Easter Holiday 2012

The puke-filled field trip was over, lessons were observed, books were marked (kind of) and I was ready for a holiday! I spent the weekend not packing and procrastinating until the last minute...as per usual. As I was going literally from one holiday destination to the next, I packed for Norway as well. Hannah picked us up on Monday morning and we headed for Gatwick. A cramped and boring plane ride later, we touched down in breezy, warm Tenerife! We headed to our hotel and took some time to explore the area that we were staying in, Los Cristianos. Rather than go through a painfully detailed retelling of the entire five days, I can sum up the holiday in the following:

• Breakfast at our condo
• Beach for the day. We had to take some breaks from the stresses of sunbathing to have some lunch (AKA cheap cocktails) at one of the restaurants along the water.
• More sunbathing
• Swim in the pool at our hotel
• Dinner, drinks and exploring Tenerife by night.

It was a great holiday....aside from getting a wicked sunburn, as was to be expected. Strangely enough, it was the backs of my legs (from the knee down) and the tops of my feet that got it the worst. I stocked up on the SPF 50 and avoided the sun like the plague for the rest of the week. So much for coming back bronzed and beautiful, like Mary & Hannah. While we were there, we went to a neighbouring town, Las Americas, where all the nightclubs were. On our first night out, I met a Finnish guy named Niko who was on holiday with his brother and father. Bless him. Not sure how good your game and pickup lines can be with your dad sitting beside you. Aside from Niko, we met a couple of other very unwanted guests in the form of cockroaches in our apartment. Hot damn, those things are fast. And very, very gross. Creepy crawly disgusting bugs.

Hannah & I went whale-watching on our last day in Tenerife...there are pods of Pilot whales found off the coast, and Hannah was dying to see them. The trip took about 2 hours and we saw entire families, including little calf whales..so cute! Hannah was so excited, and I loved seeing them. For such huge creatures, there is something graceful about the way they move through the water.

The week went by incredibly quickly and we soon found ourselves on the way back. We landed at Gatwick just past 2 AM, where Hannah's friend Mark was waiting to pick us up. Mark dropped me off at Heathrow where I killed time until my flight to Norway. Thanks to a lucky upgrade, I got to fly business class...no complaints here!

My trip to Norway didn't involve Finnish men, cockroaches or stray cats that wandered into the apartment (true story, happened a couple of times in Tenerife. I wanted to keep it) but involved family, friends, movies about Space Nazi's and more food than I care to even think about again. Most of the week was spent relaxing at Sarah & Kristian's while they were at work, with trips to his parents, the cinema and out to dinner mixed in there. I went for walks around the lake, fed the ducks, had a duck bite my shoe (ok, I may have stuck my shoe out to see what the duck would do...I kind of deserve it, apparently) and visited with Michelle to meet her new little boy, Teodore.

Norway was so relaxing and a great holiday. Sarah & Kristian just bought a new house, so my next half-term holiday will probably see me back in Norway, unpacking them into their new house! Can't wait :).

So, it was back to England last Sunday, and back to work on Monday. The week went by incredibly fast, and the next couple of weeks are bound to be incredibly stressful. Great...When is my next holiday?

First Time.

I think that I have finally recovered enough to relive the first (but I am sure not only...I would only be so lucky) experience of this particular event as a teacher. Naturally, I'm speaking about chaperoning a field trip.

And what a trip it was. Let me give you the details.

100 Year 7 students...100 eleven year old boys and girls being taken into the woods of Oxfordshire to work on team building skills. And I was lucky enough to be going along. A definite bonus was being able to wear casual clothes, even if I did look younger than some of the students and get confused for an extra child a couple of times.

Within about 5 minutes of pulling out of the school parking lot, the kids were into their pop, candy and were about 27 different shades of hyper. The bus ride was about 90 minutes and it was about an hour into the trip when the inevitable happened.

"Miss......I don't feel so good." And up comes the first batch of sweets and fizzy drinks.

It was like a chain reaction and I was left walking through a mine-field of projectile vomiting children. The heat on the bus was turned up on high, there were no windows to open and the smell was just...indescribable. Once the first kid let loose, the smell and sound set off another, and then another...and then another. Followed by 2 more, just for good measure. In total, 6 kids couldn't keep their snacks to themselves and we only had 3 sick bags. I'll spare you the details. Actually, no, I won't. 3 kids were lucky enough to get their own sick bag, one needed the spare change of clothes that were brought along and the last one got to experience a type of recycling that nobody ever wants to participate in. I likened the event to a scene I watched in a Stephen King film, only it was much more...chunky.

Eventually, and with no more chunks a-flying, we arrive at Cornbury Park and spend the day watching the kids do team-building exercises, like learning to build a fire, collecting firewood, cooking over an open flame and playing some games. The kids cooked whole trout for lunch and I decided to creep a couple of them out by eating both eyes from the fish. Wasn't so bad, tastes a bit like a salty, crunchy pea. Much more appetizing than what the kids had to offer for snacks on the ride there, I'll just say.

Rounded up the kids, gave them explicitly clear instructions that they were not to eat or drink a single thing on the ride back, and loaded them back into the buses. Overall, an eventful field trip. I definitely needed the holiday that was coming up that weekend. Next time...my Tenerife trip!