Blog

Eye don't know

29/4/2021

Dilated eyes, making it very hard to ride home on an e-bike in bright sunshine!

I've been noticing my left eye getting more and more blurry over recent months. Then last week I had a half hour with quite limited vision in the eye except for a floating zig-zig shape!? So Jiajia and I went to a hospital last week to see a recommended eye doctor. I was given a battery of tests and finally told that my left eye had got significantly worse from 7.0 degree to 15.0 degrees over the last two years! But they couldn't say why - just old age - and had no suggestions for improving it or avoiding further deterioration.

So the next day we went to a different hospital and another recommended eye doctor. He looked at the previous scans and did a couple more tests before declaring that my left eye has a sizeable cataract and needs an operation sometime in the next few months. Jiajia and I felt this sounded like a more believable diagnosis but we are now left wondering why the first hospital had such a different conclusion. Meanwhile, I'm left with some blurred vision and the odd headache.

2 Comments

ConFUSEing

27/4/2021

1 Comment

Our electricity suddenly went off yesterday afternoon. Our fuses looked fine and other flats seemed to have power. But one of the great things about China is that you can usually get a workman to visit quickly, and for little or no money. I popped down to the neighbourhood office and walked back with an electrician in tow. He was initially confused, but then spotted that our neighbour's fuse box had wires sparking inside! Ten minutes later, our electricity was reconnected. For free!

1 Comment

100 - 1 = 99%

25/4/2021

1 Comment

JD has his mid-term maths exam today (Sunday!) and spent most of yesterday (Saturday) practising for it. Let's hope he does as well today as he did in his mock exam yesterday when he finished the hour-long exam in 20 minutes, scoring 99%. Fingers crossed.

1 Comment

The cure

23/4/2021

4 Comments

Can you guess what this advert was for?

4 Comments

Flashback: This day in ...2007

21/4/2021

1 Comment

Another in my occasional series of "Flashbacks" looking back at blog entries made before this Weebly version started.

Bella teaches 95% of her lesson in Chinese. When I suggest afterwards that she should really aim for at least 50% English she replies (in Chinese), “I can’t, I can’t !”, and she’s probably right. She skips through today’s lesson from the standard, modern textbook in 10 minutes flat, studiously avoiding any games, pairwork or communicative exercises. The remaining ¾ of her lesson is spent tackling some of the hundreds of multiple choice grammar questions in another textbook she has found somewhere (I’ve never seen it before. I hope I never see it again). The questions are painfully dull and many of the answers are dubious, at best. The students are slowly lulled into a stupor of inactivity.

Same school, same grade, same lesson, different teacher – the lottery of which students get a decent chance to learn English and which students don’t …

Half an hour later, just along the corridor, Lily starts her lesson with a quick song. She is all smiles as her students belt out “Do-Re-Mi”. Excitement mounts as she pulls out a bag with something clinking in it. Empty bottles are produced and the new words, “tall, thin, short, wide, heavy and long” are taught. Large pictures of oddly shaped people are stuck to the blackboard and students are called up to write descriptions beneath each one. Lily then uses a “flip flashcard” to present a dialogue followed by a flawless pairwork session, full of encouragement and laughter. Everything is done in English – simple, clear English, repeated often and aided by body language. Activities from the colourful textbook are quickly completed and there’s time left for an “Anagram Game”. It’s a masterclass of Middle School teaching.

…same school, same grade, same lesson, different teacher – the lottery of which students get a decent chance to learn English and which students don’t...

1 Comment

Court on camera

19/4/2021

1 Comment

JD's school P.E. lessons are largely based around basketball. Other sports and exercises hardly get a look in. And he is required to post a video showing his home basketball practice every week (regardless of how wet the weather is!).

1 Comment

Army dreamers

17/4/2021

1 Comment

Lovely 'literation

15/4/2021

1 Comment

The BBC, having fun, ending their article
with an alliterative tongue-twister!

1 Comment

Oh my UFE!

13/4/2021

0 Comments

Tea chers

12/4/2021

0 Comments

Last Friday I took the 6 hour bus journey to Pu'Er (home of the famous tea) where I'd been invited by my friends LuoHao and his wife "Seven" [see above] to attend a workshop he had organised for 60 Middle school English teachers. On Saturday morning they took me on a 10km walk around a large reservoir. And then, after lunch, the workshop began.

We first watched two demo classes, complete with a class of 50 students. Both of these were surprisingly good, despite being focused on Grammar and Reading respectively. Afterwards I led the feedback session, eliciting the teachers' ideas and thoughts. [see above].

On Sunday morning 5 teachers gave short lectures on various aspects of teaching (in Chinese) before I gave my 1½ hour talk (truncated from the 2 hours requested due to the previous teachers overrunning!). Then, after lunch together, I took the 6 hour bus trip home. It was fun to be in the countryside once again, training young rural English teachers - something which used to be my sole job. But I think I'm getting too old for all this travelling!

0 Comments

CHANEL?

9/4/2021

0 Comments

Testing, testing 1-2-free ...of COVID

7/4/2021

0 Comments

Had my first COVID test earlier this week (negative) - surprisingly uncomfortable! I am now all clear to travel to PuEr (7 hours by bus) at the weekend to run a workshop for the city's English teachers there.

0 Comments

Sushi for he, she and me

5/4/2021

2 Comments

When Jiajia took JD to his first sushi meal a month ago (I was away) he fell in love with it. He wanted to take his friends to the restaurant for his birthday, but it only seats a dozen people so we vetoed that. However this last weekend he declared that he wanted to treat Jiajia and I to a sushi meal with some of his Birthday money. Very sweet.

Squid

So we went there yesterday. JD loved it and Jiajia is happy to eat it, but it was a bit of a trial for me. I don't like seafood and it doesn't like me. I settled for a seaweed soup with minimal fishy bits, but I still woke with a gout attack this morning and I suspect it's no coincidence.

2 Comments