for a bit of a mooch before the obligatory Starbucks stop and home. In the afternoon, Maggie stayed here to do some homework (she seems to have a lot, although she possibly stockpiled it for the weekend) and the rest of us went to the urban planning museum. Which I appreciate does not sound very exciting but was actually really good, the high point being a massive scale model of the city.

Sunday was mainly taken up with fencing for T and M. (I have no idea when we are going to have time to get out and about and explore China, let alone Shanghai.) The rest of us wandered the streets near school, though not in too much of a sad and pointless way. We worked out where our house will be relative to school and shops and pool; we bought some dvds; we went to Starbucks, obvs; and we went in two ludicrously expensive supermarkets. (Last week, I decided we were all tired and fed up of bought food and that I would make spaghetti bolognese. The ingredients cost me £25! And it wasn’t even especially nice. I haven’t been cooking because the flat has an absolutely minute kitchen that is equipped with one (1) small saucepan, one (1) small frying pan and one (1) wok.)

I went on a course last week called ‘Shanghai123’, at which I learnt not to drink the water, not to eat the food and not to breathe the air. And some more useful stuff. And we have a (well-deserved after last summer, I think) holiday booked for October.

We said goodbye to our brilliant ‘first 3 weeks’ driver, Kimi (main picture) – we now have Tony.