I brought the car home on Wednesday in anticipation of rain the following day so that I could transport Cass in her special finery to school without getting saturated. The second photo above shows my park on the other side of the river from our place. I wouldn't dream of attempting this park back home, but as it's often the only option (squeezing into a tiny space), I duly backed and filled to fit the car in. Most cars in Taipei have associated scrapes and bangs on front and back bumpers as a result!
I've continued the tradition of adopting out my toy monkey, Chee Chee with my current fifth graders. Although I was a little wary of how they'd take this seemingly babyish concept at first, they're great kids and have embraced it at another level. Although they seem incredulous that I act like he is a real monkey, when they come back and report on their stay with him, they invariably have tales of him learning musical instruments, eating and drinking a lot and even talking and moving around the house. The latest adopter even exalted Chee Chee to his highest status yet: that of a saint! See photo above.
The Polish Nation met on Friday afternoon/evening and we were honoured with Cassy's presence and she reported she slept like the dead after her couple of North Taiwan, German style ales! Wol and Gurecki were in attendance as always and many a tall tale and true were shared.
My kiddies are in the throes of early semester testing and I caught a shot of them in relaxed mode before they started and also in all earnestness as they attempted a writing sample. These are just "reference point" tests as we're taking on a whole new system this year which will entail us taking a whole week off class to do the one-on-one testing necessary. It will be nerve wracking as we've never done it before, but after a few days training we feel a little better able to face the new paradigm.
Cass and I hugely enjoyed the brilliant new Bond film on the weekend, Skyfall. This really has to be the best ever. Afterwards, we retired to Thai Town and ate a lot of fried stuff, which is very unusual for us. The fish looked recriminatingly at us throughout, so, suitably reproached, I think we'll revert back to our largely steamed based fare from now on!
A little video is posted up top of a class pet in one of the classes in which I work: he's quite a sensation!
Apologies to be both late and brief this week...next week is a special edition for a special reason!