Holidays are just around the corner but we need to stay motivated for a couple more weeks. It's difficult as we are tasked with packing up our rooms for the big move over the break. As the boxes stack ever higher, the shelves are denuded of books and charts and graphics are stripped from the walls, even the kids are sensing the "endness" of it all, which is never a good thing for classroom management in the last throes of a dying school year.

I've introduced a couple of Reader's Theatres into my class today, which should stave off some lethargy (amongst the kids as well as me!) for the next few days. They're pretty funny and the kids are enjoying using some over the top voices and accents to bring the characters to life. I'm staying vaguely motivated as well, which is never a bad thing!

I've had the second last full version of the Polish Nation Intellectual Forum on Friday night and the last full incarnation of the famous Book Club on Saturday night. These final sessions are all due, of course, to the fact that my great mate Gurecki is soon to fly off to Nagasaki to live, work and play. No doubt Wal and I will continue the "Nation's" discussions in some form next year, and the Book Club will go on, but neither of these social essentials will ever be quite the same again. It's such a bummer that the international teacher's balloon is pricked at regular intervals by these departures....it's happened all too often to both of us over the years!

Cass and I enjoyed the stellar weekend weather by washing every thing we could get our hands on....weird and pathetic, right? Cass was actually totally in charge of both planning and executing this job...I just took massive liberties with the "royal we". The thing is, that due to the last two months being filled with dank and horrid weekends dripping with humidity and a cloud curtain drawn across the sun, there has been little option than to "put off" those washing tasks that need a breezy, sun filled dry day. We got it on Saturday and Sunday and Cass had the double strung line rigged up on our back verandah groaning under quilts and underlays and all nature of bedding and towelling.

We did sneak out to see Cassy's much anticipated film of the month, "The Great Gatsby" before dining at The Spice Shop on the way back home. I was less of a fan than Cass, but did appreciate just how pretty the houses (and Leonardo!) were as well as the opulent sets and grand casts. We had fun playing "spot the Aussie" amongst the ensemble and were able to pick out most, if not all of the bit-parters along with the two in major roles. The Indian food was as great as ever, but I do still have a hankering for both of our favourite Newcastle Indian restaurants, Raj's Corner and the incomparable Surtaj. Soon!

Report time is upon us and I'm procrastinating by tapping out this blog entry. I'll flee the school building shortly while Cass remains ensconced, meeting with the power players in the middle school as their boss gives them the "low-down" on the new tests they have to do this week.

Photos: bit thin this week but a shot of the identical curled kitties along with a couple of shots of the "tongue lashing temple" resplendent with bleating, saffron-robed monks.Following that, some boys find a pillow to aid their reading, nestled in between some bare boned shelves. Finally, a class shot of one of the 5th grade classes I teach.

There are three sure signs that the school year is winding down and it won't be too long before we're winging our way home again. Firstly, in the covered walkways and shopfronts on the last half of our walk to school, tiny birds start to build nests each spring. when we first see them we know that the end of semester is a way off, but as the chicks hatch, squawk in unison with their tiny beaks and get bigger each day, we know that the end of year approaches. As they plump up and burst from their environs we know it's closer, and when they eventually all fly the coop, term time is right upon us.

The temple round the corner from our house, that we also pass each day to and from school, gets ready for its annual festival. We've actually only witnessed it a couple of times over the years, but it involves a quite bizarre "tongue lashing" ritual, where young men work themselves into a betel nut induced haze before setting upon their own tongues with a sharp, fork-like implement. It seems when the blood streams and the narcotic wears off, the young tyros accept the cheers of the assembled crowd and scurry away to tend to their wounds. All this is accompanied by regular volleys of firecracker strings, various other pyrotechnics and the dancing effigies of the black gods worshiped at this particular temple....all with their tongues stuck out!

