Hiya. You alright? (Typical English phrase for Hi, how are you doing?)
We had a pretty good week teaching (both of us had 4 day weeks) and a great weekend this week.
To start off...thank you so much to our awesome friend Taylor Hackett, and Pat Cracknell for answering our call for Tim Tams. We received 2 packages containing 4 packs of Tim Tams each and are happy campers now :)
Sam taught at a PRU school Monday...which is for kids that get kicked out of mainstream school. Some wear ankle bracelets...it's a bit frightening. She had a very funny discussion with one of the boys though during a lesson about the menstrual cycle (in a class of 3 boys with a male teacher). Essentially this 13/14 year old boy just couldn't wrap his head around the fact that girls "bleed" for a week every month. He asked a bunch of questions and kept coming back to "EVERY MONTH?!" He also calculated that girls have their period for about 6.2 years of their lives. She had the opportunity to get a contract until the end of the school year in a year 1 class, so Tuesday she went into that class for the day. They were an amazing class, but full-time over here is just not what she wants right now so she turned it down. Wednesday she had a day off. Thursday she taught a SEN class of 7 Autistic boys. She had a wonderful day with them. Friday she taught high school Art. It was pretty good for a high school day, the other art teacher was really supportive and the kids were pretty talented.
I had a great week. I started off in year 5 in a new school...a great school and very nice class. They had a lot of questions about my family and pets back home so I made a little slide show to show them. Tuesday I had another new school, and it was a big trek...all the way out to Essex. I taught a mixture of kids in years 5 and 6. Wednesday I got to go to one of my favourite schools...an all girls prep school, teaching year 4 for the morning and then my favourite, elementary PE. I got to play cricket for the first time. Thursday I went to a school that our friend Mary has a contract at, and taught a year 5 class. It was a really fun day. Friday I had the day off, so I ended up going for a nice long run around the area that we are living. It was a gorgeous sunny day so it was wonderful.
We went to they gym Wednesday and I kicked Sam's butt...it felt great.
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| What are you doing? "I'm horizontal running" |
Friday night we had a lazy night.
Saturday we headed out on the town...up to Notting Hill area.
It's a gorgeous area, and was a very pretty day.
There's a big market there called the Portobello Market. We wandered through there for a few hours...it was huge! Lots of antiques, and clothes, and food, and weird nick-knacks. We also found the blue door that Hugh Grant's character lived in in the movie Notting Hill.
We headed home after that for dinner, then headed back out to meet our friends Brianne and Mary in Balham to go into Piccadilly Circus.
We wandered around up there for a few hours before heading home again. It was lots of fun.
Sunday we got all countrified to go to our concert.
We got ready early so that we could go up into London for a bit before the concert.
We ended up around Waterloo Station...wandered up by the Thames for a bit
then through this food market where we had an early dinner.
We then headed towards where the O2 stadium is. We decided to take the cable car from Royal Victoria Docks across the river to the stadium.
The docks area was gorgeous and the cable car ride was really cool. Great view and such a pretty day for it. We got to the stadium and of course had to get our jumping pic before heading in.
We were curious what the crowd would be like here (figured there would be a lot of Americans and Canadians). It was a big crowd, a lot older age-wise than we expected, and lots more Brits than we thought.
The concert was phenominal!!! It was super long...started around 4:30 and didn't finish until 10:30.
Chris Young kicked it off with a full set of songs. He played straight through, not much chit-chat. He was great. The Band Perry did a lot of hyping up the crowd. They did some fun, country versions of "Fat Bottom Girls" by Queen and then "Timber" by Kesha and Pitbull which led into their song called "Chainsaw". It was really fun. Then Rascal Flatts came out and rocked it. They are AMAZING live. They added in "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars to lead into one of their love songs...it fit really well. They finished with an encore of "Life is a Highway" and killed it...we may have gone nuts when they sang "The Khyber Pass to Vancouver's lights".
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| Life is a Highway...cuts right before the above mentioned part. |
And of course, Brad Paisley finished out the night (Sam and I guessed the order of the first 2 artists pretty easily, but spent a lot of time trying to guess the order of Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley...apparently Paisley is pretty big here). He kicked serious butt live.
His guitar skills are crazy
He's funny and really connects with the crowd. He even took someone in the front area's phone to take a video from up on stage, sang to it, then took a selfie! It was so funny. And we were jealous.
We had so much fun. Transited home, and were absolutely exhausted and half asleep on our last train and then bus home. By the time we got home it was after midnight and we both woke up really early that morning (me at 6, Sam at 6:30...stupid not being able to sleep in). So our sleep was short...5ish hours, and up for work.
We ended up a Clapham with 4 others for an hour before we both got sent to a school to be TAs for the day. It was our first time at the same school, so that was nice.
It ended up being a Muslim school and was a very different experience for both of us. It was a lovely school and nice kids.
We had a great week and weekend...thanks for reading.
We out.
Lisa and Sam
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