Mercifully we received the call last night that the camp would be postponed for a day, due to a rather lacklustre typhoon bearing down on us, tracking up from the Philippines where it had far more strength. Insipid or not, it was enough to delay the camp by a day, which means one less night for Cass enduring the privations that come with it!
It's not any one thing that makes this such a chore, but a combination, not the least of which are the needs of 200 middle-schoolers, many of whom have never been away from home, except to stay in luxury hotels, at any time during their lives. Not only that, but the teachers are tasked with running all the activities to keep this group learning, entertained, fed and watered during the entire week, a gargantuan task akin to a military operation. Apart from that, the kitchen which produces the meals is a squalid cesspool full of vermin which necessitates her having to bring small meals of her own and not eating correctly for the week. It is exhausting work and to be honest, Cass is about over the whole deal after 12 years in a row of said penance! She's a soldier though, and is sucking it up yet again, with the sweet knowledge that she as least one more night in her own bed before needing to head off to Fulong belatedly tomorrow morning.
Although lacking any ferocious power, typhoon Fung Wong has managed to drench the island overnight and danced up and around our umbrellas on the walk to work this morning. Cass wore her thongs with her finery to get changed later when we got to school. There is a constant soaking occurring as I write, and a very depressing sight of grey, drizzly skies and whipping winds can be seen from my classroom window. My neglected cactus is getting an unexpected soaking and has decided to pop open even more bursting flower pods in celebration!
Cass had her book club on Friday night when I had yet another footy feast down at Patio 84. She's always delighted when Darby hosts the group as she gets very experimental with her cuisine, not afraid to try out something new, and uses the girls as guinea pigs. From all reports, it was as different and delicious as usual, including a special dessert surprise of hooking up with their recently departed member Paige all the way from Canada in her early morning via Skype. Their new member, Stacey, works at the American Institute in Taiwan and gets all sorts of magazine subscriptions and shares the wares at the gatherings. So, this weekend, Cass has had some trashy mags to take her mind off the looming horror of camp as well!
We had a couple of TV series binges lately which have been deemed very worthy. Firstly the latest season of "Game of Thrones" and more recently, over the past week or so, the second season of "Rectify." It was sensational....do yourself a favour and all that!!
Finally, as you can see from the photo above, we're not hardly done by in the internet speed stakes here in Taipei. For a very modest monetary up-grade, I have officially 120 Mbps (though I can't seem to break 100 on a speed test) download speeds and the guy actually offered me 200 Mbps if I wanted it! Other photos are of Summer Sonic and the historic Osaka castle.
P.S. Sharp eyed readers might notice the date stamp on last week's blog has changed to yesterday's date. When fiddling with photos for this week I accidentally deleted last week's post! After a few minutes of stunned horror in anticipation of trying to re-write it, I managed to find a cached version of it to copy and re-post...phew!