Top of the mornin' to ya!

It HAS been a while, hasn't it? I haven't been really been at home for the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of blogging. But don't worry, all that is about to change. However, because I've done a few different things (and would like to blog about them all) I shall blog in bitesize chunks. Starting from the most recent event... DUBLIN.

Yes, John and I recently visited Dublin. When we go abroad the places tend to be rather random (Kaunas, Riga and Bratislava to name a few) but for once I got to choose. So Dublin it was! And we had a great time. After a lie-in (we left at 5.30am instead of 3am) we went to the airport and managed to get to Ireland without any real hassle (apart from nearly missing our flight waiting on a bacon sandwich and scrambled eggs... luckily John has the superhuman ability to inhale his food). And the whole visit was kinda like that- no hassle, no rushing around, no transport issues. Naturally, much of the time was spent doing things we could have done in London- for example Wagamama's and shopping in HMV and H&M- but it was nice to do it in a different place. Dublin is a really good city for walking (and man, did we walk...) as everything is fairly close together. I was a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be many actual Irish people around, but it was fun trying to copy the accents of all the American/Geordie/Scottish tourists there too. Here are a few of the places we visited:

Ok, so I can't actually remember what this is, but it reminded John and I of two completely different historical buildings from other countries we've visited. 'Seen one, seen them all' springs to mind...

The grandest post office in the world EVER. A significant part of Irish heritage. Go look it up on Wikipedia.

A rather cute Salvation Army corps building. There are only one or two left in the whole of Ireland, apparently...

Dublin Castle. A little oddly designed, but quite cool all the same.

Not really sure what this is either, but an American guy offered to take our photo here as we walked past. I think it's part of the castle...

We were extremely lucky with the weather too. It was fine the whole time we were there, but as we left the view from the plane window looked a little bleak:

Lovely.

A rollercoaster of a weekend...

This weekend has been crazy busy. But in a good way. It started off on Friday, when I FINALLY got to see Mamma Mia! This made me very happy:

I was really excited by this point (probably to the point of irritating), as not only were we about to see the film I been going on about for months, but we were going to the Odeon in Leicester Square to see it! I was very impressed by the free souvenir programme, but not so much by the leopard print seats. Nevertheless, I absoloutely loved it...

On Saturday the Hadleigh youth (with a bit of Southend and Wickford mixed in) went on a day trip to the big, enormous, giant, humongous, GREAT Thorpe park! And it really lived up to its name. I felt a little sorry for Rich, as I convinced him to come by telling him we could visit Thorpe Farm. But when we got there it turned out they'd got rid of the farm a couple of years ago. Cue a slightly subdued Richard... until he discovered the wonder of the Rumba Rapids. See if you can spot in this video:

a) Richard comparing the whole experience to a high budget action film

b) Heather getting increasingly irritated with the video camera/the fact she was getting wet... we had a conversation prior to the ride along the lines of:

Heather: Will I get wet? I'm not going on it if I'm gonna get wet.

Katie: You won't get wet.

This was Heather after Rumba Rapids:

And here's a little slice of the fun:

It was a great day out, although some of us got wetter than others (as some chose to queue up for Stealth instead, which terrified the living daylights out of me):

Finally, it was Farewell Sunday today, which meant saying goodbye to our corps officers at Hadleigh Temple and Richard. Ben and I wrote an 'Ode to Richard' and shared it with the rest of the corps during the meeting... but I'll leave him to blog about that. It was really sad saying goodbye to the Wrights- they've been excellent officers and will be missed very much! I spent most of the afternoon feeling like I was in 'Challenge Anneka', running round Basildon trying to find a photo processing shop and suitable photo frame for Richard's leaving present before the shops closed at 4. It was worth it though. You'll just have to imagine this photo in a frame, wrapped in Indiana Jones wrapping paper:

Boxes

Every month, a worship event called CARUS is held at Mashbury. Last night's event was really good- it was given the theme 'Dreamtime' and involved us writing down our dreams for ourselves and dreams for the community on two sides of a large cardboard box. After that, we rebuilt a massive 'house' of boxes and it looked quite impressive. Until, that is, someone came up with the idea of playing Jenga... and taking one box out at a time. Here was the eventual outcome of that game:

I think Ben was pretending he was in some kind of disaster movie where he was trapped under rubble. I then tried to get an action shot of Glyn jumping mid air into the boxes, but all I managed to get was an action shot of a box:

I think Christina got more than she bargained for when she tried to join in the fun:

And it wasn't all playing with boxes, there was some worship and thought-provoking stuff in there too. One thing I realised is that I don't really have any 'crazy dreams', dreams that are very unlikely to come true but are an ambition anyway. I'd like to have a few of those.

It was a great evening- if you've not been to CARUS before, come along next time!

Happy Half Birthday to me!

