Sealife Centre, Mini Golf and Xanten

It's half term this week. Yay!  The week started off with a few days relaxing.  I was still resting my ankle (on the mend now), so we didn't do much.  I did manage to squeeze a lunch in with my lovely friend from work.  We had the above ice creams, which were seriously tasty!

On Wednesday morning, Matt's parents arrived.  We took them to school so that they could have a look around, and see Matt's new office for next year (very excited that he's getting an office).  Then we went down the road from school to a bar and leisure centre called XXL.  It's where we go quite often after work on a Friday.  They have ultra violet mini golf, so of course we had to have a go at that.  It was fun, but it takes your eyes ages to adjust to the weird glowing!  Matt won, of course!  But Margaret got a hole in one!

 On Friday the forecast was rain, so we decided to do something indoors.  We went to the Sealife centre in Oberhausen.  This is where the famous world cup predicting octopus was from, and there is a memorial to him at the centre.

The centre was really interesting, with lots to see.  They have a huge tank with a tunnel under it where you can see sharks and a giant turtle.  We paid a bit extra so that we could go on a glass bottom boat tour of this tank.  The turtle was swimming about on the surface, so it was well worth it just to see him.

 On Friday we went for a day trip to Xanten, which I was hugely impressed with.  In fact it was so good, I think I will take next weeks guests there too!  It was a 45 minute train ride away, and is a small medieval town with lots of cafes, ice cream parlours, and little individual gifty shops - just what I love.

The Cathederal was beautiful.  Someone was flying a drone around it to take video and photos of the interesting architecture, so it was rather noisy in there, but the stained glass was lovely.  I especially loved the window that had been designed by the children of the town.

There was an interesting memorial in the crypt for 4 martyrs who had died during the war.  There were memorials for everyone who had died in 4 concentration camps, with barbed wire over the stones that said the camp names.  It was very interesting, and not really what I was expecting in the crypt.

Xanten is famous for it's Roman Archaeological Park, and I can see why!  It was only 9 euros to get in, and there was so much to see.  The amphitheatre was great!

Above are the baths and one of the temples.  Below is the amazing museum.

We were pretty tired after our trip to Xanten, but not too tired to go to the Inland Harbour in Duisburg for some gigantic pizzas!

Tony and Margaret left at 4am on Sunday, but their flight was delayed by 4 hours!  Not a brilliant end to the trip for them, but we had a great time seeing them.

Saturday morning, Matt went to school to play football against the stag party of one of the men who normally plays football after school on Fridays.  We had a birthday party to go to on Saturday evening, which was fancy dress.  We went in Hawaiian costumes, and it was really cold!

So that's our first guests done, now we have 2 more in the next 2 weeks.  Busy times for us, but at least we only have a 3 day week next week.

Proof That Jogging Is Bad For You!

I only ended up working for 3 days again last week.  On Sunday, I went for a run and managed to bruise my ankle bone.  I have no idea how; I didn't trip or fall, it just suddenly started hurting a lot.  Work didn't help the situation.  On Monday and Wednesday I was covering all day for Year 5, because one of the teachers had an eye infection.  I was on my feet a lot of the day.  I did tell the kids that I was going to teach from sitting down as much as possible, but it never really works.  You just end up with a huge crowd of children around your desk!  On Tuesday, I was continuing to sort out the gigantic order of resources that had come in earlier the week before.  The other TA was on the Year 6 residential, so I was on my own.  Sorting through boxes and ticking the order off a huge list isn't exactly something you can do sitting down, so by the time Thursday morning arrived, I was definitely ready to go to the Doctors.  I got seen really fast, and had my foot strapped up.  I spent quite a nice couple of days watching films and not doing much else really!

On Saturday I went to my friend's hen party.  She had lots of guests from the UK staying with her, and about 5 of us from work went too.  We went to her house for drinks, and to get our T-shirts and play a few games (her fiance had been asked lots of questions, and my friend had to see if she could guess the correct answers).

We then headed out to the Apollo Theatre in Dusseldorf for the 'Tulips of Amsterdam' variety show.  The show changes every 2 months or so, and my boss had been to a previous one and said it was really good.  There was a bit of talking in German, but not too much, which was good.  The acts included; chorus girls dressed as windmills, tulips and prostitutes!, a contortionist, acrobats, jugglers (who were throwing juggling pins between them.  They stripped down to vest and pants while still juggling, and then put all of their clothes back on while juggling too!  Shirts buttoned up and ties re-tied too!),  The hen was called up on stage to partake in some cowbell ringing too!   Here is the link to the website, which has a video on it.  It's a good taste of what the show was like. http://www.apollo-variete.com/

I left at about 11pm because my ankle was starting to ache, but I believe the others didn't get home until around 6am!!!

