Life started! Yay!

My life here seems to have finally started.
I walked to school today (a walk of roughly 30 minutes) to meet Lorna who is in charge of the assistants at Pate's and she gave me the guided tour of the school. I just gotta say 'wow'. Pate's doesn't make the impression of being a school at all. It doesn't look the least bit like any school I've ever seen. Firstly, it has carpeted floors everywhere, the sixth formers have common rooms (not an invention of Harry Potter, then) with small kitchens even, there are computer working places all over and when I waited for Lorna at the reception I was startled to see a Toshiba flatscreen hanging at the wall whereas an even bigger one is hanging in the senior library. So, all in all, the school seems to be quite posh as is the rest of the town - which isn't a bad thing at all ;)
Lorna also seems to be really nice. She handed me a map to find my way through school which will be very useful considering that I wouldn't have found my way out today. She also told me that she'll try to get us assistants a day off, so that we can do stuff together. Then there was a short explanation of what will be expected of us which sounds quite reasonable. The assistants usually work 12 hours a week, mostly with small groups of students with the main aim to get them talking (including discussions with the sixth formers as a preparation for their oral exams). There might be some of the more clever primary school pupils coming over to learn a bit German and I was asked to teach them a bit, since they probably won't be needing me the whole 12 hours anyway ;). Additionally, I wa asked to help them correct some of the essays languagewise which is fine, obviously (although...they might want to wait until they've seen how bad my German really is, hihi).
There'll be a teaching programme for all the assistants in Gloucestershire at Pate's on October 15th . We will have started teaching by then, but anyway...Working life starts next Wednesday (Oct, 1st) at 9am and I think I'm even looking forward to it.

After the meeting with Lorna, Sandra (one of the French assistants) picked me up and we spent the afternoon together which was really nice. She has her car with her, so we drove into town, went to Starbucks (why didn't anybody tell me that Frappuccinos are cold?!), did a bit of shopping (Tesco's, that is) and went to her place (not what you think ;) ). She lives here with her boyfriend who is still looking for a job. He seems to have a bit of a rough time, since he is not particularly convinced by his English. We had a nice conversation, though, and both of them were really hospitable. Since we got along so well, the three of us will be going out for a beer on Saturday evening. There you go, I had a great day today and will let it finish with a film...maybe Die Einsteiger...who knows ;) Thanks for reading and have a good night!