Project 52 week 30

Well, summer is well and truly here. It has been another scorching hot week, with just enough wind for M to take his boat out, where it was a degree or so cooler.

Sunday

 Today was recycling day. As we only had small things to recycle- even if the buckets were full- we decided to go to the Parish recycling station instead of the big one at Bellozane. On our return, we picked up some fish from the van at the harbour for dinner. I then spent a large part of the day at the computer: Blog post, MOOC, iTDi Business course etc. In the evening Miles joined us for dinner and then I was quite ready for bed.

Monday

At breakfast time I watched M trying this puzzle. My friends gave it to him for Christmas and it has been sitting in a corner for months. He decided that the wine in the puzzle was a good one, and that Cairis could redo it with an inferior bottle! The instructions came with the thing- but my husband was too determined to work it out for himself. It took ages :-) Cairis then took very little time to redo it= OH the joys of having young eyesight.

Tuesday

                                          The cats have been struggling with the heat. 

Maisie has taken to sitting out in the early morning, and then hiding under a chair for the rest of the day. My student decided to bunk off as it was too hot for school. I ended up writing reports for the inspection. Ebs, strangely, doesn't seem as bothered as Maisie,but likes to be where I am, so sitting on the window ledge is more her style.

Wednesday

Some great iTDi sessions this week. I've been catching them whenever I can, although most of them seem to be at a time when I'm in class:-(. Thank goodness for the recordings. My friend gave me a Peace Lily recently because it was being attacked by one of her dogs. It is so happy on the deck outside the kitchen that it is in bloom, and has more flowers coming through. We had another earthquake today. I was sitting at my desk when the chair moved! This time it was a little further away than the last one.

Thursday

Another day of report writing. A very hot day today- the hottest of the year so far. The shops are still having problems because of the ferry. It was holed last week when it ran aground, possibly due to the earthquake moving the sea bed. Unfortunately it is our freight link to the world- so many empty shelves in the supermarkets. we popped down to the tower at Le Hocq for a nice cooling ice-cream.

  Friday

Popped out to visit our friend who has a farm near us. The cows are looking very healthy. I love Jerseys. They have such beautiful faces and such long eyelashes. That's before we mention the fantastic milk products they produce- Yum!!

Saturday

School staff barbecue today. I forgot to take my camera! On the way home I caught up with some friends and we had a drink together while we caught up. The Parish hall next door to the pub is looking very colourful at the moment. I will need to get a picture of our one to compare.

 Sunday

Popped out to get some flowers from the roadside stall, as usual. The display was very bright and cheerful. For £10.00 I have managed to fill my house with an array of flowers.
 I like to put them next to a mirror to magnify their beauty- it works well when you don't have many too, but that is not a problem today. I have Gladioli in the window- still tight shut though.

A bit sad that the sessions with Vicki Hollett have come to end- as do all good things! I just have the final assignment to do- and that looks fairly hard work.

Project 52 Week 29

The year is certainly moving on a-pace. At work we are getting ready for our British Council inspection- it seems to require inordinate amounts of paperwork! The featured weather this week was HOT, particularly towards the end of the week.

Sunday

Malcolm got up and left the house with Cairis, after a quick breakfast. There was a sailing race and they were both involved. Peace:-) I started by making little videos of last night's ceilidh.

I had my online course with Vicki Hollet at 3pm, so spent most of my time pottering about the house, but I popped out to get some beautiful flowers for the window.
Tonight is M's birthday meal, although his birthday isn't until Wednesday. We always have a special dinner on the closest Sunday, so Miles can be included too. Also, if we invite friends, they don't stay too late if people have work to go to the next day:-0

Monday

New students today. One of them was the head economist for a large chain of supermarkets- he was very interesting to chat to. It is nice to teach a high-level group of adults again. The last few weeks have been teens and 1-2-1 students. We are very busy at the moment, and my boss wanted to do a review of the year at lunchtime. It was interesting to look back at our To DO list and recognise how much has already been achieved, and to determine where we go next. I love the fact that we are all involved in the decision making.

