Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Here is a link to my other blog about the work we do in Class. I keep it for the parents of the class to see what we get up to... But i have to say something about this picture. http://holywoodsteiner-classone2012.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/elementally-my-dear-class-one-and.html It is part of a series of pictures which i did of the four elementals in chalk on slate. They saw me start it, but u completed it during their music lesson. Then i put it up on the bay window on the landing of the classroom. When they came out and saw it at home time, they all went, wow, look at that! I wondered what they were looking at and was delighted that they had found the drawings lovely. It is the smallest things that sometimes make the biggest difference. Over the last few weeks, the pictures have faded as ohter classes have sat at the bay window to wait for German lessons and rubbed themselves against the slates. I love that - the temporal nature of the work - and how the pictures seem to have a l...

Ma and Pa Kong kong and the chuchu I took these photos on the last day of Kong Kong being here. They capture the kids and my mom and dad perfectly. It's funny how we don't expect to be heroes, but we really are heroes, in someone's life. My mom and dad for instance. Heroes. Honestly. And Oisin and Ghin, heroes. Here to look after me and for me to look after them. Yesterday, i was feeling a bit low again, and i went to bed. Partly the admin just brought out terrible things for me, partly i was feeling very tired, partly i needed to have gone to the club but did not, and partly it was just a general blahness of being. I thought, all my life i have only ever believed in people. I have only ever wanted the best for the whole. I did what others thought were best. I accommodated and compromised. And where has this gotten me to? It was sooooo unfair. However, this morning i got up and i felt alright and then yesterday began a miasmic return across my heart, then i st...

Ghin enjoying ice cream n dr who

It has been like forever i have slobbed. Watching Never Been Kissed and not thinking. It is too cold for my mom to go out so despite the good weather we r home. But i dont care really. Or i dont mind, more accurately. Resting is really REALLY good. Slob central :-)

So what am i spending this beautiful day doing? Admin. Yep. I am sorting bank statements, mortagage statements, accounts, etc, etc. Ugh. I HATE doing account but it is now a necessary evil. The other thing is that it sort of is a recapitulation of my life since i first arrived here. So it is heartbreaking as well. I looked at statements from last year, places i had been to, Achill Island, Venice, Bunbeg...you know and then it was sooo sad. But it had to be done, i have no choice. My mom is watching The Awakening, a different trip down memory lane for her. Ah Zhe, the hero of the story has recently passed away from cancer in real life and they are rerunning all the episodes. It's very sad. I listen to the theme song from the series and it takes me down memory lane as well. We sanguine types i think don't really care for memories. Possibly why i am slightly obessive about the blog and diarying. Over the years i have realised that my memories tend to be locked up in pictures a...

Well, here is my mom cooking. Last night shed badgered me to get out a chicken backbone that I had saved. Being brought up Asian, I have several quirks. I eat salty rice porridge with pe tan. I am unnecessarily loud, because like everything in Asia is loud. I have an over and under developed sense off responsibility, simultaneously. I will save every part of the chicken because it can be used for something. Like the backbones. My freezer can sometimes have three backbones in it. Anyhow I was reminded several times to get the chicken out of the freezer. Ten this morning when. Came down she asked me, can I make curry with it? I said, look you can do anything you want with it. Just enough about the backbone. It is a ridiculously gorgeous day today. When I say it is nice I mean it is sunny and shiny. It is also cold. My mum spent most of yesterday, as we wandered around town, saying how gila the weather was. Seow you know, your weather. I said, philosophically, April showers. She was not...

Having wrestled with the blerluddy iPad for almost a week now i have come to the conclusion that if you are not planning to just surf the net or watch youtube vids, it is pretty much useless. The blogger ap on it is crap, as is the FB one, and also the outlook app is also crap. I can't get my photos to connect to FB and it insists on calling my iPad a phone, even though it is not a phone. In short i have had enough of the iPad. Facetime is great tho... So...yet another week of hecticity. School was busy-ness plus ten and if i wasn't sleeping i was rushing about getting things done. I try not to rush of course. But it does seem like i spend much of my time pillar to posting. Like today for instance. It began with an early start at school where i cleaned the classroom and did the final prep for Main Lesson. Then there was school. I did Here and There and then we recalled The, A, An and And. Then children then were desperate to read, so we tried reading from the Pirate S...

