Back At Work

This week back at work has been very tiring but it is good to be back at work.  

I had the pleasure of spending the whole weekend with Faye.  She and I enjoyed each other's company from Friday night after I returned until Sunday.  We went out to eat and went to talent park to check out the birds with my new monocular.  It feels really good to spend time with her.  It was our third time hanging out. I am hopeful she and I will spend a lot more time together. 

The statuary in talent park is just stunning.

There are tons of shore birds in talent park.

Over the past few months I have been using Duolingo to learn Chinese.  While I am making progress with this, I decided that I needed to accelerate my language learning.  So, I opted to sign up for Mandarin lessons.  Starting next week I will have two hour and a half long sessions each week for five weeks.  This will give me a total of 15 hours of lessons.  After that I will decide on how to proceed with this.

I also checked out a couple of gyms.  The first one is called Moho.  They have a well equipped gym and an outdoor pool that overlooks the city and bay.  The facilities are more than adequate for my needs but the location is a bit out of my way. 

In the photo above you can see the neighborhood in which Moho is located. In the photos below you can see the pool and the view from the pool.  As you can see it is very nice but the pool is not yet open for the year.

Yesterday (Friday) I visited a different gym that seems far more promising.  The facilities are well equipped and I would have access to two separate locations.  One is close to my current workplace (although next year the location of the school will change when we move into a new building) and the second is not far from where I live at the hilton.  I forgot to take photos of the second location but as you can see in the images below the location near work has an indoor pool, great views of the city and the bay, and a fully equipped gym. The hilton location offers an outdoor pool and a sauna + jacuzzi pool.

Both gyms have a high membership fee.  With the Panatta being the more expensive of the two.  But the value offered by the Panatta is very good.  My decision to sign up will lead to a better state of physical and mental health.

Faye came over again last night. I had tickets to a student's piano recital and she joined me at this.  My students are incredibly skilled and talented and they never fail to impress me. Afterward Faye and I went to a couple of bars in Sea World and called it a night.

That is all for this week.