Well, the past week of restless nights and busy corporate days, the past months of preparation and document gathering and the past year of gradual writing and rewriting our policies and promotional material paid off on Friday afternoon when we listened to the auditors’ report. Along with some glowing commendations for the ESL department and the faculty within, but there were absolutely no recommendations apart from continuing what we are already doing. This is almost without precedent and I feel very satisfied to say the least!Cassy was also fairly pleased. Her humanities program was also under scrutiny and of course, anything with which she had any direct input in shaping was extremely well received. Divisionally, there were recommendations for change made in all three divisions, yet they are all fairly reasonable and will not take a quantum shift in thinking to achieve. All in all, we’re both quite ecstatic with outcome: it’s quite amazing to have a program vindicated and praised by some leading experts internationally in the field, a real buzz actually. So much so, that we’ve both experienced a bit of a let down this weekend as the accumulated effect of weeks of adrenalin charged working fervour gradually slipped away.
Now for more important matters (!) Cassy supervised and advised her little coterie of makeup girls as the middle school play full dress rehearsal went ahead on Saturday. Apparently the girls got a little carried away with the expensive stuff allocated for the “trees” in Oz, so we ventured out today to makeup shops both glitzy and pedestrian to source the elusive brown needed to re-supply the trees. It was quite hilarious as the sleek black clad girls in Sasa fussed around and tried to find what was needed. They were extremely helpful but language barriers did prove a bit of a problem: asking for directions and ordering food etc is pretty easy these days, but describing the hue needed for the faces of human trees is not! Anyway, after much hilarity and a thorough examination of Watson’s round the corner, Cass came away with all she needed.
Huge news: after many years of being a spectacleless family after my eye surgery, Cassy has succumbed to the first signs of ageing eyes! She has used a little pair of glasses at 1.5 times magnification for a little while at home now, after I bought her a pair at a 2 buck shop. She feels it might almost be time to wear them at school occasionally, when she is grading stuff, so we checked out a glasses store in the Shi Dong and she ordered a very stylish, but plain pair of titanium frames. The lenses are quite weak, but just enough to stop that “long arm syndrome” getting any worse. I might convince Cass to let me post a photo next week, but don’t hold your breath!
Photos: Cass in various makeup shops and the last of the famous “Chee Chee”