We thought it was all over, and it was

An early start.

I’ve been lax in my blogging, not just here but elsewhere, too, perhaps having reached a point where I have nothing new to say or see no point in saying anything because saying something achieves nothing.

Term ended like a slow terminal illness, and died by inches, one millimetre at a time. Apart from one class in the final week, I had no teaching at all for most of June because of changes to the post-exam timetable. There were things to be done, but I got on and did them, and then the term resumed its terminal decline.

In fact, it died two days sooner in one of those classic Chinese moments when some student comes and tells us in the course of some unrelated conversation that the final day is Wednesday. My reaction was one of scepticism, but after some research, it turned out to be true, although who knows when we would have been informed. However, knowing what the school can be like, I won’t be at all surprised if we have to work the weekend before the start of term to make up for the two pointless days at the end of last term when we didn’t sit around at school wasting our time by being there.

Die Führerette and her husband have gone.

Mr. Bradford, as I’ve now learnt, would not have been the best choice of HoD. His contribution to our collective lesson plan was apparently abysmal. Die Führerette, much to her irritation, had to add the missing content. He has also bolted from school at the earliest opportunity every day, something which I rarely managed to do even if I’d wanted to.

Ms. Giggles got louder and louder, and really did need to be kept occupied with some teaching to counteract her constant demand for attention. Her contribution to our collective lesson plan include a massive dollop of her own interests, which also had to be rewritten by die Führerette. [18.10.14. Ms. Giggles then rewrote what’d been rewritten so that her pet project would be included again; again, I completely ignored it.]

It also seems that Ms Giggles has been plaguing Putin, the new dux gymnasii, with messages in which she has, no doubt, been making quite clear what her requirements etc. are. Things went too far with some message about the conduct of the final assembly, which was why she was having a meeting with Medvedev a few weeks ago, who had been dispatched to deal with her. As far as I can tell, she is now part of the organising committee, although watch the Chinese simply do things their way.

There may also be some culture shock when Vlad and Dmitry find that not all Chinese school children are as brilliant at English as those who attended V and D’s previous institution. We’ll see. [30.08.14. I cut out the previous two paragraphs because they’re been superseded by more recent events. However, I get the impression that they are expecting the same enthusiasm from our little darlings. Somehow, I think not.]

We’ll also see whether Vlad can make any headway against the school. From what I’ve heard, the school there seemed happy to acquiesce to his demands. Here he may find himself banging his head against a brick wall of the vested interests who have really been running the centre in the absence of a permanent leader.

On the one hand, we may still have a source of inside info from the top; on the other hand, if Vlad and Dmitry have a close working relationship, we’ll have to mind our Ps and Qs, and quite a lot of other letters of the alphabet. [30.08.14. That’s certainly be true so far. Would like to make scathing com­ments about Ms. Giggles, for example, but Dmitry is present and seems disinclined to join in the fun.]

I’m now on my third version of next year’s timetable, although the changes to mine have been minimal so far. I was surprised to see a reduction in the number of hours I’m going to be teaching. There are still some question marks hanging over the classes because it seems that apart from the Year 2s, I have nothing but SL classes, Vlad having decided that even for the Cambridge students, there should be the regulation four classes. But a cursory glance at everyone else’s timetables suggests that it’s four across the board when the HL classes usually have six to accommodate the literary texts. Even four classes aren’t really enough. [30.08.14. This mystery was eventually resolved. The classes are being split, but remaining together for the most part, apart from a couple of periods when they have their lit. classes. The timetable is now on about the ninth version.]