Summertime

On Thursday, my colleagues in New York moved up our remote meeting, because they were at home with a snow day. My social media shows pictures of snow and ice in various northern places where friends and family live. It is kind of bizarre to look at the pictures and realise how completely distant those pictures lie from our reality.

It has been hot here. A couple of days were uncomfortably hot, but mostly it has been beautifully hot. Shorts and T-shirt and sandals and a cool breeze blowing in the window. Blue sky, green glass, white puffy clouds. Evening walk around the park watching the bats fly in, listening to the birds making their dusk calls. That type of hot.

Schools are still out for summer. Our school aged child has been reading, skating, actually practicing the piano again, watching videos, getting bored. I think it has been good so far. Summer break is short here, though. He goes back to school at the beginning of February.

As for me, I've been teaching summer school. January summer school. It's fun to say that. The January school involves honours and postgraduate students from all over Australia, coming to take more advanced and specialised classes in one place. It has been very fun to teach. I've picked a topic I really love, not too far from my research. And there are about thirty or forty people attending, asking really good questions, getting excited as well. When you teach regular classes, there are always a few students who are only there to get a grade, and who don't really care. But here, everyone seems to care and everyone seems to be learning and having fun. I wish I could do all my teaching in an intensive summer school unit.