Tuesday

I paid Cairis to edit my website today. She is very efficient- and found lots of little errant links etc. Well worth it. It is what she would really like to do in the future, but there isn't much call for it over here. If anyone has any ideas or online links- I'd be interested in hearing from you.
The sea was beautiful on the way to work- so I stopped to take a photo for my Facebook friends. The view shows the village of St Aubin in the distance.
In the evening we had dinner in a local pub, so that I could have the evening off.

Wednesday

M's birthday. I got up early and set  the table with his presents and cards. I found a rose in the garden and added it to the table. Ebony was funny. She thought the picture of the cat on one of the birthday cards was a threat, and kept attacking it. What a funny sight it was. I had a session to learn about Edmodo with Russell Stannard at 6pm and then cooked a special dinner.

Thursday 

Today was hot- 30 degrees and high humidity. A couple of my afternoon students are at an interesting stage in life, which necessitated having a fan on in class-YES!!! We made a joke about it, but it was still a pleasure to be cool in class. The weather forecast promised a thunderstorm for later in the evening. ( In fact it did materialise- but with much lightning, little thunder and almost no rain. ) The beach looked very enticing- and a couple of my students bunked off for the afternoon so they could go there and swim.

Friday

M had the car today, so he dropped me off at work and promised to pick me up later. I decided to  invite him for a late lunch. As we were already on the South West, it seemed logical to drive to the West coast for lunch. There is a lovely cafe half way along, which does great food and has views across 5 miles of beach. It was hot though, and I wasn't sitting in the shade, so I caught the sun. One day my freckles will all join together and I might have a suntan instead of looking like a lobster. In the evening we returned to the West for the pub music session. It was  nice to catch up with everyone before all the holidays start. Carl asked me to go down and help him with his computer in the morning.

Saturday

After helping Carl I spent some time doing housework. Both members of my family were out doing something, so I managed to get some work done. Ebony has decided that she doesn't mind the hoover- as long as it is me who is using it. Maisie just runs a mile. Later we drove to the Pizza Express in St Brelade's Bay for a quick bite, and walked along the gardens on the promenade before driving home. The sky promises a good day tomorrow, athough I will be inside for a lot of it- at my computer :-)

Project 52 Week 28

Another week of sunshine, but the heat was tempered by WIND, which was a major feature this week.

Sunday

M offered to phone the window company about our broken sash in the laundry, so I decided that I had better clear it out. This meant matching up the 60 million socks which I had been putting in a basket on the table. Once empty, it was rapidly filled- by 2.5 kilos of black cat. I started a new ITDI online course with Vicki Hollet today, so spent a lot of time at the computer.

Monday

A quiet day at work. Lots of new students, so I tested the new teenagers, and everything went very smoothly. On discovering that I was running my car with the orange NO Diesel light on, I stopped at the garage to fill up. My garage gives you a lottery ticket and you have to add up all the numbers. If you are on the list for the week you can win a prize. Mine was a car air freshener, which makes my car smell like a new car. I now have to hang on to the ticket until the end of the month when it will go into a draw for a monetary prize.

Tuesday

Today was windy. As it was also warm, we had the class windows open, but had to close them as the blinds were buffetted about by the wind and were beginning to drive people crazy.
The big tall agapanthus around the coast took a bit of a battering, but seems to bounce back quite quickly.

Wednesday

Today I had to pop up to the organic farm round the corner from the college. The band are playing there on Saturday, so I volunteered to find out about parking, setting up etc. It is one of my favourite farms. I often bring my agricultural science students here to talk to the farmer and his wife. They have the cutest calves in a pen next to their farm shop. The little brown ones are Jerseys, which are dairy cows. The black and white ones are beef cattle which are  Jersey and Aberdeen Angus cross.

