vrijdag 28 oktober 2016

Blog time (finally!!!)

Hurray, finally another blog. Time flies by so fast!
Well, here I am :)

Lexie and Izzie on a rainy day
I've started to teach flute and clarinet at one of the international schools in town (ISA). I'm teaching kids from P1 (P for Primary) up to middle school. The school is located in Rectory which is an arts district in an old brick factory. There are lots of separate buildings that house galleries and restaurants. It is a very green area with nice lanes and beautiful old buildings. The school is new and modern.

Some of my ISA students
The system is that I go to the classroom to pick the students up, and I take them back after class. This is pretty nice because I get to walk a lot and also climb loads of stairs in the process and by now you know I have a thing for stairs 😋

🎶Morning has broken.....🎶
Some of the kiddos are really small so holding a flute is a bit of a problem. We use a special kiddy flute and also "just" recorders. For the clarinet students I've bought a clarineo which is a super lightweight plastic clarinet in C. The kids love it! The sound is not bad at all.

Class with Justin
Besides ISA I'm still teaching in HuangPu where the new first year students have also started their classes. Argh!!! So many new names to learn!! Every Tuesday I'm off to HuangPu for the afternoon. Not this Tuesday though, as we had an unexpected day off. That was fun too as I treated myself to a massage and a manicure, after a nice quick work out and general chilling out.

Hi sun! ☀️
I've also been subbing at the American School which is very nice as well. I get to see the sunrise!
The trip to the school bus has become more enjoyable and much faster due to new city bikes. You download an app on your phone, reserve a bike and go. Once you lock the bike it is available for the next person so you don't need to worry about your bike being stolen. I tend to move around town in circles so using my own bike is not an option.

Making a wish!
Tuesday was also the day that Lexie turned 5. We had a celebration during the weekend with nice food and a lovely cake. She went to kindergarten during the day and had an extra celebration on Thursday. The kindergarten has a once a month birthday party for all the kids that have their birthday in that month.
Gimme my cake!!!
Some more pics:

Super cool yet sweet kungfu Lexie

Mommy! Me too!

Chilling out before work

Uhm..........


Higher physics, baby!

Last weekend my music school had a student concert. The kids did great and it was a lot of fun.
Luckily one of our teachers got a nice place for us to use. Everybody was happy, yay!

Lexie and part of ma clarinet gang :)
I've bought myself a new Bb clarinet this week. My old trusty LeBlanc wasn't as trusty anymore. I had it maintained but I'm afraid it is getting too old. It has been used super intensively throughout my conservatory and orchestra days. I tried a gold plated clarinet but I honestly couldn't find any pro's compared with a silver plated one. I actually felt that the sound of the gold plated one was a bit on the thin side.....

Selecting my new clarinet (left one in pic is my old one)
That's my update for now! I still have to write 3 articles for GWIC but I felt like writing to you first! 

xoxo

J