Almost Back To School

Well, the Easter holidays is almost done for another year. 


As usual, in some ways it feels like it has been nice and long (like my trip to Cambridge to see Laura on the first day of the holiday seems like aaaaaages ago), but in other ways it's blink and you'll miss it.


Highlights:

• I've discovered a game that I like to play, and am reasonably good at.  This is Rummikub.  I was introduced to it on game night about a month ago by Adele and Ed.  We also played Pandemic that night, but it seemed unnecessarily complicated to me, and not enough skill involved (or indeed any as far as I could make out).  I played it quite a lot with Mum, and have also discovered that it is available to play online as well.  Each game is about 15 minutes long, which is just the right length for me.
• The trip down to Cambridge to see Laura was uneventful in terms of the journey.  Which now means I can manage to NOT end up in an ambulance on 66.66% of my trips to Cambridge!  Laura was substantially late however, due to someone jumping on the train line.  I entertained myself well enough though.  Luckily, I'd thought to bring a good book along.
• I spent Sunday-Friday in Shropshire, which is about the perfect length of stay.  Long enough to settle in, but not so long that I miss my own space and my own time table.  Did a few day trips out, which was nice.  We went to see red kite feeding at Gigrin Farm, which was quite a spectacle.  Perhaps 70 kites in total.  We also went to the RAF museum, which turned out to be more interesting than I had originally thought it might be.  There was just the right balance achieved I thought, between geeky "plane facts" and "human interest/history stories", when I am substantially more interested in the latter.

As an aside, while at the RAF museum, I read about MAD (Mutually Assured Distruction).  About 3 nights later, listening to a quiz show on Radio 4, one of the questions was asking what MAD stood for.  It was one of the only questions I could answer. ;)

• I spent one day with Adele, shopping in Milton Keynes.  I had a lot of vouchers to spend, earned via my various survey jobs I do.  I also finally got around to spending the not-insignificant sum of John Lewis vouchers I was given when I left my previous teaching post back in October.  I got myself an Egyptian cotton sheet for the bed, and a smoothie maker.  Both things I'd wanted, but not quite enough to spend my own money on. ;)
• Whilst with Adele, we watched the first two episodes of the new Game Of Thrones!  Love that show!
• I went to IKEA in Milton Keynes this past Thursday, and came away with candles and a side table, which I then put together by myself.  I'm getting quite handy at this flat-pack assembly malarkey!

Lowlights:

• Somehow, I've no idea how, I spent a good 48+ hours with quite bad pain in my left shoulder.  It came on completely out of the blue on the Sunday afternoon, and gradually got better over the next few days.
• On the day we spent seeing the red kites in Wales, before that we did some cemetery hunting.  It was cold and quite windy, and then having spent perhaps 6 hours outside, with a sore shoulder, I got deeply cold.  That is one of my biggest pet hates.  When all you can think about is a hot bath.  That made me v-grumpy. lol
• I've spent this last week of the holidays, on and off, preparing for school again.  Unfortunately, I'm also back on the job hunt.  It seems to have come round extraordinarily quickly, but when I consider that this is for work to start in September, some 5 months away, it doesn't seem so strange.  Finally though, what with being back in sync with the academic year cycle, there are permanent jobs out there to apply for.  But whatever I get, really.  I'll be content with!  Just as long as there is money coming in!  It's just that the whole job hunt is a whole other thing to think about!

Neither High Nor Low:

• Changes are a-foot for my class this coming term.  We're getting another full-time teaching assistant in the class to be a 1-1 support for a child.  This will change the dynamic of our little team quite considerably.  I have only met her incredibly briefly, once, in a crowd.  So I hope she gels with us okay.  I guess she's starting the first day back, but I don't know for sure!
• I am also getting my first ever PGCE teaching student.  And they are a final placement student...  Which is the placement that really matters.  Having never had a teaching student before, this is unchartered territory for me.  And it's brought an awful lot of old memories to the surface of my own final teaching practise, which was incredibly memorable in many ways!  I am still in touch with my own mentor from my final practise, so it feels rather like coming full circle.  However, I know NOTHING about this student, gender, age, ability.  Nothing.  I'm not even sure when they are starting.  *shrug*  But this is another adult to shake things up a bit!  There will be 4 adults in the room, which seems like a lot!  My class won't know what's hit them!  LOL
• Kimmy comes to stay in just over a month!! YAY!  That will be such a fun half term!  But it also means that all the school work I'd usually do gradually over the week off, will need to be done during this working term instead.  And let's just say that I'm not quite sure how that is going to happen!  Although, hopefully, with this teaching student coming, some of the burden of planning and marking might be off my shoulders...  Here's hoping!