And Then There Was One

It’s now the month of May, meaning the weather is getting colder & wetter. While Canada get sunny & hot, Middle Earth sinks deeper into a freezing winter. Luckily, by the time that happens, I’ll be on a plane back to Canada. The sixth week of teaching practice has ended with me teaching 10 lessons & being positively assessed by the College of Ed for the second time. I’m glad that I was assessed in my other Y11 HIST class because my Y10s are the rowdy bunch – must be something in the water.

Even though I have one week left to teach at Villa Maria, my associates won’t be letting me go that easily. It appears they won’t take back the reins of the classroom until I’m fully gone, meaning I’ll be teaching all my classes next week. That makes it 15 lessons! It’s hard to imagine how these experienced teachers can do all that every week & still go home alive. To stay ahead of the game, I’ve been spending more time after school go over everything twice, and received a crash course in efficient photocopying.

Like always, I’ve been paying attention to what’s been happening in the world & swine flu is still in the news. I’m glad to see my hometown moving ahead with plans to expand light rail transit (LRT) but I’m not impressed with the planned routes. I can’t understand why they’re putting so much emphasis on an east-west line when they should first expand the north-south line to the airport and into Hull, Quebec?

President Barack Obama celebrated his 100 days in office (very well managed in my mind), thus giving the biased, conservative news agency, Fox News, to unload an unlimited amount of ludicrous criticisms on him. It leaves me wondering how Americans can watch American news because when I try to watch Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC, my IQ drops several notches. The only credible news source in the USA right now is the Daily Show with John Stewart!

The only big stories down here are the recent police standoff in Napier, the murder retrial of David Bain, and the crisis in Fiji. Since I'm teaching my Y9s about forms of government, we'll be looking at the Fijian crisis & how the people's rights, especially of the media & journalists, are being denied by a self-centered military man who thinks he can do no harm. Sigh, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Um . . . I thought I would have more to write but I guess not. Aside from the wet weather, and busy school teaching, there’s not much else I can think of right now. Cadets is going steady; I taught the Basics how to tie several knots (Reef, Fisherman’s, & Figure 8) for bushcraft. For the next lesson, I’ll be getting them to tie the Clove Hitch & Bowline.