Year Winding Down

Today's weather:  High = 7  Low = 0

Sunny

 

With yesterday's cold wave beginning to moderate now, most of us teachers are glued to the weather forecast to see what's coming up next.  After a slight warming trend this week, there is another cold wave attack before next weekend.  It's actually a very predictable trend, where this happens every 6-10 days.  

 

Stage 1:   The winds are out of the south and sunny as temperatures warm up   (4-5 days)

Stage 2:   It gradually gets overcast and begins to rain.  The winds shift to the north or northeast   (1-2 days)

Stage 3:   The rain stops and the wind intensifies, shifting to the north and temperatures plummet   (1-2 days)

Stage 4:   The wind subsides and gradually switches back to the south, where stage 1 repeats again

 

Basically, once it starts raining in the winter in Shanghai, the temperature always drops.  Stage 3 can be particulary brutal as it's not uncommon for the temperatures to decrease throughout the entire day after the rain stops.  That is, the morning "low" can actually be the high temperature as the warming sun isn't enough to counter the cold front effect.

 

Meanwhile, the school year is wrapping up.  First thing to finish is the dreaded masters degree course on mathematical proofs that has been dogging me for the past 6 weeks.  With the latest written assignment scoring a sweet 90%, that has bumped up my average and there is less pressure on the final assignment  (due Tues) in order to pass the course.   Having said that, I'm nearly done the final assignment and it's looking more and more likely that I will pass this course.

 

On the anticipation of this happening, I'm heading out to the boonies to Sino Canada in order to celebrate with a colleague over there who also had to suffer through this same online proofs course.  The idea is that we'll be drinking some alcohol.  

 

Meanwhile, there are still two weeks of course teaching before Christmas, and then we get a 3 day weekend from Dec 24, 25, 26!   Colleagues over at Sino get 2 weeks for this break, which seems unfair, but then they also live in the boonies while I'm teaching in the middle of Shanghai.  So it balances out.

 

However, a colleague at the school I teach at is undergoing surgery at the hospital and I'm covering classes, and coordinating a team of other subs.  This is a ton of extra work and thank goodness it won't overlap much with my masters course, otherwise I would undergo sure meltdown.   They are compensating me nicely for this sub work.

 

Once Christmas is done with, then New Years will happen.  In this case, we must follow the Chinese school calendar which gives Jan 1, 2, 3, as holidays.  That means, yes, we work on Dec 31 which is a Saturday.  Will I actually do any work that day?  Hardly.  It will be a day of showing movies in class.

 

Shortly after that, it is final exam season, marks, report cards, and I've already got my flight booked for Jan 13.    If my predictions are correct, we'll only have to suffer through 3 more cold waves, 4 tops, before taking off.  I'm also hoping that the flights out won't be affected by adverse weather as they were last year, given the ice and snow situation.  Will just have to see what happens.