blu tac thief!

There is a little bit of a mystery going on within Form One at the moment. We have a blu-tac thief! On Monday, I came in and someone had taken the blu-tac from the name cards. Tuesday, it was the posters lining the staircase outside their classroom. Today, the name cards again. We all have our eyes and ears peeled, to catch this criminal red handed :)

Last Monday was full of drama. I had my hands full at 8.30am with 3 hysterical 7 year olds. E (who can be a bit of a bully) broke D's waterbottle - a gift from D's mum (who is away for 2 weeks with her fiance without her daughter, and making her board...yeah I know, that's a whole other rant. Parents here are ridiculous. CARE FOR YOUR CHILD). D burst into tears, E started crying because she knew was in big trouble, then S decided to start because everyone else was crying, and she thought it would be fun to join in. Trying to comfort D, tell off E and make sure S wasn't throwing herself onto the floor was extremely difficult. This is why I am going to teach high school. At least teenagers don't decide to throw a tantrum and bang their fists on the floor!

Little rant here - sometimes I want to get some of the students here and throw them into the real world. Some of these girls are so mollycoddled. There is a girl here who is 10, and we have to look after her in form time because she doesn't like school. I REPEAT. SHE IS 10. OH MY GOD, SUCK IT UP AND ACT YOUR AGE.GROW UP. I'm pretty sure the only reason we do it is because her dad is the third richest man in Britain. GAH, private schools are fucked. I hate the class system over here. Australia isn't exactly 100% egalitarian, but we're a lot closer than England!
I got on my high horse yesterday with L, who I help with Maths. I like to think I'm extremely patient with her - she has learning difficulties, but her attitude is shit, which really gets me going. I don't care how smart a kid is, as long as they try their hardest, that's all that matters. When a kid tries to give me attitude, angry Georgie emerges. I hold Angry Georgie in 99% of the time, but yesterday, after 20 minutes of trying to convince her to finish a timetables grid, she threw her head onto the desk, pushed my arm away from her desk and declared 'You're such a pain, why are you here, I hate my life, it sucks'...and other things to that effect. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was extremely lucky to get one-on-one classroom help, some kids don't even have the chance to get an education (real high horse with that one, phew.) and if she wanted to make her life harder and muck up her future, then it didn't matter to me, and I turned around and helped T and R, who were struggling with their 12s. Ignoring her worked a treat, she pouted and sighed in my direction for about 5 minutes, then realised I didn't actually care and wasn't interested unless she wanted to work. And she finally got on with it and we finished the exercise. Thank the Lord.

The past week or so has been more relaxed than usual - it's such a difference from the beginning of the year! We have two new gaps, and they are both ridiculously sporty so they've taken all our sport classes, which leaves us with classroom support, duties, and everything that is INSIDE. Godsend. Winter is fast approaching and I'm so grateful to not be out in the cold. Games lessons when it's 2 degrees outside is hell.

It's been really warm latel!. They are all complaining about the 'boiling' 28 degrees, but to be fair I complain when it gets below 10, so I guess they're allowed hahaha. Sometimes. The IVs tried to tell us that school should be cancelled, because to 'work in this heat is inhumane'. Guys, try a 39 degree day in a classroom with no air-conditioning, then take a packed tram and train home, and see how bad 28 is then.

Man I sound so grumpy! I'm really not. I like work, it's just when I finish work and keep getting invites to things I can't go to back in Melbourne that my homesickness kicks in. Watched 'I still call Australia home' last night - BIG MISTAKE! Tears everywhere. Didn't realise I was that bad!

Dinner tonight was shepards pie. Yummy. The girls are as lovely (and as spirited) as ever. A and P, true to form, jumped on me as I walked down the link to dinner, and P decided to jump onto my hips, pull my shirt and announce loudly 'Miss P, your boobs are big!'. A then announced that she liked them because it means that 'Miss P is cuddly', so maybe that evens it out? Crazy girls, but I'm going to miss them!

