Black Friday (to be followed by the Resurrection)

Like all black days, there are usually precursors which give an indication of what to come. In this case, it was last Wednesday when, while I was at my desk preparing class, I heard from quite a distance and through the closed door of the Managing Director's office a loud expletive. At first I thought he had injured himself but he turned up later, very much in one piece.

Then, Friday morning I was reminded that there was to be a staff meeting today, to which I replied, I had to leave early to get ready for my weekend trip. Stay at least for the start, they said. And they remained as cryptic as possible. So at 3:15pm we all sat down for the meeting, to hear: "I'm sorry but Intrax will be closed down by Friday next week." Yes, the American owners had reconsidered their investment and decided to up and leave. To cut a long story short, another school has already offered to take our students from next week, and also wanted to snaffle a few teachers in the short term. So now I am working there, full-time, well, for the time being.

The school's impending closure left all in an odd state of mind. As a co-worker told me today, when he told other people, even his wife, they didn't seem to understand. It felt like grief. Many of us had been with the school in its many manifestations since 2001. For me, driving a motor vehicle was probably not the best thing to do as I kept having realisations all the way to Taupo: the EIA course is now worthless, ah, but I don't have to fill in all the holes! I don't have to deal with surly Pablo, but what will happen to all those nice students. Will we keep in touch?

Now us teachers are already in a new school while the news was broken to the students. Should we be there? It seemed cowardly not to be. But we had jobs. The news was not received well.

After 5pm I went to Foodtown where as it happens I bumped into three previous students of mine. They were all sad and resigned to the fact. One of them was not going to be affected, as it was her last week, but the other two had three more weeks remaining. But they didn't seem to want to go to the next school. There was attachment to the old one.

Anyway, life goes on. And in this case, just two days later (rather than the usual three) there was a Resurrection, which I will describe along with details of our wicked trip to Ruapehu in my next blog.