20 Days!

Yes. Please expect every post from now until Christmas (which, I will admit, probably won't be astronomical in number) to start off with a count-down numbering the days to my return to Canada. As of today, it's 20!! It still seems sooo far away but, in reality, the time will (hopefully) go by incredibly fast and before I know it, I'll be home :)!

The most exciting event to occur in the last few days is the dusting of snow I saw when I woke up yesterday. I was so excited! And by "dusting" of snow, I literally mean that. There was barely enough to make footprints in, but I still was pumped! This is a great little preview for my trip home at Christmas. I've also been told by most of my colleagues that, if we are to get oh, say, 5cm or so of snow, life as we know it comes to a screeching halt. England isn't prepared for the "wintery" weather.

Seeing the snow really put me in the winter mood and, with that, put me into holiday mode! On my excursions out and about yesterday, I bought 1) A book titled The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill and 2)...

A little Christmas tree!

I've named the tree Charlie, after Charlie Brown, and he (it?) is sitting happily and merrily on my coffee table. Meet Charlie!

I realize I won't actually be in England on Christmas day, but the little tree just is a little holiday cheer while I count down the days.

The town center is decked out for Christmas and with lights and Christmas trees and stores are already blasting the holiday tunes. I'll have to make sure to get some pictures! I'm starting to get over the touristy-phase of living here and am not taking as many pictures as I first did upon arriving in England.

I'm experiencing my first set of long reports at school...the Canadian equivalent of report cards. Luckily, all my classes aren't due at once. Rather, the long reports are issued by year group so I only have to tackle it one year at a time. This is extremely helpful as I am having difficulty finding the right wording on reports. I'm nervous about my first parents evening. I've already had a parent tell me over the phone I sound too young to be a teacher...I can't wait until they meet me face to face.

The weather is beautiful here today and it is calling for another chance of "snow" and I think that is my cue to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, while it lasts. I'd take a snowstorm over the more-common rain and grey skies any day.

35 Days to Go!

The most important countdown has begun! Actually it's been in progress for a few months now...
The countdown to Christmas! Only 5 more weeks until I return to the true North strong and free(zing). I'm already looking forward to being home and being back with family and friends. And, another major part of my life that was left behind.

I'm speaking about hockey, of course.

I had a dream last night in which Mike Cammalleri, the closest thing to a Greek god that plays for the Canadiens, came over to my apartment for a cup of coffee. There are several things to be noted:

1)Why is Michael Cammalleri in Northampton, England? Not that I'm complaining...
2)I would never want to serve him English coffee...yikes.
3)This is a sign of major coffee and hockey withdrawl.

Dear Lord Stanley (cup),
Please, please, please, grant me my Christmas wish, and put Mike Cammalleri under the tree for me.

In other news...actually, this is literally about the news. Or the newspapers, to be more specific. As I was flipping through a local newspaper the other day, I began to pay attention to the descriptive adjectives (God, I really am and English teacher...) used in the articles. I've come to realize that British newspapers, despite the prim & proper British image, are rather...explicit in their descriptions. There was an incident in which a man exposed himself while relieving himself in the park. To describe this man: Pervert Flashes Passers-By. What?! Since when is it not slander to refer to someone as a pervert? I started to pay closer attention to the titles of other articles:

Boozer Wants Kids Back
Pervert Shows Porn
Psychotic Teenager Arrested

For an opinion column, they list the address and occupation of the respondent:

24, of no fixed address, unemployed
38, without employment
and so on and so on.

I began to realize that British newspapers really take their gloves off for their stories (I also realized that Northampton has some really questionable people living here...). This is yet another difference between Canada and England I'm just coming to notice. The British reporters seem to have free range of the adjectives they use to describe those they are writing about. Yikes. Remind me to never interview for a story.

Last weekend, I took my first tourtist-y trip to London for the day with another girl from the agency. It was lots of fun. We went to the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Globe theatre, a walk along the Thames, and lots of other places. However. The greatest place that we went to turned out to be Piccadilly Circus. Why? Because there is a coffee shop that serves...




TIM HORTONS.

Mind. Blown.





Elspeth had told me about the existence of this wonderful place and I could only pray that I could find this personal Mecca of mine. Angela & I met up and took the underground to Piccadilly Circus and were able to find this glorious coffee shop. A slight dissapointment, when it turned out to be a coffee machine serving Tim's coffee, but still. It tasted good...remarkably close to an actual double double. And, to top it off, they had Tim's doughnuts!





Boston cream, you complete me.



You can certainly bet your double-doubles that the Tim Hortons coffee-cup holder is now proudly displayed on my dressed in my apartment. For those really tough days when I need a visual pick-me-up.