Nuff said

Some photos of the both of us... Oisin had pasted a price tag on ghin's head, Determined to up his value Ghin added to it Messing around with the iPad on the very first nite we got it

I was reading this in some book and thought do people really think this, that life could be a succession of grey days? That is mad. Life is sometimes painful and ridiculously and unnecessarily terrible, but dull and boring? Pointless? How can life be pointless? Life is totally and utterly amazing. It is unfathomable and full of mysteries that will never be solved. It is fabulous and delightful. Its infuriating and frustrating. It is disappointing and annoying. It's possibilities are endless, limitless. Grey and dull? If only it was a bit boring. I could do with some boring I tell you. Life is full of wonder. If I am ever hacked off I'm never hacked off with life. Never. I do sometimes go, what's is the point? But not to the big question... It would be more to the thing I was doing than to life in general. We went to Lisburn is threatened. The day was dry but a bit windy and cold. We  hung out at the linen centre which was fascinating. Mannequins with bits of flax hung...

Three days ago i went to school with no coffee in me. And i wondered, why was i feeling so miserable? Coffee, imbied by mystics and kings, by poor men and drunk with durian hutan to sweeten...coffee. Today i said to my mom, i feel oddly filled with a deep peace. What do you mean my mom says. I have no idea. It's gotta be good right? I have no words right now for it, so its best i let it sit. My problem is that often the words come tumbling out and its usually all nonsense. So i think i'll just let it sit. Going off to attend a Forest School seminar today. I think i' may end up missing the second half of it as i don't want my mom to spend all of Saturday on her own. I love this domesticity you know. The not doing an awful lot. I do so much during the week and have to do so much that on Saturday i take an enforced rest. We will prob go to the Irish Linen Centre in Lisburn later on. I am utterly fascinated by linen. I love its feel and texture. Really well made lin...

Finally figured how to upload bloody picture So, finally managed to get the pictures sorted. Still don't understand quite how I did it. We got a new iPad. Sort of not entirely convinced. Put on my moms fav sites. Think I might return to my Frankennetbook now. It's sort of a merged between a Mac and a Samsung since I spilled coffee on it. Don't ask. Back on the Frankennetbook now. I am absolutely whacked after a day of trying to teach seven year olds to maypole dance. Honestly, it is far trickier than it seems. I'm not even going to go into it. This photo i took on the iPad shows all my wrinkles. I do not like it. I was at the Apple store and the person who was seeling us the iPad looked like Edward Norton. I have a slight crush on Edward Norton, so it was quite difficult concentrating on his pitch on the Macbook Air. Also he was like 14 years old. Well, ok 26. He was also about 6'3". Yep. It is v odd. Most of the young folk in the Apple store speak with...

For the last two weeks i was told, you look like your dad. The guy in the sushi shop said so. Then a couple of days ago someone in school said, yep, there goes Stephanie as a man. ALL my life i have been told i look like my dad which always annoyed me seeing how my dad was a MAN. It is only later on in life when i realised that he looked like his mom. Meaning i look like my grandmother. I don't know if that is any better, cos i never really considered her a raving beauty either. Anyhow, this photo, i look like my dad. Yesterday after he had a bath and combed his hair back, it was like looking at myself in the mirror. A bit disturbing. Today during the school meeting about governance, i found myself dreaming. This is why i can never become a politician. Cos i would just be constantly dreaming. It's not that i'm not interested nor was it not interesting, it was just that my daydream was far more interesting. This is what makes me suspect i am a cosmic child. As opposed to...

Steiner geek Finally beginning to understand the FHE a wee bit. The book is divided into three parts: Well, ok four. The first part is short - why and how we ended up on planet Earth. Yep. short part. Life before death, life after death and bits in between. What we bring with us and what we will take with us. Like most creation mythology, i can take or leave it. It's interesting and does no harm. What is important is the HERE and NOW. Then it is roughly divided up into how we work in our soul, spirit and physical body and how Thinking, Feeling and Willing operate in all three arenas. How as human beings we perceive things and act. How we can then best reach the children in this context. In many ways Steiner says - look, there is no need to know anything else if you understand this. If you understand all of this then you are sorrted - everything else is technique. I think that understanding this text is important if we are to be relevant in the 21st century as teachers, espec...

