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):

Saturday: Gloucester and Clubbing...errrm....

On Saturday, Viki and I went to Gloucester to see the Cathedral which is very beautiful, stunning and even cosy in a way. The cold in the old building didn't exactly appeal to us, and there was a very strange exhibition in the Cathedral by some Swedish church in which bullying and Jesus' life were strangely thrown together, but apart from that, it was brilliant.

Viki eyeing the strange exhibition which used very subtle metaphors.
Parts of the Cathedral from the outside.
View from the inner garden.
Gloucester Cathedral lent its cloisters to the Harry Potter film team and, Viki and me being big fans, we not only had to see the locations, but also to reenact certain scenes from the film.
Viki giving her Severus Snape impersonation (notice the demonic red eyes which were totally intended!)


Expelliarmus!


Here lies some important chap whose name I've forgotten. He was a son of William the Conquerer's who died imprisoned by his brother. The reason for taking this picture wasn't his historic value, but the way he lies there which looks incredibly uncomfortable.


Later, we went to see the historic docks where we found the reason for the number of seagulls living here (water, who would've thought) and the Black Pearl!



In the evening, Thomas finally acted on his promise to cook for us, so we had homemade burgers and chips. Later, Thomas' flatmate, Angel, and a friend of his, an Italian bloke named Marco, joined us. Marco ticked all the boxes that an Italian needs to tick to fulfill all the clichés. He basically used his hands to talk, wasn't exactly subtle in his hitting on Sandra, commented on all the beautiful girls on the telly, etc. I loved his accent, and in general he seems to be an okay guy.
Originally, we wanted to go out clubbing afterwards, but Viki wasn't feeling so hot because she was still struggling with a cold, so we left after a nice evening at around 1am.

German Visitor

Viki arrived on Friday afternoon and we spent the day hanging about the house and walking through town. I volunteered to cook and after the nice Buletten à la Wilfried, we met Thomas, Francois and Sandra at Bentleys for a pint.


Viki was introduced to our drinking companion Wii and I had the impression that they got along fine. Viki is welcome to contradict me here, though. Fortunately, her Mario Kart Wii skills weren't better than our's, so no one managed to rank higher than 11th place. Out of 12, that is.


Viki had an interesting conversation with J about the Minotaur's (see blog picture) penis which is kinda big (note that J+M have a minitiature version of the statue in their living room that spurred the conversation). Anyway, Viki begged me until I took a picture of her with the Minotaur and Hare. Again, Viki is welcome to give her point of view :P

I know I'm not a good blogger anymore. But not a lot is going on, so I rarely know what I'm supposed to write about.
What happened? Let me see...
I assume you know that England got a lot of snow last week, but little did I know that the English are such weather wimps. The public transport system in London stood still (including the Tube, I would like to know how that's possible ;) ) and schools all over the country closed for a few days due to the state the roads were in. The result (schools closing) doesn't suprise me as much as the roads not being gritted properly. They don't exactly keep a stock of salt or whatever they use, because they rarely have that much snow, hence they run out fairly quickly when they do. The grit was just enough for the really big main roads, everything else was just left as it was: slightly smaller main roads, pavements. This time the next door neighbours' children had enough snow to build a three part snowman. Anyway, Pate's was closed on Thursday and Friday which was quite nice and today everyone also hoped that it wouldn't open because we had quite a lot of snow again last night. The new lot has already melted, so no need to close. Hrmpf.

Some weeks ago when I put out the rubbish to be collected the next day, a woman stepped up from behind, her dog on a leash. She asked me whether the bins would be collected the following day which I affirmed. Then, she asked me if I would mind her putting her dog's poo bag (at that point she held up that black bag about whose contents I'd just got informed) into the bin. Niiiice and probably the strangest question I've ever been asked.

We're going to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tonight, then there are two more days of work to do before half term aaaand Viki coming over. Plans for when Viki is here: drinking, clubbing, Gloucester (incl. original locations of the Harry Potter films) and probably Oxford.

Update

One of my pupils got beaten up on his way home after a night out last weekend. Apparently it was completey unprovoked which makes things so much worse. He was in hospital on Monday and Tuesday, and I saw him when he came into the language office last week and I was shocked, because by the looks of it, the beating was really bad: black eye, bruises, he even had to get stiches. I wonder how high the hopes are to find the culprits. I also wonder how safe it really is to walk home alone when it's dark.

