In January we had a once in a decade dump of snow in Shanghai. It snows occasionally in Shanghai (once every few years), but usually there is not a lot of snow and it doesn't stick to the ground. This year we had enough snow to be able to build snowmen!
It started snowing in the afternoon of a Wednesday. Clara arrived home from school first and she had fun running around holding out her tongue trying to catch snow. Ethan and Erica arrive home by different methods - Erica catches the bus and Ethan rides his bike, so they arrived at different times. It was funny to see each of them in turn come up the street calling out "it's snowing"!
Erica arriving home. Check out those bare knees. Erica hates wearing stockings so much that she will still stick with socks even when the temperature is 0 degrees celsius.
Clara arriving home when the snow had just begun.
Ethan arriving home. Biking in the snow doesn't look pleasant.
Clara and Erica played outside a little in the snow, and we assumed it would probably be gone when we woke up the next morning. But it wasn't..
It was still snowing the next morning and we received a warning from school that if the snow continued, school would be cancelled (due to the buses that come from all over Shanghai not being able to drive on icy roads - they are pretty cautious about that here). School wasn't cancelled and the kids headed off to school. Then while I was out visiting teaching later that day I started receiving multiple calls, texts and emails. Each of the kid's schools were trying to contact me.
School was cancelled! On my way over to the school I started reading the emails in more detail and had a laugh at the reason for the cancellation. It had nothing to do with the snow! A new science lab was being installed in Ethan's school and one of the workmen had cut through the main power supply to the school. They had been unable to restore the power and now there was no heat and no ability to cook lunches. So, all parents were invited to come and pick up their kids!
On a side note, a different international school sent all of their students home early last week. A workman had cut through a main water pipe and none of the toilets would flush! I've been told that Chinese work crews often don't map out the areas that they will be working in, and this is why they end up doing things like this. I guess sometimes they don't know which cable not to cut and where not to dig a hole, until it is too late??
So, anyway, the kids were sent home while it was still snowing. They were not disappointed...at all.
Erica arrived home and then quickly headed back out to go see a movie with her friend's family. Then her friend came to our house for a play in the snow..
The girls' first attempt at a snowman.
Then they moved to the backyard and made a much bigger snowman. I was impressed with how big they made their snowballs, and that they continued doing this through to the evening - it was cold!
That night I took some pictures to send to David, who was on a business trip - Philippines I think? He expressed regret that the snow might melt before he would return and he wouldn't get to see this.
Clara took her snow globe to bed that night :)
This is what Ethan did that afternoon - homework. He had just finished explaining to me his solutions for the conflict in Syria and then I sent him to bed.
I went to bed that night with another message from school telling me that school might be cancelled again tomorrow, but we didn't know for sure yet. My hopes of sleeping-in were dashed when the school indicated that the outcome would be posted on the website at 6:15am in the morning. So I had to get up as usual to check if school was on. No sleep-in for me.
When I got up the next morning I took some new pictures to send to David. I also discovered that school was cancelled, so was able to let the kids sleep-in, even if I couldn't.
David was due to return the next day, so we were hopeful that the snow would hang around long enough for him to enjoy it - and Clara was desperate to have a snow ball fight with Dad.
The kids slept in. When they woke up we checked their school website again and discovered that they all had work set by their teachers. Ethan literally had a full-day with every subject setting work. Erica had some tasks to complete, but she went to her friend's house to do this, and it sounds like they had fun completing the tasks together. Even Clara had 'snow work'. However, her work was building a snowman, measuring the height of the snowman, drawing a picture of the snowman and writing some sentences about the snowman. We had already built a snowman, so her tasks were finished quite quickly.
We turned our backyard snowman into an Australia Day snowman. It was awesome for the kids to have no school on Australia Day!
Clara and I then went for a walk around our compound to check-out other snowmen and look at the pretty snowy scenery..
Our backyard.
Our street.
Our house.
Our snow angel.
David ended up flying back before the snow had melted. He said that the city looked really pretty from the sky. Clara was able to have her snowball fight with Dad :)
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