I do appear to be using this blog rather well as a reflective journal at the moment, although it’s definitely deviated from the subject of teaching…. I have a fair amount of time on my hands right now, what with no classes and bugger-all to do in the city (this will change next week, thankfully), so I am writing rather regularly. Unfortunately, EB means my writing is not always super-coherent and it is often riddled with errors, but, oh well; it’s my blog and I’ll do what I like with it :D
Today I’m going to talk about things that are really good for me right now, and things that suck:
Things that are really good:
· My school; it’s totally awesome. I am really looking forward to teaching again next Monday, despite the shared-school situation. I am actually feeling quite proud that we have taken on another school, from the east, and will be ‘housing’ them, so to speak. It’s a cool thing to do, given the horrendousness of the situation (although I am aware that it's also just bloody good luck that my school was so unaffected). We can’t have teachers teaching and students learning in tents, or even prefabs; students need to do Science in a lab, Drama in a drama room, and English in an English room. That’s not to say that I think that sharing school premises is something we should aspire to in New Zealand - I believe that education systems should be as well-resourced as they possibly can be (spend, spend, spend, you stingy government(s)!!!) Anyway, things seem really well organised and the teachers seem pretty onto-it (despite the ever-pervasive EB - at least everybody’s got it, so no-one in particular is at a disadvantage there, heh). I think things should go relatively smoothly once we all get back into it. Can’t wait! I also have some lovely friends on staff – not a lot, but some - and I’m constantly meeting and getting to know more people. Yay for cool teachers! Yay for my school!
· All our neighbours are in a very similar situation to us. This is actually a bad thing I guess, but when you walk across the road to collect water from the artesian well, neighbours pop out of nowhere to grumble with you about the lack of water, the damage to their house or how crap the council are. I never knew anyone on our street before this quake; yay for neighbours and communities coming together!
Things that suck:
· No water. Still. It came and then went again. Pretty much all the mains pipes up our street are munted somewhere. I can see now that it’s gonna take ages to repair all the leaks. I wrote a huge post about it but I won’t bother posting it. Instead, to summarise, I will say that it’s truly depressing (as well as annoyingly time-consuming) not having running water in your own home.
· Every single café and restaurant that I used to go to regularly has gone. Last night we had fish ‘n’ chips for dinner, which was really yummy, but it just wasn’t the same as sitting in lovely Topkapi and having a glass of wine as you wait for your deliciously enormous kebab to arrive. Oak Tree has been red-stickered. C1 is down. Osaka-ya in the CBD is probably down. Under the Red Veranda - down…so many businesses are simply going to disappear, never to be seen again.
· We’ve had no visitors from the other side(s) town since the quake. I guess this is because the streets are pretty munted in the east right now and people have been warned to stay off the roads. Not that anyone is actually obeying that request… also, it’s a dumb request when services are barely functional in 50% of the city; we do still have to live, Mr Mayor. I guess the lack of visitors is also because there is practically nothing left this side of town (goodbye lovely QEII pool- I miss you so much already), and well, we can hardly cook a meal for anyone without water. My concern wider concern is that east Christchurch has been quite isolated from the rest of the city since the quake; this is worrying me a lot. What is in store for the future of east Christchurch?
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