Those days, while they do still exist, are starting to become a little-less frequent in occurance. I'm not sure when it happened, or how, but I've found myself starting to actually fit in at the school and not be so worn down by what takes place during a day. I'm starting to talk with other teachers about getting involved in the extra-curricular activities (the Glee club I currently help run is anything less than glee-ful) and the school musical is at the top of the list.

We had another faculty-night out on Friday and, instead of being completely exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of a week, I found myself laughing and sharing stories along with the other staff members. There are still rough patches (really rough patches) but it's starting to become more routine and less soul-shattering to deal with.

A new list of questions I have been asked by my students...

1)"Miss...Why are you so short?"

2)"Miss! Have you met Justin Bieber?!"
Me: "Ahhh, no."
Student: "Oh. Well, have you met his mom?"

3)"Can I come back to Canada with you? Like, in your suitcase or something?"

4)"Miss...Will you sing to us? Please? We'll be good!"

5)"Miss...do you go home every weekend?"
Me: "I go home every night...I don't sleep at school, you know."
Student: "You go back to Canada every night?!"

Ahh yes. Our future generation.

I also experience my first bonfire night in England last weekend and, I must admit, I never realized just how serious this occasion was. When out walking on Saturday night, I could see fireworks in the sky coming from several different directions around the city. And these aren't the DIY firework kits you buy at the corner store. These are professionally-planned and orchestrated displays happening here. They are beautiful. I found them significantly less beautiful when I still could hear the gunshot-like sound at 3 o'clock in the morning while trying to sleep, but a cool thing to have seen, nonetheless.

Well. I should probably get to marking the pile of books I brought home with me this weekend. But, first thing first. I need to go buy some gourmet coffee in case any dashing NHL players show up at my doorstep and demand refreshments.

Home Again, Home Again

From fjords and lefse to puddles and pudding, I have returned to jolly old England. Actually, I was anything but jolly at 2AM on Monday morning when I finally collapsed into bed in Northampton following a (delayed) flight and (delayed) coach ride. School was a tough reality I had to face Monday morning.

I had an amazing visit in Norway, yet again. I am quickly falling in love with the country. I'm starting to think that Norway will be my "happy place." A decent runner-up to my current happy place, which is home.

Throughout the rest of my break, I went for walks and did absolutely no schoolwork while Sarah & Kristian were at work and then spent some good time with them in the evenings. On my last weekend there, we spent it re-organizing the new kitchen, visiting with Sarah's colleague and her adorable new baby boy, visiting Kristian's family and doing some more sight-seeing around Stavanger.

The 2 most beautiful places that we went to visit were:

Brutte Lenke (The Broken Chain Memorial)

The memorial is located along the coast to mark the sinking of an oil rig in 1980, killing almost all crew members on board. It is a huge monument and located overlooking the sea. The walk to the monument took about 20 minutes along the gorgeous Norwegian coast and the view was spectacular. Along the way, we passed a small beach where there were hundreds of jellyfish congregating…gross. I was maturely poking at one with a stick when Kristian decided to put his funny pants on and scare the living hell out of me and I screamed loud enough to probably wake the dead jellyfish I had just been poking.

and


The 3 viking longhouses.

On the way back from Brutte Lenke, we stopped at a site where there once was a Viking longhouse settlement dating back from the Iron Age (around 350-550AD)! It was so neat to see them…I had to imagine how the country must have looked thousands of years ago to those trying to make a living and survive off of the land. The entire thing was made even more “realistic” (or funnier…) by the presence of 4 or 5 young men doing real-life role-playing…kind of like real-life Dungeons and Dragons. Seriously. Complete with costumes, shields and swords. I have my suspicions though that if these guys were to meet actual Vikings, they would be on the losing side of the battle. Big time.


So, another wonderful trip has come and gone and I find myself back at school and back into the same routine. However, it makes me happy to think that there are only 47 more days until I am back in Canada for Christmas. The countdown is on!

Day 1: I Kill a Television.

It's the first official day of my half-term break and I have already managed to screw up something technological thus far. Kristian has a very nifty all-in-one remote control that controls his TV, the Wii, audio system, DVD player, etc, etc. Annnnnnnd, in the company of yours truely for about 30 seconds, I now can't get the damn TV to turn on. I am a death sentence to all things technological. Sarah's laptop is taking its life into its hands by allowing me to be on here at the moment.

My visit has been great so far! I landed around midnight on Friday so came to Sarah & Kristian's and headed to bed. Saturday, Sarah had First Aid training at school and Kristian had some errands to run so I had the place to myself for awhile. After coming home, Kristian opened up his birthday presents I brought with me (a Metallica towel and the Dave Mustaine autobiography) and we headed for a walk downtown. Our 'quick walk' led us to the Stavanger Museum which was really cool! There was a Darwin exhibit on and lots of other exhibits showing Stavanger throughout history...supergeek in me is coming out now.




There was one exhibit in the basement that had all kinds of animals, both in skeletal form and stuffed form. One such creature is...



