Saturday 18 December 2010

Return of the Snow

Another busy work week as I continue to squirrel away pennies for all the travels I have in mind for 2011. This week I celebrated my one week mark until I fly to Switzerland for the holidays, and also buying my flight to Rome where I will meet Mom and Chris in February :) I will meet them in Rome for the weekend and then a couple of days later they will come to London where I will finish up my work week and then I will have a week off to show them around.  It will also mark the half-way point of my year over here so I am quickly filling up all of my time off with trips I would like to take before I head back to Canada in August - and for this I am saving my quid!

This week was full of jobs. On Monday I returned to the lovely school that I very much enjoyed last week and is very close to home. This time I was in a year 1 class and these 4/5 year olds were lovely! We had a great day doing some maths, some stories, some computer games and some Christmas coloring. They even sang me their Christmas song sans music and it was quite adorable.

I also spent 2 days as a TA in a nursery class out at another school that I enjoyed last time I was there - but is unfortunately no where near my house! It is beyond dark when I return from work, but for an enjoyable day it is worth the trade off!!
In nursery they are 3 years old so my day is mostly spent reading stories, playing play doh, zipping jackets and doing crowd control! I will be there next week as well, this school is open until the 21st! I have very mixed feelings on the whole `nursery` thing.  I have been in other schools where nursery is half day, sort of like pre-school back home, only a little longer. At this school there seems to be a choice between half day and full day. Some kids stay all day while about half of the class changes mid day. There is one little girl who is completely adorable, but has some major issues socially - often hitting other kids and saying very rude things. However, this little girl gets dropped off in the morning and stays all day at nursery, and then goes to an after-school play time too. That means she is at school from 9am until 4pm or later. And she is 3 years old!!! That would be a long exhausting day for me! I think is is too much for some kids and gets abused as free daycare when these kids really need some one-on-one attention (there are usually 30 kids running around nursery and I'm sure just as many after school).
our walk home - not so bad unless you're in a skirt and flats :s
On Friday we had a half day at my regular school because it was their last day before holidays. It was great, as usual. After the staff had planned a nice lunch out with money that had been donated by the school CEO. However, the dreaded London snow returned... Teachers started to panic as the white stuff fell and lunch was called off. Christine and I weren't so excited about this development because we were going to get rides to lunch and a station afterwards and had dressed accordingly. Now our plans had gone to hell. A kind TA offered us a ride to the station, even though it is in the opposite direction she normally goes, about a 5 min drive out of her way. So we helped dust the snow off her car and jumped in. But.... as she pulled the e-brake to stop and open the gate at the bottom of the drive her car slid a bit (I know what you're thinking - shocking!) but this was enough to make her nervous so out we got, into the snow to make our 25 minute trek to the station... We arrived with cold feet and legs - remember we have to wear skirts to school! and we get on our train quickly because it was delayed in our favour. At the next station we will have to wait 30 mins for the train we normally take, so we switch up our route and end up waiting about 10 here and switch again but only have to wait a few minutes for that one too...
Saturday morning snow... airports already closed, oh dear
After all that the snow had long since stopped and the sunshine had come out, but we were done for the week and that was all that mattered!
Now I sit in bed Saturday morning delaying my journey to the gym because today it actually does look like a blizzard out there --- can only imagine the mayhem that this will bring.
Happy Holidays :)

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