The things I forgot

There are definitely something’s I forgot about living in London. There are some great things and some annoying things. So here are my top 5 treasure and troubles of living in London which escaped my memory.

Treasures

5. When the sun is out, the parks are flooded with happy people. They really know how to enjoy the sunshine.
4. There is chocolate everywhere, so hard to resist.
3. Public transport is pretty darn good.
2. So many free museums
1. Cell phone bills are like 20$ a month and have unlimited data.

Troubles

5. It’s insanely expensive, twice as much as the rest of the country
4. Crowds, people everywhere… Can’t breath, so many people
3. Many places oddly have two taps in the bathroom, one for hot and one for cold on opposite sides of the sink, so you have to turn them both on and sort of go back and forth between scalding and freezing your hands
2. The prevalent paranoia surrounding friendly people and their possible motives (I gotta stop thinking this way, so uncanadian)
1. Tourists, if the crowds weren’t annoying enough, the hordes of tourists will drive you mad.

Back to London

Well I’m back in London for another year of torture… I mean teaching… Damn that auto correct. Due to the demand of certain friends and family I’m going to start blogging again to keep everyone up to date on what’s happening and what I’m up to.

For the accommodation update, I’m still staying with a friend until the 21st of September and then I get my apartment with two friends, another Canadian teacher and an Australian accountant. Further updates on that to come 🙂

The teaching plan for the year is, spend one term (until Christmas) teaching in one school, probably starting around October, and another school for the remanding two terms. We will see what happens though. For now, I’ll just be supply teaching, and waiting for a really good opportunity to come along. I’m not going to settle this year and end up somewhere as bad as last year (hopefully).

As for my first weekend back, it was very fun, though done on the cheap side and with severe jet lag. On Saturday we went and explored Greenwich market, my old stomping ground, and then took the tube to what will be my new stomping ground. I didn’t get to see inside my new apartment yet but we checked out the neighbourhood and walked from there to whitechapel. It was nice out and so great to see my new area. It put me and my friend Dan at ease to see that it’s a pretty nice area.

After that we went back to Greenwich to go up to the observatory to see the prime meridian. Even though I lived so close to it last year we never ended up going. We made the time this weekend though, it was fun. We saw the prime meridian (or the most widely accepted 0 degrees longitude- though some people use other ones). We learned a lot about how difficult it was to tell time on ships and how so much money and effort was put into developing an accurate way to tell time aboard ships. We even got to see a planetarium show, one of my favourite things! Finally, we went to covent garden and leicester square just to walk around and see what was on. After that, it was quickly home and in bed… I fell asleep so early each night this weekend.

Sunday was great too. After walking around Greenwich just a bit, we wondered to Hyde park. We walked through the park to the little man made lake and got on paddle boats. That was also very fun, though the water is not as clean or pretty as in Canada, that’s for sure. After exploring all of the park we could from the water, we grabbed lunch and went and ate by a fountain where we saw baby ducks up really close. After that we went to my favourite museum, the museum of natural history, and discovered a part I had never been to. I probably missed it a few times because its about geology and other earth sciences, but it was actually fascinating and so well put together. Since we went for the spirit collection tour, and they were done those for the day, we decided to see the butterfly exhibit which would be leaving soon instead. It was very pretty, though small. I believe after that we came back home, and I think I fell asleep at 9pm!

This week has been a lot of getting things together for work, meetings and signing things etc. I did a lot of walking to get around, even if it was more than an hour away, just because I wanted to enjoy London in the unexpected heat (It’s been so hot!).

Here for your viewing pleasure are a few pictures of my Sunday out. I’m excited to see what this year brings.

A Tudor Weekend

I had the pleasure of having a touristy weekend with my three favourite U.K. friends.

On Saturday, after working out at the gym and making a nice lunch we headed to central London to visit the Tower of London. An amazing place to learn all about British history. Using my degree I was able to educate my British friend on some of his own history, but he taught me a couple new and interesting things too.

