Travelling teacher

Disclaimer: this post is a bit scattered and all over the place. I don't really have anything exciting to share, this is more just me checking in because it's been a while! Tomorrow is my birthday. Well, actually, it's my birthday right now but the UK hasn't quite made it there. So I celebrated today by making it snow and giving us a half day, spending the afternoon making chocolate afghans instead of yelling at Year 9s. I look back on the person I was four years ago as a bright faced, enthusiastic teacher who would prep 2 hours for every 1 hour lesson, who swore she would never yell at students, and I laugh at myself. Treat them with respect, and they will return it, was always my philosophy. In my naivety it had never occurred to me that sometimes yelling was the only way to be loud enough to get their attention. But anyway, I'll save that reflection for another time. I love chocolate afghans. Mostly I think because I have inherited a love of butter and the...

For the last leg of our tour we arrived in Switzerland three nights ago. The tour is through Europamundo, but unfortunately our tour group, eight in total, was made up of three couples, two of whom were on their honeymoon and not enjoying the rigid itinerary at all, the third an older couple, and then my enthusiastic roomie and myself. Because of this, all our evenings seemed to end three hours earlier than the itinerary said, so we didn't have as much time to explore at each stop. Switzerland was no exception, arriving in Zurich and going straight to the hotel at 6.30pm because most of the group didn't want to stop in the city. Although a bit disappointed, we still made the most of the hotel restaurant where our water was more expensive than our beer. The following day was spent mostly on the bus, stopping at Interlaken (the city between the lakes), then Jungfrauch, in the Alps, then Lucerne, before returning to Zurich for an hour in town and then heading back to the...

Snow has lightly dusted the rooftops here in Zurich this morning. I have school tomorrow. I am overwhelmed by a mixture of emotions - I have meet new people, made new friends, experienced the beauty of natural landscapes, the magnificence of infrastructure that has survived hundreds, or even thousands of years. I have learned about incredible people of vision who left behind them legacies many are still enjoying the benefits of today - Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Gallileo, and countless other Italian artists and poets; Alfred Escher, the man whose vision led to the establishment of the Swiss railway system, and the Swiss bank, without both of which Switzerland would likely have not survived. It fills one with awe to see such abundance of talent and history in one location but more and more I realise mindset breeds talent. I have developed a great admiration for the Swiss, for their value on quality and deep sense of integrity. Nothing is ever rushed here, every decision takes t...

Alo! Coming to you from a plane just above Germany, I’m on my way to Rome, and very excited! But more on that next time. So it’s now officially mid term break. I didn’t quite make it to the end before taking off on an adventure, heading on a beach roadie mish with a week still left. Car hire here is ridiculously cheap, as long as you don’t care about an excess – I’m sure a car wash would have been more than what I paid for a weekend’s hire. But their loss. So Vauxhy and I took off on a wild crazy countryside exploration that involved several flooded roads, a night time dead-end farm track detour, and a carpark that redefined the meaning of potholes, throughout which Vauxhy did me proud. I must admit, before embarking on my journey, my expectations of the UK beaches were fairly low. I was really just craving beach, and ready for whatever shape or form that took, regardless of how anti-climactic the experience might be. My expectations were well and truly exceeded. For st...