The Great Canterbury Cathedral Craft Giveaway!!

It's been well established that this blog combines many of my passions: travel, writing, and teaching.

Let's add one more, shall we?? How about crafting??

When I was wandering around Canterbury, I found a ... wait for it ... YARN SHOP!! Yay! I bought some absolutely beautiful multi-coloured yarn, and I'm going to use it to make a scarf.

But the question is, WHO would get the scarf? I just finished making myself a hat, so I don't need to keep it. There are lots of people I can think of who would appreciate a handmade scarf, using yarn that came directly from England (and a cool place like Canterbury no less!)... I just can't decide who should get the gift.

So I'm leaving it up to you, dear Readers. The first person to leave a comment on this blog post (NOT on Facebook) gets it!

Ready... Set... COMMENT!

The first of many (excursions, that is)

It had been too long since I went on an adventure. I'd been sick all week (with tonsillitis!). For five days, I'd done nothing but lay in bed watching movies. I'd eaten little other than noodles, yogurt and orange juice. It was time to explore England.

My first excursion out of the city was to the towns of Battle and Canterbury. I was really excited to visit both of these great and historic cities, and not just for their tourist appeal. You see, back in high school, when I was supposed to be learning all about the history of the world, I was bored. Dates didn't stick in my head, names of places and people were forgotten instantly. It just wasn't my thing. I was a Math girl, and elected to take Chemistry and Physics rather than History.

Now that I'm older (and oh-so-much wiser), I've seen a little more of the world. I've read a LOT more literature. So I have a few items in my mental toolkit that I lacked back-in-the-days-of-high-school. For one, there is context to what I learn about. In some cases, I've now read some historical fiction that took place in Europe. Traveling to the places where my books took place means that when I see what they really look like, I already have a mental picture frame (made up of a story) to put them in. I will remember new historical facts more readily because I have other information already in my head to tie them to. They become meaningful by their association to other, already significant pieces of information.

For another, there is relevance to the history I learn about. Actually being here, seeing the sights where the battles took place, makes them matter a whole lot more. I will never forget what happened at the Battle of Hastings because I was there. I didn't read about it in a textbook. I walked across the battlefield and my shoes got all muddy.

Once upon a time, I said I wanted to travel the world so that I could bring back a piece of it to my future students. To be honest, I had forgotten about that goal. But I remembered it on this trip. The thing is, I will never be able to take my students with me to these places. But what I will do is show them the pictures from my own trip, and tell them about being there. The way I tell the story of the history of the world will be so much more interesting to them, because it's real to me.

So, what did I actually see? What is this history I learned about so readily and thought about so significantly? Read on, dear Readers, read on. Two more posts are planned for this week, one for each of the cities I visited.

Overheard by a Canadian: Episode 7

An English guy, on his phone, as he walks by me. I hear only the following two sentences:

"Right. Well, did anyone see you do it?"



Yikes.

Angela, where have you been?

I haven't been blogging much lately. But never fret! More posts are on their way. By way of explanation, I've been sick all week AND working too hard. In case you've missed the drama of life lately, here's a bit of what's been going on:

When I arrived in London on January 13th (five weeks ago), and had my interview with my agency the following day (a Friday), I was intending to do Supply work here for the remainder of the school year (which is akin to TOCing in Canada, or "subbing" for the non-teacher readers).

However.

The first working week I was given a "temporary" posting for the week. It was a Year 1 class of 30 kids (which is standard here - be ever-so-thankful for smaller class sizes, Canada!). I quickly realized they were going to be a handful, but heck, I could survive anything for a week, right?

Five weeks later, I have not yet seen the inside of another classroom. The teacher I'm covering for has had a respiratory infection, and every single week she thinks she just needs "one more" week off before her doctor gives her the go-ahead to go back to work. So every single week I just put my head down and barrel through another week of struggle with this class. And every single Friday, the Head comes in and asks me to stay for "just one more week." A few weeks ago, I committed to the school, my agency, the parents, the kids and myself that I would stay however long it took for the teacher to return. I was already the third Supply the class had had, and I didn't want them to have to deal with another transition. So I was in it. I was committed.

But I never really had any idea how I would feel at the end of it all.

Before I left Canada, everyone warned me that "the kids are bad in England." In response, I repeated my feelings that "kids aren't bad, but the way they are managed can be." Since I've only been in this one class, I still can't really comment on "the kids in England" (my scope is still too small to do so fairly). But what I CAN comment on is the 30 kids I've gotten to know quite well.

There are about 5 that are ... challenging (see what I did there? that's the polite Canadian TOC in me).  Three are just attention-seeking and need some training about appropriate behaviour at school. If I was going to be with this class long-term, I feel confident (thanks in large part to Cindy Brown) I could work with them to improve their behaviour and (as a result) be able to teach them and the rest of the class in a much better and more productive way.

