Online French Resources

The company I work for, Schoolshape, is supporting a number of new projects relating to online resources for French teachers.

The first is French Resources, a site on which teachers and small educational publishers can create and share resources.  Publishers can choose to share resources for free or to charge a monthly subscription.  There are already a large number of free resources present for listening, speaking, reading and writing.

The second is OpenExam, a charity focused on teachers more say in exams.  Their initial project is to set up a collection of shared practice papers for languages commonly taught in the UK.

Tomb Sweeping Festival

Me, my gf and her mum

Today is tomb sweeping day, the last major date in the Chinese calendar for me to participate in.  It's the day when you should pay respect to your ancestors by visiting their tombs and clearing them up.  Only, in a tropical climate after a year's growth, this is easier said than done...

Then, you should make sure your ancestors are well supplied where they are in paradise, which involves offering food in front of the grave and burning paper money (fakes, usually made out for $1,000,000,000 or more!), but if you really love your ancestors, you can really make sure they're living in style by buying a whole house and setting light to it.

Especially note the right-hand house with the sports car in the garage.

Me playing Mah-jongg and winning lots of money (I wish).