Wales

Well it's been 2 weeks since our little holiday to Wales so it's about time to update you all on what we did!

We went over the Easter holiday so on Good Friday, we packed up our bags and caught the train to Heathrow airport at 7:30am in the morning to pick up our rental car. We went with Ed's sister Katherine and her boyfriend Rosco. We arrived at the car rental hire place and they said to us, "You can have any car in row RC". We thought "Wow that's great!" only until we found out there was only one car left in that row! It was still a nice car though, a Holden Astra Hatch.
It took about 5 hours to get to South West Wales, to the area of Pembrokeshire. We were staying in a place called 'The Old Coach House' on the edge of a National Park and about 8 miles from the coast. We were staying in a little cottage that was joined onto the main house. It was beautiful! Since the cottage overlooked a reservoir swimming with wild brown trout, Ed and Rosco couldn't resist the temptation to throw the line in before dinner. Their enthusiasm was rewarded when they came back with 2 wild brown trout for tea!

After a good night's sleep we woke up at 9am to go to another reservoir in the nearby village about 5-10 minutes away. This one was stocked with rainbow trout and only fly fishing and ledger worm (?) was permitted. The boys bought a day fishing permit for around £15 and they happily fished for about 4 hours with squirmy worms while Kath and I sunbaked and read books. We were certainly lucky that weekend as the weather was perfect. Not too hot or cold, beautiful clear blue skies each day and warm sun on our backs.
The boys were even luckier that day and caught 4 rainbow trout which means we had 1 rainbow trout each for dinner! We were yelling and screaming everytime they caught one. It was funny because our voices would carry across the lake and people would look at us to see what the commotion was all about. (An elderly couple caught about 12 between them - we couldn't work out how!) Anyway, the fish were so big and fat that Kath and I couldn't finish ours but the boys couldn't bear to waste them even though they both admitted that they couldn't eat fish again for a few days.

Sunday meant Easter Sunday and we all went to a small chapel in the closest village. It was an Anglican church and quite traditional but the service was very very good! It was led by a female vicar who was really a one woman show. She did the offering, the prayers, the worship (played keyboard), the communion and the sermon! She just kept rushing about going from one post to the next. The service was in English with some parts in Welsh which was very interesting. We found out that they pronounce things exactly as it is written which is strange because there are no vowels in a lot of Welsh words.

After church we went for a walk around the reservoir near our place and it was beautiful walking through all the pine trees. The ground was covered in pine needles and you would sink a bit into the ground because it was so soft. We then came back to the house and fell asleep near a sheep paddock (there are sheep everywhere in Wales). We woke up, went to a local pub and had dinner there. The barman mistook Rosco for being Welsh so started speaking to him and Rosco just smiled and nodded as you do!
We came back home on Monday and stopped at a beautiful 'Rapunzel's castle' on the way home near Cardiff.

Signs in Welsh and English

View from our cottage

The living room

Kath sunbaking

Ed's catch

Rosko's catch

On the coastal path

At the pub

Church

In the forest around the reservoir

Castle in Cardiff

Random photos!

Ed with his mummy.. i mean 'a' mummy at the British Museum

Being silly at the British Museum

A typical London street (on the way to our train station) - no grass!

Having tea and cake with Trammy

A bunch of rabbits at the Borough Markets

Seafood at the Borough Markets

Kensington Gardens

Some pics of our place will be coming soon...

Good morning Mrs Buckingham Palace/Mrs Blackhouse/Mrs Beckhouse/Mrs Brickhouse/Mrs B

Well it's been a while since our last update so this will be a long one. As you can see from the blog title, Mrs Backhouse apparently is not an easy name to say! I thought the first one was hilarious. It was said to me by a Polish girl in Year 2.

We've slowly settled in and getting used to things here such as:

- walking really fast everywhere
- bringing our coat, scarf and gloves out with us everyday
- wearing comfortable walking shoes
- having a constant runny nose
- walking on the right - of a 2 way footpath or on an escalator (but driving on the left?)
- experiencing 4 seasons in one day (eg. snow then sun in a matter of minutes)
- hearing people say 'yeah' at the end of each sentence like jamie oliver (eg. "my mum and dad yeah, they have 2 kids yeah.." and so on).
- pulling out a newspaper to read as soon as you sit down on the tube
- hearing 'train delayed due to passenger action' at the tube stations
- the never ending fire engine sirens, ambulance sirens, police sirens
- saying 'p' instead of 'pence'
- seeing no grass on the footpaths
- thinking that something for £1 is really cheap when in fact it is $2.50!

Those are a few things! I'm sure there are many more that I can't think of at the moment.

Ed and I have both started work. I've been doing supply which means teaching at a different school each day. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. I can walk in, do my work and leave at the end of the day and not think anymore of it. The teachers have all been great and left work for me to do. The negative aspect of it is that the children know I'm only there for one day and try to make my day absolutely horrible! One class I had which was particularly bad (Year 4), nearly made me lose my voice from shouting so much. But the classroom teacher had told me that they usually respond to shouting. And they did for maybe...5 minutes.

But usually the classes I have taught in have been quite good. The main difference to Aussie schools is the amount of ethnic children in the classes. The other day I taught a year 2 class which had only 2 caucasian students in it. The rest were from Eastern europe, india, middle east, asia. I mainly teach in East London which is considered a low socio economic area and that might account for the mixed ethnicities. Other differences include the teachers picking up the children from the playground after each playtime and also waiting after school for each parent to pick up their children. There is no before or after school care here. They also have free school dinners (which in fact is lunch) for children whose parents earn under a certain income.

Ed's work has been good but I think hectic. He can walk to work as it's only about 15 minutes away. It's good because he passes our local supermarket on the way to and from work so I can get him to pick up things for dinner! (or should i say tea?) We had dinner with some of his workmates the other night and they are all really nice guys. Half of them are from Australia too. Ed already joined a soccer tournament here called the Barclays 5 a side 'football' tournament. (you can get in trouble if you say soccer!) It was on last weekend and unfortunately his team didn't win but he had a good time. It was freezing cold though and all outdoor.

We've stayed with Ben, Kath and Rosko over the past 2 weeks and it was so nice spending that time with them. But a couple of days ago we moved into our own place which is only about 3 mins walk along the river. It's a one bedroom place and just the right size for us. We are really trying hard not to convert the rent amount into Australian dollars because it ends up costing more than our mortgage repayments! But we're happy with it and there is plenty of room for people who would like to visit.

We have been doing a little bit of sight seeing recently. We went to the Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park (next to Kengsington Palace). If only we had a little more time we could've made it into the palace but we were late for an appointment with our real estate agent. Yesterday we went to the British museum which is pretty big and took about 3 hours of non stop walking.

Some pictures are coming!