School

I spent the last week invigilating (fancy word, eh?) the GCSE oral preparations. Damn, that's a boring job. Sitting in a tiny little office with two pupils at a time and seeing to it that they don't talk or get out dictionaries. In theory, the job sounds quite nice, because I can basically do whatever the hell I want as long as it doesn't make any noise. So I spent Tuesday reading a film magazine, but even that bored be after three hours. On the other hand, the Head of French said we'd get paid extra for the job because they would have had to hire someone anyway, so they can just as well pay us. It remains to be seen, would be a very nice bonus, though.
The job draws to a close and it shows: my year 13s had their orals two weeks ago, the year 11s last week and the year 12 will follow next week which also means that I'm going to get a new timetable for the remaining 2 1/2 weeks in which I'll have to work with the lower classes.
Considering I only have a month left, I should get a move on buying all the English DVDs that I want. It's a shame we'll only get paid once more. That's something I'm really going to miss ;)

Walk in the Country

I still don't quite believe what I've done...I actually went out for a five mile walk with J and M. We drove to Newent which is a fairly small town about half an hour from Cheltenham and we walked. I still don't quite see the point of walking without a purpose, but it was actually quite nice. The weather was fine, the countryside was beautiful. I really enjoyed it and that scares me.

London

I went to London at the end of March to stay with J.'s brother and his family.
I arrived early on Friday and had to spend the day in town, because my hosts for the weekend wouldn't be in before the late afternoon. So, I decided to do all the touristy stuff that I had last done when I first visited London. I'm not posting any pictures of the sights here, because 1. I have trouble uploading photos and 2. if you want to see London's sights, try Google :P

The English obviously still like their red phone booths, even in the times of mobile phones.


In the evening, K., his family and I went out for an Indian. After a nice meal, I was just knackered and wanted to sleep, because I knew I would have to get up early again the next morning, since I was meeting Saskia, a friend from Germany, and her boyfriend at Piccadilly. We decided to have breakfast together, so they'd have enough time to get to Portsmouth where they wanted to see a concert.


We did it the English way and had a full English breakfast and a pint of cider afterwards. It felt a bit weird drinking alcohol at 11 am, but since the pub was full of other people doing exactly the same, we eased up and enjoyed our drink.


After they had left me, I started wandering through the city again, went to The Old Vic, took the mandatory picture,


went on to Oxford Street where I found this shop which reminded me of Thomas' colleague whose favourite word is also the name of the shop.



Since I had mentioned that I'd quite like to go to the theatre, K. and his son J. were kind enough to get up at the crack of dawn to queue at Leicester Square to get tickets for the evening performance of The Pitmen Painters.

On Sunday, J. took good care of me. Him also being a film buff, we went to the local video rental store and got Bava's Bay of Blood and Bunuel's Simon of the Desert with which we spent our afternoon. J. currently works for a film label called Watchmaker Films which has released The Whole Shootin' Match on a very nice DVD. So, go and buy it!
J. is very interesting to talk to, he is full of stories about films, actors, directors and all the background information of film productions. He's about my age, so I figure all hope's not yet lost for me.

Ich mach das mal grad auf Deutsch...

