Christmas!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks back in England. and this is literally the first chance I have had to post some photos.  The first week back, we did our usual thing of going for a curry.  You can't get curry really in Germany, so we enjoyed it very much!  We also went to the IMAX cinema in London to see the new Star Wars film (Amazing!).  We went to the Apollo in London to see Caro Emerald perform.  The tickets were my birthday present from Matt.  Caro was wonderful, I really enjoyed myself.  She played all her hits, plus some new material, and a few Christmas songs and covers.

We also had a few days in York planned for last week.  We took the train up on the Thursday, arriving about 3pm.  We walked into the town centre, and I felt so sick that we had to go back to the hotel.  Then followed 8 hours of the Winter Vomiting Disease.  I finished, and an hour later, Matt started!  Matt's brother had caught it a few days earlier, so we must've got it from him.  We spent the next 48 hours in bed, and only left the hotel to get the train to Newcastle for our next stop.  So we didn't get to see any of York at all!  It was such a shame, but we will definitely go back.

We were visiting friends from Germany who moved back to the UK this year.  The boys went off to see Newcastle play football, and the girls did some Christmas shopping, before we all went out for dinner in the evening.  We went to the beach the next morning, which was lovely, and there was a nice craft and bric-a-brac market on which we had a good rummage around.  Unfortunately, Matt and I were still recovering from being so ill, and our friend had got a nasty ear infection, and his face had swollen over night, so we ended up getting dropped off at the station 3 hours early for our train, so that he could go to the walk in centre.  It was nice to see our friends, but the weekend was a bit of a disaster really!

Back in London, and feeling much better, we had a nice couple of days with Matt's parents, before heading to Mum and Dad's for Christmas day.  As is the family tradition, we went to the street in the next town to look at the ridiculous Christmas lights that raise money for charity every year.  I'm not sure that Matt was particularly impressed! but I love it.

We went to the Garden centre to see the reindeer...

... and then Christmas day was upon us...

The best present of all has to be Matt's to me; he bought me a DSLR camera!!!  I love it, and it can do so many things!  Here are some of the pictures I took playing around with it...

 

We went to Highcliff beach for a walk on boxing day, and of course had the obligatory coffee and cake.

Today we gave the dog a bath, and are off this evening to a party.  Only one more week until we're back to Germany, and to school, but that also means that the countdown to America for Easter is getting closer!!!

Boxing, Parent Visits, Winter Fair, and the Light Market

As promised, here are a few photos from the boxing match that Matt and his friend from home, plus two friends from school went to last weekend.  They had a fantastic time, and the Brit won, so they were very happy.

Matt's friend coming to stay marked the first of our 3 visitors in an 8 day stretch.  It's been an incredibly exhausting week!  Matt's friend went home last Sunday.......

I went to Cologne for the day on Sunday with my friend from school and her Mum.  Cologne is beautiful at Christmas, and the markets are wonderful.

Mum and Dad arrived on Monday for a few days of Christmas market hopping.  We were at work, so unfortunately couldn't go with them, but we saw them in the evening for schnitzel, and Christmas market hot salmon, and gluwein......

They left on Thursday, and Matt's parents arrived on Friday.

We had our Winter Fair at school on Saturday, and we were both down to work the morning shift, 11-2pm.  I was on a stall of games, where you played to win little prized.  It was a shame that we were downstairs in the food area, rather than upstairs with all the crafty christmas stalls, because the atmosphere was lovely up there.  The Choir sang on the stage, and Santa arrived.  Matt was supervising generally, so I think he got to see more than me.  Matt's parents came for an hour - enough time for a sausage in a bun, and then when we were finished, we headed into Duisburg for the Christmas markets, which are lovely.  We had dinner at Websters Brewery, and lots of gluwein at the market.

Saturday night was our house Christmas drinks in the garden.  We were determined to show our faces, which we did for an hour, with a glass of gluwein (with a shot of Amaretto) to aid us.  It was quite hard work because none of them speak English.  Matt did brilliantly, but I really struggled. I am determined next year to know a bit more conversational German!

