i know it's been a while but i'm back, tonight will just be a short update/rant about nursery but tomorrow or the next day i'll have a more detailed post.
work has been going really well; the first week just flew by and now we're in our third full week life is settling down to the routine.
working in lodge has so far shown me that i really do love working with children and could definitely see myself working with a similar age group in the future. although i love most of the job (except mounting paintings...*shudder*), my absolute favourite part is over at nursery with the 3 and 4 year olds. they are so sweet and little and say the funniest/cutest things. one of my personal favourites was:
*while watching a video about a little girl wanting the moon, jamie the 4 year old ginger pipes up with*
jamie: miss grey, if a girl asked ME for the moon I would give it to her :) i'd pick it up with my muscles.
*cue everyone dying with adorableness*
working here has (so far at least) made me consider working with little kids more than primary/high school like i had previously thought; but i guess that it's only the beginning and i have plenty of time to be put off and also...i have a few years to decide.
in terms of out-of-school activities; last friday the 14th of january we (georgie, yve, janet, greer, caitlin and i) went out to yates; the pub in high wycombe and danced the night away until close to 3am.
this weekend i babysat for 2 girls on friday night - really good girls who went to bed when i told them too and did what i asked. it was surprisingly good and i earned £35 which is always nice!
on saturday georgie and i went in to london to meet izzy and janet for dinner before seeing CHICAGO!!!
ahhh it was amaaaaaziiiiiiing, the cast were incredible, the dancing was unbelievable and it was super mega awesome cool ahhhhh. thanks to train replacement buses; the trip took a half hour longer than it should have but otherwise was great!
yesterday we spent watching tv until close to 3pm when i decided that i needed some fruit, HP sauce etc. and went down to the supermarket.
flights for half term to berlin have been booked; as has an ANZAC tour of turkey for the easter break which i'm particularly excited about.
this morning georgie, rose and i switched on the tv and heard an australian accent and nearly died! lockie leonard (which i have never watched before) was on kids tv and made me feel really odd...not homesick but kind of nostalgic. i'll be sure to watch it again tomorrow!
as for now i'm off to watch another of the many movies we have hoarded in the flat and eat another tin of pineapple! i'm addicted, it's a curse...
Monday, 24 January 2011
Saturday, 8 January 2011
january 8
on monday we all woke up early for a meeting with david, the head master of godstowe. he basically gave us a welcome to the school and asked us to come back at midday with a good idea of what we wanted to do as our job. i hadn't really thought about working in lodge, with the kids aged 3-7, but once david started talking about it i was really interested. caitlin and i had to discuss seriously which one of us was going to do it because we both wanted to, but in the end i got the job!
at midday we went back to his office and met the house mistresses, yvonne the head of lodge and iliffe the vice head. we settled on our jobs and discovered yvonne is irish, from co. wicklow!
iliffe gave us a tour of the main school and then we went back to our home in highlands house to move out. after 4 trips along the path, across the tennis courts and up 3 flights of stairs, i was moved in and georgie and i began to unpack. this involved throwing everything that had been left behind OUT of the wardrobes and emptying our suitcases. neither of us have finished unpacking yet...but i will do it today.
tuesday and wednesday i was working in lodge, helping the teachers to organise themselves and doing photocopying and setting up displays. on thursday morning we were all ready to go by 8.15am and set to work. i was sent to do readers with a kindergarten (like grade 1) class which was the cutest thing ever. the kids were all really excited and some were a bit shy to meet me, and all their reading was great. the thing about godstowe is that all the children seem to love reading by the time they're 7. i went on my break at 10.20 and was put on break duty which was a rainy day program so that just involved setting up a video in the hall for the kids. after that i did some readers for a transition (grade 2) class and had lunch at 12pm. at 12.45 i went over to the nursery with one teacher to put the nursery kids (3 and 4 years old) down to sleep/rest and after 20 minutes anyone who was still awake was allowed to play. i played "noah's ark" snap with a girl called olivia before i went back to lodge.
in the afternoon i did more readers and at 3.30 went down to the hall to do after care. the kids have to be witnessed being picked up by a parent, so they have to individually go up to a teacher and say "good afternoon mrs ____" and shake their hand before leaving. at 4pm, the remaining children were seated in a circle for izzy and i to pass around glasses of water and marmite or jam sandwiches. little by little parents picked the children up. after eating, they were allowed to play and a few of the kids put on a puppet show for us until at around 5pm we were let leave as there were only 3 kids left and 2 teachers to watch them. we went up to the flat and collapsed with tiredness before getting up for dinner at 6.30. later on of course i spoke to my family and did some emailing.
