Bill adds his $2.50 to the blog

Hello from Bill

Well school is GREAT! Loaded with conflict and fear at upper levels but with the kids it is great. And the opportunities for teaching are beyond my imagination. Here are the school “bullets”.
There are no bells and yet the kids get to class on time. They wait outside the door until invited in and stay quiet and cool. There are kids everywhere in the common spaces. If they do not have a class, they can go to the entry commons, outside to the many courtyards and secluded benches, or to the dining room where the snack bar opens at 7:30 am and stays open until 4:30 pm. I may shrink a lunch menu for the week so you can see what is offered these kids.
BBQ

Western Entrée
Ham, Macaroniand Cheese
Chicken Pot Pei
Lasagna
Meat Loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy
Chicken ala King

Chinese Curry
Assorted Fried Noodles
Stir fried Chicken
Stir-fried Scallops
Deep Fried Pork Chop with rice


Beef with w/carrots & Celery

(NEW)


Broccoli
(NEW)





Mixed Vegetables



Broccoli
Baby Carrots
Cauliflower & Cheese
Baked Beans
Sweet Peas
Sweet Corn
Green Beans
Cucumber Sticks
Mashed Potatoes
Irish Potatoes
Egg Plant with basil
Celery Sticks
Carrot Sticks
Chinese Broccoli
Chinese Cabbage

Orange Sections
Fresh Melon
Bananas
Watermelons
Orange Sections
Fruits/Desserts
Pears
Applesauce
Peaches
Applesauce
Fruit Cocktail

Mexican Wedding cakes
Pie Crust Sticks
Ginger Cookie
Choc. Dirty Pudding

Beverages
Sunkist 100% apple, grape and orange juice, peach juice, Vitality lemonade, skim, 2% & chocolate milk,

soy milk, unsweetened iced tea, Lipton sweetened lemon tea, coke, sprite and Fanta orange.

Pizza Bar
Available by the slice or the whole pie.

Varieties offered are: pepperoni, sausage, Hawaiian, double cheese, vegetable and supreme.

Salad Bar
Over thirty food items are available to create your signature salad

An assortment of dressings are available

Potato Bar
Various items are offered as toppings for your fresh baked potato.


Cafeteria
The cafeteria, potato bar and salad bar are open from 10:45 a.m. until 1:15 p.m. school days
Service Hours
Pizza Bar
The pizza bar is open from 10:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. school days and Saturdays

Snack Bar
The snack bar is open from 7:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. school days.

Ok so that is a lot of space but this is the hub for the kids. There is a HUGE room with dozens of wash basins for them to wash hands before entering. Lots of hand washing around here.
The attitude towards teachers is really different from public school. We are not beggars for jobs but rather the admin team comes and recruits what they believe are the best. It changes the attitude because they want to make you welcome and seem to treat you with respect. Case in point. The teachers’ dining room was appropriated for the temp library so they established another faculty room, made sure they ordered all the international papers for the room, put tables, chairs and patio umbrellas so faculty could sit outside and then bought a new fridge and soda machine. Anything else “just ask”.
Kids seem very shy to talk but sing loudly and really want to be in the classes. No discipline issues.
New teachers were introduced at an assembly and given flowers. One girl stopped my on the way out of school that day and said, ‘Welcome to our school.” To bad she is not in my classes.
I have written about Grace our music secretary before but she continues to astonish me with her willingness to do what I thought was my job re: secretarial items.
The music library needs LOTS of work. I would give a lot for my boxes of single copies. The previous folks were pop and show tunes with sacred music mixed in and not well.
Did I mention that the school bus for the kids is a series of long range tour busses like Greyhound on steroids?
The Board of education gave a party for teachers and staff at the American Club in China. WELLLLLLL!!!!! Free beer and wine in vast amounts. A dessert table with tiramisu et al, and five stations staffed with wait staff full of finger foods including Peking duck and and and. Not exactly what I am used to.
Carol is going to substitute teach dance this coming Friday and has been volunteered, for pay, to chaperone the 7th grade Camp Taiwan for a week later in Sept. She will get to see great sights in the central mountains of the country.

Other stuff
People do not eat sandwiches with their hands but cut it and fork each quarter and eat it off the backwards fork. They do not like to touch their food.
There is some aspect of design or art work in almost every moment of the environment. The guard railings are cement poured and often painted to look like bamboo posts. The man hole covers depict the sky, the earth and the sea with fishes in it. The new sidewalk in our area is grey, red and green concrete tiles laid in a pleasing manner. There is tons of community contemporary sculpture in median strips and in every roundabout.
Carol goes to the pagoda in our little park often to see how the gold (BIG) fish are doing. It is such a peaceful place if only it was a little cooler now so we could enjoy it more.
We have succulent Asiatic white lilies in an arrangement and an achingly beautiful collection of blooming grape colored orchid stems in another grouping in our living room. It is truly like being in NYC with availability being a major characteristic. What do you want? It is here, with the exception of clock radios.
When we were in London, the Orange Julius store was the “lets think about USA bolthole.” Here I think it will be Chilies restaurant which we loathed in the states but like here. Carol and I laughed because Thursday nite we were sitting in a Japanese department store ( Shin Kong Mitsukosi) eating Tex Mex food, in Taiwan drinking beer from Singapore 92 for 1). Wow! Doesn’t that mess with your head?
Again with the clean! The MRT (subway) tracks are so spotless that there is not one scrap and I really mean NOT ONE scrap of paper or cigarette butt or anything around the tracks. The concrete is not grease/oil stained at all and the 3rd rail looks like it gets cleaned and degreased daily. Nothing!
Carol is feeling so much better after her sinus yuck and feeling so rung out. Thank heavens because there is too much to look at and enjoy being not well.
Funny sights: Scooter people who ride 2,3, up to 4 up. We say a little kid riding in front with a helmet and a battery powered fan for when they had to stop.

SKYPE
Okay this is really really really great. We just got totally wired with ADSL at the fastest up and down load rate, a powerful wireless router and Skype. If you do not know what Skype is, please go online and look at it. For example, I can call US for $.021 US cents per minute from here. That is less than the ATT card rate of $.34 per minute I had in the states. I establish a Skypein phone # for $38/year in the 317 and another in the 860 area code so both parents can make a local call and get me here. If I do not answer on the computer here, it then transfers to my cell phone. This cost about $.08 a minute.
So the bottomline is, if you are a skype customer, and let us know what your skype name is, we can TALK for free. This is great

Well so long for now. I am off to try and post some pictures on this blog so it will be more than blog, blog blog.

Love to you all and keep in touch. It is important!

Bill