This time exactly in 10 weeks I will be sitting on the plane, having just taken off from Heathrow. This is going to go so quickly, but drag at the same time....

September

A couple of Saturdays ago I helped out Turner, and went down into town to the massive park, then to Eden (the shopping centre). I was taking photos of all the girls because the Turner camera had gone missing - the girls were loving it, they were posing and jumping like nobodys business hahaha. Rose and I engineered a few jumping shots or two, we should really take it up professionally. Adel (the Turner deputy housemistress) bought me an icecream, which was SO lovely of her, and then I got to know the new girls in Turner while taking a group of Uppers around Eden to buy supplies for their 'crazy hair' day on Sunday.

After buying hairspray etc, we went shopping and they were trying on massive heels in River Island. HILARIOUS. A. was pranicing around in massive hot pink stilettos while M. stalked up and down the changerooms with a massive sparkly handbag, and there were tears of laughter coming out of my eyes. Let's be honest, I probably wasn't setting a good example, but it was the kind of thing that I'd do with Hannah. :) As we were walking back up the hill (that bloody hill, I'll be so glad to get rid of that!) Stuart Bonner, the music director, was in a shop and he jumped out to scare the girls as a joke. They laughed, I screamed and nearly fell to the floor. Real cool Miss Peters, reallll cool.

On Sunday I relaxed, watched videos, practiced piano (Daisy taught me 'Mad World' on piano and I am determined to perfect it by December) and was generally lazy. I love weekends.

I'm tired already. I've got a whole new class of Form 1s who are absolutely gorgeous and very good...so far. A couple of them are a bit teary, S had a cry on my shoulder because she was scared of going into class. It's all very new and scary!

I'm helping with Form 2 Maths which is quite fun. We spent a double lesson learning to set out work neatly and draw margins (which, for a bunch of 8 year olds, is harder than you would think...). Thrilling. I love sitting at the back of the class before we get into the work and watching the teachers - the teachers here are amazing, they're so good at their jobs. The girls were nearly leaping out of their seats to answer questions. I'm also doing quite a lot of French and gymnastics with the older girls - yay! Vicki and Felicity - the two new gaps - are very sporty, so although I'll miss my netball, I won't have to spend my day outside in the freezing British winter, wooooo!! AND I get to wear nice clothes now, instead of trackies. Win. They are both lovely, and the best part is that Felicity lives close, so there is just Em, Aisling, Rose and I in the flat, which is so less crowded and a lot more relaxed.

It's funny showing the new girls around - you realise how much you call this place home! Walking through the school, girls will hug you, say hi (or in the case of S, Z and E, do our secret hand shake) and you'll always stop for a chat with a teacher. The longer this year goes on the more I begin to realise how much I will miss the girls! Z got milo from her Dad during the hols, and very kindly gave Rose, Em and I a packet each - what a legend.

My aunt and grandma came over two weekends ago! I thought it was just Maria, but when she walked through, she asked me to wait for ‘this old woman I flew over with’. IT WAS GRANDMA. I couldn’t believe it, nearly collapsed onto the floor. I spent the best three days with them, sightseeing, showing them around London, and having good old family time. I miss my family! When I said goodbye on Sunday night, I had a little cry on the tube, but I’m totally good now. I want to go home and I don’t want to leave. What is going on.

The past week or two has been quite routine - but in a good way. I'm very comfortable here, loving my new timetable and my classes. The laminator is broken, which is HEAVEN because half our admin work has disappeared! Woo! Hoping we don't get a new one until Christmas.

I’ve had bit of trouble with my diabetes this week. My last vial of insulin went off, so I was stuck on Friday with enough insulin until that night, instead of until Tuesday of the next week. I had to run down to the doctors, beg for an acute prescription, run to the pharmacy, run back up the hill (DIED at least 3 times over. I fucking hate that hill) and slide back into work. THEN I put it into the medical fridge in the resource room, but when I went to get it that morning, it was locked. Had to ring David and ask him to open it up for me. I felt so bad!

