Changing Times...

Hi team,
Tonight is the eve of Mandy and I moving house which just seems to be a good time for an update; this and a couple other big upcoming changes in my life out here I want to tell you all about...

First, yes, Mandy and I have finally found a place to call our own and tomorrow I spend the day moving in and decorating! It's bitter-sweet because leaving Ange will not be easy-it means not having dance parties on the drive to work because Andy, our new landlord who will now be taking us to work, is not much of a top40's dance party kind of guy...Don't think he'll be into trashy TV and chinese food nights either so that will be different...
But, on the plus side, I am REALLY looking forward to having a normal sized room-goodbye closet! and a place to call my own:)

Another HUGE change is that, as of Jan2012, I will only be teaching PE at Tollbar! Once again, bitter-sweet news because I have really enjoyed teaching and getting to many of my students and feel like I have grown so much as a languages teacher. But, on the other hand, I am really happy that I will no longer have to be in-between two departments and will be able to really get to know one group of people-PE people are really awesome too which helps:) I just feel so much more at ease with this department, they are more laid back and so helpful giving me all the support and guidance I need which is great!

Another exciting upcoming event is that of MARG AND ROSS coming to visit!!! It will be very nice to have a little piece of Canada come here for an English Christmas:)
(the rest of you, feel free to come see me ANYTIME!)

The French trip (another pro of having been in French first term) was really awesome too. I had so much fun being with the kids outside of school and just getting to know them better. One of my worst students was on the trip and said to me "hey miss, I actually really LIKE you on this trip!" to which I replied: "ya, I actually like you TOO!" I have had no problems with him since getting back to school which has been great. But yes, seeing the North of France by bus and going to cheese and chocolate shops, a bakery and Europe's biggest aquarium for free was pretty sweet! This trip definitely made me start to think twice about teaching because I just found myself so much happier spending this sort of time with the kids rather than having to keep them SILENT in a classroom working...Made me wonder if I wasn't destined to be a camp counselor my whole life? yes, parents, I know: there's no pension in that career..but seriously, I just feel sometimes that disciplining and being super strict with kids drains me of my joy and passion for teaching and makes me feel tried and discouraged. Guess I am still trying to figure out my own style of discipline while trying to fit into the requirements of this school...
Teaching PE is different though because it's less SILENT and more management and SAFETY precautions which I just seem to be able to handle more naturally. I'm sure there will be plenty of new challenges to be faced in the New Year taching full-time PE but one thing is for sure: I get to wear track pants everyday!!!YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Well, I should get my rest-gotta have max. muscle strength for moving tomorrow but will post pictures of the new pad when it's looking good and will be sure to post pictures of the rents visit/Christmas all happening in a week!

Hope you're all enjoying lame Christmas tunes all over the radio/malls and the all-out crazy Christmas decorations/lights you have back home (they are SO TAME in England..)

Cheers!

-Nat x

teaching French in Thai?!

oooooooooooooooooook so basically this week has been the CRAZIEST, toughest week I have ever worked. I am putting in 12-hour days in the school, coming home, working some more and sleeping.

I.have.become.a.robot.

I work, eat, sleep and teach somewhere in there too. There are a lot of exams at Tollbar. They want us to register a lot of marks. They want us to write a lot of reports. I had my first parent's evening tonight. I am going on the French trip next week and need to plan my coursework for while I am gone. This coming Friday I am getting observed and evaluated by the Office for Education Standards of England and Tollbar cares a lot about how this goes. My head hurts.
Seriously; ROBOT.

Why am I doing this again?? Mandy and I keep telling each other that when we make it through these two crazy years, we will be able to do ANYTHING. That usually keeps me going...

I just wanted to tell you all that this is what I am going through; no more thoughts of France for now, just work. Lists and lists of work. Something interesting today though-what I see as a ray of sunlight in this chaotic time-is that I have received a new student in one of my French classes. Her name is Peeka and she is from Thailand. She does not speak a word of English. I have to teach the kid French?! We had a lot of fun on google translate today-I would write in English things like "how are you?" and she would read the Thai and respond...I taught her 1-10 in French because she knows how to write out numbers one to ten so as I pointed at each, I would say them in french and, in this moment I realized that French is a really STRANGE language. It really made me realize how different pronunciation is from one language to the next. I tried to teach her to roll her r's and that you pronounce the J jjjjjjjjjjjj instead of "y" like in Spanish...we laughed a lot. I looked and sounded ridiculous. But we had fun and she brought me  great joy. It is going to be interesting figuring out how to teach her. Looks like I might be picking up some Thai this year!

