The Model United Nations Convention held here at school this week thwarted my attempts to hit the bag this Friday. As the representative for the Congo shared the concerns of his country about multinational oil companies’ exploitation, the staccato sounds of bashing the bag or the speed ball probably wouldn’t have gone down too well! I went into the weight room for a while instead, before joining a few of the boys for a beer at Diamond Tony’s. We had a great afternoon out on the terrace looking down the hill towards school as the sun went down, but I went home pretty early as Cass and I were booked for an important task the next day. Cass had gone with Kathy down to the bag shop to pick up some goods which looked fantastic, after spending the day in professional development, the highlight of which was a lunch at Chili’s!
Saturday, we were booked up to do one of the tri-annual ESL admissions tests. Even though we’ve had over a hundred applicants in the past and this time just a dozen, I made an executive decision, and decided we needed two people on deck to proctor the exam. It’s just not safe to have one person: if someone, teacher or student falls ill etc. what could be done? Anyway, I’ll claim our daily rate of pay (for each of us) as we then graded and sorted the exams. It took all morning for the exam and a time afterwards to grade so we felt pretty tired at the end of it. Casino Royale, the latest Bond extravaganza beckoned later in the afternoon, so we bought our usual seats and scootered over to Miramar. It was superb! I’m ranking this the best Bond film ever. Not only did it have the most exciting of Big Bold Bond stunt scenes, but Bond himself was slightly vulnerable and as Cass pointed out, the women in the film slightly more than just two dimensional babes. Model and computer generation skills added to an amazing climactic scene which had to be seen to be believed…great fun! We had dinner at Aubergine then headed home and had an early night, only to get up again at 11pm in time to watch the Aussies smack the Poms in the delayed rugby league test.
After a late night due to the footy and a very busy Saturday, we were pretty tired this morning. We’d planned to head to the coast if there was any surf at all, but the webcams showed a beautiful sunny day, no wind and only a six inch swell. Knowing this, we luxuriated in a long, relaxed breakfast and then both had a good read of our books, Ian McEuan’s “Saturday” for me and P.D.James’ “The Lighthouse” for Cassy which are both clever and captivating. I fell asleep on the lounge for a little while after that (!) before we decided to go over to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace has been going through a long and costly renovation and though the façade looks exactly the same, the interior is a gleaming new, stylish interior of muted colour and gorgeous marble. The gift shop alone is worth the visit, items ranging from the kitsch (pens and mouse mats decorated with pictures of Chinese treasures) through to the stupendous (beautiful centuries old C’hing dynasty pottery pieces at premium prices). A Starbucks snacky lunch was relaxing, and we even picked up a little bottle of caramel sauce to add some pizzazz to our Thanksgiving treats!
Short week this week as we will truly give thanks to working in an American school: Thanksgiving gives us a 4 day weekend starting on Thursday. We’ve ordered an apple pie and a blueberry pie from food services, bought a 5 day pass to the internet rights to the 1st Ashes test which starts 7am Taiwan time on Thursday! (We really hope we get an uninterrupted feed…fingers crossed) There will be some of the Aussie boys here at that early hour, hopefully to see Glenn McGrath bowl that first ball of another Ashes summer: it will be surreal watching it from here, raisin toast and coffee early in the morning but, oh, so sweet!
Photos: Dave on field day with three of his enthusiastic third graders! Two shots of Cassy at the National Palace Museum and another of all 4 of us with Cassy’s orchid!