THURSDAY, 3/5/15
My new semester starts today. Thursday classes begin for me at 8:00am, but my room is always wrecked out from various groups meeting at different times during the week or weekends. I try to arrive no later than 7:15 to guarantee I’ll have time to get set-up and all my materials and devices ready to go. It wasn’t too bad today when I arrived. I was expecting much worse after a holiday. A few times, I’ve had to go find chairs in other rooms or on different floors.
Time for a little straightening up.
After class, I worked on setting up the new grade book on the computer (has to be done each semester. I have to search the student names from a database of all grade 10, 11, and 12 students (about 190 total). It includes their Chinese name, as well as their English name. Of course, I don’t have their Chinese name in my info, so I get to scan every name, first looking for student ID numbers that start with 2013 (the grade 11 students), then looking for the specific students in my classes. It takes some time to work through it. They’re alphabetized by their Chinese family name.
At lunch, I enjoyed hearing more about everyone’s travel during the Winter Holiday. The guitar club guys meet during lunch. They’re reviving the music they’ve played in the past, 5 songs, and beginning to record it for themselves. Today is just a rehearsal day, no recording. The orchestra club isn’t meeting today after school. I’m not sure we’ll be meeting again this year. All the 12th grade members have a required lecture session on Thursdays after school, so they won’t be attending anymore. Some of the grade 11 students are “in charge” now. We’ll see what they want to do for the remaining 6 weeks before all their tutoring and testing begins.
Back home, as it begins to get dark, fireworks start going off in the neighborhood. It seems to be heavier tonight? As it turns out, the 15th day of the Chinese New Year is another big fireworks day. Looking out from the apartment, there are big displays all over the city. None of this is organized. It’s all individuals firing them off. These fireworks would be really expensive back in the US. They take their fireworks serious around here.
FIREWORKS VIDEO LINK:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8mm2beee0trdxj/15.3.5.Fireworks.MOV?dl=0