Cass has got 5 meetings this week after school or during her prep time, all on top of our windfall of 85 and 95 paragraphs to grade respectively. As stated often in these pages, it's a pretty hectic life we lead during school terms. We've brought it upon ourselves in a way. The powers rarely meddle in our curriculum, trusting that once they've hired the best (their words), they expect and trust them to deliver the best in terms of rigorous yet fair workload to gain the best student learning outcomes. Often this trust demands that we go the extra mile in terms of grading and commenting to give them the feedback they need to show improvement and to become better students of English. This is sounding too much like a glossy promotional poster, so I'll sidestep onto other matters!
Cassy hosted her Book Club on Friday night and I definitely side-stepped that to go down to Uli's and watch a little football while I waited for Wal to turn up! The (Book Club) night was an enormous success as usual, culminating in the miracle pavlova, so labelled as it is produced from the tiniest, most rudimentary table-top toaster oven. The whipped mixture has to be carefully eased into the space which only just accommodates it, and Cass manipulates the dials for temperature and time a few times as it cooks. The girls enjoyed not only the magnificent pavlova, but also the pitas and falafel which were mildly cheated from the local Pita Bar.
Meanwhile I decided to risk some VPN work on my phone, downloading my VPN app, logging in then connecting to the Sydney, Australia ISP. Then, once I was mirroring Aussie traffic, I logged onto my app from Fox Sports in Australia and watched NRL games streaming to my phone at the table at Uli's...fantastic! I feel well justified in doing this as I pay a subscription in Australia to do this very thing, it just has convoluted broadcast rights here in Taiwan. Anyway, it worked a treat!
There's never a dull moment here in Taipei's leafy northern suburbs. We're ringed by temples here and cacophonous music and overly dramatic miked-up exhortations are the norm, but sometimes we get a glimpse of something more unusual. On Saturday, the light was laser-like in intensity and the heat was bitumen-meltingly severe. Despite the ferocity of the heat and sun, we had to brave the outdoors to get the groceries for the coming week. The bigger temple over the river was hosting some cacophonous sounds as usual, but also some fully made-up dramatic actors going through a play. How their white masks weren't pouring off was amazing: the crowd was sucking down frozen yogurt, fanning itself and hiding in the shade as much as possible, while the actors played out scene after scene being quite serene!
To counteract the shocking assault of grading and (gratuitous?)meetings we are enduring as well as our swelling student numbers, we decided to gain a catharsis by planning and booking a few holidays. On Sunday, we had a chat about some possibilities and after a very short time decided on a few potential targets. Looks like we'll be spending Taiwan's national holiday extended weekend (4 days) in Vietnam and we're planning a few different cities and towns in Germany for Christmas if the flights work out. It should be fun as we return to two of the places we've really enjoyed before. We've got some other plans as well, so it looks like a bigger than usual year for travelling: might be some salve for our crushing workload (I know and acknowledge that this is a massive first world problem, but I'm going with it anyway!)
Phots: Coppers (!), Orphanage Club in my room, the sparkling apartment pre-Book Club, and shots of the temple players. Video up top for now and later here.