We're Gathered Here Today To Witness The Joining Of This Blog Post With The Week-End It Depicts In Awesomely Matrimony...

Well, it was quite a crazy second half to my week last week in which a lot changed around here. First off, as most of you already know I am now a full time Drama teacher! Well, at least until the Christmas holidays. Most likely the position will continue on into the New Year for at least a couple of weeks or so but I’m not going to get my expectations up too much at this moment. I have guaranteed work for the last 15 days of the schools year and I could not have asked for anymore than that J. Once I finish up the two week break for the holidays then I’ll start worrying about how long this position might be going for. I want to also take a moment to thank everyone for their kind words and thoughts. It makes me feel really good to know I have so much support behind me back home and you guys really keep me going over here. So much love!

Alright, so last Thursday I had my last day at Bishopsford of this term. Obviously I was pretty excited for this because the school I’m at now is a lot better in a number of different ways. Going in for my last day this term I just wanted to coast through the day as much as possible, assign the work, supervise, and get back home and ready for my next day at Cheam. Obviously the powers that be could not allow this to happen and thus my most eventful day at Bishopsford had to be my last. The beginning of the day was alright actually….just agonizingly slow. I just had to assign work for my Year 10s to accomplish and then waited the hour each time for the (seemingly) uber slow clock to hit the one hour point in each lesson. My period three class was a bit hectic, it’s a small class that has a lot of bottom set students in it and they were acting out a bit in the class. One student in particular ended up having a football in class and was kicking it around the classroom and heading it back and forth with a different student. I really, really didn’t want to have to go through the process and getting it taken away because that would have ended up keeping me back at the end of the day so I told them to put it away multiple times. Unfortunately they chose not to heed the warning and so I didn’t have any problem solving it fast. I had to call Patrol in to claim the football and the student ended up giving him some serious attitude and getting escorted out of the class. After this class I had the same class again for a Sport BTEC (exams that are less difficult than GCSEs) class. Luckily their regular teacher was there to set up the lesson before heading out and I would supervise them. The student from the previous lesson came into the room and needed to get work to bring with him to do in the Principal’s office. On his way out he decided it might be a good idea to smack another student on the head with his workbook (bad decision number two on the day). The other kid just snapped, got up, and proceeded to punch the student in the face LITERALLY in front of their regular teacher. The other teacher and I snapped into action immediately and took the punched student out into the hallway while I jumped at the door handle and held it shut with one hand whilst holding the punching student back from being able to get out of the door. Luckily the other male students in the class sat him down a couple of times and tried to calm him down before a bunch of senior management came in to take them out of the lesson. Just ridiculous and for something so small. Needless to say I was ready to be heading home by the end of this day.

To be honest I don’t really have that much to report on the events of Friday for school. Apparently the teacher who I am covering has an awesome Friday schedule with only two classes during the day and the first one isn’t until period three. I only a Year 7 and a Year 8 class and they were quite lovely actually. The rest of the time I just chatted and came up with some plans with Alexis and Lucy on what to cover and expect in next week’s lessons. There’s also an Inset Day (PD Day) on Friday next week in which they will be doing departmental planning and I was invited along to get some more information on how the school and department works.

On Friday night the week-end began and it was AWESOME. I was prodded (quite easily I might add) into heading up to King’s Cross with a couple of my flatmates to go to an event known as “Power Ballads”. I feel like this title should tell you everything you know but I’ll give a little music lesson for those of you who I just lost 25 words and one punctuation mark ago. A “power ballad” is pretty much any arm-pumping, head banging, held note dominated, rock out song from the Eighties or Nineties. Basically think bands such as White Snake, Bon Jovi, Meat Loaf, Heart…I’m sure you get the idea. Evidently the guys who were DJ-ing it thought Miley Cyrus belonged in the same category but I’ve been slowly trying to remove that portion of the night from my memory. We were completely pumped for a night of epic singing, dancing, and air guitar awesomeness. As most of you know I have a stupid memory for song lyrics and they came in very handy this evening. The venue itself was actually pretty cool, you wouldn’t expect the club atmosphere that’s inside looking at the outside of the building. This place was completely decked out too with smoke machines, periodic confetti cannons going off, and a female attempting to swallow the entire neck of a blow-up guitar…..I’ll let you visualize that for a moment……..yeah…….take it as you will. We ended up rocking out on the stage, singing to a ton of songs (whilst semi-shredding some vocal chords along the way), and finally heading out at around 2:30AM. Once getting outside of the venue it then became apparent that we really didn’t know how to get back home considering the Tube doesn’t run that late. After figuring out we needed to take three different buses to get home we caved and took a £40 cab to get home and crash.

Saturday rolled around and I woke up with my voice feeling like I just went on three consecutive Bands road-trips. I’m still coughing periodically right now as my throat recuperates….completely worth it though. On this day I was treating my flatmate Brittany to her first (and only) English football experience. She’s been here for over a year and had never been to a match so this was a must for her. We headed into Fulham to catch the Lilywhites take on Birmingham City. After arriving a little early we headed to the pub for a couple of pints and then rolled out to the match. Our seats were AMAZING!! I mean I did pick them out myself online and that’s why I was so excited. We were on the Putney End just to the right of the goal in the very front row. The players were almost directly in front of my face as they came into the box or were gathering for a corner kick. It was amazing to see some of them so close! On the other hand….it was f%&$ing COLD!!!!!! England is currently experiencing some heavy Artic winds blowing down from Russia and it is nasty cold right now (“But isn’t this like summer to you” says every English person I know before I metaphorically punch them in the face). The match ended up a 1-1 draw with Fulham coming back in the second half. An alright score for such a bitterly cold evening. After the match I ended up meeting up with Nate and some other friends for post-match pints in Putney while Brit headed home to warm-up. We ended up home soon after and it was soon to bed.

Sunday I woke up relatively early to run a few errands in the city. First off, I finished my Christmas shopping!! What in the world is up! I just need to figure out how much it’s going to be to ship things back to Canada but at least it’s all bought. In my travels I ended up walking passed the Tower of London. I had completely forgotten that the ice rink of open at the Tower and spontaneously decided to go for an hour skate while I was there. Now…I’m a mediocre skater at best. I’m not amazing but I can take solace in the fact that I am light years ahead of the skating abilities of almost every person living in this country. It was HILARIOUS (in a rather macabre way) watching people falling left, right, and centre. Kids falling, parents falling, parents falling on top of their kids (yeah), and whole families falling together. Almost 75% of the people didn’t let go of the boards so they could keep their balance and meanwhile I’m just kind of trucking along around the rink. It was funny watching their jaws drop when I was doing crossovers while they’re struggling to push off to get some speed. I’m bragging in any way because at home I suck in comparison to other people, but at least I can be a bit cocky while I’m here ha ha ha. In the evening I ended up going to see the new Harry Potter movie (awesome!!!!) with one of my other flatmates, Kim. Once we got back home it was time for a quick Skype with the family and then off to bed.

Overall, quite the epic week-end and definitely one of the best I’ve had since arriving here. I had my first day of my full week at Cheam today but I’ll leave that for the mid-week school blog post. I’m helping out in some directing of their school musical this year, “Bugsy Malone”. Unfortunately I’m not familiar with this show at ALL so I have to sign off and get cracking on reading the script (conveniently located beside me). I’m off to bury my head in a book and until next time:

Cheers and Love Y’all!!

Erik

P.S. if you haven’t heard any of the new Kanye West, Kings of Leon, or James Blunt albums I highly suggest you do because they are quite enjoyable. I’m also seriously into Mumford and Sons and Belle and Sebastian if you get a chance to hear them!