Weekend Trip: London & Cambridge

Good day! I am currently enjoying my half term break. If you don't know what that is, it is because you're stuck still teaching children in Canada. Ha. Take that. As we missed a lot of London when we were traveling back in May, we decided that it was the perfect time to go for a long weekend. Here's some interesting worth while (at least I think) things to do in London.

London

1. Tower of London
Jordon is more the history buff than I am but this is one thing you can't miss. Firstly, it's a castle in the middle of the city, don't see that every day and secondly, so many things happened here. You can see the Bloody Tower, the court yard where Anne Boleyn lost her head, some of the old torture devices...... okay so it has quite the gory history. We even saw a little boy running around yelling "Off with yer head!" You can join a tour every half an hour where they will share some of the immense history. If you plan ahead, you can find 2 for 1 tickets online making it only £24 for two people.

2. St Paul's Cathedral
A church is a church is a church...true most of the time, unless you are talking about this incredible building. St Paul's Cathedral has been home to many historic events as well: Nelson's funeral (his body is in the crypts of the Cathedral, which you can visit), Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding and Churchill's funeral. There is a Whispering Gallery that you can climb to and if you sit across the dome from someone and say something into the wall, they can hear it from the other side. There are two more galleries that take you outside. The picture right below shows the view from the highest one. An audio guide is also included in your admission cost. Again, if you plan ahead you can get discount tickets online. It ended up costing us £34. If you don't care about seeing the galleries or the crypts, you can go for service on Sunday or their evening song at 5:30 pm every night for free.

3. A Free Museum

There's that word again that I liked so much when we were traveling before. London offers a lot of free museums. There's the Natural History museum, The British Museum and The Victoria and Albert museum, just to name a few. The Natural History museum was packed as it is half term and it is probably the most kid friendly. We chose to go to the Victoria and Albert museum which had some pretty neat things, but I think we both agreed we would have rather gone to the British Museum to see things like the Rosetta Stone and mummies. That's next time for us. 

4. Take a Stroll in Hyde Park

Hyde Park is beautiful in the fall. The picture above with the yellow leaves was taken there. We went to see the Peter Pan statue and Kensington Palace, where William and Kate reside (the rare time they are in the city). 

5. A Free Walking Tour(s)

That's correct, MULTIPLE free walking tours. We did one of London (technically the City of Westminster, there are cities within the city, it's all confusing) where we saw Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the alley that inspired the set of Knockturn Alley from Harry Potter. We then did a Jack the Ripper walking tour in the evening where they took you to Whitechapel where all the crimes where committed. There is a pub still standing there, The Ten Bells, that was around during 1888. Take advantage of these. There are multiple companies and they are easy to find online. 

Cambridge

On our way back home, we decided to make a stop in Cambridge, which I think we're glad we did but it is a total let down. You hear all these nice things about the University, and don't get me wrong, it's amazing, but they want to charge you anywhere from £3 - £8 to enter each COURTYARD. Not the building itself, just to the grass through the gates. It's ridiculous. We snuck through some door to snap a quick photo of Trinity College which is below but I didn't think it was worth £8. It seemed a bit pretentious to charge us simple peasants to walk the grounds of a university we could never get into. If you do decide to go there, let me know if it was worth it. 

It was a whirlwind of a weekend and now I am working at catching up on Netflix, learning how to make a proper Sunday lunch and relaxing for the rest of the break.

- Vanessa xo

Learning How to Teach in the UK

If you have me on Facebook, you may have noticed I started sharing wonderfully silly situations I've experienced in the school system here. I am not a great teacher, I still have so much to learn on this career journey, but I was getting good back home. I was getting requested back, I knew how to take attendance, I knew that if they had music I should be taking them to a classroom somewhere else in the school and I knew I could look at the timetable hanging on the wall to let me know what time I should be transitioning into the next lesson....

Well, if you ever want to mess with your confidence as a teacher, try moving to a new country.

Here's some differences between teaching back in Alberta and teaching in the United Kingdom that my teacher friends can enjoy and where my non-teacher friends can laugh at my mistakes. You're welcome.

1. Take their Lunch Order
What? This is such a weird step in my morning. After I've done the registration (NOT attendance) I have to go through a list and find out which students have brought a packed lunch, who's getting a cooked dinner, who's getting a Jacket Potatoe (I still don't know what this is) and so on and so forth. I'm pretty sure I forgot to even send it to the office one day but luckily the TA was on top of it.

2. They have Books for Every Subject
You know how your parents had to buy you those exercise books and duotangs and scribblers and as a teacher you always bought some extras to have on hand? Those don't exist here. Every school I have been to will have about six or seven coloured coded books for each child. Every class in the school will use the yellow book for English or the blue book for Topic. I really enjoy this aspect because you can clearly identify with books they need to be using for which subject.

3. They mark EVERYTHING
And you have to use specific colours for your marking... "Pink is for THINK"... oh man. I was unaware of this on my first day. The next day, when I went to the same school the Head Teacher told me I didn't mark anything.... I ended up staying an extra two hours that day to do all the marking from the day before as well as the marking from that day. Needless to say I walk around during the lesson with my green and pink pens now.

4. It's Head Teacher, not Principal
But you already knew this.

5. They Take Security and Safety very Seriously
Check out that alliteration... and I thought I was loosing my touch. Every school has an wrought iron fence around it with a gate entrance that is padlocked at night. Once you get through the gate and into the school, someone has to let you through the first doors. At the end of the day, you have to go to where the parents pick up your students, a parent will come up to you and tell you who their child is and then you call them forward.

6. There's no Bells and No One Puts Up a Timetable
I can not stress enough how stressful this is! I never know when they're suppose to be going out for play time or starting to pack up for lunch or when we go from music to assembly to English to Spanish.

7. It's Maths, not Math
Bet you didn't already know this

8. Religion Plays a Big Role Here
Back home, unless a school was in the Catholic system you didn't cross much in regards to religion studies. Here, I've encountered it in some way or other in every school I've been in. Now this is fine and dandy, but I'm not religious so it's been tough listening to what they're telling these children like "Gods the only one who will be there!" while I'm thinking "Mmmm partial credit..." It'll be interesting teaching a religion lesson. Stay tuned.

9. You don't realize How Many Words are Different
Here's just a few examples. Sweaters = Jumpers. Bathrooms = Toilets. Pants = Underwear. Trousers = Pants. Eraser = Rubber. Fries = Chips. Chips = Crisps. I'm constantly messing things up.

All in all it's been a fantastic experience so far. I really am grateful for the opportunity to explore teaching through a new lens and get a perspective on the profession I don't think I would have gained staying in Canada. I'm getting into the swing of things and learning new things every day.

- Vanessa xo