Saturday 29th December, 2012          1830

I looked out of my window mid-morning and was horrified to see snow. Horrified because that means no e-bike and having to walk. My 1530 lot cancelled because another test was sprung on them meaning I will do them as scheduled next Friday, but that still left me with the diehards who wanted to see a film. The snow was that bad that even Kevin didn’t want to take his car so we walked down together.

I haven’t a clue how to use the equipment in the media rooms seeing as everything is in Chinese and simply popping a DVD into the slide doesn’t induce it to play - or the screen to scroll down and the projector to turn on. Various students had a crack at The King’s Speech and eventually we were on our way. Or so I thought. What happened was that we were treated to the trailer for Chalet Girls four times, but no main picture. Some of the girls had the stupidity to suggest there was no film on the DVD, a fully legal commercial purchase made in the UK by my Mother and sent out to me, and one which Kevin has copied to his computer and shown his students using his own projector in class not three days ago. Anyway, we gave up on it and the students asked if they could watch another film instead. There are various ones saved on the computers so I said watch what you like. They only picked a flipping Madagascar film that I watched on iPlayer last night! Great fun.

I was rather hoping that with the snow tomorrow’s tug’o’war contest would be called off but no, it is being held indoors. At least this time we should have Monsieur (our pet name for the Chinese French teacher) and Ollivier, so we will have a bit of strength and youth and it should negate the need for slightly built female teachers to have to make up the numbers.

Sunday 30th     1830

Another cold and brisk day but one I have to say which was lovely and sunny. I made a pork casserole last night (which Kevin was grateful for seeing as he was staying on campus - he brought a large dog bowl to my room for a takeaway!) and as I only had a chicken stock cube, salt and pepper to make it with I put some chilli flakes in. Gave it a bite but it was fine, in fact it is dinner tonight as well.

I gave my flour to Kevin yesterday and asked him to bake a loaf with it in order to find out if the problem was indeed the flour. It isn’t. He produced a lovely loaf so it is back to the drawing board. Maybe program one is the wrong one so I will have to get a translation because it is really bugging me.

At four I took Pepsi out. Kiki had told me I had a delivery in the No 1 cafeteria so we went there first. The main campus roads have 75% thawed allowing me to ride, but first I had to get out of the road behind our block. The block faces south so of course it was still covered in snow and with no through traffic (aside from a few footprints) largely as it was yesterday. By dint of riding with my legs akimbo to act as stabilisers I managed to get onto terra almost firma and we set off. Any thoughts I had of leaving Pepsi outside the canteen while I collected my shopping evaporated when I saw four feral dogs lingering outside, two of them large. I tucked her under my arm and took her in. I put her down whilst the student located my goods and was most concerned to see Pepsi had run away, understandably for such a timid little dog because the pack had decided to investigate. I mounted a rescue mission, collected my baked beans and mozzarella (plus a free packet of some sort of hotpot sauce) and went to the shops.

You will recall my mentioning previously that there is a metal ramp on the stairs which e-bikes and e-pickups use (including me) to get up. Although it had defrosted it was still wet and coated in tyre deposits. Not a problem for vehicles but seeing as the ramp is identical to ships engine room plating, not advisable for pedestrians to use unless dry. A great many of them discovered this fact when the did a merry dance - lazy sods should use the steps because there are only five - and one boy actually came a complete cropper. I suspect by now he is in his dormitory regretting it and nursing a sore coccyx.

Oh, by the way, the tug’o’war today was cancelled, probably because most of the teachers who live off campus didn’t want to come in because of the weather. I am sure it will be rearranged for a time that is most inconvenient for me though.

The sun had dipped below the horizon when I came back and whereas it had been  around zero before, it became positively cold. I believe the forecast is minus six overnight so my hearty stew will be most welcome. I really must remember to put the electric blanket on my bed soon!