...da ich mich mal ordentlich auskotzen muss. Aufstehen war heut gar nicht so schlimm, obwohl ich zur ersten Stunde rausmusste und mein Körper definitiv noch den Rhythmus vom Wochenende inne hatte. Blick aufs Handy: SMS von Benny, dass er seine Magister-Arbeit heute abgeben wird. Ich kann zwar mangels Guthaben nicht antworten, freue mich aber für ihn und hoffe, dass er im Laufe des Tages mal zur Packstation wandert. J+M sind heute nacht nach Madeira abgedüst, d.h. ich hab die nächsten 10 Tage das Haus für mich, auch nicht schlecht. Sobald ich das Haus verlassen hab, war meine gute Laune dahin. Bin zur Schule gelaufen, wie so oft, nur heute ist das Wetter wieder deutlich schlechter geworden und ich rege mich jede einzelne Minute des Wegs über den beschissenen englischen Wind auf. In der Schule angekommen, warte ich auf meine erste Schülerin des Tags. 20 Minuten zu spät. War ja klar...besagte Schülerin hatte ich im Januar zuletzt gesehen und letzte Woche hat sie mich gebeten, den Termin umzulegen. Kein Problem, solang sie denn auftaucht. Der Termin war heute und sie kam, wie gesagt, erstmal fett zu spät. Gespräch war aber okay, und danach kam eine meiner Lieblingsschülerinnen. So weit, so gut.
Dummerweise hatten sich für die dritte Stunde zwei Elfklässler für dämliche Extra-Sitzungen, die ich halten muss, eingetragen. D.h. normalerweise wäre für mich um 10.10 die Schule aus. So durfte ich erstmal bis 12.05 warten, um die beiden Elfklässler abzuhandeln (10 Minuten pro Person und dafür 2 Stunden warten?! Na danke!). Auf dem Weg zurück ins Language Office sehe ich, dass sie noch jemand für die vierte Stunde eingetragen hat (beginnt um 14.25!) Sauber. Nochmal 2 Stunden warten. An den Schulcomputern kann man sich die Zeit ja auch nicht mehr vertreiben, da alles, was halbwegs unterhaltsam wäre, geblockt wird (youtube, facebook, studivz, Filmforen, etc). Also hab ich spiegelonline gefühlte 231-mal aktualisiert. Die französischen Assistenten haben den Montag in der zweiten Woche frei (okay, Sandra muss für ne halbe Stunde kommen), ergo gab es auch nicht wirklich jemanden, mit dem man sich hätte unterhalten können.
Ich war heute morgen um 9 Uhr in der Schule und habe sie um 14.40 verlassen. Unterrichtet habe ich 70 Minuten, den Rest habe ich rumgesessen. Irgendwas stimmt hier doch nicht! Was für eine scheiß Organisation. Bin ich froh, wenn es Ferien gibt.
Als ich endlich diese Hölle verlassen konnte, war es natürlich immer noch windig wie Sau, nur hatte es bis dahin auch zu regnen angefangen. Heftiger Wind, Regen in der Fresse, meine Schuhe fangen nach zwei Minuten im Regen an zu lecken. Eben wollte ich mein Busticket für London nächstes Wochenende buchen, meine Karte wird nicht akzeptiert und jetzt spinnt blogspot auch noch! Spitzen Tag, aber auch! Ich hock mich jetzt vor die Glotze, mach mir nachher ein Nudel-Schinken-Gratin und will nix mehr hören. Für heute hab ich die Nase wirklich gestrichen voll!

Sometimes 'tomorrow' doesn't necessarily mean 'tomorrow' ;)

The weather was really nice on the day Viki and I went to Oxford. We even took off our coats while waiting for the coach. One of us was obviously trying to win the 'grumpy looks' contest. Guess, who.


In Oxford, we visited one of the most traditional colleges, Christ Church, ...


...where we accidentally found more locations of the Harry Potter films. Quote Viki "Hey, those stairs look like the stairs in Hogwarts." My answer "Yeah, but virtually everything in England looks like it could be a Potter location."


Found out that she was right, so we waited until the dining hall was cleared after the students' lunch, so we could visit Hogwart's Great Hall.


In a way we felt like humans from a lower class because quite a lot of the premises were off limits to visitors, which is understandable, but annoying nonetheless. But then, I wouldn't want to have tourist roaming Mainz university. Not, that there was anything interesting to see, but I think you'll get my drift ;)
After hanging about the campus for what was probably an hour and a half (because we had to wait for the Hall to be cleared), we went into a historic pub where we tried to be very British: we took advantage of an offer (two meals for GBP10), ordered fish'n'chips (with mashed peas which looked worse than they actually tasted), and I even had a pint in the middle of the day.


After our tasty lunch, we went up to one of the church rooftops to enjoy the view from above. The staircases were nothing for people with severe claustrophobia, but fortunately none of us suffers from that condition *cough*. The view was well worth it, though.



Viki, thanks a lot for the visit. It was brilliant having you here :)

A note to PC

I could also post pictures of blokes hanging about in shorts and t-shirts, but then, they wear that all year long no matter the weather. Here is a picture of the Cheltenham ladies enjoying themselves in the snow on the hockey pitch two weeks ago.


By now the snow has melted and the temperature is back to an acceptable level, although I almost expect it to get worse again, now that Viki has left, hehe.

Sunday: Laziness

We basically just relaxed on Sunday: we watched The Royal Tenenbaums and enjoyed J's Sunday roast. Since I don't even remember anything apart from that, it must have been a very lazy day ;) But then, we had to mentally prepare for our trip to Oxford the next day (about which I'll also write a few lines, but since I want to watch a film now, that'll have to wait until tomorrow):