Monday 25 August 2014

Project 52 week 34

Week 34- the year is galloping along:-) They will soon have things for the big C in the shops. The weather this week was seriously changeable.


Monday

This week everyone was a lot  less stressed. The inspection appears to have gone well, although we won't get the report until October. When I finished work I took one of my students to the old German bunker at Noirmont. The views from the headland are pretty spectacular on a clear day. The island's coastline is peppered with bits of German concrete, leftovers from the Occupation. It would be pointless to remove them as, apart from the difficulty and the cost, it is part of Jersey's history.

Tuesday

A wet one today. Both this week's students are in fashion; one is a designer and the other a saleswoman of designer handbags. I will need to do a bit of research on their subjects, although it's lucky that I have them, and not one of my male colleagues:-)
Today I drove along the West coast, past the lighthouse at Corbiere. The old lighthouse keeper's cottage is still there, but the tower is automated now, so it is just a family home. I don't think I would like to live there- they must be really isolated- and get buffetted by the waves at high tide.

 Wednesday

Thank goodness- a dry day. The Jersey Lilies ( amaryllis belladonna) are in flower at the moment. They are quite different from Guernsey lilies ( nerine sarniensis) which have leaves. These were in the garden at the college, but they are everywhere on the island at the moment.

Thursday


Today my business students were doing some text analysis. We started with a matching exercise with words of different register. They enjoyed it and it was a nice kinaesthetic activity to stop them falling asleep after lunch. I spent most of my day in meetings, when I wasn't in class- it was a loong day!

 Friday

A short day at work is great on a Friday, as the weekend starts fast. It was useful today as the Ceilidh Band had a birthday party to play for. We don't often do things on a Friday any more. It was one of the farming families from one of the Eastern Parishes, who were celebrating a slew of events at the same time. It was a fun evening with great people
and the food was excellent.


Saturday

M has gone to help organise the weekend sailing races for the Jeux des Isles. I had to stay home for a couple of workmen, and my neighbour brought me some rhubarb. There is a bbq for the young sailors later on, so Cairis and I went out for a bite to eat. Tonight's ceilidh was cancelled, so we were free for a change.

 

 

 

Sunday

My friend won a competition for a platter of seafood. As she lives alone, she decided to share it with my family and invite herself to dinner. The company delivered the food at lunchtime, so I spent the afternoon preparing salads, and making mayonnaise etc. L is gluten intolerant, so I always cook fresh food and make sure that she can eat everything. The evening was a great success, but the fruits de mer had to be finished by the furkids as everyone was full.





Sunday 17 August 2014

Project 52 Week 33

Week 33. A big week for the island, and a stressful week at work!

Monday

Today M decided that he needed the car, so he gave me a lift to work. It is school holiday time, so there isn't much traffic on the roads at the moment. That will all change later in the week. We were late , so everyone had taken the best parking spaces- lots of new students who had brought their cars over on the ferry. It was still very windy- Bertha had not quite finished with us, and there were some water spouts seen around the coast. As I wasn't driving, I had time to take a photo of the granite wall on the seafront. I love the pink colours of the Jersey Granite.

 Tuesday

BC inspection at the main college. We had to prepare very detailed  lesson plans for each of our 3 lessons. Some of my colleagues found this very stressful. I don't mind doing it, and in order to see where I am in a plan, I like to add a little icon for a quick look. The newspaper shop made a mistake and sent us a Guardian instead of our usual Independent, but it got the thumbs-up from the inspectors, so we didn't say anything :-) Having put together 3 plans, I realised that they would likely come in to my Business Class in the afternoon. I had two PTs in the morning, which would be a bit boring to observe. In the end I was proved correct, but I had a fantastic group, who worked like a charm. At the end of the afternoon we had a Teacher Focus Group meeting with the inspectors.

 Wednesday

Still warm and sunny. The wind has dropped now, making the day much more pleasant. The inspectors are at our summer school, so everyone is more chilled. The casualty of all this is the iTDi MOOC, which I don't have any time to watch. I got Cairis to sign up though, and she has been enjoying some of the recordings. The sky looked pretty this evening, but the forecast for tomorrow is wet.

