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I know, it’s been too long. I haven’t any excuse except that have been extremely busy since heading back to London.

I have a job, sort of. I am working “indefinitely” with a Yr 4 class. No one knows how long for really but it looks like it will be a whole term which is fantastic. The advantage is that as I am not on contract with them I am still being paid daily supply rates. The disadvantage is that I am working my butt off trying to understand a different curriculum, different standards of assessment etc.

It is half term in a week and a half and as much as I would like to go somewhere I think I am going to stay in London and relax. I want to do a few London sights I haven’t seen yet, like Richmond Park and Hampton Court and I also plan to get a massage. St Paddy’s day in Ireland is going to come up fairly quickly and after that it’s Turkey for ANZAC Day. No other trips planned yet but I’m sure it won’t be long.

One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging is that I usually blog at Starbucks but I am proud to admit I have given up buying a daily coffee! It was my New Years resolution and I have so far kept it. I am now having one of those Nescafé frothy things, which is pretty good. One box of eight is about the same price as one Starbucks coffee so I am going to put the money I am saving towards a holiday.

Will be back soon with more details.

Appreciating Friends

I can’t believe it is just over two weeks till I return to Australia. Crazy, just crazy.

I am coming back to see my best friend get married and I can’t wait. Chelsea is a friend who has always been there through some massive times in my life. She was the only friend who visited me regularly when I was in hospital and I am so glad I can be there to celebrate this time with her.

Catching up with people will be fantastic and I am going to be able to celebrate Christmas with my family before flying to Scotland for new years with some new friends.

I feel lucky that I have already met some great people here in the UK. My housemates and I hang out and go out fairly regularly and I also still catch up with people I met during my camping adventure.

Yesterday I took a trip to Southampton (about an hour and a half south on the train) to catch up and watch one of them play in a football match. Note that you are NOT allowed to call it soccer. I did that in front of a group of year six students the other day and got paid out mercilessly.

It is getting cold and wet here. Until the other day, I only owned one pair of everyday shoes (plus my runners) but have invested in some awesome polka dotted wellies on eBay (for £3!) and I am also planning to buy a pair of boots. So I will be all set for winter. I am really hoping for snow! Maybe not in London but at least in Scotland.

For New Years we have a three day trip around Scotland including the Isle of Skye before celebrating Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

Can’t wait to see you all.

Teaching in London

I’m writing this on the tube on the way home from another day at work.

I have been working at a Church of England school yesterday and today in a Yr 4 classroom. It has been a lovely school it is so nice to be at the same school and in the same classroom for more than one day.

By the end of this week I will have visited four schools that were completely new to me. That’s four days of trying to find the school, meeting the staff, meeting different children, trying to learn 30 new names (120 names by the end of the week.) like Mubarak, Mohammed, Muhammed, Abeisha, Abshetha, Rotimi and my personal favourite Chardonnay! In seven weeks of teaching in the UK I have visited 17 different schools.

Working out the times and lesson plans each morning can be difficult, some teachers are extremely organised and have things running on a very tight ship but I was in a class the other day where a teacher has been in the same room for 20 years and looks like she has never thrown anything away. She had lots of porcelain cats everywhere and no one could find any of the children’s books.

The structure of lessons is very different to Australia, maths and English lessons are often scheduled in the afternoon when the kids focus is at their lowest. All hell will break loose if you change the lesson order.

I like to be out the front of a new school by 8am, often this means leaving the house by 6:50am. I know I can’t believe I do that either! But it’s too stressful if I’m late and not 100 percent sure where I’m going. Sometimes, like today I don’t get home till 6, usually though I’m home by 5:30.

Schools place a lot of emphasis on their marking, each piece of work must be acknowledged and not just with a tick! Often work will have a whole sentence comment like ‘Timmy don’t forget to add capital letters and full stops to your work’ the irony being Timmy is six and can’t read the comment. I think it’s mostly for the parents benefit. So I do spend a lot of time marking, I usually try and have morning tea in the staff room to meet the staff and spend the majority of my lunchtime marking. If I didn’t do this I could easily be at school past 5pm.

Children start formal school very young. I taught a nursery class this week of 3-4 year olds. Some students had only turned 3 in August. Their schooling is play based but they do wear a uniform and are assessed and expected to sit at school gatherings and listen.