One doesn't speak English, so he thinks he can get away with being silly (and sometimes downright mean) because he "can't understand me." He's a very sweet and cute little guy, though, and I have a soft spot in my heart for him. When I first got here, he spoke VERY limited English and could not string two words together to form a sentence. Asking to go to the bathroom was a simple word, "Toilet?" Fast forward five weeks, and he now says, "Excuse me, can I go to the toilet?" This is a huge language leap for him, and I'm so proud. Last week, I had the kids survey each other about their favourite colours. With this little guy, I walked around with him, modeling what he was supposed to do and pointing to the kids' names on the sheet so he could record their answers. After a few kids, he got the idea and started asking "Colour?" With every few kids or so, his question evolved to "Favourite colour?" then "What's your favourite colour?" then "Alex, what's your favourite colour?" and finally (with PERFECT pronunciation and diction) "What's your favourite colour, Ramon?" (he even moved the words around in the sentence!). I nearly cried I was so proud!

The last... well I'm at a bit of a loss about him. He needs help. He needs one-on-one support. He's not handling himself well in the classroom, at playtime, or at any time really. I've done everything I've been trained to do to support and help him. But he needs coping strategies that I am not prepared to teach him. I feel for this kid, because I see the sweet and funny child in him. But his anger takes control of him too often and he's not getting the support he needs to be successful. I hate that we see this situation all too often. In a perfect world, there would be endless money available so that kids like him could get the attention and support he needs. I fear for his future success in the school system and in life, and I pray he works it all out and gets it together. For now, though, he takes an inordinate amount of my energy and attention and pulls me away from the other 29 kids in my class way too often. This is exhausting for me and unfair to the rest of the class!

Apart from these five little monkeys, and a few others that act up and are too chatty, and the one that has a possible Dyslexia problem, and a few that are unable to recognize their letters and sounds let alone write a story (which my top kids are doing wonderfully), I have a pretty wonderful little group. They are undisciplined and noisy, but I've been told by several teachers that they are "way better with me than they were before." I feel so good knowing that I've made some kind of difference. A few of the parents have approached me this week to thank me for staying through the transition and for doing a good job with the kids. Apparently they talk about me at home :)

Five weeks ago, I would have said I was more than happy to give this class back to their teacher. But now, I don't really want to let them go. I would be happy to keep them through the end of the year. If I knew I was going to have them long-term, I would feel free to make even more changes to the structure of the classroom and the strategies I use with the difficult ones. I could really turn this class around and have fun doing it.

And knowing where I was going the next day was nice too. I have to admit, I'm not really looking forward to the Supply game, now that I've been away from it for so long. So...we'll see how that goes.

Add to these daily challenges the fact that I was asked to provide Reading, Writing and Maths targets for all 30 kids this week, PLUS the fact that I got sick and the cold lasted all week due to the overworking and lack of sleep... and you can see the reason for the lack of blogging :)

Besides, blogging isn't something I feel any pressure to do regularly. Right from the start, I warned that it would be irregular and random. I blog when I feel like it and when I have something worth "musing" about, not because I feel like I owe anyone another post. As soon as I start to feel pressure to do it, I'll stop it altogether.

Hope you are all doing well. I've moved past the Honeymoon stage of moving to another city, and I'm starting to miss my friends and family back home. I love you all... drop me a line when you feel like it and let me know what's going on in YOUR lives!