The third signal for impending summer (Taiwan) or winter (Australia) holiday fast approaching is Cassy's internment at the middle school play for the weekend. The traditional Friday and saturday nights, plus the Sunday matinee are all prepared for many hours before the performers hit the stage. She is in charge of the makeup crew, and although running like clockwork after all her experience, there is nothing to do about the endless hours needed in commitment on this weekend. The show, Annie, dealing with orphans and dogs etc. was a pretty breezy one in terms of makeup, but her crew still needed direction while the cavalcade of "stars' lined up at the makeup room door each night had to be seen to be believed. I went up after we had a great lunch at Eddie Cantina to see the horror, and although Cass had warned me, I was still taken aback by the crazy energy backstage with people running hither and fro and still hours out from the curtain raising!

As a result, we squeezed our relaxation times in and around the play this weekend. I was able to see the Knights powerful win against the Bulldogs, while I replayed the second half for Cass when she arrived home later in the day on Sunday and scootered over to pick up some delicious Maya Pizza. Why can't they play like this every week?!

We're continuing to pack and stack at school and the weather has finally turned: it's brutally hot, humid and enervating...bring on the holidays, just three more weeks! Photos: some of our little feathered mates, scary black tongues, Ker Qiang Road, foundry art on the street, Eddie's Cantina, the makeup maestro at work(!)

Cass reading Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King and Dave reading Caravaggio, an Artist's Life

 A purge, a cleansing, a purification or a catharsis....whatever you like. Cass and I began today to do just that in our professional lives, as today was set aside as a packing day for our imminent move from the classrooms we've occupied for 11 and 12 years respectively. Oh, what a mixed feeling! Glad to be free of unwanted goods, but awful wading through the dusty back crannies and crevices in our cupboards, bookshelves and drawers to discover the most ridiculous of "keepsakes". In a professional setting, we've discovered we've both hoarded the silliest things. We pride ourselves on our minimalist living at home, but we wonder what is lurking in those back cupboards and wardrobes!

I've been most conflicted about how to dispose of professional books and materials that have laid idle for up to a decade. I did many courses in rapid succession when we first arrived and the two master's degrees obtained came with a cost of at least one textbook from each course taken, sometimes significantly more. All up, I had more than 50 texts! The education sphere spins on a giddy cycle, and when it comes around again, the material, while not really ground-breaking, has been rebadged and packaged to appeal to the modern teacher's taste for something "new". So, therefore, these lumpy tomes are unwanted and superfluous. Luckily, a "picker" amongst our colleagues noticed the growing piles of said reference books and started some boxes to accommodate them: I filled three to the brim without another's contribution!

Kids' books and materials were a different matter: we are boxing them up to be sent to needier schools in Taiwan or overseas and the stack of boxes continues to mount. Well resourced schools like ours can afford to get the latest and greatest at regular intervals, but we don't have a purge like this very often. Due to the new high school building now being in full operation, the middle and lower schools are "migrating" into some of their old spaces. Cass and I are both sad to leave our current spaces, but we've been lucky to stay put as long as we have, I suppose. I'll be moving to a purpose renovated "half" class, split down the middle which will result in a long narrow room: not the ideal teaching space in my opinion but the powers that be have different ideas. Cass will move down a floor and away to the south. Her space is similar in size, but the orientation has thrown her a bit: it's the opposite to what she had before! The movers will move all the boxes over June/July while we're on our long break and we'll have all the immense joy of unpacking and setting up again when we get back in August!

This weekend was a soggy sock of a thing and although we managed to get out and away to the magnificent Pizzeria Oggi on Saturday, we stayed pretty much inside in the dry. We watched multiple episodes of the critically acclaimed "Top of the Lake" and were excited to spot scenes filmed in Queenstown and Naseby, reminding us of our trip there with Ross and Ains.

