Well, it has been quite an eventful week around here…and by “here” I mean Britain in general. As I know most of you have been hearing from either myself (or some other source out of the UK) it gets pretty mad here when it snows. I know, it seems like a rather ridiculous thing to think about. As Canadians we’re just so used to snow being a part of our lives in winter and we’re also well equipped to deal with it. Here in the UK however they don’t get it that often and it usually doesn’t accumulate that much. With a large weather system flowing down from Russia, Britain got hit….hard. People went absolutely mental around here because they’ve never gotten this much snow this early before…mind you it was just a couple of inches. We didn’t get hit as hard in London as they did up north and in Scotland, plus Surrey, Kent, and Essex were hit particularly hard. Cheam School is in Surrey so I ended up with a couple of days off this week, and here’s where our story begins.
Monday and Tuesday were actually pretty good days. I’m slowly getting to know my classes and most of them are really good. The Year 8’s are a bit crazy and hard to handle but I think I’ve mentioned this before already. My Tuesday schedule is also considerably lighter than the other days of the week so I had a lot of free time. I’m also getting set for the students performing their assessment tasks in a couple of weeks…yes, seriously marking! It’s like I’m a real teacher! For those of you who can’t find the rather large amount of sarcasm in these words…now you know. I’m also helping out with the school musical. The teacher whom I am replacing at the moment was directing the acting portion of the show so it’s been in a bit of disarray since she’s been out. They’re performing “Bugsy Malone” which apparently was a musical on film released in the Seventies depicting old Prohibition-era gangsters but played entirely by children. I think there’s supposed to be irony in there somewhere but it seems like a pretty fun show, at least I read it that way. I’m going to have the chance to take on scenes to direct and help while the other teacher directs scenes. It’ll help to get more done and faster and I’m really excited to get my practical experience to help me out. Tuesday was also the day it started to snow and so of course the kids went absolutely crazy that day. It was quite a battle to get them to not throw snow at each other. There isn’t really a strict policy about it because the snow’s not usually around that much to worry about it but teachers were being very strict about it that day. One kid did end up taking a snowball in the head and getting cut….kids just don’t have some sense sometimes. Everybody left as soon as school finished that day because they were worried about having trouble getting home. They were right.
I didn’t have any problems myself. The trains were still running without any issues at this time so I managed to get home without difficulty. The other teachers didn’t have it so lucky however. One of the other Drama teachers, Alexis, ended up stuck on the road just a mile away from the school, waiting for over an hour in standstill traffic, and finally having to abandon her car and walk the rest of the way home. There’s no comprehensive system for snow removal in the country and there’s also a massive shortage of salt for the roads. As a result there was a considerable build up of black ice on the major roadways, a lot of accidents, and people resorting to abandoning their vehicles. Most people don’t own snow brushes or shovels either so it was interesting watching them cleaning off their cars or driveways with whatever they had handy. Trains also operate on a third rail system that froze quite quickly in the very cold temperatures so people were stranded in train stations. Gatwick airport had to be closed for a couple of days and a lot of people had to bunk up at work because they couldn’t get home for the night. It was actually quite a nightmarish situation for a lot of people but still pretty crazy that this amount of snow would cause almost the entire country to ground to a halt. Now, I didn’t mind having a day off on Wednesday because of the snow but I lost a day of work on Thursday as well. It’s unfortunately because I can’t control the weather and it directly forced me to lose days of work which sucks. I guess that’s just part of life though. I did however end up getting work on Friday at Henry Compton School in Fulham. The schools closer to the main city didn’t get as much snow and the main roads were cleared pretty quickly because of the heavy traffic. They were open all week and they had a teacher out sick on Friday so I covered. It was a Food Tech classroom so I ended up watching a couple of classes cooking and got to taste some of it as well. There’s a technician that works in the classroom so she handled what they had to do and I just wandered around and observed. It was actually not a bad day and went by fairly quickly. I’ll hopefully be back at Cheam on Monday though. They’re going to be opening later than usual apparently because the site is still in rough shape as are the roads in the area. It’s been very warm out the last couple of days here however and most of the snow has melted so I’m thinking it shouldn’t be a problem.
Other than that I’ve had a pretty decent week-end. On Friday night I went with Brittany, Nicole, and Kim to the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland. It’s a really cool and massive Christmas market and carnival that gets set up in the park every year. I’ve been badgered by Scott to go check it out because he and Dusty went there together at this time last year when he was visiting. There are a ton of different shops set up selling all kinds of practical, crazy, or downright silly things. Lots of bars set up selling mulled wine, beer, and hot chocolate (which could be spiced up with a little Bailey’s if one was keen). Tons of different food options from your regular hot dogs, burgers, and cotton candy to bratwurst, crepes, Belgian waffles, and even a place that sold Haggis sandwiches (of which I might have to go back and check out). Plus there’s a skating rink set up and a bunch of different rides and games. It was really neat and set up right in the middle of the park in London, you really forget where you are when going through it. Afterwards, Kim and I met with a couple friends in Wimbledon for some drinks before heading home.
On Saturday I ended up sleeping in a bit and sitting around the house for the most part. We had people over to the house in the evening for a Secret Santa party before people all left and it was also a going away party for Brittany because she will be leaving us soon to head back to Canada. It was a fun party (a lot of people actually) and we ended up playing Christmas music all night and exchanged some funny gifts. We also ended up playing beer pong and for those of you who think I might have lost some skill having been over here…I dominated. When I come back to Canada it’s going to be on like Donkey Kong you’d better believe that.
Sitting here now I’ve got to sort out some script stuff for Bugsy tomorrow and then probably chat with my parents later on Skype about my week and there’s. I’m making up a scene breakdown chart for the show so we can organize rehearsals a bit better as well as breaking them up into scene groups to rehearse specific scenes simultaneously. I wasn’t asked to do it but it’ll help so of course I’m glad to do it. That’s another week in the books ladies and gents…only two more school weeks until the holidays start if you can believe that. It’ll be nice having some time off but I think I’ll definitely be looking forward to getting back to it in the New Year. Until then…
Cheers and love J
Erik
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