All this sounds like I am complaining, but I’m definitely not. I haven’t had a bad class yet. There is one school I have told my agency I wont go back to, but that was not because of the children but the staff.

Going to new schools each day is challenging, but the benefits I am gaining are amazing. Getting to see how different classrooms are run is fantastic and the confidence I am gaining in myself and my teaching is invaluable.

My agency have asked me if I would like to take on a full time position. I have thought about it but don’t think I would take on anything more than a term. My Aussie housemate who came to the UK at the same time as me has taken on a job until July 2013. Although the guaranteed income would be great there is a lot of accountability that comes with it. And lets face it, I didn’t move to the UK to gain a career.

Well my train is about to pull into the station. Hope you enjoyed my rambling!

Zombie Zombie Zombie heya heya

On Saturday my Aussie housemate and I went out on a zombie pub crawl. It is held every year in London to raise money for the homeless charity St Mungos. It basically is as easy as it sounds, you get dressed up as a zombie and move from pub to pub.

Getting ready to go was pretty funny, we tried to convince our English housemates to come along, however they were pretty reluctant to get dressed up, although one of them agreed to meet us later “when it was dark”. We didn’t put a massive effort into our costume. £2.50 cotton tops from Primark covered in food dye and some black and white face paint from the pound store and we were set.

Traveling to the starting point on the tube was hilarious, lots of stares and comments (it was only 1pm!) we tried to smile and wave at any kids we saw so they weren’t too scared and we even got some high fives from some brave ones. We also got stopped for lots of photos. My favourite thing to do was to stand next to people at traffic lights and wait for them to notice me and freak out. It cracked me up every time. London people are funny though, they don’t acknowledge each other so it was nice to get some reactions and make people laugh.

Here are some pics of my day. The pubs were a lot of fun, very busy and crowded but it was a great friendly atmosphere.

All ready to go out with my housemate.

I love this picture, great memory of London

Dad, meet my future husband. Ha ha just kidding

My housemate and friends.

I had a lot of comments and questions about my forehead. Not sure if you can tell by the pics but I have a flap of skin hanging down, exposing a rather nasty wound.

How it was done is very simple, I didn’t use latex or anything fancy. I literally glued a couple of layers of tissue to my head using ordinary white glue. When it dried I peeled it from the top of the tissue down to about halfway. I then painted the exposed skin black, and then added red food dye (in paste form) on top. Simple! For my skin I used a mixture of white face paint and a cheap mud face mask. As the mask dried it made my skin look cracked and peeled and even more dead!

This is the house that crap built

Time for an update on our rental house.

Negotiations have progressed with our landlord regarding the mold situation and I finally convinced her to come and have a look (and smell) of the kitchen.

She came over with her handyman (I use that term loosely, he isn’t very good and I’m not being mean just honest.) He speaks little English which is tricky and so far his inspection of the mouldy kitchen has consisted of knocking on walls and seeing what sound it makes. He also shrugs a lot and puts his hands in the air.

But anyway! Our landlord came over and I showed her the extent of the mould, under the kitchen skirting board thing, behind the washing machine, in the cupboards and she was actually very receptive. She is going to have her handyman take apart the dishwasher and remove the washing machine to try and find the source and has contacted her insurer for repairs! Success! She even admitted that a coat of paint wasn’t going to fix it like she initially said!

I also asked her if I could organise a quote to have the carpets cleaned as they haven’t been done in two years and we are all new tenants and she agreed to that too!

I think she might be someone who comes across quite harsh in emails but is much more personable (?) in person.

Stay tuned as repairs start to happen!

The Paralympics – An amazing three days

I have spent the last three days soaking up the atmosphere of the Paralympic games. I was very fortunate after stalking the ticket website for about a week to secure tickets to Excel, athletics in the stadium and swimming in the Aquatic centre.

Friday I literally spent the enter day at Excel (9am – 7:30pm!). I had a day pass which entitled me to jump in and out of the different courts as much as I liked. I was able to watch sitting volleyball, judo and powerlifting. In some bizarre way I really liked the powerlifting! No idea why, it’s not exactly a fast paced sport, but it was really interesting. There was one devastating moment when a GB powerlifter didn’t make his final lift and just lay down on the floor and cried. It was heart breaking.

I also loved the judo, once I got the hang of the rules. It is very exciting when the athletes manage to flip their opponent onto their backs scoring an ipon (100 points and automatic win!) It is especially amazing when you remember all the Paralympic judo players are visually impaired.

