Teaching Begins

This must be some kind of record, I can't believe that I haven't blogged anything since Monday!!!  I'm already falling behind and I've only taught one day hahahaha...

Not too much has happened over the past few days except for being able to actually teach on Wednesday for the first time ever in England so that's been pretty exciting.  Anthony and I were both fortunate enough to receive some supply work at the same school and on the same day.  We do have to check every morning if we have work and now that we finally have a pay-as-you-go phone, they will call us every morning to see if we want work.  There are also pre-bookings which was what we had for our Wednesday teaching where the Supply Desk will email you ahead of time the details and how long the supply work will last.  

At first, we were finding it extremely hard to get by without a phone since it is an instant line of communication and our Internet here is not very dependable at least for the time being.  So we decided to go out today to find a cheap phone that will serve as a temporary basis until we figure out everything with our Canadian cell phones.  We feel much better now knowing that we have a cell as communication for now and that it will no longer hinder our day to day work.  This month is definitely going to be tight, but we just have to keep trusting in the fact that God will provide work for us - he already has and a week early!!  He's the one who brought us in here in the first place so everything will work itself out. 

I know all of you are wondering how our first day of school went and I'm glad to report that it went pretty well for a first day!  My day was a little better than Anthony's...hahaha...but I'm sure the tables will turn eventually because I know they're not all good days.  We were very lucky to be in quite a good school too.  All the kids were in uniform and ranged from Grade 6-7 to Grade 11-12.  It's strange having all of those age groups in one school but it seems to work here.  The British do their school systems quite different than Canadians (specifically Ontario) so there are quite a few adjustments that we'll have to make.   Their grades are called years and the age groups seem to be a year or two ahead of ours (for example - age 14-15 is year 10 where at home that would be Grade 9).  Not too big of a deal but the classes are done more by age then year/grade.  

It was so nice to actually have a full day's work yesterday!  Every school is different in all areas of England so for us yesterday they were very strict about their time schedule.  It was actually quite convenient because the kids were only in 1 hour periods with 1 break in the day and a later lunch.  The day went by really quickly and the kids were really good even though some of them have short attention spans, but that's expected.  I got to be in the same room all day and poor Anthony had to move around to different classrooms and even a different campus at one point (got lost on the way there).  The school had me teaching Business Communications/IT (computer) classes all day.  I managed to teach 4 periods but honestly, it was the easiest class.  I pretty much babysat the kids for the most part until they started asking about my accent.  MY ACCENT????  

Anthony and I exchanged stories at the end of the day and were laughing because most of the classes were distracted all day trying to guess where we were from and once they heard about Canada they went crazy!!  They love Canadians...honestly it felt like we were rockstars all day on the Red Carpet.  These kids just could not get enough of us!  They asked some good questions too like: "What's a famous food from Canada?" to which I replied Poutine - they had no idea what it was and when I explained that it was fries, cheese and gravy they all just looked at me like a deer caught in headlights.  They didn't even know what fries were until they figured out they were called "chips" (English word for fries)..."Do you like Justin Bieber" to which we both replied, I hate Justin Bieber LOL..."Have you seen a moose/bear?" to which Anthony replied yes and I replied no to the moose and yes to the bear - the kids were so excited but I had to keep explaining to them that bears/moose are not exactly gentle creatures.

We heard a funny story yesterday from one of the other PE teachers that said the kids were mesmerized by snow.  Apparently they were plastered up against the glass in their classroom and watched the snow fall in amazement for 8 minutes.  Anthony and I were killing ourselves because we know there's about at least 1 foot of snow back at home so when we told the kids about snow in Canada they freaked out!!!  We also told them it's probably at least -10 degrees to which they responded THAT'S FREEZING.  LOL....they don't know what real winter is!!  

The questions kept rolling in and more and more students started intently listening to what we had to say about Canada and they loved getting to know us as not just teachers but people as well.  They are so curious about everything.  One kid actually thought I was Irish...I couldn't help but laugh out loud because I have no Irish accent whatsoever but to them, it probably all sounds the same!  It's hard to remember that WE have the accent, not the other way around.  To top off the day, I had a proposal from one boy and then an "I love you" from another so all in all I guess it was a pretty good day for me!! LOL :)  Anthony had a harder day than me - he taught PE and Science.  He said that the kids had no hand-eye coordination at all and they had no idea how to play even Badminton.  I felt bad but that's something that you encounter when you're supplying I guess.  A lot of the kids don't know/care how to do something, it's just a class.  Just like my IT classes, the kids were playing games half the time until we finally got into work mode.  The last period for Anthony was a last minute switch to Science because he wasn't aware that he had to teach PE that day and work a shirt and tie with dress shoes.  The head of PE mentioned that maybe it was a good idea that he switch classes with another supply teacher because he didn't want to mess up Anthony's pretty shoes.  That class turned out to be a little bit of a disaster, but all in all, Anthony pushed through and managed to make it to the end of the day. 

What a great first experience (for me at least)!  Overall, everything has been moving along quite well and soon we will be on the road to success!  We have successfully budgeted for everything now it's just a matter of gaining steady income and consistent work. 

Here are some words/phrases learned in the last couple of days: 

Frankfurters = hotdogs (who calls them that? hahahaha) 

Muffins = English Muffins

Handset = cell phone

Fizzy drink = pop 

Cover = supply (teach)

Chips = fries

Mate --> slang for  buddy  ie. "How's it going mate?" 

"Just wait a tick and I'll be back..."  ie. tick = second/minute

Strange things noticed/different from Canada:

- Chips are sold in bulk:  each bag contains individual bags of chips instead of everything all in one bag --> don't like that one bit hahahaha

- STILL not used to people driving on the opposite side of the road/car --> SO weird!!! freaks me out hahahaha

More to come and hopefully not so many days lapse in between this was a lot of writing!!  Missing all of you at home <3