This weekend I was sick on Saturday, but on Sunday Aisling and I (Rose was babysitting, Em was away) dragged ourselves out of bed at 6.50am to go to Camden Market before seeing a show at the Globe. Camden was AMAZING – I fell in love. I bought two second-hand books (I can’t help myself with books, it’s like Mum with shoes…) and a gorgeous vintage silk skirt, which was only £15 because it has a coffee stain on the front (I can get it dry-cleaned for about £10). I’m in love with it – hand sewn with a tight waist. Heaven.

We could have spent all day there, but headed off to London Bridge tube station to get to the Globe. We had standing tickets - £5, bargain. We were ‘groundlings’, and stood so close to the stage. We got water, cake, everything thrown onto us. Aisling’s bag got soaked in wet sock water. Loved it! We saw ‘Dr Faustus’, by Christopher Marlowe, and Arthur Darvill was Mephistopheles. I was about 30 cm from him, I nearly died. The actors were all amazing, I came out of there as high as a kite.

There have been countless funny and cute things the girls have said these past weeks – I should really start writing them down. K, a Polynesian girl, skipped past Rose and I last week and I said over my shoulder ‘Hey K’, to which she replied ‘I’m black!’ Had NO idea where that came from! Rose and I were pretty much on the floor in laughter.

One of the teachers is a stickler for unnecessary photocopying and laminating – she wanted me to do 30 colour copies of these notices, laminated and backed. Haha, no. This is how I get my kicks now…I copied them in black and white, didn’t laminate them and stuck them up with blu-tac. They still look good. Haha, take that.

26 days until half term. 71 days until the end of term. 79 days until I get on the plane to fly home.

So I've been lazy

really lazy.
I can't be bothered writing a huge blog about summer. No-one is going to get through that anyway, So I'll just jot down some highlights and have a rant about starting work again.

- Fell in love with Italy. Want to go back and live there. Not even joking. Someone please teach me Italian, pronto!
- Went sailing through tiny Greek islands for 3 days, in our own boat. Met fantastic people, so much fun. At one point I was sitting at the front of the boat, sailing through choppy ocean in my bikini, and water spalshing all over me. It was fantastic!
- Did Eastern Europe for about 2/12 weeks. Croatia was beautiful, I need to go back. Budapest is the coolest city ever. Prague is like living in a fairytale, it is absolutely gorgeous (and you can drink on the street there as well, which meant Aisling and I were able to walk along the streets of Prague drinking cheap wine and making lots of new friends hahaha)
- Albania was crazy. Very weird. (Unfortunately didn't find Voldemort, but there's always a next time)
- Krakow was AWESOME. Polish people are so friendly, and the city itself was really funky. Met some great English, German and Aussie people in the hostel, had heaps of fun with them/ Went to Auschwitz, which was something I really needed to do after doing 20th century history. There were some tears, it was a very confronting day.
- Slept in Warsaw airport. It was cold and horrible and I had to sneakily sleep in a cafe by hiding behind the stacked up chairs and putting cushions over me. Never again.
- Spent a couple of days in Paris with Steph. It was lovely to see her again, and also to talk French!
- Finished off Europe with Santorini for 6 days. It was so relaxing. Kate and I went cliff diving, donkey riding, drove around the island and had the best week ever!
- Last place I went before starting work was Ireland. Ireland was great, it's another place I want to live for a while. The people are ridiculously friendly, and the country itself is stunning. The weather is shit, but my pale skin fits in there haha. Rose and I saw a play in Dublin the night before we left, for £10. Bargain.
- Got back to London on a 12 hour overnight bus (hell), then discovered that to get back to High Wycombe we had to get the tube all the way to West Ruislip and then a bus to High Wycombe. 15 hours on public transport. Wanted to die.

