the_vulture

The day went by smoothly. I had even spent a lovely few hours touring Rochester whilst obtaining the needed tubes for the didge. The packing of the didges went smoothly and I discovered there may be a possibility of bringing them with me on the plane as excess luggage, costing quite a bit less.  

I spent much of the evening filling out the second box, carefully sorting fiddly bits into smaller boxes to put into it. I got everything to fit nicely and I was seeing an end to the packing for the shipping.

Then I weighed the damn thing.

11 FCUKING KILOS OVER!!!

*sigh* It's a quarter past two in the morning and I now have to see how much of the Gods cursed extra weight I can stash into the large suitcase. And it looks like the biggest piece of extra weight, my printer/scanner, may have to be shipped seperately after all.

Dammit.

Needless to say, the trip into London tomorrow is off. I should be able to squeeze it in when I get back from Germany, hopefully.

This holiday is causing me way too much stress!

Yep, I haven't posted in a while. 

A couple of weekends ago, I went to the Star Wars Celebration Europe convention in London with a friend. 'Twas my first sci fi convention of any kind and it was, ummm..., interesting... Clearly, it was an event for collectors, though the die hard fans dressing up costume made the thing quite entertaining. The Force was strong amongst them (as well as the Farce).  ;) Clearly though, if you had any form of Star Wars (or any other sci fi) merchandise to sell, this was the place to sell it. Amongst interesting things seen were: a venue selling a host of original props from a variety of films (I saw one of G'Kar's face prosthetics!), storm troopers of all shapes and sizes, the actors for both Hollys from Red Dwarf, and a fun costume competition hosted by Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok). The day was topped off by dinner at Chillie's with my friend. 'Twas a good day!

As for the nerfs I am herding, they're still pretty wretched. Two of my classes are shaping up a bit, but the other two are proving quite problematic. One class is filled with kids who seem wholly immature both mentally and emotionally. There is something seriously wrong when about a third of the class demands C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonant words like cat, dog, etc.) spelling sheets because anything else is too difficult. And two of them even struggle badly with those! As for their behaviour towards one another, let's just say that the first few weeks of the next term will be spent purely on conflict resolution and anger management. 

I'm not trained as a primary teacher!

It hasn't been all bad. As I discover what does and doesn't work with my classes, I've had some better lessons with them. And yesterday proved to be an entertaining distraction. Courtesy of some additional funding made available to the school for the purpose, we celebrated cultural diversity. We had workshops on steel pan playing, Indian dance, music, French bowling games, batik and even an introduction to didgeridoo playing (led by yours truly!), amidst other events. 'Twas good fun! 

The remaining two and a half days of next week will likely be taken up by worksearches and other light stuff. I'm certainly not going to fight to get really productive lessons out of this lot! *chuckle*

There will be some improvements next term: I will no longer be in a crappy room with crappy furniture as the crew is just about finished knocking two small rooms in the English department to make a large one, I will regain use of a projector and white board setup, support will be more consistent, and I've been told that the new year 7s I'll be receiving, whilst still being pretty damn weak ability wise, are much better behaved than the lot of year 8s I now have.

Still, we're running low on TAs (they're not being as readily replaced when they leave or retire) and we're losing a vital member of the staff, our current deputy head, who is retiring this year. THAT is going to be a blow that may send the school spiraling downwards. There isn't a lot of confidence in our new head teacher. A lot of teachers are saying that they'll see how things go this term/year and, if it gets really rough, they'll be leaving. I'm currently of the same inclination. My plan will be, during the next term, to save up a ticket to anywhere and, if this ship starts sinking too fast, jump. I've already done three tours of duty in this country and I don't need to prove anything to myself; if my job gets too crappy, I'm gone.

In other news, this weekend will be spent doing a lot of cleaning, laundry and such, in preparation for my departure to Canada (east coast, not west - sorry!) near the end of next week. Yep, I'm headed back to spend time with immediate family and my grandfolks. I imagine that revisiting many of my childhood haunts will likely prove to be quite restorative to my spirit. I'm certainly going to enjoy spending some lazy days camping on the beach! 

I getting very close to being able to perform circular breathing whilst playing the didge. I can actually sustain noise whilst breathing in; I just have to work on being able to do it consistently. Just need more practise...