I love my lazy Sundays. I try not to make plans and keep it as a day to do whatever moves me. The only thing consistent with my Sundays, besides the laziness, is taking time to reflect on everything from the previous week, both the good and bad. Here’s what I’ve learned:
1) People will judge you based off of your choice to root for Liverpool FC or Everton. Monday night I spent the evening at The Brookhouse watching the highly anticipated Liverpool vs. Everton game. Now, if you’re from America and your name isn’t Ben Bach you have no idea why this game is such a big deal. Let this teacher educate you: Liverpool and Everton are the soccer…er…football teams here in the city. It’s pretty much a Chicago Cubs-White Sox rivalry without bats and gloves. For an 8 P.M. game, we had to arrive 90 minutes early in order to have the last table (God only knows when the fans started showing up). By game time, the bar was packed with fans sporting their red and blue jerseys and big-screen “tellies”. Ali and I split a bottle of wine and soaked up the cultural experience. After 45 minutes of straight football and not one Bud Light commercial or play review, I left the bar yearning for the Super Bowl. I’ll stick to the American football I know and love.
2) Chester can be done in a day…or three hours. We made our first day trip to Chester, a city about 45 minutes southwest of Liverpool. Chester is famous for being really, really old. Although we didn’t meet any Roman soldiers, we did walk on the one-thousand year-old wall that wraps around the city, visit the gift shop of the cathedral (no one wanted to pay 5 quid to see the inside), pray inside a church built in 1000 A.D. (free of charge), reach a moment of Zen next to the river, wonder if it was possible to get inside Chester Castle, take too many pictures of a man feeding ducks, comment on how green everything was, and explain to the Germans what happened at the Roman amphitheater. Overall, it was a nice escape from the city. Chester also inspired day-trip #2: Castle hunting in Northwest Wales!
3) I’m going to be sick for the next three years. Last week, I caught some kind of infection and impetigo, leaving me with a “smoker’s cough”, phlegm, and sores in between my nostrils (because you all wanted to know that). I had to take a half-day on Wednesday to visit a doctor and get a prescription, which cost me 75 quid. One of my students also stabbed my thumb with scissors. Basically, I was a mess last week. What’s even better: according to my cooperating teacher, I’m going to catch everything my students get until my immune system adjusts. This should take about three years…awesome.
4) Lesson planning requires a lot of…planning. With each new week I’m spending more and more time at school after-hours. My teacher tells me not to work too hard, but I don’t know how to. I want to give my students meaningful learning experiences, and dammit, I want to impress my cooperating teachers (maybe a job at Northway – my cooperating teacher is moving back to New Zealand…dare to dream). If that means staying until 6 P.M. Monday-Friday, then so be it. My biggest challenge for this week is to find a balance. Last week I came home every night completely drained, wanting nothing more than to eat dinner and sleep (it didn’t help that I was sick either). I didn’t have the energy to go clubbing or venture into the city, and unfortunately, my new friends who spend 2-3 hours at lecture a day can’t relate to what I’m going through. I found myself being, in the words of Florian, “aggressive” at times. It’s not fair to them, and I don’t want to be a bitch five days out of the week. I’ll figure out something…I always do. On a positive note, my students loved the Talking Textiles unit – I was pleasantly surprised to see how involved they were with the process. With the exception of one student (I was able to get her to stop one of her famous tantrums by threatening to send her down to reception (preschool) to pout and cry), they all behaved well and stayed on-target the whole time. I knew I was doing all right when one of my students said, “You’re a good teacher, Miss. You teach fun lessons”. This week I’m teaching three lessons on Greek mythology, and one of my lessons is structured based on the jigsaw theory – Jeanine Dell’Olio would be pleased. Hopefully, things will run smoothly.
That’s about all for now. Tune in next time for castle-hunting and turning Snow White and the Seven Dwarves into a poetry unit…cheers.
1) People will judge you based off of your choice to root for Liverpool FC or Everton. Monday night I spent the evening at The Brookhouse watching the highly anticipated Liverpool vs. Everton game. Now, if you’re from America and your name isn’t Ben Bach you have no idea why this game is such a big deal. Let this teacher educate you: Liverpool and Everton are the soccer…er…football teams here in the city. It’s pretty much a Chicago Cubs-White Sox rivalry without bats and gloves. For an 8 P.M. game, we had to arrive 90 minutes early in order to have the last table (God only knows when the fans started showing up). By game time, the bar was packed with fans sporting their red and blue jerseys and big-screen “tellies”. Ali and I split a bottle of wine and soaked up the cultural experience. After 45 minutes of straight football and not one Bud Light commercial or play review, I left the bar yearning for the Super Bowl. I’ll stick to the American football I know and love.
2) Chester can be done in a day…or three hours. We made our first day trip to Chester, a city about 45 minutes southwest of Liverpool. Chester is famous for being really, really old. Although we didn’t meet any Roman soldiers, we did walk on the one-thousand year-old wall that wraps around the city, visit the gift shop of the cathedral (no one wanted to pay 5 quid to see the inside), pray inside a church built in 1000 A.D. (free of charge), reach a moment of Zen next to the river, wonder if it was possible to get inside Chester Castle, take too many pictures of a man feeding ducks, comment on how green everything was, and explain to the Germans what happened at the Roman amphitheater. Overall, it was a nice escape from the city. Chester also inspired day-trip #2: Castle hunting in Northwest Wales!
3) I’m going to be sick for the next three years. Last week, I caught some kind of infection and impetigo, leaving me with a “smoker’s cough”, phlegm, and sores in between my nostrils (because you all wanted to know that). I had to take a half-day on Wednesday to visit a doctor and get a prescription, which cost me 75 quid. One of my students also stabbed my thumb with scissors. Basically, I was a mess last week. What’s even better: according to my cooperating teacher, I’m going to catch everything my students get until my immune system adjusts. This should take about three years…awesome.
4) Lesson planning requires a lot of…planning. With each new week I’m spending more and more time at school after-hours. My teacher tells me not to work too hard, but I don’t know how to. I want to give my students meaningful learning experiences, and dammit, I want to impress my cooperating teachers (maybe a job at Northway – my cooperating teacher is moving back to New Zealand…dare to dream). If that means staying until 6 P.M. Monday-Friday, then so be it. My biggest challenge for this week is to find a balance. Last week I came home every night completely drained, wanting nothing more than to eat dinner and sleep (it didn’t help that I was sick either). I didn’t have the energy to go clubbing or venture into the city, and unfortunately, my new friends who spend 2-3 hours at lecture a day can’t relate to what I’m going through. I found myself being, in the words of Florian, “aggressive” at times. It’s not fair to them, and I don’t want to be a bitch five days out of the week. I’ll figure out something…I always do. On a positive note, my students loved the Talking Textiles unit – I was pleasantly surprised to see how involved they were with the process. With the exception of one student (I was able to get her to stop one of her famous tantrums by threatening to send her down to reception (preschool) to pout and cry), they all behaved well and stayed on-target the whole time. I knew I was doing all right when one of my students said, “You’re a good teacher, Miss. You teach fun lessons”. This week I’m teaching three lessons on Greek mythology, and one of my lessons is structured based on the jigsaw theory – Jeanine Dell’Olio would be pleased. Hopefully, things will run smoothly.
That’s about all for now. Tune in next time for castle-hunting and turning Snow White and the Seven Dwarves into a poetry unit…cheers.
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