I'm in the process of getting thoughts together for the thesis. The thing about academic exercises is that they are precisely that. Exercises. Because there are academic exercises and then, there is real life. I don't know what teachers in regular schools use when faced with the wee uns, but in Steiner education, we have a whole battery of things we work with. The temperaments. Constitutional types. The Extra Lesson. Our curriculcum. And then there is the Foundations of Human Experience. The FHE is a collection of 14 lectures which Steiner gave to potential teachers at the first school. It is more than for teachers, but it mostly concerns teaching. It looks at the biiig question: why are we here? What is the point? (You'd think i'd have sorted this question out by now since i've been working with it for the past three years in detail...ANYWAY...) Some stuff is pretty far out. Like for instance, we are here because as human beings, our physical existence allows...

Life seems to be going back to normal. With changes, of course. After a week of having my parents around and filling each other in on everything, we then all heaved a collective sigh of relief and then tried to spend as much time with each other. Because they stay so far away, when i do see them it is really full on. Like 24-7. When i was younger this was tough. Now it's fine. We laugh at each other and poke fun at our annoying habits. It seems weird after all this time to be back in a 'normal' household. Well there isn't much to report, apart from extreme busyness. I'm trying to find hours in the day to do everything i'm supposed to do. The blog, of course, is my affliction. I can't help but write. I have around three places i write - my diary, my netbook and the blog, of course. It is my way of thinking things through. So this evening i think i will do more of the thesis. It's getting very interesting now. And then i will read some poetry. The k...

We went to the Titanic exhibition. It was really REALLY good and then after that we had afternoon tea at the bistro. It was lovely. As you can see.

Today we drove to Newcastle - in the rain. And then we drove around the Mournes - in the rain. And then we drove back to Belfast - in the rain. It rained, a lot. The boys were of course bored, especially since they didn't have the iPad or Pod to entertain themselves as i believe children should be bored. Or beating the crap out of each other, the old fashioned way. My parents, being on the cusp of 70, were quiet and resigned to their fate of being dragged around South Down. It really isn't my style to drive for hours in the rain, but they had been cooped up in the house and between the Master leaderboard and trips to Tescos/Sainburys/Skinners, were slowly going mad. So i thought, what the heck, Newcastle, in the rain. There was some good value. There was still lots of snow in the Mournes, which thrilled my father to no end. Despite it being gale force everything, he went down and took photos. Oisin clambered on some rather high and slippery snow drifts. Ghin and my mom st...

The biggest occupational hazzard is currently just laughing yourself silly. Honestly children are hilarious. You could spend the entire day just giggling at them. In the playground i was on playground duty when one of the wee uns came up to me and complained that his friend had pushed him on the ground and then dragged him around. I said, well, where is he? And he pointed him out. I squinted at the culprit and then looked back at his victim. The victim at this point was making a face at the perpetrator and smiling as if to say, na-na-na-na-na-na...he was in the midst of this when he turned back to me and saw me gazing at him. The grin then was wiped off an immediately replaced with the same suffering look, although with summat less conviction. I continued gazing at him and he began to grin sheepishly at me. I raised an eyebrow and then said, i think you're ok. Off you go. My feet are killing me. Of course wearing high heeled boots is not a help. We made bread today and it tur...

It really pissed down yesterday. after saying it was  very dry year we had, part from the snow, the gods decided to give us all the rain in April in the one go. I don't know if that is a good idea. And it was still 4 deg C. Really tired yesterday but still went for a talk about birds last nite, because i wanted to support a friend. It made me think of two things as he spoke: firstly, although i do love birds, honestly i am SO GLAD that i don't have to deal with them on a regular basis under the circumstances i had to any longer. To be honest, i wasn't really dealing with them in the way i thought i should - so it was well and truly time to move on. The second thing was - god it's a weird ol world the world of birds. It used to be sooo important and now it's kinda a thing which happens in a small quiet corner of the world - where the average age of the person who is interested in it seems to be about 73. I had a friend who used to go on and on and on about th...

If i were an animal, i'd prbably be the red squirrel... Easter rung in many changes. It was a long two weeks of lots of stuff. The last few days have been a bit unusual in that my folks got here and there was the course. It feels like the last three days was an entire week in itself. We did the four temperaments in the course today. I was thinking of my giggly happy self from that previous life and wondered if i would ever be that giggly person again? I mean i'm now going deep to find happiness and contentment - perhaps because i had been to that happy giggly place i could get there again? I don't do the beating myself up thing, not really. I mean i do take responsibility, but i don't go, why oh why am i so shite? I don't. It is quite a revelation to discover that people do do this on a regular basis. It's not like i have good self-esteem. It's more like, what is the point? What is the point about beating yourself up cos you know, just get on with...