Today we went to the Landschaftspark Nord, which is the old steel work landscape park that I have been to several times before.  They had a Christmas market on just for this weekend, and it was lovely.  All the stalls were handmade crafts, so just what I like!  We had currywurst for lunch there, and then had a wander around the park.  I took loads of photos as I always do, even though I've been there 3 times before, but I did spot these moving fans that I hadn't seen before, so thought I would share them with you.  The picture at the bottom reminds me of the old channel 4 adverts, where things move into the shape of a 4!

An exhausting, but really nice and festive week.  We're quite glad that we have an evening to ourselves now though!

Christmas Party and Christmas Markets

This week has been very cold in Germany.  It is officially winter!  A pretty standard week for me really, with the fun addition of being in charge of 10 very excited year 6's as we decorated Lower School with Christmas trees.  Matt had a more difficult week, with one of his diabetic kids getting taken to hospital in an ambulance.  She is OK, but it was rather stressful for everyone.

Friday night was the work Christmas party, at Bolero's, the Spanish restaurant in the Inner Harbour.  I got ready at Al's house, and her Mum, who is visiting, made us snowballs to get us in the mood for partying.  It was a really good night, and I managed to control myself around the open bar.  I think Matt was a bit worse for wear this morning, and some friends are still in bed now (it's 7pm on Saturday!!!).

This week a poster went up on the Lower School staffroom notice board of Matt in a suit and Pete (below) photoshopped into a wedding dress.  The caption read 'Congratulations on your virtual wedding' with two playstation controllers joined with a heart.  It was really funny, and very much true.  They do spent an awful amount of time talking to each other and playing online games via the playstation.  It wasn't until later on in the week that we realised that Pete looked exactly like Laura (below) in the photo of him in a wedding dress.  Hence this photograph...

The Christmas markets are in full swing now, and we visited them a couple of times after work this week.  Here are a few (wet) photos of Duisburg market, which is lovely.

This is flame cooked salmon, which you eat in a bun.  delicious!!!

... and the lads enjoying bratwurst.

Cats, Indian Festival and Duisburg

It was a busy week last week, as per usual, with lots of people off sick in Primary, which meant lots of cover for me, and missing my favourite lessons of the week; year 8.  Things improved a huge amount on Thursday with the opening of the Christmas markets.  Everyone's mood seems to have improved, and now that there are only 3 more weeks left of school before we break up for Christmas, everyone is feeling the Christmas spirit.

We had a furry visitor at the start of the week, which was lovely.  She's like a hot water bottle; perfect for cold winter nights!

On Friday night I went to a friends birthday house party, which was lovely and chilled out.  I was taught a game called Linkee, which you HAVE to play.  It's awesome.

Saturday night was the Indian Festival at school, organised by one of the Mums at school.  She had payed for the whole thing from her own pocket, and it was a spectacular evening of traditional and bollywood dance, traditional music played live, and a play all put on by the Indian children at school.  I know a few of the kids and they were just brilliant.  Three girls in upper school who performed a dance, with bells all over their outfits, said that they had been rehearsing for 6 months!  It certainly showed during their performance.

There was an Indian vegetarian buffet, which was AMAZING, and the reason that most teachers had bought tickets.  While the food really was superb, I had a great time at the party, and especially enjoyed a year 2 teacher who did a magic show on the stage and at the tables.  He was incredible, and i'm trying to think of an excuse to hire him!

Afterwards we went to our local pub, Shanke for 'a few beers'.  We ended up getting home at 2 am, after several shots of rubarbershnapps, and after playing Linkee, girls vs boys.  See if you can guess from the photos below who won!!!

On Sunday, we just realxed and watched TV, which was what we needed after out night out!

Annmarie sent me some photos that she took on her (much better than mine) camera, of the Landschaftpark Nord, which we visited at night when she was here a few weeks ago.  The photos are brilliant, but you just can't get a sense of how great this place is.  They have a Christmas market there in a few weeks, which I would love to go to.

 

At the top of the 70m high tower.