Monday 19th August
So I had two days off before school was to start their introduction days. I didn’t do much on Monday, taking a bit of time to sort out the flat a bit and made another small trip to Walmart just for a few food items. So it was my plan to call this blog ‘they don’t have cheese here’ and for the most part they don’t. I had to scour the shop but eventually found a fridge with a single type of real cheese available. There was a range of processed cheese slices, and some expensive butter costing equivalent £5-8 a block!
Tuesday 20th August
Tuesday I took a walk to the Florentia shopping centre near by, was a 40 minute walk mostly down a cycle path but fairly scenic, and kept me off the path running directly along the road, a six lane carriage way. Along the way I saw a guy making a brush from twigs to sweep the road. If you’re going to ask someone to sweep something the size of a motorway you could at least give them a broom.
The shopping centre was sort of Italian styled, looks nice but was 95% designer labels, Gucci, Prada, etc. Expensive, and no interest to me, no DVD/media shops, book shops or anything other than premium clothes, shoes, handbags, perfume with a Starbucks or Costa I between.
Wednesday 21st August
Found a shortcut to school to cut off a few more minutes, can reliably do the walk in 10 minutes. There’s a lovely lake in the centre.
School went well, seems positive and reassuring. My fellow Chemistry teachers are yet to appear so I’m at a bit of a loose end still, just focusing on sorting the lessons immediately needed next week. My big success was quickly discovering that fellow science staff are gamers of Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering. I huge source of relief that I have people I will be able to keep doing these with, we played a game in the evening. So sure was I that I would not meet anyone playing these on a staff of barely 30 that left all my cards and games behind in the UK. Damn. Maybe in a few months...
Thursday 22nd August
Neither chemistry teacher will arrive in school before next week, so I’m very much left to my own devices, asking questions and generally finding out what you can’t do here. Printing is likely impossible for the first month, I’ve no idea why that’s just how it is an no one seems to be able to do much other than shrug and laugh. I think I’m just going to have to get used to this general disorganisation and lack of resources.
I managed to bugger up the school laptop given to me the day before by downloading some anti-virus software onto it which caused it to blue screen of death. Still unclear as to the reasons, but just laugh and shrug, get a new one. I got text books, and the content is largely the same, so that’s reassuring for teaching.
Tried another supermarket on the way home, found they have interesting flavours of crisps. I’ve never seen Cucumber flavour before, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was just weird and I couldn’t finish the bag. Also had a cheap bottle of red wine made in this region. Bloody awful.
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