I can't believe that it's officially summer starting next week :) It has come so quickly and now I don't know what I'm going to do with myself over the next few weeks! Definitely need time to recoup and catch some rays!!

Well it's about that time of the year where as a teacher you think to yourself...yay school is out for the summer and I have so much vacation time I'm laughing. Well...not so in the UK, we only have about 4-5 weeks of summer vacation every year but we are lucky enough to have more vacation throughout the year so it all adds up anyways. Even though most of the kids at home are now or next week done school, we are steadily teaching our classes until July 19th. Seems to weird to have to teach that far into the summer but that's how it's done and we're starting to get used to that. Not to mention that it doesn't even feel like summer over here because the weather sure isn't the Canadian summer weather we were hoping for. But the good news is that we have had an incredible start to the summer :)

A lot has happened in the past few weeks and so much has changed for us. I have started working at my new school that I will be teaching full time at in the September, we have moved from Brighton to Eastbourne, tried to furnish our new place inexpensively and are going to be seeing some family come to visit very very soon!!!! YAY!!!

I am so pleased to be in my new school and already starting to get to know the kids that I will be teaching next year. They have put in mostly music (with a little bit of maths until end of July) with all Year 7 and Year 8 children (ages 11-14). It has been an interesting journey, sometimes learning things the hard way but nonetheless, the kids enjoy having me there and I feel very welcomed by the staff as well. I am thrilled beyond belief that I have the opportunity to actually teach in my subject area and sooooo many of these kids just want to sing all the time, which is as you can imagine, super exciting for me! I have so many different classes so it's hard to keep up with them all but it seems to work ok. I had to break the ice a little with some of my tougher subjects so I decided why not sing in front of them as nerver racking as that was.But it seemed to work and then word travelled quickly as I had other classes that asked me right away to sing for them - so overall, I'm pleased with the students are their want and passion to devote their time to music. With that said, they are a challenge at times but it is worth it in the end!

The last few weeks have been a bit nutty and at school, at least for me, I have had so many things to do and meetings to go to plus extra little bits here and there to do. This is the busiest supply job I've had yet to date LOL...it definitely has been stressful at times and it wears you out really quickly but it's worth it! Next week it will be summer vacation and I can get to relax (somewhat). Luckily we have planned everything out for the fall and will need to get some things planned over the summer but that's the easy part. I got to take part in hosting 300 Year (10-11yr old) students over the last week. They have these days where the Year 6 students can come in (grade 5) and spend a few days with us to see how we run the school. They get a feel for how they will fit in once they come into Year 7 (grade 6) in September. It was so great getting to meet all of them but you forget how young they are. They were all so small!!!!! LOL...good experience but absolutely exhausting! The kids had a great time and are already looking forward to summer school and coming again in September.

Best news outside of one of us getting full time permanent work in the summer is Anthony finally landing a full time job for September as well!!!!!! AMAZING!!!!!! So within 5 months we both managed to get full time permanent work starting in the fall - God is good! :) For Anthony it was all "who you know" because the job basically came to him. He did go through all the motions of doing the interview and getting a tour of the school but they loved him and within the SAME day ended up calling him back and letting him know that he got the job. We are still waiting to finalize everything with the school (paperwork) but after a couple days of Anthony spending time at his new school, he is looking forward to working there in the fall. There will be somewhat of a commute considering this new school is in Brighton (go figure) but it's about the same travel time for both of us now by train - 30 mins or so - can't really complain! Anthony will be working at PRU (school for children who are permanently excluded from regular school classrooms), kind of like the school that he worked at before at the beginning of the year when we first came here. It definitely will be a challenge but I'm pretty sure he's willing to take that challenge and mold the students into something great. He also did get EXTREMELY lucky in that he will be teaching PE most of the time as well as ICT (computer) classes. He is fit for this job and is excited to be teaching full time in September. After meeting some of the kids last week, they really got attached to him and really like him so that's a big positive things already!

As for the summer, I am going to be doing some summer school work and Anthony is probably going to be doing some teaching as well. We are trying to find odd jobs around here because there isn't much to do for 4-5 weeks off of school when you are low on funds. The best news was that as of yesterday, the school confirmed that they would be paying me over the summer but I wouldn't receive the funds until August 31st - so it's like they're paying me a monthly salary at the end of the summer!! Seriously that was DEFINITELY an answer to prayer because we were starting to get worried a little bit...all of that has been taken care of now :) :) :) Thank the LORD!!

Otherwise, life is pretty great right now, we've managed to bring over some Canadian weather - it was almost 35 degrees here yesterday!! And we've enjoyed our time seeing Aunt Susan and Kara on their visit to London -- it was so much fun (pictures and blog to follow)! We saw some things that we didn't get a chance to see yet so that was amazing! Oh...and we are finally getting our sofa and bedroom furniture from a colleague this weekend - IT'S ABOUT TIME! We have been waiting over a month for this stuff and are so happy that we are finally going to have something to sit on. However, we are geniuses because we bought some hillbilly camping chairs with cup holders that we are using currently in our living room...LOL...looks pretty good when you don't have anything else to sit on hahahahahahahahaha...*sigh* soon enough everything will finally be together properly so we're looking forward to that!!

More to come soon...I have a lot to catch up on apparently and I've been letting my readers down with my blogs. NO EXCUSE!

<3 Steph & Anthony xoxo