Tuesday 9the September, 2014                2030

The longer you live the more “interesting” life becomes.

I really wanted to have an early night last night but because I felt dreadful I stayed up late again. I could feel something coming on and it certainly did by the time I woke up. Yet another cold and the disease-ridden freshmen don’t even arrive until tomorrow.

Last night we encountered Pooh on our midnight walk, Pepsi having flushed him out, immediately prompted him to take refuge in a tree. No amount of coaxing by me would get him down and my tree climbing days are long gone. I suppose I shall just have to be thankful he seems to be fending for himself quite well regardless.

This afternoon we had the training session in how to use a classroom. Of course it was anything but. What it was, was a representative from a software firm sent to show us how to use it. The software in question allows the user to take a memory stick from a student with a speech by them previously set as homework and play it back, adding written comments by the teacher. There was however one major problem in that the presentation; if it can be termed thus; was given entirely in Chinese! I would have been lost even if it were in English.

The crux of the matter is that the school wants us to set homework each week for students to give a speech and record for critique later. So two hundred plus students each week need speeches listening to and comments logged? It’s not going to happen. The rep was also asked if we could have the software on our own laptops but we were told no, it’s only on the computer in the particular classroom we were in. The school seems oblivious to two things here:

1. When they hell are the entire faculty of the Foreign Language Dept going to be able to do this using one computer between all?
2.  When there is no class scheduled for these classrooms the doors are locked and teachers have no key!

That was forty minutes of my life I will never get back again.

One little snippet that I have to include is about the retirement at sixty policy that was recently dreamed up to get rid of Kevin and I. Kevin’s assistant teacher informed him that the foreign affairs officer has said that if he wants to stay on teaching after this year he has to find someone to guarantee his health!!

I did offer to forge a letter from God for him. In fact I think he should give them one anyway simply to demonstrate how imbecilic they are.

After dropping Pepsi off home earlier I went back out exploring the shops and restaurants outside the south gate. Couldn’t be bothered cooking (I wasn’t actually that hungry either) so found one with photos of the food on the wall. I went in and ordered beef, mushroom and peppers with rice. I was surprised to note the owners and family are Moslems because I haven’t seen any in Chizhou ever. It is unlikely I will ever see them again either because they charged me 20y and yet on one wall the Chinese menu showed almost every dish as costing half that. You only get one chance to rip me off.

Tomorrow is a new year and floods of bright eyed and bushy tailed freshers will pour onto campus (just short of 4,000 of them) and classes begin for teachers and older students. I have a reprieve until Friday so all I need to do is wait here for the gas man, go and give Yvonne 1,011y and then ride to town to do some shopping. The reason I am giving Yvonne so much is because she is going to order me a fat free deep fat fryer plus a load of ingredients with which to make my own ham. I can only hope I am not wasting my money.