It was Sandra's birthday on Wednesday and we celebrated it on Thursday evening with quite a lot of booze (yes, I admit, it was too much for me ;) ). Sandra made burritos, we had beer, vodka, rum, scotch tape and my Super Nintendo!


I just love that picture! She had just downed a glass of alcohol.
Things I learned on Thursday evening:
1. I'm rubbish at Super Nintendo when I'm drunk.
2. Don't drink another beer just to pass the time.

J + M are still in London and have been since Wednesday. Thus, I've lived unhealthily for a change and haven't left the house since I got home from Sandra's on Thursday. Ben's sister stayed for the weekend, so Sandra and Ben were busy entertaining her. Next week will be rubbish, because I have to start teaching my extra lessons with year 11. GCSE questions! Hooray! 'Wie ist deine Alltagsroutine?' over and over again! Looking forward to it!

On her last day before her maternity leave, Lorna gave me more work to do which, in principle, I don't mind doing, since I'm still working less than what they pay me for, but the extra lessons are at such inconvenient times. One extra lesson is Thursday, period 1, a day on which I usually come in for the third period. She also stole me one of my remaining three free afternoons in two weeks, whereas my French colleages are only in three afternoons per fortnight. Well, I'm not too happy about that, but I'll live...probably.
The weekend was fine. We met at Sandra's and Ben's on Friday evening and played on my Super Nintendo. Unfortunately, Ben had to go to work again at 11pm, but the rest of us still enjoyed the games and the Foster's.


Sandra and Thomas were crappy at Super Mario Land, so I was responsibly for finishing levels after they had lost all their lives. Sarah once again stepped in to save the day, hehe.



Yesterday evening, we went into town, this time Ben could join us and we had a few drinks. Today, J+M are taking me to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire which has just won the Golden Globe for Best Film. After the film, we're going to a pizza place. Eating out is a fairly good idea at the moment, since the dishwasher broke. Mike had managed to keep it going for a few more days, but yesterday, it decided it doesn't want to live anymore. The new one will be delivered next week and until then, I hope, no one will use up a lot of dishes.

My biggest problem at the moment seems to be that I'm fighting a fight I can only lose. One of my DVDs came with some kind of theft protection and I just can't get it open. Since I had another DVD like that with which I didn't have a problem I assumed the new one would be just as easy to crack...it's not. I might just have to decide that the film is rubbish to make myself feel better...

See for yourself. How the hell am I supposed to get that red thingy out of the black thingy?

Internet - best invention since fizzy water...when it's working

The first week has passed and everything is fine. We had snow (my first snow ever in England, yay!), but it's melted again for which I'm grateful in a way, because it doesn't provide me with excuses to take the bus to school anymore. There are major differences between the English and the Germans in handling snow: 1. no one clears the pavements of the snow, 2. English snowmen consist of only two balls. Very strange to my continental eyes, but maybe that's because the English never have as much snow as we have, so they have to see how far they come with what little they have.
So, here is a melting British snowman.


School is basically back to normal, although I was a bit amazed to see all of my pupils show up (note, I wrote that before today, Monday). I suspect they've realised that the exams are drawing close. I don't mind since it's better for my heart and my blood pressure anyway.
There is news from the language office: Sam's boyfriend has proposed to her. On Boxing Day, he told her she had an hour to pack her bag and then took her to Frankfurt am Main, which is one of her favourite places, and asked her there. Sam's comment to us was "It was our eight year anniversary. It was about damn time!" It's great to see her on cloud nine, she's been grinning all week, hehe.
Lorna is going on maternity next week and the new head of languages, Ferosa, has assumed her post. I just hope she won't make us work harder than Lorna did ;)
It was very good to see Sandra again. The other one seems to miss France even more than before the holidays. No comment!

I'll do it the Thomas way now and only allow my newly aquired DVDs to find their way onto the shelf once I've watched them. Unfortunately, that leads to them piling up next to my bed as you can see.

I've arrived safely in England again after two weeks of pleasant Freizeitstress. It was good to see so many of my friends again, thank you. And to those I didn't manage to see: sorry, but we'll catch up at some point ;)
Watch out for high quality pictures sponsored by my parents who were kind enough to give me a nice digicam for Christmas.