cultural extravaganza
Let's get the important thing out the way first
I got my Doctor Who tickets ;)
And we've booked a hotel for our weekend in Montreal.
#buzzing
But anyway, that's not the point. I doubt this will be a particularly informative blog - it's been a quiet few days. I totally scored a winner with this cycle anyway - the teacher I'm working with is doing exams with her kids this cycle, so basically all I have to do is sit in classes, helping out with questions, while she does speaking exams outside the room. I'm hoping the classes aren't going to go wild - the surprise of an almost unknown English person in the classroom might just about be enough to keep them calm, especially if I do the ultimate teacher thing. Walk around the classroom with arms crossed making determined clickety steps with my brogues (try not to break into a tap dance - harder than you'd think) and stand right behind the ones that you know are mucking about. You know fine well your teachers did this at school, at least when you were like 11-12, and without saying anything, the notion of being overheard and their silence totally shut you up. Unless you were a complete dick head.
Plus I only have 4 classes this week before I can bugger off to meet the other assistants for our catch up, so it should be alright anyway.
(The rest of this blog was written the day after, so there may be some updates to the stuff up there ^^)
So. We did another cinema trip - this time Prisoners, starring the wonderful Hugh Jackman and the lovely Jake Gyllenhaal (whose surname, incidentally, I managed to spell right first time: 10 points for me). Whilst it was a good film, it wasn't really my kind of thing, nor was it Alice's. It wasn't just edge of your seat cinema, it was edge of your seat, stress out and get slightly hysterical kind of cinema. At one point I think Alice was practically sat on my knee. So yeah - if you're into thriller kind of stuff, give it a go. But that is not the ultimate cultural experience of the week - because on Saturday night we went to the opera. First experience of the opera for us both, and it was really, really good. We'd wikipedia-ed the plot before hand- because you know it's like in Italian, and we were worried we wouldn't understand. It did, however, have subtitles in French which I pretty much understood (which surprised me) and were helpful. The singing was a little on the quiet side, but we were right at the back of the top balcony so I imagine it was deafening on the front row. So yes, feeling very cultured by the fact I've been to the opera now, and yes, I'd go again. We've also booked the ballet (The Nutcracker) for the night before we go to New York in December - I'm not sure if I've already written about this but this cultural insert seems the ideal place to mention the ballet.
So we had our first snow of the winter this week. It was a traumatic moment when I woke up to Alice's message of "mate I looked like a snowman by the time I got to school". I opened the blinds, and screamed "NOOOOOOOOOooooOOOOoooo" very melodramatically. The place was like something out of a Christmas card, and it was still snowing. Whilst, I confess, I was a bit excited, it felt like the start of a VERY long winter. I managed to trudge through it and made it to the bus stop (a 5 minute walk), looking like a bit of a snowman myself. I even pulled off the walk up to school in brogues (still too early for snowboots) without falling over and looking like a prick in front of the kids. I was at school for 10.45, and the place was covered in snow - yet when I left at 4.15, the snow was just gone. As quickly as it had descended, it had melted and Canada had battled off winter for another day - thank God for that. Though saying that, it's still damn cold, like -1 today or something.
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My easy week is rapidly becoming not that easy - I had to plan a class for today and it was with a class that even the teacher described as "almost impossible to teach sometimes". They weren't horrific, and they weren't rude, but they just have get so easily distracted and they don't really respect me. Though considering I look like a twelve year old, in their shoes, I guess I wouldn't really have that much respect for me either.
The other classes, the ones I just have to monitor through their exams are pretty easy, but really boring. And I'm crap at discipline. I just panic and don't know what to say to a kid that's messing about in a test. Which probably sounds incredibly shocking to everyone that knows me - it must really take something to shut Hannah up, and she can be a right angry cretin so I don't know why she doesn't just shout at them. All true, all true, but I just seize up and kind of stutter a jumble of words out that sound like "hey, something shush, you got five, shushhing minutes". I'm not that bothered - I just panic because they're all muttering in a foreign language.
