Project 52 Week 5

So here we go for week 5. 

On Monday I returned to work. I had two classes of students from an Ecole Hotelier in France. They were very well-behaved for 16-year-olds, and a pleasure to teach.
 We had just settled down to work when the lights went off. Our electricity comes from France via an underwater cable, and something had outed the power at their end, causing an all island power cut, which we later found out had affected Guernsey too. The power wasn't restored until almost lunchtime, and by this time we were all starting to feel cold, as well as working in a half-light. The weather wasn't too bad on Monday, and after a quick staff meeting, I was able to go home and get on with my third week of EVO courses. I had an interesting live session for the BE group and wanted to get to grips with the third week tasks for both courses.

 Tuesday was my first full day of work, and I was happy to have some adults to teach in the afternoon. The only problem was that the power cut had messed with the clock on the wall, and I had no idea what time it was. It is lucky that teachers have an inbuilt sense of timing for tasks :-) My students wanted to practise for the TOEIC test, so it was a fairly easy ride. I gave them a lift into town afterwards and we stopped to have a coffee. It rained solidly all day. This can't be good for the island, which should be planting the royal potatoes about now, but the fields are waterlogged.

On Wednesday the man came to empty our recycling bins. I was so fed up with the waste of duff photocopies and newspapers that I agreed with the company to have their bins in each classroom, and the staffroom and office. We fill them up reasonably slowly, but it's nice to feel that we are doing something positive for the environment. Oh, for a paper-free existence! We are getting better, though. A lot of material has been uploaded to drop box and we have access to computers in the classrooms.
 When the summer school starts we will have IWBs as well.
I had to stay behind after work to interview a few people who had been enquiring about the CertTESOL in March. I managed to group three of them together for interview, but the rest couldn't make it until Thursday.

So Thursday arrived, accompanied by a Code Orange weather warning of flooding in low lying areas. I managed to get to work, although the roads were covered in seaweed, which made driving conditions a bit dicey. I stayed late to finish my interviews and the weather was actually reasonable when I left to drive home. The high tide was heading towards the highest one of the year and everyone had sandbags outside to try to protect their properties. When I got home I lit the fire and decided to stay home. I have been playing around with websites all week, trying to find the right platform for my e-book. This was a golden opportunity to test some of my ideas against what was actually possible.


 My Husband left for Scotland this morning. He has gone up to visit his mum, who is in her nineties. We always go out on Friday night. We choose a pub and then gather the musicians by email. Fortunately the weather was foul- and we all decided not to go down to the pub on the East of the island that we had picked as our meeting place. What a good call! The Code had changed to RED, the sea was sloshing over the wall everywhere and there was some localised flooding. However, on the East coast, where the pub was, they had a landslide. We would have been in a pickle had we gone out and not been able to get back up the hill. I decided to clean all my little cat statuettes and return them to their shelves.

Quick sound check

Saturday was the date chosen by the Scottish Society of Jersey for their Burns' ceilidh. The Yacht club had booked the band for the correct night, so they chose a week later, and a five-star hotel. We had to go down in the afternoon to set up, and were treated like second-class citizens. No going through the hotel, we had to use the tradesmen's entrance at the back, through the kitchen area :-). We set up and had a quick sound check. This was at 5 pm. We didn't have to go back until 10.30, but in actual fact it was closer to 11.45 pm when we started to play.(something to do with the slow service). The room was very colourful, but the lights made their raffle difficult as they couldn't make out the real colour of the tickets.

On Sunday I dropped my daughter up to the old Napoleonic Fort which overlooks the town. It is a sports and leisure centre these days, and she was going skating. She has joined a roller derby team and is training to be a referee. I then popped down to pick up my flowers, and did a bit of housework while it was quiet. I forgot to check whether Miles was coming to dinner, with M being away, so we waited until late to eat, until he turned up, or not. This gave me time to join the EBook group for a Hangout on Google. In the end he must have decided that it was better to come when we were all together en-famille.

I wonder what next week will have in store. I hope that I don't have to spend too long doing interviews. I'd like to try to make it to the gym at some point, and I'm really looking forward to laying with my E-book a bit more:-)