Thursday, March 18, 2010

i can haz internets

Right now I can barely move for the excitement of finally having an internet connection. It took me two hours on the phone this afternoon with an Optus troubleshooter in India who gave me some good advice for my cold as well as fixing the connection issue, so I feel I have earned it. Also, can someone tell me why I paid so much for such a terrible connection last time? I just downloaded the latest episode of This American Life (do yourself a favour, folks - best podcast around). With my Unwired connection this took about 10 minutes. New ADSL2+ connection? Less than a minute. How did I manage?!

Anyway, I'll get over it soon, on to more substantive matters... As of yesterday my week-and-a-bit at the boys school turned into four. The poor man with the nasty divorce isn't going to make it back before term 2. It's a big relief to have work lined up until the end of term, although I was quite looking forward to bidding farewell to some of the more charming boys in my year 10 class. Speaking of charming, the prayer with which they start the lesson asks for the ability to express themselves with "thoroughness and charm." I've regularly had to restrain myself from encouraging them to pray harder for charm.

The headmaster visited all of my classes today with a letter for parents explaining that I'll be taking over the classes until the end of term and generally placating them for the disruption. He took the opportunity to explain to my students that I am well credentialed with a degree from a sandstone university, "and a Masters, mind you, which you can't even get as a teaching qualification in Western Australia." Cultural cringe, or what? Anyway, their need for prestige is working for me right now.

As it is there are other advantages to this situation (remember again, the phone is just not ringing with other offers): I walk about 20 minutes to work in the morning - leaving home just after 8. Bloody luxury. The last section of my walk goes past the back of Fremantle Prison. It's surrounded by a fantastically thick limestone wall. And I always get a kick out of the fact that there is now a children's literature centre there. No kids that's not the key to learning...

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