Speaking of foreign languages, this guy started speaking to me on the bus. I was casually doing a General Knowledge quiz on my iPad - wow I know, my life really is that cool - and he asked (or at least I think he asked) if that was an eBook. I was like "em ... non" and he was like "isdifhdjfsjkdfkdkf" so I laughed, which is of course what you always do when someone else says something in a language you're supposed to understand and yet don't. He then decided to ask me something else which I believe was asked in a backward sort of way so I guessed that "non" was the right answer. He sounded satisfied, so I think it was the right answer. Future reference, I had my headphones in mate, it means I don't want to chat. Sorry.
Anyway, I've taken to watching films before I go to sleep at night - in general, films that I think I should have seen by now and yet have somehow evaded me. So far, I've managed; Runaway Bride, Sleepless in Seattle, American Psycho (book miles better than film), Maid in Manhattan and This Means War. Amongst stuff that I've already seen; Something Borrowed (romcom queen am I not), Daddy Daycare (greatest soundtrack ever), Star Trek: Into Darkness (rapidly becoming one of my favourite films, especially when Kirk fixes the warp core, and it's on my iPad so it's good bus watching), Jane Eyre (Fassbender version - yum), and also copious amounts of How I Met Your Mother, Doctor Who and Sherlock. I know, you're all very jealous of my vastly exciting life (I'm also up to date with X Factor, Made in Chelsea and Downton Abbey).
I'm gonna head off now, because tomorrow is the day we meet up with all the other assistants and get two rather jammy nights paid for in a hotel with free food and activities and fun. I can't wait to see everyone else, and hopefully I'll get to try ice skating in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have some decent things to blog about after this weekend - I realise my comprehensive film lists aren't really that exciting. I could fill you in on some of my other vastly exciting activities - such as eating copious amounts of sushi and marshmallows (sometimes at the same time), plucking my eyebrows, watching tv upside down, getting cold teabags slapped off my face (cheers Alice bud) and accidentally flooding the bathroom (note to self: tuck the shower curtain in next time otherwise the floor gets wet and starts to drip into Andre's room and then he has to knock on the bathroom door whilst I'm getting out the shower and I have to be like mate hold on... awkward) - but they're not that exciting either. I promise to take some nice photos from this weekend. Asta la buh-bye.
I got my Doctor Who tickets ;)
And we've booked a hotel for our weekend in Montreal.
#buzzing
But anyway, that's not the point. I doubt this will be a particularly informative blog - it's been a quiet few days. I totally scored a winner with this cycle anyway - the teacher I'm working with is doing exams with her kids this cycle, so basically all I have to do is sit in classes, helping out with questions, while she does speaking exams outside the room. I'm hoping the classes aren't going to go wild - the surprise of an almost unknown English person in the classroom might just about be enough to keep them calm, especially if I do the ultimate teacher thing. Walk around the classroom with arms crossed making determined clickety steps with my brogues (try not to break into a tap dance - harder than you'd think) and stand right behind the ones that you know are mucking about. You know fine well your teachers did this at school, at least when you were like 11-12, and without saying anything, the notion of being overheard and their silence totally shut you up. Unless you were a complete dick head.
Plus I only have 4 classes this week before I can bugger off to meet the other assistants for our catch up, so it should be alright anyway.
(The rest of this blog was written the day after, so there may be some updates to the stuff up there ^^)
So. We did another cinema trip - this time Prisoners, starring the wonderful Hugh Jackman and the lovely Jake Gyllenhaal (whose surname, incidentally, I managed to spell right first time: 10 points for me). Whilst it was a good film, it wasn't really my kind of thing, nor was it Alice's. It wasn't just edge of your seat cinema, it was edge of your seat, stress out and get slightly hysterical kind of cinema. At one point I think Alice was practically sat on my knee. So yeah - if you're into thriller kind of stuff, give it a go. But that is not the ultimate cultural experience of the week - because on Saturday night we went to the opera. First experience of the opera for us both, and it was really, really good. We'd wikipedia-ed the plot before hand- because you know it's like in Italian, and we were worried we wouldn't understand. It did, however, have subtitles in French which I pretty much understood (which surprised me) and were helpful. The singing was a little on the quiet side, but we were right at the back of the top balcony so I imagine it was deafening on the front row. So yes, feeling very cultured by the fact I've been to the opera now, and yes, I'd go again. We've also booked the ballet (The Nutcracker) for the night before we go to New York in December - I'm not sure if I've already written about this but this cultural insert seems the ideal place to mention the ballet.