...This furry little friend. I knew it was long-since dead and stuffed...but I was still waiting for the eyes to blink or something.


After stopping for coffee and supper, we headed to Cardinal, the pub that we went to on my first visit here. Thankfully, I wasn't ID'd as Cardinal is 24+. We left Cardinal and went to another little place where the only people there were....the 5 of us. Sarah, Kristian, Per, Arthur & myself. And, to make it even better, the music was all country and classic rock. Score! After our wild night on the town, we ended up at home at the nice late hour of...9pm. I guess that's what happens when you start your day on the town in the mid-afternoon.

Yesterday, we went to Hallestø beach and took Sarah's colleagues dog, Theo, with us. Theo is a St Bernard 'puppy.' I use that term very loosely as Theo's head is about the size of my torso and he is capable of knocking me over with a well-aimed nudge. And the drool on that dog...I had a sudden flashback to the old Ghostbuster's movie where the pink slime was coming out of the bathtub, trying to snatch the baby. After a windy walking on the beach, we dropped Theo off and came home. Kristian's mum, Sidsel, came over for tea & coffee and it was really nice to see her again. She and her husband, Jon Einar, had been up in the mountains skiing over the weekend. She told me a saying often applied to Norwegian's and I'm starting to believe it: Norwegians are born with skis on their feet. Probably true.

I brought no schoolwork with me this week so I plan to relax for the next few days. I may head into work with Sarah at some point this week...we'll see if my nerves are up for that.

The Final Countdowwwn (Insert 80s hairmetal dance sequence)

Instead of doing something frivolous, such as marking notebooks or lesson planning, I have decided to spend some time with the blog read round the world. Ok, perhaps a little pretentious...a blog that is read in at least 4 countries. Obtaining world-wide fans aside, this blog has another major perk: decompression. It helps to be able to write everything down, keep my friends and family updated and just have a place to record some memories of this pretty big adventure I've found myself on.

This week has been the most stressful week yet, without a doubt. Last week all my students completed assessments and, this week, the task of marking them naturally had to be done. That was a big enough task. Add to that...

--Staff meetings/co-curricular activities every single day after school
--Two open evenings for parents and potential future students
--Re-interviewing and re-applying for my job to continue past Christmas--which included a 3-hour interview process, a lesson observation, a formal interview, a formal application and setting cover work for the time I would be doing the interview
--Lesson planning (apparently that's an important part of teaching...)
--Dealing with the cold/flu bug I found myself gifted with last Sunday

Hmm. Oh, yes. I tried to sleep every now and again.

Somehow, with the help of lots of over-the-counter cold medication, a few breakdowns here and there, and lots of raging moments of "I can't do this! Get me on a plane back to Canada!" I survived. The assessments are all marked, the open evenings are over (rather successfully, I think...the young kids looooved making me say things in my "funny" accent), I'm feeling much better thanks to lots of sleep over the weekend, the lessons were somehow planned and I successfully was signed on with the academy until the end of the academic year. I celebrated Friday night by getting take-away, eating the first proper meal I'd had all week, and going to bed by 11pm. I know. I'm livin' the rockstar dream.

After all of that, it felt like it should be mid-term break. But, oh no. Not yet. I have a 4-day week this week with the students and a morning of staff training next Friday before I head across the sea to Norway for my mid-term break. Can't wait!! Kristian's birthday is this Wednesday, so I'll be just in time for birthday celebrations on the weekend. Aside from that, just looking forward to having time to relax, not think about school (as if that will happen), spend time with Sarah & Kristian and hopefully discover some long-lost Viking tribes that happen to be kicking around Stavanger. I promised Zach I'd try to bring him back a pirate ship from England, but maybe a Viking shield or helmet would suffice.

I'm missing home, missing family, hockey, TIM HORTONS, and the beautiful fall weather I'm accustomed to in Canada. It's nice enough here...starting to cool down, stay grey-skied most days and the weather is tending to lend itself towards wet and raining most evenings, but not what I'm used to. I miss the smell of a fall morning (as cliche as that sounds) and the warmth of a wood fire. Oh, dear. I think I'm turning into a Harlequin novel. I suppose that is a sign I have to drag myself to marking notebooks and prepping for school tomorrow morning.

T-minus 5 days!

I'm pretty much Jack the Ripper...of computers.

Yes. The (apparently) inevitable event has indeed happened. I've killed my laptop.

I killed it.

DEAD.

To forego the many curse words I would like to apply to my current situation, I will, instead, just have a moment of silence for the latest victim of my computer-killing spree. It's quite sad, really. This laptop was still just a baby. Only 4 months old. I'd like to say a few short words about it...

Dear Laptop.

At the tender age of 4 months, you decided to leave this world in a blaze of glory and crashed hard-drives.