Parent's evening was fun too. I enjoyed meeting the parents, seeing where these kids come from-some of the look SO MUCH like their parents-I tried not to stare too much...I should get back to marking, distracted break OVER. Back to robot mode.

Ah but first, I will leave some scripture that my father just left with me-a favorite of mine that could be an encouragement to anyone going through a tough/challenging time right now...
Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.
-Isaiah 40: 28-31
Just when I think I am running out of steam and just might have to call it quits, God comes through with just the right person or word of encouragement to get me through:)

Will update more sometime this weekend to let you know I survived this week!

Cheers,

Nat
x

I want to live in France.

Bonjour mes amis!

So we're back from the trip of a lifetime: ten days discovering the South of France!
Coming back to Grimsby was not easy-I decided to miss my flight to Manchester from Paris to get an extra night in...or it was an accident and I went shopping thinking that when the airprot tells you your flight is delayed that also includes the bus shuttle taking you 10km to the plane itself but no, I was wrong and HAD to spend an extra night in the city of love:) I called up an old friend and stayed at his place and had a really great last night in France!

Mandy and I in Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris

We saw so many beautiful cities (the whole time I was asking myself why I live in England..?) and the biggest thing that stuck out to me were the people we met along the way. The locals we met and befriended were so proud of their cities and so eager to show us around! We started in this beautiful city called Annecy which is on Europe's cleanest lake and on our first night we met a local named Arnaud who offered to take us to his city the next day for an hour-long hike on which we got to see a panoramic of amazing mountains including Europe's highest peak: Le Mont Blanc!

 On a river cruise, Annecy

The view from our hike by Arnaud's town, Aix Clement

Our next stop was Nice but on the train there, I got to talking to yet another local who convinced us to take a day trip into Monaco which was only 15 minutes away from where we were staying. We took a short train ride the next morning and walked from a town called Cap D'ail along the Cote d'Azur to Monaco and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful things we saw all trip!

 The view from the walk to Monaco...

 

 Takin' some time for yoga:)

View of the city by night from the Prince's Palace

We also made our way to Monte Carlo lined with designer shops and fancy cars which was quite a switch from the natural beauty from Annecy and Cap d'Ail..

Our final stop before returning to Paris was Marseille where we stayed at the friendliest, cleanest and best hostel of our whole trip. Right when we arrived, we signed up for a day trip to the famous Calanques (something we'd read about and planned on searching for on our own the next day). 

Within an hour of arriving in Marseille, we were on a bus with new friends from the hostel and went on a sunset tour of the Calanques we would have never gotten on our own.Our guide was a local who was so passionate about his city and the area, he told us stories and history and led us to the perfect viewpoint to watch the sunset.

 

On our way to the top with our guide Nabil and new friends from Australia and Germany!

 

Nabil brought oil that he'd flavored using herbs from the Calanques and which had been steeping together for

 three years..soooo good with the cheese/bread:)

 

He also shared Marseille's traditional drink with us-cheers!

  

After sunset, we hiked back down in STYLE sporting headlamps which we had a lot of fun with...

The next day we toured the city and enjoyed dinner and a night out with all of our new friends.. 

Chris and Gerald workin' the model poses

Le Vieux Port, Marseille

Some Cathedral...

All in all, this was a fantastic trip on which we Canadians made many new friends (some strange, some helpful but all so friendly and welcoming!), we discovered the beauty of the South of France and I officially want to move there. Laurent the local from Monaco mentioned looking for a tutoring job for me...hehe

As for now, I am happy being back here (not the part where I have already started work and planning for next week-our languages department is getting evaluated so going back has a lot of extra pressures..) but seeing our housemate Ange, catching up with church friends and other Tollbar teachers has been good. I'm glad we have at least one more weekend of vacation before work starts up again!

Closing comment: I almost forgot that Halloween was this week because no one here seems to get as into it as we do in Canada. Tonight we drove by a house decorated with cobwebs and a pumpkin (pretty standard Halloween front door set up for us) and Ange (our English housemate) was in shock and had to slow down driving to take it all in..I have been made fun of before for being "too enthusiastic" about things and this must just be yet another thing we Canadians get too enthusiastic about!

We Canadians carved pumpkins tonight and tomorrow night is a costume party at fellow Canadian Laura's house so I should get my fill of Halloween candy and festivities:)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, enjoy the pictures and take a trip sometime to the South of France-but be warned you might not come back;)

Cheers,

Nat

x

Half Term Time!

