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!
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