You were a good, if short-lived, friend, that provided many a hour on Facebook and MSN. Hours that should have, probably, been devoted to lesson-planning.

You survived the trans-atlantic journey to England only to lose your life tragically one grey Saturday morning when I pressed the power button, unknowingly delivering the fatal blow to your system.

O, woe is me, dear laptop. Just so you know, I will always remember you.

I will always remember you as the POS laptop I bought from Futureshop, the store which is currently on the receiving end of some seriously violent thoughts from me at the moment.

In closing, dear laptop,

I hope you burn in the eternal fires of damnation.

Is It Mid-term Break Yet??

Ahh, the end of another week. Thanks be to God. The weeks, in retrospect, go by really fast, but man I am exhausted at the end of the day and dead on my feet by the end of work on Friday. Continuing on with the weekly tradition of "screw cooking!" Fridays, Joel, a colleague, Zoe, and I went back to O'Neills for a (few) drinks and some supper. It's such a relief to know that I don't have to even think about school for the next 48 hours (nevermind the fact I dragged home about 15 pounds of marking in my bookbag today) and I can enjoy my weekend.

Hmm. The biggest news happening recently is my upcoming trip to Norway on my mid-term break. I fly out Friday afternoon & return 9 days later, just in time to crash for the night and head right back to school that Monday morning. I refuse to take--or even think about--schoolwork with me, so I'll be slightly manic (and incredibly cranky) by the time I board the flight. I've made up my mind and decided I refuse to spend a break, whether it be a mid-term, Christmas, or otherwise, here in Northampton. I'm heading to Norway for this break, going home for Christmas, hopefully Greece for my spring break and we'll see what other adventures I can find myself on for the others. I want to be able to look back when I'm 50 and finish a story to my grandkids by saying "...and when I woke up, it was just me, the goose and I was lost in Italy!” or something else amazing along those lines. I was to have as many great, crazy and terrifying adventures as I can while I can still get away with the excuse of being young and irresponsible.

Not too many random adventures happening as of late. As part of my job requirements, I help run a co-curricular club afterschool on Thursdays and it just so happens to be a Glee club. It is lots of fun, so far. Although my little Gleeks just enjoy making me repeat words back to them in "Canadian" for the hour we're there. I did a nice little Michael Buble duet—by default since the rest of the students refused to sing—with a kid this past week (which may have been slightly inappropriate and I'm sure Ray Williams is screaming somewhere '701!! 701!!!). Speaking of Michael Buble, I was going to buy tickets to his show in Birmingham this weekend but they are sadly all sold out. So. The moral of this story is that I would probably sell a kidney if I could get a ticket to see his show. Cause, when I think about it, it'd be a little hard for him to propose if I'm not actually at the show. See? Always thinking.

While talking to a colleague this morning, I realized that I actually had to concentrate to pick up on her accent. I was amazed—did this mean that I really was growing accustomed to living in England? Was I actually beginning to understand the British accent? I was so proud of myself! …Then I had to ask a kid to repeat the word “football camps” about 5 times before the rest of the class, in unison, shouted back “he said FOOT…BALL…CAMPS!!!” and I was knocked off my high horse pretty quickly. I’ve also had the first awkward student-add to Facebook. I came to realize pretty quickly that I should probably not have lied and told my students I didn’t have Facebook because that lie apparently doesn’t hold up well. Damn this Gen-X and their Facebook frenzy.

To add to the list of strange questions I’ve had from my students…

--“Miss? Miss?! Do you know you’re not wearing any pants?!” (This came today from one of my Year 9 girls who saw me wearing a skirt and wanted to make sure I knew about the change of my wardrobe)

--“Miss…how do you drive in Canada? Like…do you have cars yet?”

--Student: “what’s that thing on your flag?”
Me: “A Maple leaf”
Student: “What’s it do? You know…what’s it grow on?”

--Student: “Do you have those things in Canada…you know. Like reindeer. Only not. You know!”
Me: “Moose?”
Student: “What the hell is a moose?!”

--“Is there ever any sunshine in Canada?”

And, yet again, I’ve been asked if I know Justin Bieber one too many times. I really, really hope that he falls out of the limelight soon. Or hits puberty. Either would work fine.

As always, I must end with yet another brilliant story about my grace, wit, or impeccable sense of timing. I was doing duty at afterschool detention today (FYI: kids love doing detention afterschool on Friday afternoon. Love it. They don’t resent you at all) and had diligently shown up on time, spoken to the students I had put on detention for some silly little reason (such as throwing a book at someone’s head or something equally as inconsequential) and stepped out to speak to a member of staff. I walk back into the theatre (the only room big enough to house the number of students we had on detention) and bump into the vice-headmaster who looks at me and says “Alright Jess? You just showing up now? A little late, aren’t you?” and walks away before I thought of a coherent enough sentence to respond. Damn damn dammit.

T-14 days until Norway!