Stress Baking?
I am still having trouble with using pictures from my smart phone. This new system at LJ really sucks.
I've been rather stressed for the past week sending and receiving mails regarding our online classes as well as students quitting because parents have decided with the Corona situation they don't have the time, or they want to focus on other stuff, or they "joined because they wanted face to face classes not online classes. Don't have the time? Stuck at home all day? Really? Why would English become less important for your children's education because of a virus scare? And where is there a decent English school still offering face to face classes despite everything? What is wrong with these people? Of course it is not a whole bunch of people. Most of our students understand and are loyal. Just a few, but we are not getting the new students we would have in the new year from April, so even a few really hurts. The government is paying 1000 dollars per person for loss of income due to corona, which will be extremely helpful, but of course this is a one time thing. I think we should also be able to get 10 thousand per classroom for our business losses, but that will take time too.
Schools in our city have decided to postpone classes for another week and a half. They are so unprepared for switching to online. I think they are now thinking of having, for example, only first and sixth graders one day and a couple of other grades on another day etc, so that they can just reduce the number of students at school at one time. My daughter's JH class has over 40 students. I just wish they would divide the classes into smaller groups. Even in normal times, how can a teacher see to the needs of so many students? I now really wish we had got her into a different JH that is in a less populous area and has smaller classes.
Today was a nice quiet day at home, where I could just forget about all that for a while. I'd been watching Atlantis on CW Seed and finished up to the last ep of that. I found out in the second season that it wasn't finished (damn you BBC), and also found out that it ended on a cliff hanger so, I think I'm quitting at the second to last ep. It was cute and fun, and I really enjoyed it while it lasted.
The reason I started watching it to begin with was that I really needed something to get my mind off of The Last Kingdom so I could pace myself with that instead of binging it all in one go. I've been watching TLK two to three eps at a time and now just have the last ep left. I've enjoyed it but it has been frustrating and definitely not getting enough from just ten eps.
So, today while I watched Atlantis and waited for the stupid commercials, I decided to do some baking. I made some sweet bread dough and made half into sweet bean paste stuffed buns, and the other half into some chocolate rolls. What happened there was that Audrey doesn't like bean paste with bean bits like I do (she likes the smooth stuff - yuck :D) so she wanted me to make some other type of buns too. I was going to make chocolate custard stuffed buns, but the custard didn't harden as liked so we agreed to just make rolls, like cinnamon rolls but with the custard and chocolate chips rolled up instead of sugar and cinnamon. They looked rather goopy before I got them in the oven, but they turned out really well! I really enjoyed the dough kneading too - it is quite therapeutic.
Some pics -
Bean paste buns - they have the bean paste inside them.
These are the chocolate rolls. Chocolate custard and chocolate chips rolled up into the bun, like cinnamon rolls