As I blog, the sun is shining down and the students into whom I have poured my soul for the past six months are sitting in an exam hall taking their main (reading and writing) paper. I am sitting on my shady porch, which overlooks the schoolyard. Everything is uncommonly quiet. I am shaking slightly. I don't think they are ( Read more... )

Today is 'Prize Day'. Lessons are cancelled for the day because of the prizegiving ceremony for the year in the evening. ( The preparations are awesome. )

Suddenly it's almost time to leave. The calendar says I'm here for nearly another couple of months, but I have two more lessons with the kids before their end-of-year school exam, followed by study leave and the start of their real IGCSEs. Then I have a few revision lessons during gaps in the exam schedule, but it's all pretty much over ( Read more... )

On Saturday night there was another session with the bodu-beru down at the maizan. (There's traditionally a lot of it about at Eid.) It started late and was still going strong when I left at about half-past one. It was still in some kind of practice mode when I arrived, some time after ten, but it was soon clear this was going to be something ( Read more... )

Time for a series of updates. Apologies for their number and length; congratulations if you have the stamina to read them ( Read more... )

The week before last my mother and brother were here for a visit. Something of an epic journey to make just for a week, particularly to get to Kudafari (internal transport in Maldives, as I may have mentioned, is not quite up to western European standards in terms of predictability, scheduling, reservations or indeed comfort), but by an agile ( Read more... )

( The brief art of socialising )

Up at 5.30am last Saturday, no reason but habit, and by the time I've breakfasted and sat and read Hardy and Tennyson for a while I wonder what to do and look at my watch, and it is shortly before 8. Which reminds me of the mythical ferry that supposedly calls at about 8. So I saunter down to the jetty and a couple of minutes later along it comes. ( Read more... )

Ok, so I've been promising to tell my imaginary readers about this island since I got here a month ago. Are you sitting comfortably? ( It's very long. )

Maldives has been in the grip of an entertaining constitutional mini-crisis since Tuesday. The entire Cabinet has resigned, complaining that the People's Majlis (parliament) is being deliberately obstructive and trying to seize executive power. The proximate cause was a bill to lease the main airport to a foreign consortium; hours before a minister ( Read more... )