Heya!
Hope you're all enjoying the Canadian paradise I have been hearing about-30 degrees and sunny sure sounds nice from where I am! It seems that the weather here has finally decided to show us Canadians what it really means to live in England; I haven't seen the sun all week and always seem to be greeted by a gentle "mist" every time I step out the door...But hey, I love in Europe so I'm not complaning!
A WONDERFUL perk of teaching out here: The next two weeks we're on half-term break and  Mandy, Chris and I are headed to FRANCE for ten days. We'll be touring Paris, Marseille, Annecy and Nice in the South! I'll be sure to post many pictures when I get back but, for now, I'll leave you with some pictures I took of a nearby city called Lincoln...

 Day Trippers: Mandy, Morgan and I...

Climbing up narrow, cobble stone streets to get to the Lincoln Cathedral...

I quickly found out why this street was called Steep Hill!

Lincoln Cathedral

It was a classic, rainy, English day made complete with some sandwiches, chips and a pint at a local pub:)

Hope you all have a great next couple weeks, I am off to France and will share stories and pictures when I get back!

Cheers,

-Nat
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Regaining a "grip" on things...

Ok so first thing's first: I have learned A LOT of new words/"proper" words for things and the "Grip Story" I am about to share is a little sample of just this...
So last week I was teaching PE to my favorite classes (yes, teachers DO have favorites), it was a Netball lesson (yes, I teach a sport I have NEVER played that is basically a weak version of basketball) and we were working on passing so the girls were in pairs passing to one-another. Suddenly, one of the girls came running up to me looking quite concerned and stressed saying: "Miss! Miss! I've lost my grip!!" So I thought she was talking about having trouble catching the ball-totally expected because they are a low-band which basically means that they are not sporty, quite scared of the ball and don't have much hope of catching it..so I respond quite enthusiastically, encouraging her that "that's TOTALLY FINE, we all loose our grip on the ball sometimes, just pick it up, try again..you'll get your grip back in no time!" This didn't seem to assure her. Her face still looked worried and now she also looked a bit confused. She started pointing at her hair and responded: "No, no Miss, my GRIP, I've lost my GRIP!!" So now I'm thinking, wow, poor girl's been trying to catch the ball with her head, NO WONDER she hasn't got a grip on the ball..So I tell her that she's gotta catch the ball with both hands, encourage her that loosing one's grip is so normal when you're learning something new and to keep trying. She wasn't getting it. Well, I thought she wasn't, but it was actually ME who wasn't getting it. It took her then removing a BOBBY PIN from her hair, holding it up in front of my face and her pointing at it saying "MY GRIP...I'VE LOST ONE OF THESE!" for me to get that the poor girl was just trying to tell me she'd lost one of her fancy bobby pins (like I said, LOW-band PE class here..) so I responded "OHHHHH YOU'RE BOBBY PIN!!!" which, to a group of young, English girls, is a HILLARIOUS saying to have their young PE teacher say because it's apparently what "old ladies" call them...ya, we all had a good laugh about it. my lesson was DEFINITELY not affected my the laughter or jokes to follow that incident...hehe
POINT BEING: the English say things a wee bit differently here and it's taken some getting used to but I think I have made some good progress over the last couple weeks. I now say "you alright?" when walking by people (learned after much confusion it's just like saying "how's it goin'?"...they don't actually think it looks like something's wrong with me..). I now call my pants TROUSERS (asked a guy where he got his pants and had him pull up his briefs to find the tag...whoops)..I use the toilet, not the washroom (got some pretty weird looks asking for that one..my friends literally thought I needed a place to wash myself in the middle of dinner..haha) and dinner is TEA (it's a drink as well as a full meal..gets confusing sometimes).

School is getting better and better. My "bad" class is dwindling down (one girl has changed schools, another is on a behavioral contract and another is in "inclusion"-basically a portable for all-day detention- all week) so it's becoming more manageable and I am getting through full lessons now with that group which feels pretty good!

I have started playing basketball with a group of people that play in a men's and women's league locally so they all scrimmage Tuesday nights, the guys practice Wednesday nights and the girls are on Sunday so I have been getting lots of playing in going to those which feels awesome!

This past Saturday Mandy and I visited the infamous Chatsworth house-aka Mr. Darcy's house and it was so amazing! It took so long to get to that we basically only had about an hour to see it-I shall be going back for sure-but the grounds, gardens and of course the house were absolutely beautiful!

Walking through fields of sheep was a new experience!

 

The garden had some interesting sculptures up...

Today after church, I had some new friends show me around a local town where we had lunch (they call it dinner), visited an old minstrel and walked through a local park filled with streams and lots of beautiful trees.