Thursday

The long awaited day in the island's calendar- Battle of Flowers day. I listened to the radio when I woke up to find out where the big floats were. As they make their way down to the arena they sometimes have to take smaller roads- which can lead to delays for motorists. Some of the floats were already in position when I drove to work- but not the really big ones. When I finished work I had to go along the North Coast to get home- the avenue was closed for the Battle. It was a shame that the weather was dull and overcast. It rained quite heavily in the morning- I hope that it didn't cause too many problems for the float builders.

Friday

No rain today. The sun was out. It is still in the mid-20s, so not as warm as it was, but okay. The college had lots of students leaving, so we were surrounded by students taking photos of their teachers and classmates. When I finished work I had a coffee with my private students, a husband and wife team from Germany, at La Fregate.
 Later, at home, I decided to pull out the leggy lavender, and created a big pile for the Green Waste recycling plant. The grapes on the vine are beginning to darken, but they are not very many, nor very big. The plant is quite elderly, and I think we are going to take it out and replace it next Spring.

Saturday

Now that the deadline has passed for handing in the assignments for the course we did with Vicki Hollett, we started to share our work on our Google + site. I could work out how to get my power point on there, so I turned it into a video to upload. It took me ages to sort it out. The computer was working really slowly.

Sunday

Several years ago, one of the island residents, a Dutchman, lost his 19-year-old son to bone cancer. He set up a charity in his name and each year around this time they do a sponsored walk, dressed in bright orange (including the dogs), in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust and Clic Sargent. For the last few years he has asked us to provide some music as the walkers arrive back at base. This year it was on the waterfront in St Helier, where we were buffetted by high winds and squally showers. Most of our musicians are off on holiday, so only Miles and I were free to give our time. It was fun between showers, but we hadn't done the 20-mile walk, so we couldn't complain. A lady brought her large car round to provide us with a bit of shelter from the wind, but it didn't really make much difference.


 I don't know where these youngsters found so much energy. As for us, Miles played his melodeon under his rain cape, while I just put my guitar away for a few minutes when it got too wet.





Sunday 10 August 2014

Project 52 Week 32

 We've had an interesting week weather-wise. The promised rain arrived during the night on both Tuesday and Wednesday, giving the gardens a much-needed break. The bigger problem was Hurricane Bertha, slowly making her way across the Atlantic :-(

Monday

I spotted this on my way to work this morning. Today is the anniversary of the start of WW1, and the islands, as many other places are commemorating their war dead. In the evening we had a candlelight vigil and a ceremony in the Royal Square. Some of my students went, but I stayed home- and switched all my lights off at 11.00pm as requested. It was odd to see no lights on anywhere.




Tuesday

A slight change to my week. I started yesterday with a new class, but as we have our inspection coming up, the powers-that-be decided to use me to finished off the reports, so I reluctantly handed my class over to a colleague. At lunchtime everyone was quiet. Some had been doing peer observations and had disappeared into a classroom to discuss their findings. The rest of us sat quietly planning, eating or reading the paper. It rained during the night so my garden really perked up.


Wednesday

I arrived home to find M sanding down the front door. It had been looking a little scruffy, and now looked even worse, but you could see that it was a work in progress anyway. I stayed late at work to interview a couple of people for my TESOL course in October, but didn't accept either of them. One interesting thing- I was invited to do some teacher training in Georgia, ex USSR. It's a cool idea, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to get there. The association's reps are coming over soon, so we can sit down together and see if it is a viable idea. The forecast was for rain overnight again- one less job to do. I spent some time catching up with the iTDi sessions.

Thursday

My flowers were looking funky so I took some pictures from a funny angle while I was sitting down with a coffee.
 The big gladioli always remind me of Dame Edna :-)
I really don't think you can have too many flowers in the house, but I like the fact that I can buy so many from the little stall for so little money- especially as they need replacing every week.

Friday

I stayed late at work to finish the stock check for next week. We have booked our holiday to Crete, and Marisa will be there at the same time for a wedding, so we should be able to catch up-yay! Just a few more weeks to go. Cairis is talking about working in Italy next-she has been looking for a job that appeals. On leaving work I realised that it was raining- heavily- and of course,I didn't have a coat with me. I arrived home like a drowned rat. Tomorrow should be better and maybe the door will get finished.


