Writer's Blog

....must...continue...to write...at least one...blog post...per month (gasp). 

Actually, this blog may be approaching its swan song. For a while now, I've been pondering the idea of consolidating my various writings and musical recordings into one website. Kind of a bloggy portfolio homepage thingy, to use the technical term. If that happens, I'll just write my MsFan-like posts there instead. But for now, since this blog is still my main outlet of publishing my writing, I'll keep typing away here and now.

It's been some time since I wrote about myself and my own goings on so I'll indulge a bit. As has been the case at this time of year every year since 2011, I'm counting down the days until I touch down in Home Sweet Seattle. And speaking of touchdown, it'll my first time walking the streets of the defending Super Bowl Champion Seahawks :) I can handle the 4:30 sundown and chilly winds; friends and family, soon I'll see you in person!

So that's the near future I'm most looking forward to. As far as the two months between my last post and now, life has been pretty good. My parents came for a week and a half in mid-October and we took a trip to Taiwan between their flights in and out of Hong Kong. The weather was perfect for them and I had a great time playing tour guide in areas they missed during their first HK tour two years ago. They even came to my school for an afternoon, which was less painful than I thought it would be. My parents thought that my school was very similar in size and philosophy to my own elementary school on Bainbridge—I guess I've come full circle.

The rest of the fall has been busy with assignments for teacher certification (though semester three out of four is finally done) and a never-ending list of tasks relating to my job teaching music. At this moment, most of these tasks revolve around the planning the Winter Concert, where I'll be serving as the coordinator, putting together each grade's individual performance on the greater program. I've been through a fair amount of holiday performances in my life, but never quite in this capacity, so I'm a bit nervous. But as with most things at this school, I feel well-supported by my coworkers. A huge bonus one must not take for granted.   

Yesterday, I had probably the best Thanksgiving I've had in Hong Kong. Sharman and I went to my ex-coworker Andy and his wife Nicole's village house for an amazing feast outside on their balcony. Outside! And with a sea view to boot. It's not particularly common for people in HK (western or Chinese) to host others for a meal due to the lack of space, so we were, for lack of another word, very thankful to have this experience on Thanksgiving weekend. And today, to make this weekend even more Western-flavored, I'll be going to the Clockenflap music festival to see Tenacious D, the Flaming Lips and a few more. It's the time of year when all the gweilos gather together like white birds of a feather.

As I type this, it's a gray but comfortable Sunday afternoon. I'm in my man cave typing this while Sharman's doing preparation for her lessons on Monday in the living room. I'm a bit uncertain about what my lessons will look like tomorrow, but I'll sort that out later. Maybe the artists I see at Clockenflap will inspire me to teach a lesson about the value of live music. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...