A Winter's Tale, Part 4


Yes, the never-ending battle of my Chinese Police Certificate is still going on and it does not look as though it will be over for a few more weeks. As well as taking up big chunks of my time, it is also rather expensive.

I have been working hard on writing lots of PowerPoint presentations (ppts) because the headmaster at St. George’s wants me to be involved in Professional Development (PD). So far I have written ppts about Assessment for Learning (AFL), Design and Technology, Robotics, Flash Cards, Gifted and Talented Students (G & T) and How to write a PowerPoint! The ppt about G & T students is rather good. One of my better efforts, in fact. I did not realize that I had some many photos of my students doing all sorts of interesting things. In some ways I am quite looking forward to doing some PD at St. George’s. Doing some PD yourself ought to be a lot more fun than listening to some of the dreadful so-called PD that I had to endure at GOS. The principal was addicted to PPTs that had masses of very small writing in GREEN. Green on a white background is unreadable, if you are not sitting right at the front.

That reminds me of a rather good joke. It is the Coliseum in Rome and the lions are brought in to eat some prisoners. A hungry-looking lion comes up to eat a prisoner, but he whispers something to the lion and the lion walks away, looking very fed up. Another lion comes up to him and the same thing happens. Then the emperor says, “Find the biggest and hungriest lion and maybe he will eat this prisoner.” So a huge and very hungry lion is brought into the arena. The lion runs up to the man and is just about to eat him, but the man whispers something and, sure enough, the lion loses his appetite and wanders off. Then the emperor says, “Bring that prisoner to me!” The prisoner is brought to the emperor and the emperor asks him, “What did you say to that lion? Why didn’t he want to eat you?” And the prisoner replied, “I just said, ‘PowerPoint presentation after lunch’!”  
When I visited St. George’s School for my interview, the stuff on the display boards could have been better. At Green Oasis, I took masses of BIG colour photos of the students doing exciting experiments in Science and some interesting practical work in Geography. Then I asked the lovely Miss Yanee to print out the photos in A3 size on the colour photocopiers, laminate them and she would put them up on a display board.

Any other news? At the moment one of the HR ladies at St. George’s is supposed to be looking for an apartment in Sofia for us. The good news is that the school pays the rent AND the utilities.

 Bulgaria has already had quite a lot of snow. The other day, the temperature was minus three during the day and minus nine at night! Shock horror! The good news is that the central heating is working really well and we have some new winter tyres for the car. The tyres were 800 leva and that is about 400 euros or 350 pounds. Ouch!

 There is something rather wonderful about having breakfast in a warm kitchen, looking out of the window at the snow on the grass while you are sitting next to the hot wood-burning stove and eating delicious mishmash.



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