Saturday

Today was warm and sunny again, so I wandered down into town to meet my friend for coffee. She has just split up from her husband of many years, and needs to know that her friends are there for her.
When I got home, I found the door was turning a different colour! I'm not sure if I like the blue- and I did ask for it to all be the same colour, not a white surround. I'll live with it a bit before I complain though :-)




Sunday


I woke during the night to thunderous rain which had completed stopped by the morning. On the other hand- the wind was phenomenal! Ex-Hurricane Bertha's tail had hit the island. The white horses on the water were fun to watch- but I'm glad that my colleague was doing the chaperoning of the YLs back to St Malo, and not me. I hope that he gets back safely tonight. The trees in the garden were being blown about and even the seabirds couldn't land elegantly.
Onwards and upwards
Fingers crossed for next week. The inspection should be fine, but everyone is a bit stressed.




Sunday 3 August 2014

Project 52 Week 31

Another hot week. The humidity is becoming a little trying-especially if you have to go to work!  The weather is continuing to charm the tourists, and the students are all in full holiday mode.

Monday

I didn't have any new students in my classes, except for the afternoon Business English Class, and I won't meet them until tomorrow. We had a discussion about the inspection, but it appears that we have met all the criteria for the last inspection recommendations, so nobody is too worried yet. We still have a couple of weeks to go. I decided to get my assignment for Vicki Hollett out of the way, as I'd like to have my certificate in my file quickly if possible. I got the iTDi agreement to do so, and stayed at my computer for hours trying to put it all together. I dug out the big fan to try to cool the office down, but it really struggled to do the job.

Tuesday

Another day- another dollar. Still lots of interesting things happening in the MOOC, but I can only catch them in the evening. The cats have taken to eating in the utility room, where the tiled floor is nice and cool. The water cooler is a great idea, and both cats like moving water, so it was a good buy. I managed to get a good picture of Maisie this week. She was sitting between the sitting room and the dining room. You can see the difference in the floor colours. I stencilled the dining room floor many years ago, and people keep thinking it is original:-) In the evening I finished off my assignment and sent it winging its way to Boston, with a copy to Japan. It still amazes me how small the world is.

Wednesday

My two Business students are engineers, and they wanted to go on the excursion to Elizabeth Castle with the students who have no afternoon classes . I agreed, as the construction of the castle developed from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and is very interesting. We took the coach with the other students and staff, and then set off on our own to look around, talk engineering(!) and generally increase my students' vocabulary etc. It felt like a lazy afternoon, but actually I worked longer and  just as hard as usual.

 Thursday

I got up early to water the garden. It was all looking a bit droopy in the heat. The Canna Lilies are starting to flower. They are so beautiful. In the evening I was amazed and thrilled to receive my certificate in an email, together with a lovely letter of recommendation from Vicki. Unfortunately, My printer was out of ink, so it will have to wait until the weekend before I can hold it in my hand.


 Friday

Malcolm had the car again, so he picked me up when I finished work. As I was later than usual, it looked as if we might get stuck in the traffic. We decided to head out West instead to find an ice cream. We saw a little van at the edge of the sand dunes and stopped for a few minutes.

Saturday

Today was a day for gardening. I gave all the plants a bit of a trim, and M helped me set up an arch as support for the plants against the back wall. At some point we are going to remove the vine. It is over 40 years old and produces plenty of leaves, but little in the way of grapes, these days. Everything looks better now, so we can get in to see what needs watering better. The cats discovered that there was an area of catmint they had forgotten about, and had a great afternoon playing in it while I worked.

Sunday

I dropped M and Cairis down to the boat and popped round to the fish centre for some lobster for dinner. I've planned a great big salad, which will keep everyone happy, as it's really too hot to have much of an appetite. My next job will be to organise a trip for the beginning of September. We have decided to go to Crete for a few days.



Roll on week 32- holiday in week 36:-) Just to finish I've added a picture of  one of our trees which I took this morning. I thought it was quite pretty with the sun shining through it.