Technology and modal verbs

This week is pretty busy with teaching and then meeting people at lunchtimes. Managed to prepare work in advance for today so I could go watch The Greatest Showman last night with friends. It was a feel good movie, but not sure it quite met the reviews I'd heard. Prior to going my phone died a sudden death and refused to switch on again. I managed to get a Chinese one to replace it this morning and so far so good, although I didn't realise there was a code for my Bitcoin wallet that I was supposed to have backed up - oh dear. Will see what can be done to resuscitate my old phone to retrieve it. It was quite a complicated process paying for my new phone as the only money I had was ecocash but luckily the shop salesman was accommodating and let me put my SIM card in the phone to make payment. Am noticing a lot more people are paying by ecocash in the supermarket and most restaurants accept it. People really don't have cash. To pay tips at coffee shops I am having to send waiters air time.

Shame, my poor five year old student is feeling very stressed by grade 1 and his new workload from learning Chinese. He seems to get a lot of written home work for that practising Chinese characters. His mum has asked me to ease up on the grade one work and make it more like my old lessons which it is gratifying to know he really enjoyed and misses. She said last night when he was being made to do his Chinese home work, in an angry outburst he grabbed his scissors and started carving into his desk. Poor thing - he has really plunged into the deep end. Working on what I can do tomorrow to cheer him up. I think he is missing his friends from nursery school but he does at least see his best friend three times a week at swimming.

I met with my friend who also teaches English as a foreign language this morning before work and she said there's another app called Zoom which can be used instead of Skype and can be used in China. It apparently has some great features for teaching. We also discussed joining language schools online and teaching online. Possibly is a way of earning money outside the country which right now would be extremely useful. We talked about how home schooling is on the one hand not that lucrative but is at least a dependable income as, although you can charge a better hourly rate for tutoring, people are not good at committing. My friend says she does all her teaching from home which saves time and money as you don't have to drive all over the place like I do. Lots to think about. Was great to chat to someone doing similar work to me and compare notes.

Used the book Eric in It's a Piece of Cake by Lulu and Tee which is about chacma baboons in Cape Town for my lessons this week. It went down a treat and generated interest. I really must try write some stories. Could definitely do some dinosaur ones from my lessons with my five year old - he could possibly even help me write them.