Wednesday, February 28
Today was the first day since last
Wednesday when nothing incredibly exciting or unusual happened. It was wonderful!
Liam’s
second day at school
Liam
greeted me after school by telling me brightly “Today was worser – not
better!”. I had told him that the first
day at school would be the hardest, and that later things would get
easier. This wasn’t true in his mind
because he had fallen on the playground and badly skinned his knee. Apparently there was quite a bit of
blood. He seemed proud that his second
day was worse – and aside from this mishap, he seems to have had a good day.
Dominic’s
second (and first!) day at school
Today
was the first day that I resumed teaching at Central Washington
University. For the next two weeks, I am
teleconferencing with my calculus class so that I can finish the quarter. I’m pleased to say that it went rather well. It’s not as much fun as being in the
classroom, but at least I can see and (mostly) hear my students, and they can
still learn calculus. It was also my
second day with my history students here in Christchurch. I was able to get and study a photo roster of
my class, so many of them are now familiar to me. Today’s class was a history of number theory
from Euclid to Euler, so I had a lot of fun!
Washing and Exploring
We left
home Thursday night, and hadn’t washed clothes since, so that the time had
come. We took our dirty clothes down to
the motel laundry room, and got some help from the owner getting started. I asked her if we should wait with the
clothes, and she looked at me, rather surprised. Apparently clothes theft is not particularly
common here. Given that most people
leave their motel room doors open all day, and about a third of bikes are
unlocked, perhaps this should not have surprised me.
While
the clothes were in, Liam wanted to explore the motel. In particular, he wanted to explore it with
the two-dollar buccaneer mask and rapier he bought the day before. It’s a small motel, so this took about 5
minutes. After that Liam led us down a
road in a new direction, and then on to a new part of campus. He seems to have a great sense of direction,
for me took us right to a library I’d been looking for. I checked out a few books, and when we went
outside we found a large sprinkler watering a lawn.
The
sprinkler was just the sort of enemy our buccaneer had been looking for, and
Liam spent a happy ten minutes attacking it with his sort, to the delight of
myself, and everyone else who passed by!
Because I had planned to come straight back from the laundry room, we
didn’t have a camera with us. I’m hoping
to go back today and capture the event.
A friendly neighbor
As we
walked back to our room after washing clothes, Liam looked into the open door
of one of our neighbor’s rooms, and saw a model ship on the table. “Cool!”, he exclaimed. The man inside heard him and came out to
chat. Eventually he invited us in for
wine and candy. He was an interesting
guy: 77 years old (he looks 65), he’s a retired toymaker. Apparently he was most famous for making
custom rocking horses, and he once appeared on Good Morning America! His
home is a few blocks away, but he’s staying in the hotel for six weeks while his
house is repaired after the earthquake. Ross
and I chatted, while Liam chatted a bit and colored on toy mock-ups of cats
that Ross had made our of paper. A good
time, as they say, was had by all!
No comments:
Post a Comment