My host family has been great about teaching me true English culture. After dinner we usually spend two hours talking. My brothers will be excited to know that in order to introduce me to English culture my host family has me watching Monty Python. This is also helpful in understanding inside jokes in the faculty lounge.
My family had me watch the movie Calendar Girls about a group of middle aged woman, belonging to the Women’s League, who pose nude but behind objects for a calender in order to raise charity funds. (Like the scenes in Austin Powers). Apparently the movie was a big hit and the idea of posing nude behind objects caught on to different companies. There were even schools in which the faculty made a similar calender. I don’t think that would ever fly in a US school!!
I have joined the town running club which has been great. It gets dark here around 3:45pm so the large group of us run around town in the dark. At school I have been helping out with the table tennis club. There is nothing better than beating a 13 year old who has given you grief during the day in a ping pong match. On Tuesdays during lunch I have started a basketball club. The first club meeting had a large turn out; it’s a great break during the day.
My favorite English adjectives:
wonky, fancy, saucy, lovely, smashing, crackling, posh

On Saturday several teachers took the school minibus to Cambridge to look around the colleges and shops (..and pubs). Cambridge is actually made up of several very old, beautiful schools. The town has many quaint English shops. I learned who David Essex is and got to witness the teachers singing to You’re Going to Be A Star, a definite highlight of the trip.
Sunday my host family and I went to the market in town then several of the family’s friends came over for a several hour lunch, it was great!
A special postcard for anyone who can explain the following foods that I ate this past week:
1. Bubble and squeak
2. Toads in a hole
3. Crackling
4. Bangers and mash
5. Triffle
(people of English nationality are excluded from the contest, sorry Samantha I’ll send you a postcard anyway!)

The field trip to the Tate Modern and the Tate Britain was a very quick, hectic trip. I forgot how loud a charter bus full of kids is and how much junk they can eat in a couple of hours. While the students were on the tour I quietly slipped away to test out the slides. The guy who designed them was an entamologist who studied the travel and communication of bugs… I guess this is how he justifies building a slide in a museum, either way I appriciated it. After traveling down the slides I had trouble finding my group and felt a bit ridiculous frantically running around looking for a group of kids while wearing a bright red sticker that read, “Tate: Visiting Teacher.” I did see Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure, a piece that my students at Homestead studied. The students were able to travel down some of the lower slides. After visiting the Tate Modern we took a boat down the Thames River, passing the Houses of Parliment, to reach the Tate Britain. This museum was beautiful. Before seeing any of the works all the teachers went to the museum cafe for cups of tea. I think I will always be amazed by the tea consumption here. No students fell in the Thames, knocked over any statues or got stuck in revolving doors (although they came close) so overall it was a good trip.

I am back from Paris. (mom sorry I didn’t get to call! phone problems). Paris was a whirlwind trip, we were constantly running from one site to the next. It was really great and I am so glad that I got to meet up with friends. I am amazed at the accessability of everything. I can’t believe that I was able to walk down the street and use public transportation to get all the way to Paris, all around Paris and back to Wisbech!!
I caught the train from King’s Cross and manage to see platform 9 3/4, I tried to jump through but hit the wall…bummer guess I don’t have magical powers. On the train ride back from Waterloo, London to Petersbourgh a group of rugby fans got on, beers in hand, singing, yelling and cheering. So it was a loud train ride and definitely something to remember.
Today is my first day of actual teaching, so far it is going well. I am trying to focus on observational drawing since it seems to be a weak point. I am trying to be animated even though I am still exhausted from the weekend.
This Wednesday I will be going on the field trip to visit the Tate and the Tate Modern in London. There are 70 students going on one bus! There is a new contemporary art piece at the Modern which is a 100 foot tube slide that goes from the fifth floor to the ground floor. I think we’ve decided that Ms. Baltes is going to test out this piece of art before letting the students try it out. It will definitely be something that the students will always remember.

I am typing on a French keyboard the letters are in different arrangement. On Friday I took a bus from Wisbech to Peterbourg, a train from Peterbough to London, two underground trains across London and the Eurostar train into Paris to meet up with my friends Bridget, Megan and Meredith for the weekend. We are having a blast. We went to the museé d orseé, Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, witnessed a drug bust, arc de triumph, Louvre, saw a fake shooting on the metro, Champs Elyseé, Moulin Rouge… pretty much everywhere an American Tourister should go! Our hotel is awesome and in a great location. I am completely frustrated typing on this keyboard so I will type more when I get back to England! Much love from across the pond, I miss all anyone who would be reading this!

I learned some new words yesterday native to England. After school I was in the gym and the (cute) gym teacher (with a fauxhawk and popped collar!) came in and told me that he heard I fancy footsie and asked if during a break in the day tomorrow I would like to meet him for footsie. I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently footsie means football… we continued our conversation about our favorite sports and teams. I told him that I love the Hoosiers; his eyes got huge, “What?!? you like hooters!” So then I tried to explain the term hoosiers and that no one actually knows what the word means but I think it was lost on him. So I’m off to play some footsie.

This morning in our faculty briefing a teacher announced that he had a special tool for fidety students… a koush ball! I talked to him after the meeting about the koush ball and he told me that he had been to an education conference by one of the Brisish educational leaders who discussed the “new” concept of kinestic learning. In the conference he showed the teachers a koush ball and explained that the student can squeeze it or bounce it on one of the bands. This tool is to be used by students who fidget during classes. hhmmm.. ok. Seems like a classroom disaster to someone who grew up with koush balls…
Here is my daily schedule:
Every morning I start my day with a cup of tea get ready go to school where my supervising teacher makes me another cup of tea; then I teach two classes and partake in the faculty tea break, teach two more classes, eat lunch with tea; teach my final two classes, head home, drink tea with the family, eat dinner, then drink tea before going to bed. I am beginning to comprehend why the Boston Tea Party would have made the British so mad, 342 crates of tea dumped overboard. (The pretending to dump crates overboard in Boston didn’t really portray the impact, although it was fun.)

Hardest adjustment- no basketball!! They have some basketball hoops but the students don’t seem to understand how to play. (They all “shoot like girls”) The girls play a game called netball which sounds like what my mom used to play, no dribbling, no backboards … hmm… I think I meet have to teach these kids about the sport. I’m wondering if it will count for my community service project for IU, it seems like community service to me.
Things I have learned and questions from my students:
Apparently George Bush died
“Have you met JFK?”
Elvis Prestely died of constipation on the toilet
“Do celebrities just walk up and down the street all day?”
“What famous people are you friends with?”
“Have you seen my rubber?” (rubber refers to eraser…)
Everyone in American drives fancy cars… (I didn’t even start to tell them about the Grand Wagoneer)

I made it over! After arriving in Heathrow I hopped on the bus to Queens Station to Victoria Grand Station. I walked off the bus and followed the signs to Victoria Station where my next bus was suppose to be not thinking that I arrived in Victoria Grand Station. I (aimlessly) followed the signs out of the station, down the street and around the block into the next building. While walking I noticed the large red, white and blue luggage tag that mom had put on my luggage marked AMERICAN TOURISTER… well… that got removed as soon as I saw it.. YIPES Looking at the schedules I couldn’t figure out why my bus schedule did not match up. I was very confused. I asked for help but the accent was so strong I could not understand it. SO I went back out of the building, down the street back to the original station and followed the signs again… it was this second trip that I realized I was at a train station and apparently hadn’t noticed the 20 some trains around me… so I walked back to the bus station and found my bus… rode the bus for a couple of hours and arrived at Wisbech pronounced Wesbeach. Gotta Run… long story short I’m here.

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere: the dew is never all dried at once: a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
John Muir