Project #366 Week 33

It was one of those funny weeks again- we had fantastic weather at the beginning and end of the week, but it was a bit so-so in the middle. Not much happening outside- I've got lots of preparation to do for the upcoming course and I'm still interviewing for the October one:-)
Sunday 12th August 2012

 A busy day today. I spent the morning clearing out the recycling and decorating the utility room wall with some stickers I found. They cost the grand total of £0.99p, but really brighten the space up. The room is long and thin- it was the original kitchen of the Victorian house, but we use it for messy things such as cats, recycling and washing! In the afternoon I managed to knock my iron over and break it:-(

Monday 13th August

We were supposed to be doing a tech session as part of our CPD, but we were given some bad news about the health of one of my colleagues, so no-one was in the mood, and we all went home. I bought a new iron on the way back from parking the car on the top floor of the supermarket. It cost an arm and a leg! On returning home, I saw that the builders had decided to advertise their presence by fixing their sign to our gate.

Tuesday 14th August

Today was a bit grey- so I did some ironing- to test the new appliance, and to minimise the mountain of ironing in the laundry. The builders had taken the door off and were doing what they could to tidy up. The painters were now in evidence and they were doing what they could  at ground level, as the scaffolding is not due for a few days yet.


Wednesday 15th
On the way home  I smiled to see these beautiful sunflowers. They were so tall that you can see they almost reach the windows on the second floor of the house. They are so cheerful that you can't help but smile. I have never tried to grow sunflowers, although they do look easy to grow.

Thursday 16th 

Today I did some work in the garden. It has been a little neglected of late, and we needed to empty the side passage for the scaffolding to go up. It has been a very dry year and we are not supposed to use our hose- pipes at the moment. I decided to plant lots of sun-loving plants so that it wouldn't matter if it was hot. Good call! All the plants are growing like weeds.


Friday 17th

The end of the week, at last! It has been a long week, with everyone at work subdued, and not much else going on. Today the scaffolding arrived. It was up by the time I got home. We look like a matching pair with Tom's house on the other side of the road. His roof is finished, so it won't be long now.

Saturday 18th

6 years ago a young 19-year-old died from a rare type of bone cancer and his father has raised money for the Teenage Cancer Trust ever since. Today would have been the young man's birthday and his father organised a series of sponsored walks for the weekend. Earlier in the year he had approached us to see whether we would play for them at the end of the walks on both days, and we said we would if we had enough musicians available. We sent an email out to the gang who jam with us on a Friday in the pub, and were able to cobble together a band of 10 of us who were free to play. As the father is Dutch, everyone was given an orange t-shirt to wear. We didn't get ours until the end of our Saturday stint -so we have them for the Sunday instead:-) The sun was shining and we were there to create the ambience at the finishing post, along with some food stalls and cancer charity stalls. It was fun, and I hope they raised lots of money.

project#366 Week 32 - Carnival!

They say it never rains on the Battle of Flowers, and that was in evidence this week. The weather got warmer and warmer- starting in the mid 20s and finishing on Saturday with 30 degrees. This was the week that many people in Jersey had been working towards for months, and they probably hadn't slept much for a few days too.

Sunday 5th August 2012

Today the battle committee started to put up the familiar towers along the Avenue where the parade will take place. They added flags, which fluttered gaily in the breeze- all of the Parishes were represented, and those were interspersed with the flags for the battle itself, and the leftover bunting from the Queen's Jubilee celebrations earlier in the year. The towers were beginning to look a bit elderly, so this year we have some brand-new ones.
Monday 6th August
Today was my short day at work.After the usual meeting, I did a couple of interviews for my course in October, and then went home for a nap! Yes, I know, that's the sort of thing that old people do- but I had a good reason. The band had been invited to play for a party in the evening- and it didn't start until 10pm, so it was going to be a late one! The director of the Arts centre, a lovely, flamboyant man, was having a civil partnership celebration with his long term partner on the stage in the Arts centre and wanted us to play for dancing later in the proceedings. The evening party was held at the Donkey Sanctuary, as the lady who ran it was also having her 60th birthday, making it a lovely joint celebration. Our first civil partnership:-) After we had finished it was really dark and some fire dancers appeared. Everyone was mesmerised by their art. Unfortunately the photo didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but you can just see the face of the dancer on the right.
Tuesday 7th

 This morning the builders turned up to start work on the outside of our house.Of course, the first stage is destruction, and I was shocked to see that the garden wall had actually been held together with little more than Victorian sand! Thank goodness we decided to bite the bullet and get the job done professionally.
Wednesday 8th

This is the day, evening before Battle and as a family we have always gone for a tour round the floats to watch the last minute sticking-on of the flowers, and to enjoy the atmosphere.We started with our own Parish of St Saviour, which had an American theme, and then moved on to St Martin, Grouville, St Clement and finally we drove down to Meadowbank, where several floats were all being built in the large packing-shed which is made available to them at this time of year. The work that goes into each float is amazing, and requires many dedicated volunteers. There still seemed to be a lot of work to finish before the parade, and I'm sure that some of the float builders would not be going to bed.

Thursday 9th

Let Battle commence! 

