12-10, Monday, Late

Back From Work

The last time I wrote I had just started my part-time job at the local community college.  Now I have been working there for about 2.5 months.  Most of the work I do there now is either with new immigrants trying to learn English and trying to do something about the abysmal state of their computer systems.

Immigrants

We expect to see a flood of immigrants arriving in ports-of-call such as Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, or Tampa.  But northeast Florida is a far cry from those areas. Nevertheless, every day we see refugees from Burma, Albania, Bosnia, all over South America, Scandinavia, Russia, Asia, Morocco, Nigeria, and so many other places.   But they are here and I help get them into the language courses they need at the appropriate skill level.  And then I monitor and test their progress over time.

 All The Others

Besides immigrants I work with new students just starting out or trying to finish high school before beginning college.  Certainly a slice of society with which I have had no experience up till now.  But it is rewarding work, offering the tools necessary to rekindle their academic life and, perhaps, become better skilled and so better paid members of the American workforce.

Jekyll Island

This past weekend Marian and I joined my former workmates for our annual Christmas Party at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.  We’ve been holding our Christmas parties there for most of the last decade and we’ve gotten to like it an awful lot. The automation staff has diminished over time so the training staff and the automation staff have teamed up for the annual party.  When I joined the automation staff at the end of 1991 we had more than a dozen people at work.  Now there are a total of six.  Soon the staff will diminish to five.

This is what the hotel looks like. A lovely, restored 19th century building originally a club house for the ruling elites of the 19th century robber barons.

Looking from the porte cochere which is in the right-hand corner of the picture above, is the graceful turn of the hotel annex.

  Hidden inside the hotel facade is this courtyard decorated for Christmas.  With the fountain tinkling in the background and the birds singing, it was a lovely place to have a light breakfast on the deck overlooking the courtyard before heading back home.

On Sunday morning Marian took her normal 7.5 mile run and I did my slower 4 mile walk and saw some lovely sights on Jekyll. The island government developed some very nice walking trails where I saw this at sunrise:

The sun was rising in the east as I walked north along the walking path.  This photo doesn’t really do the richness of colors justice but it is quite lovely nonetheless.

On the way back toward the hotel I took a slightly different route where, when turning east toward the rising sun and saw the sun filtered through both the fog and the tree limbs.

A very lovely walk. A wonderful way to begin the day.

More tomorrow.