Even though the end of the semester is still 4 weeks away, there are signs (apart from our packing) that the school year is starting its inexorable hurtle downhill to the finish line. Cass is moving into the last units of study with her kids and I'm actually involved in one-on-one testing all this week. After that in the next couple of weeks, we'll be tasked with grading and report writing, all the while fulfilling our social obligations with the obligatory whirl of year-end parties and farewells. We'll definitely be ready to get on that plane in early June!

Photos: one of my 5th graders goes Spiderman near the toilets, that "stiletto" is actually made totally from sugar and adorned a colleague's 30th birthday cake! Cass cracked the next to last bottle of precious Peck's. Mary loves her box (specially imported from Germany with my "lost" puffy jacket inside!) while Virg yawns and poses for a facial close-up.

Hsin Yi is a vibrant and slick corner of the city, way down in the south east on a compass opposite to our little hamlet of Tienmu. Originally designed to be the new centre of the city, it is proud and bold, arrogantly thrusting its granite and marble monoliths onto the street and into the sky with purpose and style. The suburb is dominated by the still awe-inspiring sight of Taipei 101 piercing the clouds and inducing neck aches and drop-jawed stares. It is still a shock every time to see this building up close, and actually manages to make me lose my equilibrium at times: I get a little faint with vertigo just taking a glimpse!

We'd threaded our way through back streets in Mingde to our local station, found a seat on the first carriage (always a tactic of ours), then watched as the line descended into the bowels of the city a few stops from home. Trains shriek and scream underground all over Asia and Europe, but these trains seem to be engineered to mimic the general populace's introversion: there's a mild shake and a mew of protest on odd occasions, but basically they just hurtle between assignments with a minimum of fuss. Changing at Taipei Main is always a circus of bodies in motion, but the chaos is so organized it works somehow. Just when you steel yourself for a collision, someone just glides past with a passing whisper touch or sidesteps the inevitable crash. Onwards on the Nangang line to Taipei City Hall station (you can check on the map above!), disgorged and into the pedestrian flow up escalators and stairs to magically emerge from the catacombs in a completely different part of town!

"Longtable" was our destination, a new bar/cafe restaurant with a relaxed ambiance and a fresh outlook over a wide tree-lined walkway and bike path. It was a pleasant stroll from the station and we were delighted to find the restaurant just as advertised. It had such a chilled out vibe and it was even more relaxing to wallow in some perfect English by all the wait staff: sometimes, on the weekend, the extra burden of Chinese speaking just seems all too hard! The chef/owner was some kind of foreigner and he had a basic, but very western menu on offer. Cassy's gnocchi was mouthwatering as was my chicken schnitzel, but we'll be going for the Veal Milanese next time....first time we've seen that on a Taipei menu in many years! After some 3 courses of food and a glass of wine, we were strangely emboldened to do a little window shopping...

The Eslite Building does house a gigantic book shop by the same name, but also has many boutique shopping establishments, most of which are at the upper end of the market. We made our way into one such furniture boutique and looked at all the beautiful things as well as sat in the impossibly comfortable chairs and lounges. It was French and all the items were hand-made to customer requirements. We saw a beautiful dressing/makeup table setup which opened up from what appeared to be a large, leather-sheathed chest. Stools and mirrors and hidden compartments all opened with a whisper and a sigh on a feather touch: it really was a craftsman's work of art and at $23,000 it would want to be! Their giddy outlook down pulsing Songren Road towards the dancing glitter of 101 was quite the view.

We got a hard copy of our oft-mentioned new favourite, "Quiet", by Susan Cain, mainly because despite our recent proclivity to read books electronically, it is still very awkward to flip back quickly to read and reference items. Armed with our one purchase after a restrained session of shopping, we braved the burgeoning Saturday night MRT crowd to travel back home.

Photos: one of my students has kitted-out and customized his desk....I like it! Goats from a temple park in an adjoining suburb have been moved to our ShiDong Park so we can see them grazing each day as we walk to and from school, scooter family, shots of Longtable and the view from the lofty luxury of the Eslite building.