The first battle starts with the traffic.Jersey roads are very narrow, and some of the floats were extremely long. The first ones arrived at their destination around 6am in order not to disrupt traffic too much. I had to tackle the ones coming from the West on my way to work. Everyone is very tolerant in the morning, so it isn't really a big problem. At the end of the day, when I want to go home, I don't feel quite so charitable:-(.
I had to work all day, so missed the parade, but it was a rip-roaring success, and people who did go had a lovely time.Jersey Battle of Flowers 2012. The floats stayed in town in preparation for the next day's evening parade,the illuminated parade.
Back at home I was pleased to see that the builder had started to rebuild the wall, and reinforce it.

 Friday 10th

Today was the hottest day of the year so far. This is about the only time that working in a cool granite building is a pleasure. ( In the winter you need about three pairs of socks). The house wall is coming on now, and the scaffolding is due next week, so that the main walls can be painted. The builder asked me to go to the paint shop and find some colour charts so that they can organise themselves.I'm thinking about going yellow this time, as the red faded really fast. Perhaps a more delicate colour will last longer.I just have to convince the others now :-)
Saturday 11th

New door furniture

I added my piece to the disseminating of information for ELTchat(see previous post). Saturday is usually a busy one, but it was so hot that M and Cairis went sailing and swimming in the sea in an effort to cool off, and I did some housework and went shopping. In the evening we enjoyed watching some of the Olympics on TV, and were delighted for Mo Farrah when he won his second gold medal of these games. This is the final view of the old door. It is going to be replaced next week with one which is more in-keeping with the style of the house. We had to decide where to put the letter box, and we have decided to have a box on the wall as we often get larger letters than the little letterbox can cope with. This often means things such as photos finishing up bent!

EltCHAT.org rises from the Ashes

The phoenix comes to mind with this post from Marisa Constantinides. It is a shame that ELTchat.com has ceased to be, and we must be grateful for Shaun's back-ups and Marisa's unstinting work during her holidays- and she doesn't have many of them:-). I'm looking forward to the new website- and it is a timely reminder to not take things for granted, especially when it comes to the internet! 

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.

Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.

And that is how #ELTchat was created.    

The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.

A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011,  he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.

We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.

eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.

The news is really upsetting.

The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment

We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.

But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet

And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations

We will be back with a vengeance

We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

Chiew Pang

Sue Annan

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers,  teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers,  reposted this on your blog

If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

Project #366 week 31

Not a very exciting week this week. It started well, weather-wise, and deteriorated as the week progressed. I spent most of the week nursing a cold, and interviewing people for the next training course. Wednesday was a let-down, as ELTchat is on holiday:-(, although everyone deserves a break!

Sunday 29th July 2012

M. was sailing, and Cairis spent the morning sorting out her clothes for the Salvation Army collection.There are collection bins all over the island, and we have one in the supermarket where we park our car. It means that you can clear out the clothes that you don't need any more, and someone else can make use of them. We popped them over to the shop, although it was closed, as we have a key card to get in:-).

Monday 30th

What is there for dinner?

Back to work today and it feels like I didn't have a break. My students are lovely and I have three very interesting classes. Started interviewing after the staff meeting at lunchtime, which pretty much set the tone for the week. By the time I got home, I had a look in the cupboard to see what I could make for dinner, and decided that I needed to go shopping:-(.
When I returned my cold was beginning to manifest itself so I made myself a fruit salad- and went off to bed early.
Tuesday 31st

Before leaving for work, I asked Cairis to do a bit of hoovering for me. I wasn't too impressed when I got home to find that she hadn't done it!. In the end she was vindicated though, as the hoover had comprehensively died. It was an old Dyson, which I had had for years- and the call out charge to repair it was more than the cost of a brand new one. I went over to the supermarket and found one which met my needs- something that could handle cat hair was top of the list :-) I found a super little Electrolux which is actually more powerful than the old one, so happy all round.

Wednesday 1st August 2012

Today is the day that many in my neighbourhood have been waiting for. The big gasometer, which was alight not long ago, is being decommissioned today. I like the fact that you can see Victoria College through the frame- but in a few weeks  the structure will all be gone.The men are emptying the remaining gas today, so fingers crossed there are no problems.
Thursday 2nd August

Dry me!

A day for housework! I decided to take the plates on my dresser down to wash and dust. The weather forecast was for isolated showers- what they didn't tell us was that the showers would be absolute downpours. My poor little cat was out in one of them , and she really hates being wet.
When she comes in wet she drags her towel to me and cries until I dry her. Everyone is amazed that Ebony does this, but her sister Maisie doesn't mind being wet at all.
Friday 3rd August

Today I was given a special present from one of my old Chinese students. I helped him pass his IELTS exam a couple of years ago, and he went off to University in the UK, to do a Masters degree. He was showing off the island to his parents, who had come over for the Olympics, and asked them to bring a small statue of a Chinese teacher for me. I was delighted to see him, and the gift was totally unexpected.
 Saturday 4th
Thank goodness it's the weekend. We are still having those bizarre showers, although not too often, and the rest of the time is warm and sunny. Spent a lot of today glued to the TV watching the Olympic games as the British athletes and sports-people did really well

In the evening we decided to go out West for a pizza, and parked just as a rainbow developed over the bay. My husband said that I wouldn't be able to photograph it, as he didn't think it would come out. So I tried...

While we were eating, the tide was rising fas. The surf is fantastic on the West coast and I was surprised to see a little boat bobbing about on the high tide. The movement made me feel queasy just watching it!










This is the promenade of St Brelade's Bay. You can see the rainbow in the background. I took the first picture when we went in to the restaurant- and the second picture when we left. There are lightbulbs strung all the way round the coast.