It gets dark quite early here. This photo was taken at about 3. Maybe even before that. I was quite happy to see this castle, I believe it’s called the White Tower or the White castle, because last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding and ugly green sheets 🙂

We saw the Crown Jewels, some Beefeaters and a lot if Tudor history. This was one of my favorite carvings from within on of the rooms used as a prison. There were a ton of great ones but they were all usually very bitter and melancholy. Fair enough for prisoners waiting to be beheaded either privately within the castle walls or, more likely, publicly out in front.

Afterwards we went to a really cute English pub, all decorated to the max for Christmas. I had the fish and chips naturally 🙂 Cod, my favourite.

The next day we headed out of London to Hampton Court Palace. This is an even greater resource for learning about Henry the 8th because it was built by his advisor Cardinal Wolsey. After Henry had him beheaded, it became his main residence.

It is definitely the biggest palace I’ve been to… With a real hedge maze and everything!

I forgot my camera both days but these were snapped with our phones. One of my friends has better pictures of the four of us so I will try and get those off of her soon.

We, of course, visited another pub after Hampton Court and I chose to go crazy and have the roast beef dinner. I guess I’m getting my fill of British food before going home to Canada next week for Christmas.

Just thought I’d update about my fabulously historical and touristy weekend. It was great fun and sun was out more than it has been in a week! 🙂

My Last Night in Canada

So, tonight is my last night in Canada. I had a lovely dinner with my family and got the bulk of my packing done. Tomorrow I have some errands to run, some cleaning to do and last minute checks… Do I have this, do I even need that etc.

As the immensity of what I’m doing weighs on me I thought I’d do a little post about what I am going to miss the most about Canada and what I am looking forward to the most.

I’ll start with the negative so I can end on the positive.

1. Ontario fall- gorge colours and crisp mornings.
2. Count down to Christmas- which even includes working at Starbucks during the holidays (this would have been my 5th season)
3. Being in the same time zone as my friends and family and my safety net (dad).
4. Toronto… I love that city and London is very different.. I hope I grow to love it too.
5. Snow… Yep, I think I’ll miss even that.

Ok, what am I looking forward to…
1. A sense of accomplishment from working in my field, regularly, for the first time.
2. Weekends off and a regular schedule. (I’ve never ever had that).
3. New sights and sounds. Lots of places to travel close at hand. (And the food!!! Oh yay)
4. More opportunities to grow as a person by being challenged (especially to try and be more outgoing).
5. Finally, some of my favorite bands are British and I hope I can see some of them live. That would just be so great.

Tonight I will be sleeping in my childhood room at my parents house, tomorrow I will be “sleeping” on a plane and no one can be sure where I will be sleeping on Sunday. The stress is overwhelming but I know I’m not the first to do it, and in a week I will be able to look back jovially on this moment; knowing how it all worked out.

Well I’m taking off in a week.

Alright so I’ve decided to blog about my experiences living abroad in England for the year. I intend this blog to be about what my life is like in England and what it is like teaching in England (and the experiences of a first year teacher). Mainly a way to keep my family and friends on the same page because its hard to update everyone with all the details.

To get everyone up to date, I’ve recently been hired by an agency called Engage Education to teach in England. Basically I have a one year supply teaching contract for Greenwich, England. They also set up interviews for full time positions and if I am offered one of those, then it cancels my supply teaching contract. I am guaranteed to be paid four out of five days of each working week so I don’t need to worry about getting calls like I would here.

Where am I in the process? Well I am travelling using the (tier 5) youth mobility (migrant) working visa that is good for two years. Any Canadian can apply for this if you are between the ages of 18 and 35 (I think), you have a passport, and you can prove you have £1800 available to you (about 3000 Canadian dollars). It entitles you to work in any industry for two years. My visa got approved today and I am just waiting for the actual physical visa and my passport to be mailed back to me.

I am going to try to fly out on the 30th (ish) because I need to be in England for the 1st of October to start working. Part of me keeps thinking that something is going to go wrong and I won’t be able to fly out that soon so I haven’t booked my flight yet. I’m quite nervous about the next week and I have a lot people to see and a lot of things to do. -And packing … Erg!

So that’s basically it for now. I will try to keep this regularly updated; if only to keep my mom satisfied that I’m happy and healthy. So far, so good mom.