yipyip

While today i'm officially yet another year older (and on a more practical front, now unable to get youth prices on European rail passes), perhaps i can take solace in the fact that when i went to school yesterday for some staff program where after breakfast we'd be headed from school to the beach, the security guard stopped me and said that students are not allowed to wear sandals :p

And now for something completely different...

transitioning

The cca course ended a couple of days ago, and i must say, i'm surprised with how much i miss it (actually i only miss it a bit, but that bit is way more than i thought i would). Particularly, the four days and three nights at the camp were in fact quite enjoyable, and i did rather take to a lot of the activities that we had to do while we were there (well, at least most of them, i still care little, if at all, for sleeping in self-pitched tents - i.e. not those of the throw-on-the-ground-and-they-immediately-take-shape variety that you see by the dozens on any given weekend at ecp). After having a rather successful, if pain-causing go at various high rope elements (dragging your whole body across ten or so metres of rope suspended high up in the air does not spell much fun for the, ahem, how shall i put it, lower torso area) among other things, i must say that now i finally am beginning to understand why some students might actually want to join a uniformed group in the first place. Got to meet many others of a similar predicament (or shall i be the uber-optimist and instead label it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?) as me which was quite cool as well..

But that's come to rather an abrupt end and it's since been back to school. Actually, there's just one more day of the official school term left, and then i'm more or less done until the latter half of december (do i hear a woohoo?). My first day back at school today though has given me news that next year may be more tiring (or in optimist speak, constructively challenging) than i had originally thought that it might be. But well, the serial avoider in me shall conveniently overlook that for now, at least until i come back. And in the meantime, there's still an alarming amount of planning and prep that i should be doing before i fly on Tues morn, so excuse me while i (try to) get my act together...

No Person Can Choose

Have spent the past week at the cca course, the exact name of which i'd better not divulge here, just in case. Suffice to say that it's not exactly my dream cca(come to think of it, in some ways at least before entering teaching it was my nightmare cca), and that the course continues for another week-and-a-half, the 'highlight', if i may call it that, being a four day three night camp at a place aptly named 'camp r*s*l**ce', a quality that will certainly be much drawn upon by many, if not all of the campers, during the duration of the camp.

The past week was not bad, actually, though the most compelling encouragement that i could pick up from the course conductors to the many involuntary teacher i/cs among the course participants did not get any better than "well, since you kena arrow, might as well make the most of it, right?", which is not exactly the most uplifting of reasonings. Perhaps an apt paraphrase of that reasoning would be that we all should just "bite the bullet". Or in the case of us, fire the bullet, which is what we did on Friday. I was actually rather pleased with myself since i found out that i'm actually not an entirely hopeless shot after all (as i thought was the case after army), though perhaps it would have something to di with the fact that the firing distance was about one tenths as long as what it was back then.

One major minus though is that the food generally is less than less than palatable (no typo there). I'd gladly consume army fresh rations on any given day or even combat rations for that matter over another meal at that place. However, as bad as the food is, the thing about me is that unless the stuff placed on the plate in front of me is especially inedible, i usually will eat it, just so as not to waste food, and as such i've had many a mild irritation on my tongue over the past few days because potentially offensive food (usually some kind of fish by-product) was swiftly plopped onto my plate before i could utter any "auntie, zhe(4) ge(4) bu(4) yao(4)".

I guess however, that i can at least still look forward to some of the activities on the course (which are actually quite interesting). Here's to better weather than the past drab and damp week..