The river right outside my place in Grimsby:)

Along the road from my place to City Church...

 

Walking through the town of Louth...

I have really been blessed with new friendships over the past couple weeks. Meeting new people through basketball and church and getting closer to people at work and my two housemates has made this whole transition so much easier. Having other Canadians going through the same adjustments as I am and having local friends so eager to show me around their towns and teaching me the ropes is so awesome, I have such an appreciation for everyone in my life over here.

 

The crew in front of Louth cathedral

I had a lot of trouble settling into this new job. It gets really hard sometimes and there were moments in the weeks that passed where I wondered if I had made the right decision in coming here; if I had what it takes to do this job, to adjust to this culture and to really benefit from my experience out here. I am now at a place where I feel more confidant and really hopeful about everything. Maybe it's my new friends or perhaps my old ones and family back home encouraging me so much; maybe it's the progress I have made with even my toughest of classes or maybe it's all of that PLUS the fact that half-term break is two weeks away and we're going to Paris and the South of France!!!!!
Many pictures will follow that adventure!

I hope you are all doing well in our beautiful Tim Horton's-drinking, washroom-using and bobby pin-wearing land where my students think it's the LAW to own a moose...
I miss you all dearly and would love updates from you all:)

cheers,

Nat
x

Voiceless.

So, week one done..only hundreds more to go!
I really have mixed feelings about my experience so far. On the one hand, I am having so much fun, I'm loving my PE classes - mostly lower-leveled groups that are so uncoordinated but play with so much heart- the staff I work with both in languages and PE are so helpful, supportive and friendly. But on the other, there are many differences in the system here that are making my start a little more challenging.

I teach 2 grade 7 classes, 1 grade 8 and 4 different grade 6 classes for a total of 13, 50-minute periods a week. That's 7 groups of almost 30 kids I have to learn the names of...and that's French. In PE I have an addional three groups that I teach so that's a total of 10 different classes equating to about 250-300 names I have to learn. sweet.

I've already lost my voice.

My two grade 7 classes are known by teachers all around the school for being so bad and I feel anxious about teaching them again. I'm really trying to figure out where I stand on the whole disciplinary scheme of things; I am really struggling to comply to strict school codes while remaining true to myself...

Last night a bunch of us got together at Joelle's (another Canadian co-worker) and it was just really nice to just have some time to laugh and hang out...This week was pretty tough and like I said it's turning out to be a tough adjustment so I would really appreciate your continued prayers and thoughts:)

-Nat x

Lovin' Leeds!

Hey guys!
Just thought I's post some pics from our trip to Leeds this past weekend:)

 This is the huge indoor market-apparently the biggest in Europe where you can get anything from art to clothes or fresh local foods

 Millenium Square-lined with retaurants and it even had a huge screen playing soccer so everyone could watch from their tables!

 Some new friends...or strange men just wanting to be in the picture...

 The Corn Exchange Plaza filled with specialty food shops-too expensive for our budgets but it made a good picture!

 My first taste of a Belgium, strawberry beer-so good!

The crew in front of a mini Big Ben

Some sweet cathedral in Millenium Square...

I can't believe that it's already Wednesday and I have training tomorrow! I get to meet my department heads and the rest of the faculty (I'll try and take some pics if it doesn't seem creepy or unprofessional...) and we'll start planning courses for Monday! I am so nervous to meet the kids; apparently Tollbar is pretty intense about discipline (their school motto being "Tollbar Means Buisness!" - yikes)..Our hostess Angela was telling Mandy and I stories about the kids she's made cry and was laughing the whole time so I am guessing things may be a little different over here. I wonder if they're gonna be able to wipe my smile off and I'll come back a very serious, no joking kinda woman...?

I've been trying to picture how day 1 is going to go..trying to imagine how much trouble the kids are going to have with pronouncing Dumoulin..maybe I'll give a prize to the one who come the closest-I've never heard Brittish kids trying to say it! 

In preparation for PE (not called phys.ed. here - Angela set me straight on day 1) I have been watching youtube videos explaining Netball rules, positions and tactics cause apparently I'll be teaching lots of that to the girls classes..the PE people told me it was similar to basketball and I shouldn't have trouble and I believed them until I watched these videos and saw 7 girls on each team running around a court with specific positions displayed on their jerseys, shooting at a net with no backboard! Right, just about the same as basketball. This should be interesting...

I'll let you know how training/week 1 goes-I appreciate your prayers/thoughts:)

p.s. It seems I was wrong in saying you could post comments so feel free to message me or just comment on the wall for this group!

Cheers,

-Nat x