Now have started back at work. Daisy arrived last Friday, which I was ridiculously excited about. Saw her walk through arrivals, squealed, jumped over the barrier and an old lady and nearly bowled her over. It's been so nice to see a good friend from back in Melbourne, I'm very tempted to hide myself in her backpack instead of working for the next three months!
The past two days I have been doing prep for the start of term. Filing, curriculum stuff, meetings....it's been pretty hectic. The boarders all arrived back today, so it's going to be lovely to see all the girls tomorrow. I'm working at Turner tomorrow morning a but earlier than usual, because there are SO many new girls it's crazy. Not the same house anymore, they're all so young. :)

See Mum, I told you I'd get around to blogging eventually!

Daisy is leaving tomorrow, Ria is coming over soon, so September should be a good month!

Venice

Before I say anything about Venice, it has to be shared that Aisling, Rose and I went to see Darren Criss the night before we left England. He was AMAZING, everything I thought he would be. Such a fangirl, but so beyond caring. I nearly cried with joy, I swear to god. Then when Joe Walker came out on stage to sing a duet, the room was thrown into chaos. He sang everything, from his EP to AVPM to Disney covers. I went to sleep grinning!

Anyway, VENICE

Arriving at Luton airport, Rose and I were told that our flight was delayed by 6 hours...not the best way to start off the summer! After waving Izzy goodbye we tried to amuse ourselves until ten minutes past midnight, when we were finally called to board! After the plane trip (90 minutes and I am in Italy, Europe is ridiculous...) we caught a shuttle bus to the station to get us to Venice. That train trip was bliss...Rose and I had not slept in more than 24 hours, we looked and felt like the walking dead. We slept nearly the whole 2 hours, and woke up as we were pulling into Venice.

I will never forget walking out of the station and seeing Venice for the first time-my jaw literally dropped. No picture can do Venice justice - it is the most incredible and beautiful city. Ancient buildings look like they are floating, boats buzzing along carrying tourists or families with their shopping...there is nothing like it! We got to our hostel (with me being told off by an angry old nonna for jumping across the seats on the waterbus) then explored our island of Giudecca. It's off the main island, and is residential, but 5 mins away from the main island. It was actually quite nice, wasn't as touristy and full of western shops as Central Venice. There's this art festival going on at the moment, so Rose and I wandered into a contemporary art exhibition in this gorgeous old house. It was a very early night for us that night - we'd had about 4 hours sleep in two days! Thanks easyjet...

9 July

Today we left at about 8am and headed straight to Piazza San Marco. We went into the Basilica, which was breathtakingly beautiful, like everything in this country seems to be! I said a short prayer in there, and for one terrifying moment when I opened my eyes I thought I had lost Rose. After a couple of minutes panic I found her again, then we just decided to wander. It's true what they say - you can't exactly plan Venice, the best way to discover things is just to wander. We wandered through Rialto Mercato, where there were heaps of fresh food stalls. It smelt amazing - living in England, the kingdom of crap food, has made me appreciate good food so much more. I've been eating on such a budget that I'm going to get scurvy before the summer is out haha. Fresh fruit for dinner and no money for transport, or bread roll and bus fare? There were heaps of touristy stalls around as well, with 'venetian' masks made in china :) we grabbed a 72 hour public transport pass, then went back to the hostel for a siesta to escape the heat. (I've acclimatised to the English weather, and am

dying in 35 degrees-what am I going to do when I get back home in December?!)

Afterwards, typical Rose and Georgie, we hopped on a waterbus which made our 10 minute trip into an hour long one. We weren't really fussed, we got a lovely scenic tour of Venice. We hopped off, and took a stroll away from Central Venice and into a park. It was gorgeous, the air was cool, the sun was setting and it was SO quiet. No cars in a city make all the difference! We walked past a family who looked like they were on their way to a summer dinner outside on the terrace - they were holding bruschetta, prosciutto...pretty much a walking deli. YUMMMM. After our long leisurely walk, we took a long leisurely cruise back to our hostel. The hostel has no air conditioning, and I swear I'm losing weight from the amount of sweat I'm losing...sleeping in a 10 person dorm in 33 degrees? Never fun.

