Saturday, March 03, 2007

Little Green People and a String Quartet

I've made it through the first week back at school. Actually I think things went quite well, and we even had Wednesday off (it's a memorial day for the 228 incident in Taiwan). The crazy thing about "holidays" in Taiwan is that often they're not really a holiday at all. For instance, today I was able to go and file my taxes because the offices were required to open on Saturday since they had Wednesday off! This semester we'll be teaching a couple of saturdays because of a "holiday" that takes place on a school day some other time in the month. Crazy, eh? Imagine telling kids "Yeah, you don't have to go to school on Monday, but, oh too bad, you gotta go on Saturday instead." We also found out that we'll be teaching in two English camps this semester. I'm used to the grade six one (fun classes on Sat. & Sun) but they are also adding a grade nine camp to recruit for the high school. When my boss was telling us about this, she very casually mentioned that the camp would take place at the outdoor education camp. Also, we'd be teaching things like archery and rock climbing. Ha! It wasn't really a question if any of us knew how to do archery, simply that we'd be teaching it. I hope they're insured!

Speaking of kids, the little green army is back in force. The students' winter uniforms are head-to-toe hunter green, and seeing them all together makes the head spin. Thankfully, after school hours, it makes our students very easy to spot. I'm happy to have almost all of the same students, and very happy that they seem to be glad to be in my class.

By the way, this afternoon we've been enjoying music by a string quartet across the lane. I think I've mentioned before that we have violin music on Saturdays and Sundays, but this is the first time that he has invited other musicians. Lovely: a perfect soundtrack to a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Posted by Kathleen @ 4:01 PM