Photos!

Some photos from my walk this evening have been posted on flickr. They aren't terribly good, as photos go, but they do a good job of giving a sense of my neighborhood. See them!

Competence

Ingrid (the new manager) has observed my classes three times now, as I recall. Could be four, but I think it's been three. The first few times she had some good feedback for me, so I took her advice and made the changes she recommended. Things got easier. I made additional changes that seemed like good ideas to me on my own. Later feedback indicated that they made sense to her too. Things got easier again.

Basically, work is much more doable now, and I feel like an honestly competent teacher. After today's observation Ingrid showed me her notes, which basically said, "Ben is a competent teacher with a well-disciplined class and a powerful classroom personality. I won't need to observe again for the foreseeable future." This made me happy.

In less fun news, my knee is giving me trouble for some reason. It's got an aching pain that's occasionally a stabbing pain deep inside, on the back side of the knee. I bought a brace tonight that I'll start wearing to work (lots of standing around) and when I exercise. Hopefully it'll get better on its own. If it's still giving me hell in two weeks, I'll see a doctor.

Flip floppin'

So I made my boss' and my coworkers' collective day yesterday when I told my (new and improved!) boss that I would be staying at Jumpstart, rather than quitting at the semester. I have to go over to the main office after work today to sign papers in order to confirm. The head teacher (my immediate supervisor) was very happy, and Ingrid (the new manager) literally jumped for joy. I'm not staying for them, particularly (likable as they are), but it was still a nice side effect to make other people so happy. It's a good feeling when decisions have added benefits.

Things have gotten better since the old manager was replaced. So much better that Celine's pep talk about how we're already halfway through the year (and past the most difficult part) was really effective. I'm not super excited to be staying here for another six months, but I probably won't be miserable either, and if I work at it, odds are good that I'll really enjoy it.

1 more hour today, and then two more days until the weekend. I'm going surfing again!

Computer parts and smog: like being back home

Martin's laptop's hard drive gave up the ghost the other day, so after booting it into target mode and stripping it of all the data we could, we decided that a trip to the electronics store was in order. Last night we walked the short distance to the nearest store, where we encountered an utterly mystified salesman who tried to sell us an external drive that we could take apart in order to get at the internal. We decided there was nothing here for us, and that we would have to look elsewhere.

I, being naive, suggested that perhaps there was another similar store nearby. It was at this point that Martin mentioned the electronics market area. Things get kinda hazy for a little while, but at some point I must have convinced him (and Katherine) that we HAD to go there. So we took the MRT, got a little turned around, but eventually wound up in the right place: a whole broad street lined with electronics store after electronics store. Big superstores (useless for our needs) all the way down to little, hole-in-the-wall places where you can bargain for the price of your component (just what we wanted).

We found a hard drive for Martin at the second store we went to, and for a good deal cheaper than we would have paid over the internet. Awesome. So we decided to walk back to the other nearby MRT stop, through the market.

I made it through the market without breaking my bank account. I restrained myself to one purchase: a USB skype phone. I can now speak reasonably into a handset instead of shouting at my laptop. More phone calls in the near future, as soon as I recharge my skype account.

The thing is, after we made it through the market, the MRT was nowhere in sight. So we started walking. We weren't completely lost, just pretty severely turned around. So we kept walking. An hour later, after marching through two districts, we made it home. It was a lovely walk: the temperature was great, there was no rain. The smog is so thick right now that all the lights had lovely little halos! In fact, when I got up today, it had thickened to the point of nearly being fog. No visibility.

Just like back home!

Christmas Show Pics

40-some-odd pages of photos of the Christmas show and the party preceding it. Highlights are my kids, dressed as dinosaurs, performing "Santa Bring Me a Dinosaur", me dressed as Santa for the party (redneck Santa, I'll have you know, complete with accent and bare feet), and the nursery class wearing the most adorable berets ever devised.

Pictures are here.

Bali and changes at work

Bali was a good trip. I got to see some beautiful beaches, temples, forests, and classic terraced hillsides. I met some really cool people. I got to hang out with folks I now consider to be good friends. There was sunshine, there was rain. I even got to surf and boogie-board. I got to face down a storm, I fell off a bicycle (three times). I returned to a very cold (comparatively, anyway), very grey city that, in some ways, I missed quite a bit.

Also, my awful, incompetent manager got fired, and has been replaced by someone who seems to be genuinely good at her job. I'm hoping that this will make the last two months of my time at Jumpstart much more pleasant and agreeable.

Now I just need to start looking for a new way to pay the bills.

Pictures from Bali will be up on flickr soon, if all goes as planned.