It’s not easy to say goodbye

So after spending most of half term painfully homesick… And really trying to analyze why… I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing in my life feels terribly concrete right now.

I honestly feel like I’m living one good bye to the next. You’d think I’d cherish the time I do get to be reunited with friends but perhaps I’m not so positive as that. As soon as I go home for a visit, I’m thinking about having to say good bye again. It’s even worse in England because I have absolutely no intention of staying here permanently, or even that long, so all my relationships feel false. I’m scared to let people in, because I don’t want to be hurt by good byes.

I’m scared to go home too. I’m worried relationships and people will have changed. I know I’ve changed. Will my old friends still want me? Will they get annoyed when I say, “Let’s go to the cinema” the way some British people do when I say theatre? These things are not really big, life altering problems, but they are still uncomfortable.

I think that is where I’m at. Trying to shape my life when there is little directing it. Just measuring the time from one goodbye to the next, because what else is there really? The next goodbye is actually ages away, but even still, I can’t help being reminded every time I’m with my friends here… That it won’t last.

Anyway, Paris and now being very busy back at work has almost completely cured my immediate and aching homesickness (though I’ll always miss Canada a little). I’m going through a post homesickness episode phase though that I like to call ‘pride in the moment’. It’s when you listen to a lot of music that celebrates living recklessly in the moment, or sacrifices and goodbyes being worth it… and then also live like that.

Currently on repeat is “Save Tonight” by Eagle-eye cherry. Check it out- 90’s classic and something that describes a lot of moments I’ve had in the last year.

Other good ones:

Atlas hands- Benjamin Francis Leftwich
Against the grain – city and colour (Canadian)
Fake Empire- the national
Reminder – Mumford and Sons
Pelican – the Maccabees

I’ll stop there but there are tons. -Celebrating how I’m living my life… Something I’m going to start doing more of.

Paris pictures

Stolen from my friend Dan.

Pancake Tuesday

Pancake Tuesday in style at the request of my British housemate. He requested a stack of American style pancakes and my condition was the acquisition of real Canadian maple syrup. After some heat in the kitchen over whether my pancakes would be fluffy enough, the goal was achieved. And it was delicious.

Graves all around

Can you count all the graves. We went to a beautiful park today and stumbled upon this amazing cemetery. I don’t think they could have crammed more people into one spot. This photograph shows a less crowded but over grown part of the cemetery. Most famous person buried there that I knew-> the author George Elliot. Anyway. A lovely walk and the sun even came out for us today.

Changing of the Guard

the walk down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace

Just a pretty scene near Buckingham Palace. The frost was glittering in the sun.

I think they put all their best looking officers on duty that day. 🙂

Some marching soldiers.

I got a day off on Tuesday and even though it was very cold, the sun was out! I took the opportunity to go see the changing of the guard. Something I’d been interested in seeing when I was backpacking around the UK and Europe a few summers ago but never got the chance to see. Since my friends were all working, and had shown no interest in going, I took the chance to go on my own.

It definitely was not what I was expecting. It was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday morning on a cold December day. There were lots of tourists. I met some people from Australia, Korea, Japan and Ireland. Those were just the people I was standing near. There was a lot of standing to be done.

I arrived about 45 minutes before it was due to start and just got an ok spot to see the show. Buckingham palace always looks much smaller than I’m expecting it to. The whole event wasn’t actually what I was expecting. They marched in behind the gates, following a marching band. The band played for a while (mostly Michael Jackson hits, believe it or not) and then the other guards marched out of the gates following the band once again. There were two different kinds of soldiers and I do not know the difference though. You will see in my pictures what I mean.

It was definitely worth going to… I am happy that I have now experienced it, but I would not necessarily class it as a must see, unless you have lots of time to kill in London, like I do 🙂

Some random mobile pics.

Here are some unedited pictures from my phone. The first few are Guy Fawkes night. Two of my house mates came with me to see the largest fireworks display in London at Blackheath park. That was pretty fun. The fire works lasted almost half an hour! My neck did have a bit of a kink after that. It was nice just to spend time with the people I live with though. Our schedules are just so opposite from each other. They are really cool guys. Then there is a picture of the Thames from Greenwich on the same night. There is graffiti that was scratched into the back of a train seat that I believe says, “Cautious Diamond” and finally a picture of me. Not snapped for the purpose of this blog. It shows how long my hair is getting though so I thought I’d include it…

I’m still experimenting with the best and easiest way to upload pictures. I’m so far behind on this… expect a few more picture type posts so I can get through a lot of the pictures I’ve take over the last few months. 🙂

Some Random Pictures

Out and about for a walk, I couldn’t get over how big these trees were.

To try and illustrate how big they are, here are some fallen leaves next to my feet.

It is, isn’t it?

I do go out a lot, but I rarely take my camera. It is only light here until about 3:30 and it is always a grey dull light. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to compensate for the poor lighting. My photos are looking quite dull. 🙂

A teaching update.

So, I’ve been teaching at the same school for five weeks. This should be enough explanation for why I haven’t been updating my blog too much. Well, it would be enough of an explanation if you are a teacher. I cannot believe how much work I have put in over the last five weeks between the marking and planning. It’s hard enough when it is your first year teaching… but learning an entirely new curriculum, set of school routines, expections, and marking scheme on top of that is near impossible. (or so I thought).

Thankfully I’m done at that school for now and I can take a bit of a break and just supply teach for a little while. Supply teaching has it’s own ups and downs but what is great is that at the end of the day, I can come home and relax without worrying too much about it. Each day, more or less is a fresh start.

I was just teaching grade 6-9 (in Canadian terms, since most of my readers are friends and family from home). It’s quite difficult to adjust my own teaching education to adapt to the needs of students several years younger than I am used to, but I enjoyed the challenge. I really enjoyed teaching grade 6 and grade 9 but that equally reflects the classes I had, not just the ages.

Noteworthy events: Often staying twelve hours at school and giving the caretakers a fright when they come to lock up the english building. Meeting a few young teachers who were pretty cool, took me cool places and made me feel at home. Many students connecting with me, including two boys in particular who have severe behaviour problems but were golden for me.

Ok… actually I’ll pause there to share an anecdote. One of those boys, who behaviour I just called golden, came up to me one day with a book in his hand. He said, “Miss, I found YOUR book… here you go.” “Oh thank you, but I have a book here”, “No miss, this one is yours” “Haha, ok, thank you” … then I turn to see another student in tears on the ground and I run to his aid. Later I find out that while I was writing the page number on the board, this boy who had just been so sweet, had strangled the other student because he thought he had my copy of the novel. Although he got into a lot of trouble and I had to do some restorative justice so that the injured student would feel comfortable in the class again, I still couldn’t help but feel like I’d made an impression on this young boy. A small accomplishment, but I got him sitting quietly through lessons and reading so…. not too bad.

I suppose there isn’t anything outrageous that happened to me while teaching at this particular school outside of London. I did not … at all, in any way, enjoy the work load…. but the staff were friendly and the students… could have been worse.

Tomorrow I’m back to supply teaching… waiting at the station at 7:30 to get the call… we will see how that goes… hopefully, I don’t end up teaching reception again (age 3).

With love 🙂