yesterday was quite similar, readers, lunch duty, working in the nursery. i spent a couple of hours in the art storeroom, cutting poster paper to stick paintings on to and i spent a while sitting with one little girl to try and help her pay attention.
in the evening we watched just my luck and hitch and all went to bed even though it was everyones night off and we had all wanted to go out. the truth is that we're too tired at the moment.
at midday we went back to his office and met the house mistresses, yvonne the head of lodge and iliffe the vice head. we settled on our jobs and discovered yvonne is irish, from co. wicklow!
iliffe gave us a tour of the main school and then we went back to our home in highlands house to move out. after 4 trips along the path, across the tennis courts and up 3 flights of stairs, i was moved in and georgie and i began to unpack. this involved throwing everything that had been left behind OUT of the wardrobes and emptying our suitcases. neither of us have finished unpacking yet...but i will do it today.
tuesday and wednesday i was working in lodge, helping the teachers to organise themselves and doing photocopying and setting up displays. on thursday morning we were all ready to go by 8.15am and set to work. i was sent to do readers with a kindergarten (like grade 1) class which was the cutest thing ever. the kids were all really excited and some were a bit shy to meet me, and all their reading was great. the thing about godstowe is that all the children seem to love reading by the time they're 7. i went on my break at 10.20 and was put on break duty which was a rainy day program so that just involved setting up a video in the hall for the kids. after that i did some readers for a transition (grade 2) class and had lunch at 12pm. at 12.45 i went over to the nursery with one teacher to put the nursery kids (3 and 4 years old) down to sleep/rest and after 20 minutes anyone who was still awake was allowed to play. i played "noah's ark" snap with a girl called olivia before i went back to lodge.
in the afternoon i did more readers and at 3.30 went down to the hall to do after care. the kids have to be witnessed being picked up by a parent, so they have to individually go up to a teacher and say "good afternoon mrs ____" and shake their hand before leaving. at 4pm, the remaining children were seated in a circle for izzy and i to pass around glasses of water and marmite or jam sandwiches. little by little parents picked the children up. after eating, they were allowed to play and a few of the kids put on a puppet show for us until at around 5pm we were let leave as there were only 3 kids left and 2 teachers to watch them. we went up to the flat and collapsed with tiredness before getting up for dinner at 6.30. later on of course i spoke to my family and did some emailing.
yesterday was quite similar, readers, lunch duty, working in the nursery. i spent a couple of hours in the art storeroom, cutting poster paper to stick paintings on to and i spent a while sitting with one little girl to try and help her pay attention.
in the evening we watched just my luck and hitch and all went to bed even though it was everyones night off and we had all wanted to go out. the truth is that we're too tired at the moment.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
address/contact details
We're moved into the flat now, so we have a permanent address and landline number!
anyone wanting to send me letters etc. (hint hint) can send them to:
Aisling Grey - Lodge Flat
Godstowe Preparatory School
Shrubbery Road
High Wycombe
Buckinghamshire HP13 6PR
United Kingdom
the landline phone number is
0044 (or +44) 14944 29008)
and my English mobile is
+447576044319
anyone wanting to send me letters etc. (hint hint) can send them to:
Aisling Grey - Lodge Flat
Godstowe Preparatory School
Shrubbery Road
High Wycombe
Buckinghamshire HP13 6PR
United Kingdom
the landline phone number is
0044 (or +44) 14944 29008)
and my English mobile is
+447576044319
january 4
SO. WOW. NEW YEARS EVE.
we left high wycombe on friday morning around midday after some excitement about the internet and editing photos or something. the train was taken in to london (at the ridiculous cost of £11 pounds, a reduction from the usual £18 but none of us realised yet that discounted fares are gained by booking in advance...strange system). there was a muddle with the underground system too because the bakerloo line was down and we had to do some kind of walk around to a different station and change lines and then get a regular train and EVENTUALLY end up in paddington. Luckily our hotel was about 2 minutes walk from the station and after walking up 4 (count them, 4) flight of stairs we reached our rooms. Being highly intelligent, Georgie, Yve and I locked our key in the room after about 30 seconds so that was really great. After traipsing back downstairs and back up again, we were set.
