Today, with all the talk about UK banks going belly-up and people losing their life savings, I thought I'd better phone MY bank just to be aware of what is or isn't guaranteed. Turns out that there is a 50,000 pounds guarantee on my particular account so I'm going to have to keep a close eye on the market and pull out if and when needed. Problem is, it's a 5 year savings account and if I do cancel it before the time is up, I'll get back less than what went in (but probably still more than just the guaranteed amount).

I've been pretty busy lately with trying to get the Halloween party planned and all the bits and pieces bought for it. I finally ordered all the 'prizes' the other day and hopefully they should arrive within a week. Now I just need to try to come up with a few more new games to join the ones we do every year. My Japanese friend will help me again (I ordered costumes for us - a banana and a whoopee cushion! I'll take the biggest of the two but I'm hoping I'll get to be the banana!) and some of the mothers have also offered to help man the game stations so we should be okay. This year I ordered prizes for up to 60 kids (previously it's been 72) and it looks like it's been a wise decision since I only have 52 kids signed up so far. Unlike past years, I've decided to only hold the one party in the morning - two was just too tiring - so we can run over the time limit without worrying about the 2nd lot of kids arriving - some of them came up to an hour early, just as we were ready to eat lunch.

Last Sunday I had an English Teachers' meeting here which turned out to be a great day. There were around 24 teachers and 12 of us went out for dinner later on.

Aya moved into her flat the same day as the meeting so she had to do it alone - but then again, even though she was here, I had to do ours without any help from her so we got even!

Other than that, nothing new.