Friday, 2 January 2009
23rd December 2008: Sheena Frenkel met me at Sydney Airport, Australia
After Marg and David Dunckley had invited us to Surabaya for the new year we decided to combine a trip to Singapore........then we discovered how relatively cheap it is if you keep going in the same direction! So.......we start off in Australia visiting Sheena and Steve Frenkel, friends from 30 years ago in Coventry. We met at Coundon Court Comprehensive School in 1972 as Sheena and I were both teaching in Secondary.
It was wonderful to meet the whole family after 30 years: Lucy, Tom and Steve.
Mick arrived directly from Argentina and we had a wonderful Christmas Eve Turkey Dinner with lots of their friends
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
December 20th 2008: Hong Kong
This is on the PEAK. We went up on the Tram ( funicular) which is an event in itself and stopped off for a drink on the terrace. I call it my wine wasting day as the waiter managed to drop the tray down my back with the open bottle of wine on it soaking me to the skin through my cardie and my top. The PEAK loos must be the only ones in the whole of HK NOT to have those horrible hand driers so I could not dry myself off. However they took my clothes to a tumble drier somewhere and I ended up all dry and snug despite the raging winds up there.
Look at that view!
December 13th- 22nd 2008: Hong Kong
I had bid for a writing job with the British Council in Hong Kong for one course in their summer School 2009. As it turned out they gave me three courses to write and offered me a scoping visit to Hong Kong to observe classes, get to know the history, meet the TDU ( Teacher Development Unit) and familiarise myself with the latest developments in the EDB ( the Education Development bureau) which is including electives in the state secondary schools like English through Drama/Song/poetry/Short story/Social issues........... Just up my street.
Had a busy week packed with meetings, met Barbara Webb, the other consultant and had 2 days extra to look around and enjoy Hong Kong on my first visit ever.
Monday, 29 December 2008
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Speaking Your Mind at FAAPI, Jujuy, Argentina .......September 2007
Marcela Pawlack and the GIRLS on the organising committee for the Conference on "Intercultural Awareness in EFL" where I spoke on "Speaking your Mind" the importance of discussion skills in encouraging cultural awareness and diversity in EFL. I was in the main auditorium and managed to keep about 500 participants thinking in silence for 10 minutes!
NILE, Norwich, UK July to September 2007
Once again I went off to train hundreds of European teachers at NILE in Norwich, either at the University of East Anglia or at Hales Court in town. Had exceptional groups from La Communidad de Madrid, doing primary methodology for CLIL, another huge group of French Secondary for the Speaking Skills, the wonderful APPI Brit Lit group and the APPI Dream Team for a Train the Potential Trainers course which proved perhaps my best course to date.
Enjoyed staying at the trainers`s house in Constable Terrace with the usual crew from all over the world and running round the lake every day before class. See pic of David Hill doing his Romeo to Claudia Ferradas´Juliet.
Claudia Rey arrived for July so it was great fun to have a best friend with me and to see how she coped with the vagaries of adapting to training at NILE!
The admin staff were wonderful as always and the social programme was great fun.
Mick came over from Argentina for a fortnight and we stayed at the Black Horse Pub in Norwich and toured around a bit.
I visited Mum in Leicester every weekend and tried to make her as comfortable as possible with all the help from the social services one gets in the UK. She was thrilled to have us there and especially loved having her only son (see pic) to herself while I was training at NILE.
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