A walk around Hyde Park was decided upon and we set off with really no idea where we were going, but a firm belief that "it's big and green, who could miss it?". Georgie got really excited when she saw some lights in the distance and with the really safe motto of "follow the sparkles", we trekked across the park and discovered a Winter Wonderland fair kind of thing. After walking for a long time and being cold and tired, we decided to head back but somehow came out a different entrance to the one we had walked in and found ourselves on Oxford Street where I got increasingly more stressed as the likelihood of finding somewhere to buy credit so I could send HAPPY NEW YEAR texts, but all was well. We decided to walk back to our hotel via some strange street which seemed to be in the right direction and that would intersect with our road eventually so we set off. Somehow though, we had ended up in the Lebanese district of London. Every restaurant we passed was advertising Shisha and kebabs with an enticing "come in ladies..." so we moved smartly along. After eventually finding a greasy hole in the wall style burger joint where we got burgers, chips and soft drink for £2.50 we made it back to the hotel and collapsed on the beds to watch Friends and Scrubs before agreeing to take a nap. Happy New Year indeed...we awoke at 9pm and Yve Georgie and I decided we HAD to celebrate so we got all dressed up and went outside...then realised we didn't know where to go. Paddington was full of equally dressed up young people like us, all wondering where to go and all with nowhere to go. We considered taking a bus into Trafalgar Square but didn't know how to work the bus system and in the end we drank our vodka and wandered back to the hotel to wake the others. Then we ventured down to the "old people pub" and Georgie made friends with a french boy who we all chatted to until he left, presenting us with balloons before doing so. At the countdown to midnight we all squashed inside where scary old people were drunkenly dirty dancing and cheered and hugged before Georgie proudly declared "Happy 2013!". We survived outside until near 1am before returning to our hotel where Yve, Georgie and I stayed awake until 3am. The low point was when Georgie and I settled down to sleep and Yve stood over us ordering "stay awake! stay awake!". So our crazy drunken NYE in London didn't really happen, but i actually had the best NYE ever.
New Year's Day we woke at 7.30 to have breakfast and then decided to be touristy and went to the Natural History Museum and Science Museum, both of which were entertaining although after visiting the Science Museum for several hours we were drained by the time we got to Natural History. Walking back to Hyde Park afterwards we reached the Royal Albert Hall and did token touristy photos, then it was on to Kensington Palace just as London began to rain. We attached ourselves to a tour group being run by a Scottish man, kilt and all, who was telling stories about William of Orange (and how the elderly Irish still say a toast to the mole that tripped him and made him fall off his horse). We eventually made it back to our hotel again and collapsed onto the beds. Janet arrived a while later so we dragged ourselves down to meet her at Paddington Station and went to dinner at what we thought was Chinese but turned out to be more generically an Asian restaurant. That night we all collapsed into bed and slept until 7.30 the next morning where we got up for breakfast again before walking up Oxford Street (forgetting it was a Sunday) and then taking the train back to High Wycombe.
I know my days are a bit behind now, but I'll catch up tomorrow hopefully!
we left high wycombe on friday morning around midday after some excitement about the internet and editing photos or something. the train was taken in to london (at the ridiculous cost of £11 pounds, a reduction from the usual £18 but none of us realised yet that discounted fares are gained by booking in advance...strange system). there was a muddle with the underground system too because the bakerloo line was down and we had to do some kind of walk around to a different station and change lines and then get a regular train and EVENTUALLY end up in paddington. Luckily our hotel was about 2 minutes walk from the station and after walking up 4 (count them, 4) flight of stairs we reached our rooms. Being highly intelligent, Georgie, Yve and I locked our key in the room after about 30 seconds so that was really great. After traipsing back downstairs and back up again, we were set.
A walk around Hyde Park was decided upon and we set off with really no idea where we were going, but a firm belief that "it's big and green, who could miss it?". Georgie got really excited when she saw some lights in the distance and with the really safe motto of "follow the sparkles", we trekked across the park and discovered a Winter Wonderland fair kind of thing. After walking for a long time and being cold and tired, we decided to head back but somehow came out a different entrance to the one we had walked in and found ourselves on Oxford Street where I got increasingly more stressed as the likelihood of finding somewhere to buy credit so I could send HAPPY NEW YEAR texts, but all was well. We decided to walk back to our hotel via some strange street which seemed to be in the right direction and that would intersect with our road eventually so we set off. Somehow though, we had ended up in the Lebanese district of London. Every restaurant we passed was advertising Shisha and kebabs with an enticing "come in ladies..." so we moved smartly along. After eventually finding a greasy hole in the wall style burger joint where we got burgers, chips and soft drink for £2.50 we made it back to the hotel and collapsed on the beds to watch Friends and Scrubs before agreeing to take a nap. Happy New Year indeed...we awoke at 9pm and Yve Georgie and I decided we HAD to celebrate so we got all dressed up and went outside...then realised we didn't know where to go. Paddington was full of equally dressed up young people like us, all wondering where to go and all with nowhere to go. We considered taking a bus into Trafalgar Square but didn't know how to work the bus system and in the end we drank our vodka and wandered back to the hotel to wake the others. Then we ventured down to the "old people pub" and Georgie made friends with a french boy who we all chatted to until he left, presenting us with balloons before doing so. At the countdown to midnight we all squashed inside where scary old people were drunkenly dirty dancing and cheered and hugged before Georgie proudly declared "Happy 2013!". We survived outside until near 1am before returning to our hotel where Yve, Georgie and I stayed awake until 3am. The low point was when Georgie and I settled down to sleep and Yve stood over us ordering "stay awake! stay awake!". So our crazy drunken NYE in London didn't really happen, but i actually had the best NYE ever.