10 July

Today we had planned to do all the islands, but just ended up doing Murano (the island famous for it's glass) and Lido. Murano was quite cool - the glass blowing demonstration was awesome! The guy made a horse in about 10 seconds, so talented. We wandered around, lusted after glass dust collectors, and went back to the hostel to sunscreen up before Lido aka the beach! I had low blood sugar as we were pulling into Lido, and treated myself to a yummy hypo fix of cherry gelati - jelly beans are no more in Italy! The beach was so crowded, but the water was BEAUTIFUL.

You know what else was beautiful? Us, apparently, according to the Italian guys. Our egos inflated so much, Rose and I were hit on so much it got a bit silly. (Seriously, how is my ghost white skin and thunder thighs remotely attractive?) Italian guys are so forward! One of them, when we told him we were australian, said 'Oh, Australia, it is bootyful, just like it's women' and slapped his chest...I am not joking. Rose and I had to stop ourselves from cracking up. Another one shook my hand, went in for the normal two cheek kiss, then tried to plant one on my lips hahahaha. My favourite? I think his name was something along the lines of Dimi? He spoke not one word of English, and my Italian is crap, so we had nearly no idea what the other was saying, but oh my god he was so sexy! We used a lot of gesturing, then he went and tried to make me a bracelet out of a reed...I died. Italian is such a beautiful language, I could have listened to him talk all day. He took my hand under the water and started to look into my eyes (I swear to god I am not making this up!) but this creepy as guy was hitting on Rose, so I made my excuses and we hustled back to the beach. As we swam back he kept pointing to Rose and I saying 'bianco! Bianco!' then pointed to his extremely tanned chest looking very confused haha. Yeah we get it, we are the palest girls on the beach...

(that's not even an exaggeration. Everyone is tanned, and all they sell is SPF10, while I'm there piling on the SPF50. Have the Italians not heard of skin cancer?). As we walked back up to the beach I turned around to firmly say goodbye, and he grabbed my hand, kissed me and said 'Ciao bella'. Seriously, what is Italy feeding their men? Can English guys have some of whatever it is?

So to say the least, Lido was a success! We had a huge pizza for dinner, and got back to hostel at about midnight.

11 July

Today Rose and I did a final wander of Venice. We went into a bookstore which claimed to be 'the most beautiful in the world', and it certainly lived up to it's name! Nestled away in a tiny street, it was stacked high with thousands of books, with hundreds more tumbling out of small gondolas in the middle of the tiny store. At the very end of the store it opened up to a small canal - it still makes me catch my breath, the fact that waves lap at peoples back doors!

We found a little deli/cafe with really friendly owners, where I had a delicious pesto. Before heading back to the hostel to grab our bags, we went into the Doge's Palace, which was just incredible. I walked through the bridge of sighs, and under a ceiling covered in 24 carat gold. It's a medieval palace...and we were walking in it!

We grabbed our luggage, caught the train with plenty of time to spare, and as I write I am lying in bed in florence. It's so hot oh my god!

Activities Week

Activities Week. It means that for a week the girls play games, make things, do workshops etc. It's a very weird week...and very stressful!

Oh, on Sunday Lou adn CLaier arrived to stay with us for a couple of days! Claire's been popping in and out all week, it's been so lovely! She made us dinner a couple of nights ago and scones last ngith. She is the best house guest in the world!

Monday.
I WAS AWAKE FOR 21 HOURS.
Why? Let me explain...

I went on a day trip to France with the Middles. I know, casual day trip to France, whaddup England. We went through the tunnel. You drive into this shuttle thing and it whizzes you through the tunnel in 30 minutes. Crazy! We came out the other end and we were suddenly in France!

