Blue skies over China

The sun is out the sky is blue and the temperature has finally dropped. The birds may actually be singing. We had another big storm a couple of nights ago just endless lightning and rumbling thunder. It didn't have the punch of the storm the other day but was impressive anyway. The temperature has dropped about 15 degrees in the last two days and a Northerly wind has sprung up. It was fierce for a couple of days but has dropped a little today. You could hear it howling around the corners of the buildings and whistling through any cracks in the windows. It has got us thinking of winter and realising that we are not prepared. So we will be doing some serious cold weather shopping in the weeks to come.

Blue skies and sunny days.

Where did that line of hills come from? 

We have finally received our full timetable and are happy as we managed to not have any crossovers. That means that Michelle or I will always be available for Penny and takes the pressure off finding a babysitter for Penny. I actually manage to have thursdays and fridays off each week (which rocks!). Although it does mean that I have all of my teaching squeezed into three fairly hectic days. It also means that I don't have to work this weekend. Now I know that doesn't seem to make sense, so I will try to explain how having no classes on Thursdays and Fridays leads to not working this weekend. 

OK so next week is a holiday for Chinese national day. Kind of like Australia day but you get a whole week off and there's not so many BBQ's! Well actually its not officially a whole week off and there in lies the rub. The gazetted holiday here in China is Monday through Wednesday and they just give everyone the week off rather than make them come back for a couple of days. All rather nice you must agree. However as the holiday is officially only three days the classes for the other two days need to be made up. So the weekend before the holiday it is. Now that seems fairly straight forward right? Right. It gets a little hazy when you think about the other classes, for instance my classes. They fall on the holidays and as such are not made up for. So basically the people who have classes on the Thursday and Friday actually get taught an extra lesson. An extra lesson that cannot be included in the exams for the subject as not all of the students received it. So what happens to them, do we do another make-up class to make up for the extra lesson that some of the classes received. Thankfully not, that would have been a bit too much like some sort of M.C. Escher nightmare.

If it was up to me, which by the way it is not, I would just give the poor saps (us and the students) the full week off and forget about it. After all the 1st year students have spent the last couple of weeks marching around in full camouflage in 35 plus degree heat. To make matters worse all of the new classes that we received are on another campus about 10-15 minutes way by inter campus bus. So a commute has to be factored in as well. All good though at least we don't have to march there and it isn't hot anymore...ahhh bliss!

Some of the aforementioned poor saps.