New Year's Day we woke at 7.30 to have breakfast and then decided to be touristy and went to the Natural History Museum and Science Museum, both of which were entertaining although after visiting the Science Museum for several hours we were drained by the time we got to Natural History. Walking back to Hyde Park afterwards we reached the Royal Albert Hall and did token touristy photos, then it was on to Kensington Palace just as London began to rain. We attached ourselves to a tour group being run by a Scottish man, kilt and all, who was telling stories about William of Orange (and how the elderly Irish still say a toast to the mole that tripped him and made him fall off his horse). We eventually made it back to our hotel again and collapsed onto the beds. Janet arrived a while later so we dragged ourselves down to meet her at Paddington Station and went to dinner at what we thought was Chinese but turned out to be more generically an Asian restaurant. That night we all collapsed into bed and slept until 7.30 the next morning where we got up for breakfast again before walking up Oxford Street (forgetting it was a Sunday) and then taking the train back to High Wycombe.
I know my days are a bit behind now, but I'll catch up tomorrow hopefully!
Thursday, 30 December 2010
december 30
we've been in high wycombe for around 36 hours now, and i feel at home.
the internet was down until a couple of hours ago which caused some panic, but so far the trip has gone smoothly.
on our first flight, melbourne - sydney we were provided with "refreshment" in the form of a cookie and drink. at sydney airport we adopted our catchphrase for the trip: follow the hotties. may it serve us well.
the next, sydney - singapore was 7 and a half hours long and we watched movies, slept and ate our dinner and a snack. our flight captain was named captain england. it was fate, and we wrote a song in his honour. the next flight was much the same, singapore - london, but with more sleeping, and plane letters being read and tears shed.
the plane touched down in london about an hour ahead of schedule. some of us have british passports and got through passport control in around 20 minutes. the others took 15 minutes or so longer and we were soon through to the baggage claim. that went smoothly too, it was on the conveyor belt as we entered the hall. customs was a non-event as there were no airport officers working so all our worry about bringing lollies and biscuits into the country were for nothing. i guess at 5am, i'd just let the food in too.
in the arrivals hall, we waited for 15-20 minutes, broken up by 2 trips to the bathroom to experience first hand the terrifying hand dryers which blow your skin in different directions. georgie and i nearly passed out from laughing on the walk back to our bags. once back, we only waited a couple of minutes longer before martin approached us to ask if we were heading to godstowe. his bus easily seated us all and after a minute of photo-takiung we got in and set off for high wycombe.
seeing the town at 6.30am wasn't the most welcoming sight i could have imagined for us arriving; but it didn't really matter. up the hill at one of godstowe's boarding houses we were met by the other martin who let us in and showed us where to put our bags, leaving us free to explore the house while he went to get his wife sam and their adorable baby owen. we then all sat down and were filled in on martin and sam's views on the entire staff and student's of godstowe, including which boys were "interested in the gaps" and who to avoid at all costs. they were also glad to see that we planned on going to london for NYE, deeming us "normal 18 year olds". they then took us down to the town of high wycombe where we explored the shops and bought groceries to keep ourselves alive with until the school kitchen re-opens next wednesday.
by the time we got home from high wycombe and put our shopping away, it was close to 2pm and we all realised we hadn't actually eaten since breakfast at 3am so lunch was pretty much devoured and then georgie and i sat on the counter drinking really strong tea. it was so strong because i forgot british tea bags are SO MUCH STRONGER than the australian kind, and so 5 minutes of brewing reduced it to tea flavoured sludge. also the kettle needs cleaning, because nobody likes limescale in their tea water. yuck.