We spent the day in Boulogne-sur-mer

Walking around the markets, and spent a couple of hours in the aquarium. The girls had fun, although it was hot. got to about 31 degrees, and for 11 year old English schoolgirls that is sweltering. They did not STOP complaining, I came very close to yelling 'TRY 40 DEGREES!!'. The air conditioning on our bus was broken, of all the days...I do feel sorry for them, England's version of air conditioning is 'open your windows', so no wonder they were uncomfortable.

We had lunch at a lovely little restaurant opposite the beach. A couple of the teachers and I were very keen to take the girls for a dip, however due to health and safety that wasn't an option...stupid paperwork!!! We went for a wander through the town, and tried to force the girls to speak some French, which some of them did :) We stopped by a hypermarche to get some snacks, but we were really delayed at passport control (they made us do things we shouldn't ahve to do, landing cards visa checks etc) so missed our shuttle.

We thought 'Oh well, that's fine, we'll get the next one'. However, the shuttle that we were meant to catch broke down halfway, and we were delayed by 3 hours. Together with missing the shuttle, we were stranded with 40 Middles near the eurotunnel for 5 hours. That is a very long time. At first we relaxed and lay on the grass and it was lovely, but by the end the girls were all tired and we grumpy and we all just wanted to get home. After waiting in a queue for ages, we finally got in a shuttle and we all slept the entire way back home. Once we got back to Godstowe, we got the girls back to their parents as quickly as possible. Most of the parents waiting there were Dads, which made me laugh! Poor Dads, they're always the ones doing the crappy pick ups (well, in my family anyway). We cleared the bus of rubbish etc, then by the time I was done and could head back to the flat it was around 1am...work the next day was not fun!

On Tuesday I helped out with the Upper Division Production, as well as the Viking Day for Form 2. Helping out with the production was great, they're doing a musical version of Romeo and Juliet. Set to Queen songs. I know! Amazing! Why did we never think of that at school? Viking Day was so boring, I threaded needles for two hours because they were making bags and satchels and things. I wanted to stab myself in the eye with the needle at the end of it. I'm happy to do anything 99% of the time, but I had been told that they were 'desperate' for help, but they actually didn't need me...can you tell I'm over younger children at the moment! I love them dearly, I do, but in small doses. I love the older ones so much more!
I worked with the girls, EG and CM choreographing dances, helping block and stuff. It was really fun, and I was really flattered because CM wantedto know and acted on them! She let me jump in and block scenes and everything! That night Em baked brownies. The best brownies in the world. They were DELICIOUS, that girl is indispensible. we had about a million each with a glass of milk, while watching we can be heroes and kath and kim. Partying hard in the gap flat, woo!!

Wednesday morning I spent helping out the Lowers with 'Team Games', but they really didn't need me at all...nice excuse to sit in the sun for a couple of hours! From breaktime to lunch I did some French workshops with the Form 1s, learning how to ask for an icecream in French. We then had icecreams at lunch, and they had to ask me and AA for them in French. 'Je voudrais une glace au chocolat' times 30. Very very cute. That was definitely one of the best activities to help out with. Combining two of my favourite things, French and icecream, into one activity? Winner. I have nooooo idea what I did that afternoon, but I had aftercare afterwards which was hell. Aisling was sick so I did it by myself, and the washing up took forever. The upside was that a) it was jam sandwhich day, yummy! and b) when I got back up to the flat the feeling of relief was incredible! :)

Thursday morning Rose, Em and I dressed up in uniform, as the girls had mufti day and we thought it would be funny. They loved it, thought it was hilarious. The teachers freaked out, they kept walking into the staffroom and going 'GAH I thought you were a student!!'. Nothing to say about that day, other than I did boring photocopy stuff. Thrilling. That night was the first night of the production, so Aisling and I headed down to do makeup and relived our MHS/MGHS musical makeup days. I did Lady Capulet's hair and makeup and I must say she looked stunning :)

Friday we spent ALL day making new labels for the trophies for speech day. It's all top secret so whenever a girl walked past the trophy cabinet we all dived over the lists and labels so they couldn't see. The sneaky things kept craning their necks to see but they had no chance hahaha. That night was also the production, and it was fantastic, I was so proud of them! When J sang Bohemian Rhapsody I got shivers, she was fantastic!