The day ended with some very exciting sitting volleyball, very similar to able bodied volleyball however the net is much lower and players must keep one butt cheek on the ground at all times. There was one awkward moment when one of the players limped off court and I cried out “oh no he is injured!” Only to have my friend Bec remind me he is a paralympian and was missing his right foot. Whoops! I seriously got so into the game I had forgotten.

Saturday morning was spent in the Aquatic centre watching the swimming heats. This was really exciting as I was able to see lots of Aussies performing well. And again, the sheer determination of these athletes is phenomenal, very inspiring. The picture below where it looks like a guy fishing in the water is actually a photo of a tapper who taps the visually impaired athletes to let them know they are approaching the wall.

Saturday afternoon we were waiting outside the staff entrance to the velodrome for a friend when Jody Cundy the GB paralympian came out. He met up with a reporter and cameraman from Sky News to do a sneaky interview. Sneaky because Sky is not the official Paralympic broadcaster and is not allowed to get interviews. Broadcasting officials put a stop to the interview pretty quickly and while they argued with Sky News I got a picture with Jody. Unfortunately the reason I recognised him was because he was the cyclist who had to be removed from the Veledrome the day before for swearing and carrying on after he was denied a restart. He was very gracious and friendly though and I somehow switched into ridiculous fan mode. I think I actually said something like “ooh your medal is so heavy.” How original.

Sunday, my last day in the Olympic Park was spent at the Athletics. I am so glad I got to see the stadium. Highlights included watching Australia win gold and singing the national anthem, watching GB win gold and hearing and seeing the crowds reaction, seeing the Paralympic flame and cheering the paralympian who was two laps of the track behind the rest of the pack but still managed to finish the race. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

I feel so fortunate to have seen both the Olympics and Paralympics. Absolutely unforgettable.

Notting Hill Carnival 2012

Yesterday I went to the Notting Hill Carnival with one of my housemates. It is called the biggest street festival in Europe but neither of us had any idea what to expect.

It was massive, loud, in your face and awesome. I had a whole lot of fun and have vowed to come back next year and get on a float.

The festival is a celebration of (mostly) Caribbean culture. There was plenty of rum (in two days they get through 25,000 bottles of it!) goat curries, jerk chicken and Jamaican stout.

It is also 50 years since the beginning of independence for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago so the celebrations were extra large.

You know the festival is going to be good when the guide they hand out tells you “if you want to have a good time drink neat rum. Don’t drink beer as you will spend all day looking for the toilet” and “if you don’t know what to do, just act as un-English as possible”

The first thing we saw, a dancing knitting granny – very cool.

This was all part of the chocolate float, which covered everything near it in chocolate. Definitely the best smelling float!

I love it when the police are willing to get in on the fun.

The theme behind this float is that the mops and brooms are all decorated by children who a taught to sweep away insults, rubbish and crime. Plus it looks amazing!

This kid was very cool.

So who’s coming on the chocolate float with me next year?

Jamie Oliver’s Recipease: Pasta Masta

I stopped in Notting Hill the other day to have a look around at the Portobello Rd Markets and stumbled across Jamie Oliver’s new store Recipease. It opened three days ago and is similar to his other two stores in Brighton and Clapham Junction.

On the Recipease website Jamie states that “For a long time now, I’ve wanted to create buzzing little community hubs where people can really get involved with food.” That is exactly what I walked into, abusy little store with lots going on. They have cooking classes both upstairs and downstairs, lots of fresh bread and herbs everywhere and plenty of cooking equipment.

I had a quick look at the classes they were offering and signed up for one for the next day! They were really reasonably priced, anywhere from £30-£60 which includes the meal you cook and eat in store plus some to take home. They serve free beer or wine as you cook too!

There are plenty of course to choose from, some skill based such as knife skills, boning meat, filleting fish and others are more specific such as their Japanese Taster or

You may now call me a Pasta Masta (helps if you say it really fast in a ninja accent).

I chose pasta as I had recently made it with a friend (Hi Karon!) with varied success using Jamie Oliver’s pasta machine which, although cheap was absolutely hopeless! I cracked up laughing when I saw they don’t use his machine in store, I think it has been a bit of a flop for him.

I had a great time at the course meeting some lovely foodies like me and although I knew the basics of pasta making I got some great hints and tips and some simple sauce recipes too.