Little Venice

What's that? You're wondering who THAT random dude is? Be patient, my friends, all will be revealed...

~~~~~

On Saturday, Anna and I went on a guided walking tour of the area known as "Little Venice". I have decided that I really enjoy this method of being a tourist. It's a neat way to explore the city, someone tells you interesting things along the way, and it's good exercise too!

When I first stepped off the bus into this little section of London, I was struck by how different it looks from the rest of the city. It doesn't have the overcrowded-touristy feel of sites such as Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, nor the older-buildings-and-dirty-streets feel of the area I live in. This was something different. It was clean and white, with intriguing architecture lining the streets and canals littered with boats. I have to say, it bore no resemblance whatsoever to actual Venice, but it was nice nonetheless.

Our tour guide ("Shaughan" ... what a silly name! It's like his parents tried to think of the shortest name they could, then elongated it as much as possible) was pretty good. Not as good as the pamphlet made him out to be, but he was full of all sorts of random facts and there was lots of name dropping. Below are a few highlights from the trip.


Celebrities: Little Venice is home to many-a-celebrity, mostly within the music world. I definitely should have had my Mom and Alan with me, who would have appreciated these names MUCH more than I did, but we did get a look at the areas inhabited by the likes of U2's drummer, somebody from Pink Floyd, Annie Lennox, Kelly Osborne, the guy who created Paddington Bear, Joan Collins, and Michael Flatley (his house was nearly bought by Madonna, but she backed out at the last minute). Actually, we had a bit of a funny moment outside Michael Flatley's house; Anna hadn't heard of him, so I did a little "Lord of the Dance" demonstration to job her memory. I'm sure I did a wonderful imitation, because she remembered right away! The rest of our group was pretty amused as well :)

Status: The aforementioned celebrities take their little corner of town seriously. The little boats moored along the canal edges are a bit shoddy looking, but are actually functional. Lawyers (and other such ridiculously-too-rich people) actually use them to get into town. The mooring fees are upwards of £10,000/year, which leads me to believe it's a status thing to have a boat out front, rather than a practical solution to the age-old problem of having to take the tube with the "commoners". And there are signs up in the streets threatening a £500 fine for leaving dog poop on the sidewalk (are you KIDDING me? FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS??)). I guess they like their streets clean and pretty. But somehow I doubt they would appreciate me taking them up on the gesture they display prominently in their lawns: the carved pineapple, a symbol of welcome (apparently).

Trivia: Probably the most interesting viewpoint along the way was of the hospital in which Alexander Fleming worked. I remarked to Anna later how funny our brains are; when our guide started the story, he just mentioned Fleming's name. Out of nowhere, my mind associated that with one word: penicillin. I thought to myself, What? That's crazy. But, as I listened to the rest of his narrative, it turned out that Fleming was the man who invented the medicine! I must have learned this at some point in my educational journey. I'm sure I could not have answered correctly had I been tested on this knowledge, but somewhere in the recesses of my brain, the connection was still there. Random!

Politics: Partway along the tour, as we were merrily following Shaughan through a small park, we noticed we were headed towards some kind of demonstration. People were waving black flags with Arabic script written on them, and there were police surrounding the area. I have no idea what they were protesting, but a man came along and helpfully informed us that "The Arabs are taking over England!!!"  Likely not, but thanks for the info, Random Dude.

The Toilet: We had lunch in a little cafe called Toast. The food was fine, nothing to write home about. But it had the most bizarre bathroom ever!! The toilet had instructions on the wall, but they were all in Japanese. There was a scale on the floor. The light was blue and so low it seemed off even when it was on. It was dark enough that the mirror was absolutely useless. The sink (actually the coolest part) had a little fountain-type faucet that we both thought was pretty cool. Oh, and the toilet paper was sitting on top of the radiator, getting all warm and toasty. Which, not gonna lie, was nice. But also a fire hazard.

~~~~~

The Man in the Picture: Okay, you've waited long enough (these posts are so long, I'm amazed any of you make it to the end). There was a small group of people on our tour who did not speak English. It was actually fairly annoying that they had someone with them who could translate, because it made it harder for the rest of us to hear Shaughan. Anna and I pretty much tried to stand as far away from them as possible for this reason. Little did we know, the guy ended up being hilarious!

Our first encounter with him was about halfway through the tour. We had gone past a couple of random statues named "Man Standing" and "Man Walking" (I told you they were random). I ran over and told Anna to take my picture "walking" beside "Man Walking". Random Italian guy rushes over to me and says, grinning from ear to ear, "Married! He's married!".

Really? THAT'S only you English you know?

So I laughed and said, "I'm the other woman!" and took a much sillier picture.

Not five minutes later, the tour stopped right at the water's edge along one of the canals. As we had done at every single stop, the entire group huddled around Shaughan, then looked back, waiting for the Italian group to catch up. Except this time, they weren't hurrying to catch up. The man was climbing aboard a boat!! His wife was taking a picture, as if this was a neat tourist attraction. Nope, sir, I'm afraid that's just trespassing.

Fast forward about ten more minutes, and we're just walking along between tour stops. The man stops us for the third time (the first was to comment on my illicit affair with the statue, the second was to label Anna "Blonde" as if that was her name). This time, the only English he could spout was "Mafia" while pointing to himself. "I'm in Mafia!" Great, sir. That's just wonderful. We've somehow managed to make friends with a trespassing Sicilian mafia member.

And friends we were. At the very last stop (the hotel Freud stayed in), I was listening intently to Shaughan when I felt an arm wrap itself around my shoulders. Confused, I turned to see Mafia Guy with his arms around Anna and I, and his wife in front of me, taking a picture! Um, what? Well, all right. You've been hilarious, Mafia Guy. So, okay, you can take a picture with us. Good thing Anna was on the ball and handed the wife her camera too.

Updates

A few updates on things:

My ankle: It's doing much better! I can walk normally, and don't have to baby it anymore. It doesn't hurt at all. I'm slightly concerned that it still doesn't move properly, after two weeks. The other day I tried to sit on it while down on the floor with my students, but it wouldn't bend the way it should. It's probably fine. It kind of has to be fine for a bit longer... I can't go see a doctor yet. I'll see how it feels once I get the letter in the mail that says I'm registered with the National Health people, because then I COULD go see someone about it.