The weekend has been nothing special, other than I spent £100 on stuff for summer. Woops. It was babysitting money so it totally doesn't count!

not your average weekend

warning: not very related to work at all!

Well what a weird couple of days...

I was feeling quite ill on Saturday, and hadn't really been feeling too happy the whole week. I was just generally fed up with everyone and everything, wanting to travel and get out of this crappy little town and sick of teachers not telling us anything*. So Saturday I didn’t eat much at all because of my stomach ache, and decided to go out that night down to town. All I can say is BIGGG mistake. Drinking on an empty stomach, with blood sugar levels going everywhere is never a good idea. I won’t go into details, because putting that on the internet is never a good idea, but I woke up the next morning with no recollection of the night before, bruises and cuts all over my body and hypo at 3mmOl. I then spent the whole of Sunday curled around the toilet, head in the bowl and glasses of water around my feet. I didn’t give myself any insulin as I was hypo all day, and I am petrified of having another bad hypo. I had a horrible one last year when I couldn't move or speak, and one this year whoch was pretty much the same, and I am terrified of it happening again!

Monday morning I woke up and felt disgusting. Shaky, weak, nauseous, light headed. All the symptoms of high ketones but I really wasn’t thinking straight. Illife came into the staffroom to check our timetables to make sure everything was covered this week (it’s just me and Em because Rose and Izzy are on camp with the IVs) and immediately was like 'Ok, you're not well, what's up'. To cut a long story short, I ended up going down to the doctors around lunchtime, where he did some tests, told me that my ketones were through the roof and advised me 'extremely strongly' to go to hospital. So I spent my Monday afternoon and evening in Wycombe A&E on a drip, in a wheelchair parked next to the triage...whoo, joys of diabetes. I am 100% ready for a pump when I get back, I'm so sick of trying to work out basal and fast acting and screwing up my whole day if I get it wrong. Artifical pancreas here I come...

I came down to work the next day, feeling at about 75%, but keen to work because otherwise I would have been bored in bed the entire day, and they needed me. I had a discussion with Iliffe which reminded me very strongly of the discussions I used to have with Mum last year...
'Georgie, go back to bed, you're not well'
'I have to go to school, I have a SAC'
'The SAC can wait, you look like death'
'YOU CAN'T STOP ME!'
I hate being mollycoddled, so I assured her I was OK for work, so spent Tuesday doing all my usual jobs apart from Kindergarten swimming. Haha, speaking of, they were using noodles in the lesson...you know the big long polystyrene things? They call them 'woddles'. J. asked me to collect them up and I had noo idea what she was on about. Woddles?! That's not even a word!

Today I'm at 100%, work has been fine. Somehow all the teachers know that I've been 'poorly' and have been concerned, which is really nice! One of the girls asked me today 'Miss Peters, why is your hair so frizzy today?'...kids have no bounds. Finally finished this massive profject I've been working on for the French department, SUCH a relief. If I have to laminate one more thing I will put myself through the laminator. Did some filing today while chatting to one of Iliffe's daughters who was helping out, which was lovely. There is a bit of a gymnastics craze going on in the Lower Division at the moment, so duties are spent helping girls with backwards walkovers, backbends, handstands etc. Stupidly I did the splits for some of them a couple of weeks ago (let's be honest, I'm a showoff and enjoyed the cries of 'but you're so OLD, how can you do that?) so I'm being asked to WATCH THIS MISS P!! every 5 seconds. It's very cute though!

It's Em's birthday today, so I'm off upstairs to get the cake ready, food out and put a movie on. Yay! 2 weeks until summer holidays, thank god!! 75% of things are booked, payday is on Saturday so the rest will be booked by the weekend. 2 months of travel, here I come!! I'll get the blogspot app on my ipod so I can blog and upload via wireless. Otherwise my family might disown me :)

*It’s so annoying. If a swimming/sport/whatever is cancelled, none of the teachers think of telling us, so we’re running around trying to suss out whether we have to re-organise rosters, where our class is etc. SO frustrating.