I was sooo tired yesterday after the course and anticipating the coming of my mom and dad. The arrival of the folks has signalled a new phase to the developments in my life. But for now, we are just enjoying the company of each other, in the meantime. Over the last few weeks i have often wondered if i should have stayed in Singapore all those long years ago, but i would not have had the many good things that has happened to me along the way and i suppose, if i had stayed in Singapore i would probably not be doing what i am doing now, which has enriched me in thousands of unknown ways.  There really isn't a lot to think about - really, by way of should i have stayed in Singapore. Anyhow it is a completely weird place. If you want bread and circuses, then it is a great place to be. If you feel this is a somewhat superficial and unstaisfactory reason for being alive, then it is definitely not where you want to be. So suffering and karma. Karma, for me is one of those things - lik...

Yesterday i began tidying the classroom and was going to do the music curriculum, however, on the way out, i discovered that there was a short lecture on Elemental Beings being held in the hall later in the evening. I love the elemental beings. Being of aisan origin, that spirits help us do everything - e.g. Spirited Away and Ponyo and Totoro, etc - it is not an impossible leap for me to make. The world is a luminous, numinous, sacred place and we are indebted to the invisible ones who look after us tirelessly. I could spend the entire day rambling on and on about how this affects my day to day, but specifically, i wanted to hear the anthroposophical take on this. There were two things i took away from the incredible lecture by Dr Basil Wilson. First, that the nature spirits love to be cherished. They are enlivened in our honouring of them through festivals. Secondly, that we have a duty to work with them - they are the offspring of the heavenly beings who were enchanted into mat...

My mother has insisted that we get new everything for her stay here. So here i am lying on he new matteress with the new duvet, pillows and sheets. It feels utterly awesome.

Lighting my nights since Ghin was born.... Completed the Main Lesson block plan this morning. It always takes less time than i think it does. This is mostly because most of the work is done PRIOR to the plan - it consists of rereading the Class One year's objectives, thinking about each and every child and where they are in the process, what we have covered so far, the resources and time that i have and also all the materials available. And THEN after all that is done, i sit and write the lesson plan. It usually takes about an hour, but lots of work has gone into that really. And while i am writing i keep thinking, i'm always doing too much. But i have been told, overprepare and if you don't use it then you don't use it. I woke up today and thought: suffering is the price we pay for love. If we don't love we don't suffer. Well i think we suffer anyway, but it is a different kind of suffering. But really it is pointless to continue - because i was think...

Have i suffered enough? Anyway...I googled this question on the internet and it came up with the same three hypothesis. It even managed to produce Epicurious. Excellent. I don't care anymore cos i'm very tired. Today i did an hour of bady balance which is actually yoga done to gym music. And some horse stance thrown it. I did enjoy the extreme stretching. I thought the music was a bit sucky. But it is a gym. It goes with the territory. Would it not be very nice to have a gym with no TV, good music and lots of light? Real light, not flourescent lights. It'll probably not last a few days cos the people who'd appreciate that sort of gym do not like gyms. They will tell me all the time, i hate gyms. I also say i don't much like gyms. But they do come with saunas and today when i was swimming in the sunlight at the outdoor pool it was like being in heaven. Heaven. I'm not even sure if i believe in God. I know that it is a bit much. But i was an aetheist for abo...

There are two reasons i have gone vegetarian, sort of. One, meat makes me fat. Full stop. It also makes me confused. Like alcohol. The other is we get this veg bag from John McCormick every week and i have about twenty tonnes of veg to go through. So i have started making lots of soup. I was thinking of you know, the usual shite while i was in the sauna. I was thinking ... well, we have two choices when faced with suffering we lie down and die or we go on. If we go on we need to do so with grace and beauty or else you might as well not go on cos you'll make every one else's life hell, and what is the point of that? Then i thought - when Jesus died he redeemed our sins. Well, i don't really believe that - but it is possibly a very extreme way of creating a metaphor - of giving each of us a new chance. A new opportunity. We are free to choose - we are given a new opportunity every moment of every second of every minute of the day to... become who we are supposed to be. ...