Light Switches: I actually got really excited the other day because I flipped a switch and it didn't feel backwards! Aha, I thought. I'm getting used to them! Nope...that particular switch is upside down, for the English. Dang.

Toilet: Still can't say it without cringing. Not sure I'll EVER get used to that one...

Overheard by a Canadian: Episode 6

An English guy, to a fellow Canadian and myself, after we'd laughed at something very "English" he had said:

"I just never know what is going to make you Canadian people laugh."


Haha...we just laughed some more :)

The Social Network

You know, it's been a bit weird. The connections, how it's all falling into place... it's weird. Good, but weird.

It started in December. I posted the following message on Facebook:
Okay, Network of Socialness, I need your help. I'm heading over to London mid-January and I don't have anywhere to live yet!! Anyone have any contacts over there who may be willing to help me out? Let me know if anyone needs a roomie, has a room or flat to rent, or even has a spare bedroom I could live in for a couple of weeks when I get there, while I look for a place. Thank-you!!!

As a result, my friend Terrence sent my email address to a friend of his, Tina. When Tina emailed me, she explained that she needed to return to Canada for the month of January to renew her working Visa. So, she said, I could stay in her room from January 13th (when I arrived) to the end of January. This, I thought, was perfect! I had somewhere to go when I arrived, and a base to work from while looking for something more permanent, to begin in February. Great! (And another big THANK-YOU to Terrence for making this connection!)


So Tina and I made plans. We worked something out for rent money, and discovered that our travel plans over Christmas overlapped so that we could meet in person and exchange the keys. One day in early January, I traveled into downtown Vancouver to meet this girl who had generously offered me her space. But how would we find each other? I told her what I was wearing, and we joked that this was starting to feel like a blind date.

When she walked into the Chapters location we had agreed on, and looked around for me, we both began to laugh. Completely coincidentally, we know each other! We both volunteered for an organization called Students for Literacy while studying at UVic. We also ran into each other on a TOC placement in Victoria a few years later. How random is THAT?!?!


But the randomness doesn't end there.


Fast forward a week, and I was arriving in London. I took a cab to the new place with all of my suitcases, and moved myself in. About half an hour later, I received an email from Tina saying that her plans had changed and she was NOT coming back to London, so my temporary-2-week room turned into a more permanent place. Which is great - I love my roommates and it was nice to just unpack once! That night, one of my new roomies (Joe) took me out with a couple of his friends. We had a lovely dinner at a great place called Cha Cha Moon. On our way home, Joe and I chatted about friends and teaching and whatnot. I have a School Break coming up in February, so I was telling him about my thoughts for travel plans and he mentioned that a few of his Teacher-friends are going to Egypt. I thought that sounded pretty cool and mentally added it to my list of "places to go while I'm living on Europe's doorstep."


The next morning, I finally connected with a friend from university, Nicole. She's been living and teaching here for a few months. She sent me a Facebook message with her phone number and invited me to check out the Imperial War Museum later that day. While checking Facebook, a message Nicole wrote to another friend of ours came up on my NewsFeed. In it, she mentioned her upcoming trip to Egypt in February! Hmmm...that sounded familiar. Could it be that my friend Nicole was ALSO a friend of my new roommate?


What are the chances, right?


So I walked into my kitchen to ask Joe if he happened to have a friend named Nicole who had studied at UVic. Yes, in fact, he did, and he was in mid-text-conversation with her, making plans to visit the Imperial War Museum!

Nicole had absolutely no idea that Joe and I knew each other (how could she? We'd only met two days prior!), let alone that we were living in the same house. And yet she was merrily messaging away, making plans with both of us simultaneously.

Life is crazy.

~~~~~

On a smaller, but still very cool note: A friend of mine from Victoria, Sasha, has a sister living here in London. Sasha connected us before I left Canada, and we exchanged a few messages (again, Thank-You, Facebook!). I finally met Emma last weekend. We went out for a drink and then she took me to a friend's birthday party. When her boyfriend Goran showed up, he was wearing a "Vancouver Mt.Seymour" t-shirt (which he bought here in London!). It was a nice little piece of home :)

Overheard by a Canadian: Episode 5

Typical message heard by passengers waiting for trains: "Your attention, please. The train to ___ [insert destination here] has been canceled due to _____ [insert technical jargon here] earlier today. We apologize for any inconvenience."


Today's message: "Your attention, please. The train to Luton has been canceled due to a passenger being hit by a train earlier today. We apologize for any inconvenience."




um...WHAT?!?!? You really couldn't vague that up a bit? Was it really necessary to announce it at all? I, for one, did NOT need to hear that right before I stepped onto your next train. And what about the "inconvenience" to the passenger?? I hardly think this apology covers it.