Miao-Li Readers Theater, Spelling-Bees, etc.

5-23-15 

      Yesterday it was back to the middle school on the mountain peak in Miaoli to judge a Readers’ Theater. The time tight with Wayne driving in the rain, we made it to American Eagle just in time for my class, a class mostly spent in the front of the building judging a speech contest rehearsal. Wayne came back to pick me up after diving Leona home, picked me up late and brought me back for Pizza Hut dinner with us. I read his I Ching and we shared a little sample bottle of wine.

I wanted to save the nice bottle we bought before we left for Brooklyn to celebrate when we got back. The celebration will probably be tonight. I’m going to suggest we have a nice dinner somewhere, too; B.Y.O.B. Maybe French food?

I’ve been floating since we came back a week ago.  I sit on the restrung beach chair and settle back. I am on input and I have no reservations.

While Wayne was here, we asked him to drive us to the vet with Nala. Nala had scraped her back between her front legs squeezing out from under the dining room table last week. The wound was getting worse so we went for treatment. The vet said it wasn’t serious. Leona put the cone on Nala’s head so she wouldn’t try to lick it, though I doubt she could reach it.

There is one more officiating for me to do for Leona’s cousin’s publisher, a publisher which, according to Wayne, had a terrible year and is losing its market share of textbooks to tow other competitors. I did two this week.

We have no holidays planned. I mentioned everything from Hokkaido to Nara, to Paris or the Mediterranean around Barcelona, even Morocco, but Leona isn’t jumping. Out of the mist of the plum rains in our ‘triumphant’ return from Brooklyn, it’s been more about cutting ties than making inroads.

    The third and last contest in a week was at Leona's childhood middle school in Tan-Zih. Unlike Shuang-Wen, which had the same format spelling bee last Wednesday, these children were disorganized and unprepared. They sat on the auditorium floor, not chairs, and remained seated if the spelled the words wrong, which most of them did by the sixth word! The correct spellers stood. By word #10, the contest was over. I got paid two hours for thirty-five minutes on stage looking American.