Here are some pictures of the course. I plan on making some pasta soon and posting the steps they taught me.

How to tour like a cheapskate

I’m gonna start this post by reminding everyone I’m on a budget! Exchange rates people!!

Continuing on my Starbucks Tour of London (don’t visit Earls Court they don’t have power points) I ended up at St Paul’s Cathedral the other day. After having a chat to my Dad I decided to check the Cathedral out. I knew nothing about it but figured it would be interesting to see.

Imagine my horror when I discovered that it would cost me £15 to enter the building. Now a lot of churches I have visited in Spain, Italy etc ask for a donation but I don’t think I have been to one that charges for entry. That was pretty much it for me as I really can’t afford to be splashing money on churches right now till I noticed a sign that said no entry fee for those wishing to worship. (Here’s where the no judgement comes in) so I told the guard I was here to pray and walked right in*

The church was beautiful, and I did respect their wishes not to take photos so you will just have to visit someday. Whilst I was in there I remembered that there was the famous whispering gallery somewhere and great views of London. Unfortunately when I got to the door up to the gallery they were checking tickets (no entry fee, no ticket) but just behind me was a large tour group so whilst the guide was talking to the staff member I snuck in with the group.

I was severely punished though with 528 of these.

After 259 steps you encounter the Whispering Gallery. Which is a large circular balcony looking down on the centre of the Cathedral. It is named because you can stand on one side of the gallery and whisper into the wall and be heard on the other side more than 20 meters away.

Another 109 steps up to the stone gallery rewards you with these views.

Thats the Shard on the right, which I happen to think is quite ugly.

If you are loving the steps you can keep going going another 152 stairs to the Golden Gallery. Be warned though the stairs start looking like this.

The views up the top were fantastic and definitely worth the climb.

On the way down I noticed some old graffiti which I thought was pretty cool.

* I did actually buy a candle and light it for my family in Australia.

“I’m the only Aussie in the village!”

I have moved into my new (and hopefully last) accommodation. The only way I could afford to stay in London while the Olympics were on was to camp, tent style. There have been several campsites set up just for the Olympics. Prices for camping run are about £15 pound a night for a non-powered site. It is still expensive, however when you compare it to a hotel room it is very very cheap. The hotel I was staying at in Earls Court has raised its prices from £35 pound a night to £120 a night. Thats for a shared room, with three others and a shared bathroom with the rest of the hotel. Crazy stuff.

I quite like camping, I know some people were worried about me camping on my own (cough Mum & Dad cough) but since I have arrived on Wednesday my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. I was fortunate enough to be given a tent by some Welshians (may not be a real word) I met in Croydon. Its a great tent, practically new three person with a separate storing area. Perfect. I didn’t come with any other real camping gear as I wanted to wait and see what I might need.

The campsite is on farmland and is about 20 minutes from Olympic park on the tube which os where many of the Olympic events are being held. It’s literally a 2 min walk from the station but as I walked up I had two fire marshals help me manage my bags and show me where reception was. I had more help with my bags being carried to my campsite and plenty of offers to help me set up my tent (I was stubborn and wanted to try to do it myself). I am set up next to three other girls who are also staying by themselves, one of them has lent me a spare mattress to save me buying one. Another guy across from me is letting my use his fridge and another neighbor has said not to bother buying a mini BBQ just use his! Everyone is overwhelmingly friendly and generous.

Many of the people staying here are volunteering for the Olympics, as fire marshals, secretaries, guides, drivers. The amount of their own time and money they have put in is phenomenal. They must pay their own accommodation and are on 10-12 hour shifts.

Last night we all watched the Opening Ceremony together. There is a big screen in a marquee provided and a bar and shop as well (although you are welcome to BYO everything). It is nice to be around people who are actually excited that their country is hosting the Games. I have met so many Londoners who complain about the traffic, the costs, the crowds. I can understand, but still you have to stop and think that this is once in a lifetime stuff.

As I mentioned in the title I am the only Australian staying at the campsite (plenty of Germans, Italians and obviously British) people get a real kick out of my accent and try to mimic me. I bought out my stubby holder from Jen and Matt’s wedding last night and that was passed around with fascination (It was difficult to explain the Poosa part).

I am having a quite day today after the celebrations last night but am off to watch the Women’s Cycling in Richmond Park tomorrow.

Did you watch the Opening Ceremony? What events are you looking forward to seeing?

Love Shell