after lunch at tea and such other things including reorganising the suitcases and opening toothbrushes, toothpaste, moisturiser and multivitamins we decided to watch zoolander. unfortunately nobody thought that watching a movie might put us all to sleep, as it almost did. a bit more than halfway through we decided to go for a walk and worked out where the main school is, the sport fields, the junior lodge and the flat where i will probably be living. we returned from our walk with enough energy to cook dinner, finish the movie and crawl into bed. we were asleep by 6.30pm and slept through to almost 8am
today we had lazy breakfast watching the news( we saw flooded australia. good luck with that guys...) and kids tv, then yve suggested we should actually DO something so we dressed very slowly and walked down the hill to the train station and in to town to buy phones, more orange juice because we somehow drank 2L in 18 hours, and a bottle of vodka. we left a note for martin and sam because we had called around in the morning to see if they wanted any groceries bought. when we got back we went over to say hello and see martin's impressive movie collection. he took us up to the gap flat so i could search for the bag of things left behind for me by liv from last year, and then we went back to our house to sit down and play with phones and other exciting things. the bursar called in to say hello and then martin and sam came over again to show us how to use the laundry. after they left we realised the internet was back on and suddenly became very anti-social...
now it's off to dinner and probably early to bed again tonight to be ready for new years eve tomorrow!
the internet was down until a couple of hours ago which caused some panic, but so far the trip has gone smoothly.
on our first flight, melbourne - sydney we were provided with "refreshment" in the form of a cookie and drink. at sydney airport we adopted our catchphrase for the trip: follow the hotties. may it serve us well.
the next, sydney - singapore was 7 and a half hours long and we watched movies, slept and ate our dinner and a snack. our flight captain was named captain england. it was fate, and we wrote a song in his honour. the next flight was much the same, singapore - london, but with more sleeping, and plane letters being read and tears shed.
the plane touched down in london about an hour ahead of schedule. some of us have british passports and got through passport control in around 20 minutes. the others took 15 minutes or so longer and we were soon through to the baggage claim. that went smoothly too, it was on the conveyor belt as we entered the hall. customs was a non-event as there were no airport officers working so all our worry about bringing lollies and biscuits into the country were for nothing. i guess at 5am, i'd just let the food in too.
in the arrivals hall, we waited for 15-20 minutes, broken up by 2 trips to the bathroom to experience first hand the terrifying hand dryers which blow your skin in different directions. georgie and i nearly passed out from laughing on the walk back to our bags. once back, we only waited a couple of minutes longer before martin approached us to ask if we were heading to godstowe. his bus easily seated us all and after a minute of photo-takiung we got in and set off for high wycombe.
seeing the town at 6.30am wasn't the most welcoming sight i could have imagined for us arriving; but it didn't really matter. up the hill at one of godstowe's boarding houses we were met by the other martin who let us in and showed us where to put our bags, leaving us free to explore the house while he went to get his wife sam and their adorable baby owen. we then all sat down and were filled in on martin and sam's views on the entire staff and student's of godstowe, including which boys were "interested in the gaps" and who to avoid at all costs. they were also glad to see that we planned on going to london for NYE, deeming us "normal 18 year olds". they then took us down to the town of high wycombe where we explored the shops and bought groceries to keep ourselves alive with until the school kitchen re-opens next wednesday.
by the time we got home from high wycombe and put our shopping away, it was close to 2pm and we all realised we hadn't actually eaten since breakfast at 3am so lunch was pretty much devoured and then georgie and i sat on the counter drinking really strong tea. it was so strong because i forgot british tea bags are SO MUCH STRONGER than the australian kind, and so 5 minutes of brewing reduced it to tea flavoured sludge. also the kettle needs cleaning, because nobody likes limescale in their tea water. yuck.
after lunch at tea and such other things including reorganising the suitcases and opening toothbrushes, toothpaste, moisturiser and multivitamins we decided to watch zoolander. unfortunately nobody thought that watching a movie might put us all to sleep, as it almost did. a bit more than halfway through we decided to go for a walk and worked out where the main school is, the sport fields, the junior lodge and the flat where i will probably be living. we returned from our walk with enough energy to cook dinner, finish the movie and crawl into bed. we were asleep by 6.30pm and slept through to almost 8am
today we had lazy breakfast watching the news( we saw flooded australia. good luck with that guys...) and kids tv, then yve suggested we should actually DO something so we dressed very slowly and walked down the hill to the train station and in to town to buy phones, more orange juice because we somehow drank 2L in 18 hours, and a bottle of vodka. we left a note for martin and sam because we had called around in the morning to see if they wanted any groceries bought. when we got back we went over to say hello and see martin's impressive movie collection. he took us up to the gap flat so i could search for the bag of things left behind for me by liv from last year, and then we went back to our house to sit down and play with phones and other exciting things. the bursar called in to say hello and then martin and sam came over again to show us how to use the laundry. after they left we realised the internet was back on and suddenly became very anti-social...
now it's off to dinner and probably early to bed again tonight to be ready for new years eve tomorrow!
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