So we had our first snow of the winter this week. It was a traumatic moment when I woke up to Alice's message of "mate I looked like a snowman by the time I got to school". I opened the blinds, and screamed "NOOOOOOOOOooooOOOOoooo" very melodramatically. The place was like something out of a Christmas card, and it was still snowing. Whilst, I confess, I was a bit excited, it felt like the start of a VERY long winter. I managed to trudge through it and made it to the bus stop (a 5 minute walk), looking like a bit of a snowman myself. I even pulled off the walk up to school in brogues (still too early for snowboots) without falling over and looking like a prick in front of the kids. I was at school for 10.45, and the place was covered in snow - yet when I left at 4.15, the snow was just gone. As quickly as it had descended, it had melted and Canada had battled off winter for another day - thank God for that. Though saying that, it's still damn cold, like -1 today or something.
The view from our front window. yikes
Our street, looking very beautiful, I admit.
.JPG)
The walk to the bus stop - main road into town looking absolutely fairy tale.
My easy week is rapidly becoming not that easy - I had to plan a class for today and it was with a class that even the teacher described as "almost impossible to teach sometimes". They weren't horrific, and they weren't rude, but they just have get so easily distracted and they don't really respect me. Though considering I look like a twelve year old, in their shoes, I guess I wouldn't really have that much respect for me either.
The other classes, the ones I just have to monitor through their exams are pretty easy, but really boring. And I'm crap at discipline. I just panic and don't know what to say to a kid that's messing about in a test. Which probably sounds incredibly shocking to everyone that knows me - it must really take something to shut Hannah up, and she can be a right angry cretin so I don't know why she doesn't just shout at them. All true, all true, but I just seize up and kind of stutter a jumble of words out that sound like "hey, something shush, you got five, shushhing minutes". I'm not that bothered - I just panic because they're all muttering in a foreign language.
Speaking of foreign languages, this guy started speaking to me on the bus. I was casually doing a General Knowledge quiz on my iPad - wow I know, my life really is that cool - and he asked (or at least I think he asked) if that was an eBook. I was like "em ... non" and he was like "isdifhdjfsjkdfkdkf" so I laughed, which is of course what you always do when someone else says something in a language you're supposed to understand and yet don't. He then decided to ask me something else which I believe was asked in a backward sort of way so I guessed that "non" was the right answer. He sounded satisfied, so I think it was the right answer. Future reference, I had my headphones in mate, it means I don't want to chat. Sorry.
Anyway, I've taken to watching films before I go to sleep at night - in general, films that I think I should have seen by now and yet have somehow evaded me. So far, I've managed; Runaway Bride, Sleepless in Seattle, American Psycho (book miles better than film), Maid in Manhattan and This Means War. Amongst stuff that I've already seen; Something Borrowed (romcom queen am I not), Daddy Daycare (greatest soundtrack ever), Star Trek: Into Darkness (rapidly becoming one of my favourite films, especially when Kirk fixes the warp core, and it's on my iPad so it's good bus watching), Jane Eyre (Fassbender version - yum), and also copious amounts of How I Met Your Mother, Doctor Who and Sherlock. I know, you're all very jealous of my vastly exciting life (I'm also up to date with X Factor, Made in Chelsea and Downton Abbey).
I'm gonna head off now, because tomorrow is the day we meet up with all the other assistants and get two rather jammy nights paid for in a hotel with free food and activities and fun. I can't wait to see everyone else, and hopefully I'll get to try ice skating in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have some decent things to blog about after this weekend - I realise my comprehensive film lists aren't really that exciting. I could fill you in on some of my other vastly exciting activities - such as eating copious amounts of sushi and marshmallows (sometimes at the same time), plucking my eyebrows, watching tv upside down, getting cold teabags slapped off my face (cheers Alice bud) and accidentally flooding the bathroom (note to self: tuck the shower curtain in next time otherwise the floor gets wet and starts to drip into Andre's room and then he has to knock on the bathroom door whilst I'm getting out the shower and I have to be like mate hold on... awkward) - but they're not that exciting either. I promise to take some nice photos from this weekend. Asta la buh-bye.
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