South of England show and Aisling's birthday

On Saturday Rose and I went into the South of England show with the boarders. Aisling, Izzy and Em stayed at home and relaxed/cleaned. Being teaching gaps, we were both given IVs to look after for the day, which was fantastic because the IVs are my favourite year level (shhh). The older the better. If I don't have to tell them to stop picking their nose, I'm happy...

After an hour long bus ride, sitting next to P. (Form 1) who played hangman and waterslide on my ipod the entire way up (she beat Hannah's high score, better start practicing Han), we arrived and got split into two initial groups, to be taken around by a tour guide. I wouldn't have been suprised if the guide had been 100, he was so old and doddery and insisted on showing us a 'very exciting' cow judging. From the back. So essentially we spent 15 minutes looking at cows bums. Lovely. I felt like I was on a school excursion for that part of the day, my group kept asking me things like 'Miss Petersssss, can't we just, like, fall off the back and get lost. He's so boringggg'. I couldn't exactly disagree with them, as he was as boring as cows poo, so we had a little countdown system going until it hit 12.30 and we could bail. To be fair, he did take us inside the cow, sheep and pig sheds, where the girls got treated to talks about the different types etc, but try making 13 year olds interested in different types of Jersey cows....hell, I'm not even interested. We all know I'm not a country girl.

The show was very English...lots of posh men walking around with bowlers, carrying canes, talking about heifers and sows. The horse show was very posh - lots of polite clapping and cries of 'Oh, well DONE'. I feel like I was in an Enid Blyton book again.
As soon as lunch had finished, David said 'Alright girls, you can go' and my group and I were off like a shot. Everyone else was still getting up and we literally ran hahaha. For the next couple of hours we walked around, looking at the horses, dogs, food and spending quite a bit of time in the sweet section. It was quite nice with just the four Ivs and me - A, I, E and C. We had a great time, chatted heaps. Just before we were due to meet up with everyone else, we all got an icecream and I did my blood test as usual. They were so interested in it - they're not on my breakfast table so they have never seen me inject or anything. It was really nice, they kept asking questions and were so nice about it. Makes a lovely change from Highlands girls screaming 'EW' and jumping 10ft in the air. That's another reason I love the older ones!

The bus ride back went quite quickly. I sat next to J and I, two IVS, and J and I sang Hairspray, Glee and Wicked the whole way back. I am such a dork. That night we were exhausted, and I headed over to Turner House to watch a movie with Janet and the girls before heading back to the flat and preparing for Aisling's birthday :)

Rose and I woke Aisling up that morning...by wearing Darren Criss masks and singing 'Ginny'. I'm glad to say she loved it! That day, after she had skyped her family and we had watched our weekly Sunday morning F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode, we headed down to town to go shopping, have lunch and see a movie. I'm hanging out for after summer, when I don't have to worry about saving and we can go crazy in topshop. We didn't go in - it was too depressing because we can't afford any of it :) We saw 'Diary of a wimpy kid', which was actually hilarious. We were the only people in the cinema who were not at primary school or parents, but that's beside the point. Very very funny. Rose and I had bought Aisling a Disney princess cake, so up at the flat while the others were watching Anastasia we sneakily put some candles in and sang her a very loud happy birthday and did presents :)
(Aisling later found out that one of the girls in Lodge had the same cake as her for her birthday. This girl is five. We regret nothing)

This week is going by quite quickly. Sports day is coming up, which should be interesting. Three weeks exactly until the school year is over and we're on summer holidays!!. And you know what I realised today? 6 months exactly until I'm at Heathrow catching a plane back to Melbourne. I wanted to cry when I realised this - I don't want to leave! Must I really go to uni?