Thursday

I enjoyed my walk home last week, so decided to do it again. This time it wasn't as warm, so I was able to walk a bit faster round the coast. I finished up in a very quiet bar at the end of the route, to have a drink before I went home. It was nice to sit still for a while and do nothing. My classes were happy with the material I sourced and made for them and there is enough for tomorrow, so no pressure this evening. I will need to catch the recordings for the TTO sessions, as they have all been live at times when I was teaching this week.

Friday

Today's big talking point was the earthquake which had its epicentre just a few miles off the south west coast of the island. It measured 4.6, which is the largest to hit us for 90 years. Everything was shaken up, but no real damage was caused. One of my colleagues noticed it and wondered what it was- we said it was the kids running downstairs! I only heard about the quake later that afternoon. One of our host families works for the TV company and came out to interview the teachers and students.

Saturday

The day we have all been waiting for. M went off in the morning to do guard boat duty for the Sark to Jersey rowing race. I had a quiet morning and Cairis and I went shopping to buy a birthday present for him while he was not around. I then had to get ready for the evening:-) Today was the largest agricultural show- The West Show, which has been running for years. In the evening they had invited a couple of local bands to warm up the evening for The Wurzels, an old folk band from Somerset. They wanted to start with a couple of hours of ceilidh dancing, followed by a funny local band, and then the headliners. We were inundated with offers of help from people who were unable to get hold of a ticket for the evening:-)

Project 52 Week 27

Week 27- where has the time gone?

Sunday

It was nice to wake up to more sunny weather, although the forecast said it might break later in the week. The sun was peeping through the trees and calling out for us to eat breakfast in the garden. I had a lazy day, with some TTO work, a session with Marisa,  and some preparation for next week. The garden is starting to look terribly dry after 5 weeks with no rain and people are complaining about the sap on the pavements..

Monday

On Monday I had the job of testing the new teens. As I was the first port of call, and going off campus, I had to wear a badge with my picture and name on it. The teachers working with the YLs had to do the same. Very snazzy! At break I travelled up with them to Communicare, a centre which we hired for the week as an overspill for the college. We were three teachers, with 21 teenagers, between the ages of 15-17, from a variety of places: Brazil, Norway, Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, France, Japan, Germany and Austria. These particular kids were motivated to improve, and mixed really well during the breaks- which meant that they all communicated in English, as standard.At lunchtime we took them back down on the bus for their afternoon classes.

Tuesday

Communicare car park

A full day, with teens in the morning and a business group in the afternoon. After work I returned home to find that M had done all the housework. It was a real treat, but he hadn't thought about dinner. I sent Cairis over to get some pizza from the co-op and went upstairs to get on with some course work and to make some material for my classes.

Wednesday

Today I had time to work on my website, which is beginning to come together. I sent some emails out in answer to Tesol enquiries, and worked on some photos of M's boat from the regatta. I was given a CD of pics which someone else took, but I wanted to sort them out, as he has a birthday coming up soon and I'd like to get one put on canvas for him.

Thursday

The hottest day of the year so far, 27degrees. I decided to leave Malcolm with the car,  after getting a lift to work, and to walk home round the coast- or across the sand, depending on the tide. It would normally take about an hour to get to St Helier, and another 20 minutes to get home from town. I had no idea how hot it was, and found that I had to stop for a drink half way round:-) In the evening the session for TTO was with Dr. Nellie Deutsch.

 

 Friday

Last day at Communicare and at last the weather is threatening to break. Some of my friends decided to go to Sark for their Folk Festival. As the weather wasn't looking great, and I don't like boats much, I decided not to join them. The Island is covered in agapanthus at the moment. There are swathes of blue everywhere. We caught up with friends in the pub in the evening and had a good music session.

Saturday

Rain, rain and more rain! The ground is tinder-dry and my garden was starting to wilt rather badly. It has rained solidly for 24 hours, which will do a great deal of good. We decided to go out for fish and chips. This is not something we  do often, as I tend to cook fish very simply at home, but the restaurant is quite new so we thought we would try it. By the time we arrived we were like drowned rats.