Mustaches, markets and misfortune

Here is a delightfully sleepy photo of Matt's mustache at the end of 'this years 'Movember'.  Matt organised Movember at work and out of the 12 people who took part, he raised more money for cancer research than everyone else put together!

Well done Matt, and thank goodness the mustache has gone for another year.

This week has been full of more Christmas market visits (as every weekend will be now until Christmas).  I went to Dusseldorf market last Saturday with a couple of girl friends from school.  The market was nice, but it was really busy, so I didn't really get into the Christmas spirit quite as much as on Sunday when Matt and I went to Duisburg market.  Duisburg's stalls are just as nice and it is a lot less busy, so it gets my vote every time.  I'm trying the market in Essen on Sunday, so we will see how that compares.

Other things that happened last week include 'my' class, or rather the class that I covered for the whole week were 'class of the week'!  I was in charge of them that week, therefore I count that as a win for me!  One of the kids in 'my' class told me that I was a very good teacher, which is always nice to hear, especially when they are normally too busy being disappointed that their normal teacher isn't in. 

Every Friday in assembly the teachers each give out an 'achievement award' to a kid who has impressed them that week.  I decided that since I had taught for a whole week, that I would give one out too.  I chose a girl in my English class who had impressed me with her creativity and imagination when carrying on a short film with her own ideas.  The look on this girls face when she realised I was talking about her was priceless.  She was so chuffed and didn't stop smiling, so I was pretty happy on Friday.  This girl has been lovely to me all of this week, so that's an added bonus!

Yesterday, I went on the Year 5 day trip to the Science Museum in Essen.  The museum is fantastic!  The founder of the museum was actually our tour guide so he was obviously very enthusiastic.  The tour ended up being 2 and a half hours long, which sounds far too long for the kids, but it went so quickly!  The museum was split into 4 rooms, all with experiments for the kids to try on sound, movement, texture etc.  We would go into a room, have a talk for 10 minutes, with a couple of demonstrations of the experiments, then the kids would play with the experiments for 40 minutes.  Then we would move to the next room and do the same again.  The kids loved it, and so did I!

In other news, I have had a very sore knee for the past week and a bit, mostly when i'm outside walking in the cold (we're into minus numbers now, and it even snowed a bit yesterday).  Today I went to the doctors.  A friend at school has a doctor friend who she recommended to me.  You don't make appointments here, you just turn up and wait your turn, so my friend said go early, and she had text the doctor to let him know I was coming.  I arrived, and they said it would be an hours wait.  About 3 minutes later they were calling my name.  It's all about who you know!  I got some seriously evil stares from the very full waiting room!

It turns out that you can get joint and muscle problems if you have had an infection recently, so the knee trouble could be related to my recent bladder/kidney infection.  Anyway, they strapped my knee up, and i've got pills to bring the swelling down (it was very swollen for the last few days), and i've been signed off work to rest it, which is pretty annoying.  I'm not meant to go to work tomorrow either, but it's the Christmas party and there is no way im missing that, so i'm going in, and i'll just have to sit down lots!