I've been looking for an excuse to wear my new birthday hat for ages. I'm officially 23 and a half! And also happy half birthday to Stacey, who is 21 and a half today. Hooray! :-D

(It also happens to be Glyn's actual 25th birthday today- happy birthday Glyn- but as that's not quite as important, it can go in brackets.)

The children in my class all bought me John Lewis vouchers and expensive gifts, which was very generous of them... (although there's a slight chance this was due to the fact today was the last day of term-a happy co-incidence). Today was rather emotional, they've been a lovely class this year and I didn't want to let them go- there were lots of tears all round! It's so frustrating moving them on just when you're starting to see them really improve. It's always my favourite time of the year though- it's so rewarding to see how much the children have matured and how grateful their parents are. I'm very lucky that, for all its faults, teaching certainly isn't a thankless job. (Not at my school, anyway!)

Right, as a little half birthday treat to myself, I'm off to buy a Sat Nav. (I should've invested in one ages ago, I spend most of my life being lost...)

(Oh, I meant to add a Quote of the Day- our headteacher retired today and everyone in the class wrote a little message in his leaving card. Good thing I checked them though, as one boy had made a slight spelling error: 'Dear Mr. Chandler, I am very sorry you're living.' Oops.)

New Blogger!

Chris Carter (the one in the middle that's not me or Charlotte) now has a blog. Hooray! The blog world isn't dying after all...

Three facts about Chris:

- He can play the Euphonium . Very, very well.

- He recently auditioned to play bass guitar for the ISS (International Staff Songsters). And it went rather well... watch this space!

- He doesn't like parsnips. Not even a little bit.

For more information about Chris, you'll have to check out his blog :-D

You know you're a teacher when...

(Courtesy of a teacher friend...)

-You realise there are never enough pencils/gluesticks/scissors in the world.

-You see a child misbehaving in the supermarket you automatically give them "the look".

-You've programmed yourself to say "oh my goodness" when something goes wrong.

-You get excited in Hobbycraft!

-You can maintain a straight face in ANY situation.

-Stupid names of children in your class become the norm to you. (Don't even get me started...)

-You want to choke a person when they say "Oh, you must have such FUN everyday. This must be like playtime for you." (John, Andy... take note!)

-You also want to stab any person who says the following with a compass "Teaching? That's just about learning how to write on a whiteboard right?"

-You can sense misbehaviour without actually seeing it.

-When a lunchtime supervisor/helper/TA comes into your class to complain openly about them, you find yourself saying "OH dear, how sad" in an overly dramatic way! (I hadn't even realised I did this- but I do. All the time.)

-You say things once, then repeat them, then ask if everyone understands what you are saying, before repeating again.

-The people you work with (aka the children) are obsessed with finding out what your first name is.

-You secretly love it when a child in your class has a birthday- CAKE! (Woo hoo!)

To avoid writing reports today, I have:

- Watched 'Smalltalk Diaries', a series of 15 minute 'documentaries' through the eyes of minibeasts from all parts of the UK, and an insight into what they would say if they could talk. Brilliant. My favourite is the Geordie cockroach. (We are studying Minibeasts as our Science topic at the moment though, so that makes it kind of ok...)

- Made my own Shelfari bookshelf- see side column. I'm quite a big reader and there are a few good ones in there, especially The Book Thief. If anyone else can recommend a good summer read or two, let me know! After putting all these books on my virtual shelf, I then decided it was necessary to locate exactly where each book was in the house and re-read a chapter of each.

- Written two blog posts in two days. When was the last time that happened?

- Re-read every single birthday card I've received over the last three years. It brought back lots of memories and some of them really made me chuckle! I can't believe how we all thought turning 21 was old. Reading old cards has also spurred me to get back into contact with a few friends I haven't spoken to for ages (partly because I'd like to receive a card from them next year...)

- Researched 'Knock knock' jokes on the web. My personal favourite is still:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Little Old Lady.
Little Old Lady who?
I didn't know you could yodel!

HAHAHA.

- Finally got around to writing down favourite children's quotes/excuses from the last year or so in a little book. This was just after I'd asked a child why he was holding someone else's toy, to be greeted with the reply, 'I didn't steal it, I just found it in my hand...'

- Looked up the theme tune for Greenclaws on YouTube. I figured this might not trigger any memories, so here's a brief description of the programme: Greenclaws was a big green monster who lived in a greenhouse. Every week, Iris would visit Greenclaws. They would put a seed in a plant pot, put the plant pot inside a tree, wait for Owlma (a mechanical owl) to alert them that the plant was ready, answer three riddles/questions from Owlma (which were always along the lines of "Twit twoo, twoo, twit twit twoo?" and then translated into English by Greenclaws for him and Iris to solve), then open the tree to find the plant had grown in to something bearing unusual fruit. Amazing stuff. Now do you remember...?

Right, back to reports. I can hear you all getting your violins out...