I am sitting down to write this as my class of 66 (or 65 or 62 or ...) - but big - puts the finishing touches to its group projects. We have a shortish day tomorrow because the room is needed by someone else at 2.00. I think we'll have sucked the juice out of this particular orange by then! Five days down, one to go!The students here continue to surprise me with their notion of what might constitute a reasonable attendance. I had a student turn up today who...

I did make a separate entry for Tuesday but the IT gremlins meant it didn't upload, so here is a double header.Tuesday was a challenge. In a group of this size, making genuine contact with the students is a bit difficult, and the size of the room, along with cultural reticence to speak our in public makes genuine dialogue a challenge. However, by close of play yesterday I had the sense I was beginning to break through - which is just as well, as the energy o...

Monday evening after the first day of teaching. Few pics today!Last night I was taken to dinner by all the University bigwigs - the same place Anne and I went last year - a Chinese seafood place called the Bo Wei I think. Wahab and his wife Rukshana picked me up, and we were joined by Murali (VC) and his wife, Sitendra (Dean)and his wife, Sarita (another lecturer) and Tito (Registrar). A lovely meal and a lovely evening, in an interestingly formal kind of w...

Let me start by saying that the chef has surely changed at this place since we were here last year. Fair enough - the beef in last night's beef Cajun salad (???)didn't come with free bone surprise, but there was plenty of chewy goodies in it!Having lashed out 10 Fiji dollars on 5 dvds of the Game of Thrones series, I watched a couple of episodes in the evening. Great stuff - with plenty of familiar British faces.Now to today's adventure. I had booked my mo...

This is actually the beginning of the grand tour, even though I am putting it into this blog later. I initially had this material on another blog site which proved too complicated. I am copying it all into this so I have a single record of the travels. Here goes for the 19th of August. Thanks to Mick's good mate, Ken Nobin, he had been invited to teach a Masters course at the University of Fiji. Thus, as the clouds gathered and the wind blew on a wintery Sydn...