Dear Friends (I hope I still have the privilege of calling you that.)
The past number of months have been some of the most challenging in my life. With the grace of our Heavenly Father, it was fortunately not a case of ill health, death in the family or problematic relationships – no, it was simply a case of workload and added responsibilities related to my work.
Some of you may recall that I mentioned that a well-known international automotive company was setting up a production plant in Nantong and that we were vying for the privilege of accommodating their children in our school and that I was doing loads of preliminary work to facilitate that. Well, to cut a long story short, the parents chose one of the other “International Schools” only to find out a short while later that they had a made a grave mistake.
And that was when all hell broke loose. I had a month and a half to re-do our “sales pitch” rewrite our syllabi to accommodate the Brazilian and Swedish students and to incorporate their home curricula into ours. Then there were the practical implications of relocating the international department of the school to a different section in the building which have bigger classrooms, buying an additional 56-seater school bus, get permission from local government and the traffic department to implement new routes, advertise for, interview and appoint new teachers, etc, etc.
I realized that this was a 24/7 job if we were going to be ready in time and that there would be no room for any “me-time” or anything that pertained to hobbies, socializing and/or personal interests. It meant the end of all WB research, kayaking and – unfortunately – also SOS. To add to matters, I was also appointed as Academic Director of the International Department which also meant that the Mathematics-, Chemistry and Physics departments all became my responsibility too.
I know that I should have announced it on SOS, but decided to make clean break from everything. For my lack of communication, I apologize from my heart. For all the unanswered messages, concerns, PMs and the like, I can only say I am deeply sorry. The problem was that if I answered one, how could I not answer the others? I am by no means trying to justify my actions – just to inform you what happened.
Schools closed on Friday for the mid-year and Chinese New Year holidays, the students are settled in and have twee weeks of tuition under their belts, and, in retrospect, things have gone (reasonably) smoothly. Even though it is holidays, there is still no rest for the wicked as there are a few backlog things that need to be sorted out. However, for now I have the time to make contact with all my SOS friends – and to apologize once more.
I hope you can forgive me.
I still love you all!
H
I have joined the "cat club" by adopting a street boy kitten and about a month later, Anna rescued a kitten who also lives with me now. Boy, oh boy these young ones are a handful!
