Typhoon Morakot cut a devastating swathe through the middle and especially the southern mountain villages of Taiwan. Its ferocity was such that, unusually, it actually made news in Australia, prompting concerned calls and emails from family and friends. We were relatively untouched up here in the north, the high winds and driving rains just providing inconvenience rather than distress. Our school pulled together an amazingly quick relief support effort, the results of which can be read about here. It’s strange being back in a country with lots of minor and sometimes major natural interventions: our paintings and photos were all at odd angles on the wall when we got back indicating at least one pretty decent earthquake in our absence.The cloying heat of the past weeks has been compounded by a lack of wind and cloud cover and a watch settingly accurate tropical downpour at 3.55 every afternoon: It doesn’t last the same amount of time always, but it always starts then! Cass and I somehow forgot that this afternoon when we dilly dallied just a touch too long down at Carrefour and got caught. It was a fairly boring little shopping run, but we checked out the whole store to check out their latest and greatest. With a succession of high end stores opening up locally in recent months, everyone has had to lift their game to attract customers. Carrefour certainly had a few surprises and Cass was delighted to get a few more French style things than we’ve been used to.
Cassy had to go into work officially this morning to do her second half day extra. She’s not too worried as she gets paid and they ended up getting lots done which wouldn’t have been possible in the helter skelter of a normal day in the first full week back. She and I have both met our kids and can report that they’re as delightful as usual, with the odd quirky one just to make life interesting! I have added two classes to my load this year as the K-12 role I’ve done for years has evaporated. I’m kind of excited actually, as one of the classes is a support class where I’ll have my big group of kids in my own class and most importantly, under my rules for the first time in 8 years! It’s hard being a support teacher, team teacher etc all the time as you never get to put that individual stamp on classroom management etc…should be great.
Cass is tasked with getting all her kiddies working almost exclusively on their laptops as the school rolls out the next phase of the “1 to 1” strategy. She will be using nearly all digital tools during her lessons, and the assignments and exercises and activities will be virtually paperless. It’s a big challenge for the kids, but perhaps an even bigger challenge for the teachers…let’s face it; the kids are real digital natives. So Cass is on a fast learning curve to be the ringmaster in a technologically advanced circus and will be using her laptop and theirs, the data projector, the net and other tools to teach her content from now one….a big challenge!
While she was in at school, I braced myself to hit the 1000 steps again. My first effort back last week was very poor, but at least today I managed to beat that time by 40 seconds, even with Sunday stair traffic and a beastly heat. It’s just so beautiful and peaceful up there: we’re really lucky to have this national park right on our doorstep.
Last night we went up to Thai Town and had a great meal (as usual there) and wandered around in Shinkong Mitsukoshi soaking up the Saturday night vibe for a while. We discovered that the 2nd floor of one of the buildings has been turned over exclusively to a food court: don’t tell me we have even more restaurants to check out (!). We had a great weekend and are steeling ourselves to handle a full week with kids this week…we’re anticipating that, like the weather, it will be fairly enervating!! Photos: at Thai Town and some shots on the steps. Cass is reading "Night"
