And now, the News.
The summer course was really good fun, all in all. Three weeks of having a bunch of fourty Chinese boys between 13 and 17 hanging from my every word and absorbing priceless tidbits of knowledge from the stream of instruction which I offered forth.
Well, when I say "hanging from my every word" I mean something more like "trying to drown out my every word in a cacophony of laughs, song and Chinese directed at each other, in a state of complete obliviousness as to what I might be trying to get them to do"; when I say "absorbing priceless tidbits of information" I mean "learning essential vocabulary such as 'temptress', 'assassination' or 'mistress'"; and when I say "the stream of instruction which I offered forth" I mean "the half-hearted attempts I made to get and hold their attention for more than 10 minutes at a time despite my catastrophic hangovers and/or my eagerness to kick them out before I ran out of material to fill the lesson with". Ah, the joys of teaching.
Obviously, it wasn't really all that bad. Usually a happy sort of compromise between the two during the lessons. Neither of us really wanted to be there for three hours first thing in the morning in the hottest weather in years, but we struggles through. Out of class, though, things were very different. We had a whole load of trips to places as diverse as The Lion King in the West End or Oxford, the London Eye or the Houses of Parliament, and they seemed to love them all. (Well, apart from the one where we made them walk across half of London in suits and pinchy shoes in about 30 degrees heat, but that was just unfortunate really.) We had some highly amusing moments to make up for the bad ones anyway, all in all, for the most part provided by a single 13yr-old, seemingly gender confused kid with a penchant for the supernatural, and a budding 17yr-old neo-Shakespeare who insisted on peppering his written work with lines such as "in fair Oxford, where we lay our scene". You might well imagine quite now surreal it got at times.
They were all lovely kids, and it was great to see people enjoy simply being here so much, so I'm glad I did it. Of course, the other bonuses were that I was effectively only working mornings (although I did have to do a fair bit to help out the inexperienced course assistants on outings, but it wasn't exactly arduous) and that I got £1,500 for my troubles. Not quite so impressive post-tax, but still enough to take care of a lot of our house-renting expenses as they come around this month.
Which brings me neatly on to what I've been up to for the last week: scouring London for 'The Perfect 3-Bedroom House With Garden And Spare Bathroom' (existence unconfirmed). Though this supposedly mythical specimen has been sought by many throughout the mists of time, each quest seems to encounter the same fundamental obstacles to the completion of its task: the lecherous presence of student renters who snap up anything even advertised as 3-roomed within seconds of it entering the market, the parasitic desire of unscrupulous landlords to drain the property of every last penny of value by raising the price to unpayable levels for leasing even a concrete shack with a hose attached to the wall, and the incomprehensible inability of estate agents everywhere to be physically incapable of understanding that when you ask for 3-bed properties with gardens, what you really want to be seeing is 3-bed properties with gardens, not 2 1/2-bed flats with miniscule Juliet-balconies or basement holes with an MDF kitchen and a bicycle graveyard out back.
In other words, it has not all been plain sailing, but on the bright side, I now have a much better knowledge of London geography across multiple boroughs and I have seen a couple of nice options. Of course, one of those fell victim to the affliction of the Wavering Landlord (otherwise known as 'the owner's spontaneous decision not to rent any more the moment that you decide you might actually take an interest in the property'), but things are at least progressing. More as it comes in.
In all, the last month or so has really been quite diverse and interesting, so I can't really complain. Hopefully, once the quest has been concluded and I have a definite base and plans for the rest of the summer, I'll be able to return to more regular outbursts, but for the next few days, at least, things appear destined to continue on the same manic course without much of a break. Ah, well.
Well, when I say "hanging from my every word" I mean something more like "trying to drown out my every word in a cacophony of laughs, song and Chinese directed at each other, in a state of complete obliviousness as to what I might be trying to get them to do"; when I say "absorbing priceless tidbits of information" I mean "learning essential vocabulary such as 'temptress', 'assassination' or 'mistress'"; and when I say "the stream of instruction which I offered forth" I mean "the half-hearted attempts I made to get and hold their attention for more than 10 minutes at a time despite my catastrophic hangovers and/or my eagerness to kick them out before I ran out of material to fill the lesson with". Ah, the joys of teaching.
Obviously, it wasn't really all that bad. Usually a happy sort of compromise between the two during the lessons. Neither of us really wanted to be there for three hours first thing in the morning in the hottest weather in years, but we struggles through. Out of class, though, things were very different. We had a whole load of trips to places as diverse as The Lion King in the West End or Oxford, the London Eye or the Houses of Parliament, and they seemed to love them all. (Well, apart from the one where we made them walk across half of London in suits and pinchy shoes in about 30 degrees heat, but that was just unfortunate really.) We had some highly amusing moments to make up for the bad ones anyway, all in all, for the most part provided by a single 13yr-old, seemingly gender confused kid with a penchant for the supernatural, and a budding 17yr-old neo-Shakespeare who insisted on peppering his written work with lines such as "in fair Oxford, where we lay our scene". You might well imagine quite now surreal it got at times.
They were all lovely kids, and it was great to see people enjoy simply being here so much, so I'm glad I did it. Of course, the other bonuses were that I was effectively only working mornings (although I did have to do a fair bit to help out the inexperienced course assistants on outings, but it wasn't exactly arduous) and that I got £1,500 for my troubles. Not quite so impressive post-tax, but still enough to take care of a lot of our house-renting expenses as they come around this month.
Which brings me neatly on to what I've been up to for the last week: scouring London for 'The Perfect 3-Bedroom House With Garden And Spare Bathroom' (existence unconfirmed). Though this supposedly mythical specimen has been sought by many throughout the mists of time, each quest seems to encounter the same fundamental obstacles to the completion of its task: the lecherous presence of student renters who snap up anything even advertised as 3-roomed within seconds of it entering the market, the parasitic desire of unscrupulous landlords to drain the property of every last penny of value by raising the price to unpayable levels for leasing even a concrete shack with a hose attached to the wall, and the incomprehensible inability of estate agents everywhere to be physically incapable of understanding that when you ask for 3-bed properties with gardens, what you really want to be seeing is 3-bed properties with gardens, not 2 1/2-bed flats with miniscule Juliet-balconies or basement holes with an MDF kitchen and a bicycle graveyard out back.
In other words, it has not all been plain sailing, but on the bright side, I now have a much better knowledge of London geography across multiple boroughs and I have seen a couple of nice options. Of course, one of those fell victim to the affliction of the Wavering Landlord (otherwise known as 'the owner's spontaneous decision not to rent any more the moment that you decide you might actually take an interest in the property'), but things are at least progressing. More as it comes in.
In all, the last month or so has really been quite diverse and interesting, so I can't really complain. Hopefully, once the quest has been concluded and I have a definite base and plans for the rest of the summer, I'll be able to return to more regular outbursts, but for the next few days, at least, things appear destined to continue on the same manic course without much of a break. Ah, well.