How many men does it take to light a BBQ?

Three, as it turns out!

This has been a short week at work, just three days due to a Bank holiday on Thursday and a bridge day on Friday.  Lucky us!  It has just meant squeezing 5 days worth of work into 3 for me though.  At the beginning of the week I was given the project of creating door displays for anyone who didn't have one in Lower School.  This turned out to be 11.  That would have kept me occupied for the entire week, except we got a gigantic order of stationary and resources on Wednesday lunch time.  That took priority, even over my classes, and so that is what I spent Wednesday afternoon, and will spend most of next week doing.  Fun times!  Ordinarily it would be OK, because I would have the other TA with me, but she is off on the Year 6 residential next week, so I will be all alone.  This will give me a taster of what it will be like next year I think.  The other TA is becoming a Teacher, and the school are not replacing her, so I imagine I will be rather lonely next year!  Still, I like being busy, it's so much better than having nothing to do.

Thursday was spent doing not much at all during the day.  We went out for cocktails with some friends in the evening, and spent Friday with the same friends having a BBQ.  The weather was lovely and sunny, but still a bit breezy.  Give it another month and the weather will be scorching hot I think.  It's pouring with rain today, and were off to a birthday party later.

A relaxing, and more sociable than usual weekend. - very nice!

Dusseldorf

It's been a week full of time spent in Dusseldorf it seems.  I always thought that Dusseldorf was only good because it had a Primark, and because it has pubs right next to the Rhine, but this week I discovered some of it's charms.  On Thursday, I went on a school trip with year 6 to the building in the above photo.  It is called the Landtag, and it is the political building for our state, North-Rhine Westphalia.  The circular room is where the laws of the state are made.  I wasn't particularly looking forward to the tour, thinking that it might be a bit dull, but it was fantastic.  The lady doing the tour was brilliant.  We all went into the law-making room and took a seat.  The chairs are split into 5 segments, for each of the 5 political parties.  Each chair is for a specific person, and their name is engraved on the seat.  The kids played the part of whoever's seat they were in, for example the leader of the party got to choose who would go up and debate.  The debate was on whether or not we should change school holidays from 12 weeks to 6.  A child from each political party went up to say their piece, and one of the kids resided over the proceedings.  One was the president of the state, and one was the minister for education.  Some of the kids were for the change, just to be controversial, so the debate was really close!  The kids loved it, and learnt so much without even realising it!  Brilliant.

The Landtag is right underneath the TV tower in Dusseldorf, so while we had a couple of hours for lunch and a run around on the grass, we went up the tower in small groups.  I ended up going twice, because one of the Mum helpers is scared of heights.  On my second trip up, the boys in my group started to get very worked up.  They had seen a footballer go up in the lift before ours, and were literally bouncing with excitement.  The footballer was Christoph Kramer, who played for Germany in the winning World Cup match last year.  He was being filmed for something or other up the tower, in his home town.  He was very nice, and signed lots of autographs for the very over excited children, who had begged me for scraps of paper and a pen!  I now own a pen that has signed about 20 autographs!

The day after the trip, the year 6's were really friendly and chatty with me for the whole day.  Obviously letting them get autographs has done wonders for my street cred at school!

This weekend, we had Matt's Gran and Uncle come to visit.  They arrived on Friday just as school finished, after a traumatic taxi journey from the airport.  It's meant to take half an hour and cost 30-35 Euros.  It took an hour and a half and he tried to charge them 80 euros!  They had to phone Matt to get directions, because the driver had never been to Duisburg before!!!

On Friday night we went to Shaenke, a pub that Matt goes to every week.  They do really nice Schnitzel in there.  Some of our friends were in there too, so they joined us after dinner.  Mary and Kevin were staying at the nice hotel near school, so it was really easy to get anywhere from, since it is right next to the tram stop.

On Saturday, we went into Dusseldorf, and hopped on a ferry for an hour cruise along the Rhine.  I got a different view of the TV tower and the Landtag from Thursday, which was quite nice.  We had a hot chocolate on the ferry, and it was lovely to sit in the sunshine, even though it was quite windy.  We had lunch in a restaurant i've been to before.  I can never remember the name of it, but it serves pork, so it is fondy known as 'the pig place'.

Note the wonky clock tower in the above photo.  They built it wonky on purpose, and legend tells that it will be straight again when a true virgin marries in the church!

On Saturday afternoon we went to the Schloss Benrath, an 18th Century palace on the outskirts of Dusseldorf.  The gardens are lovely, and inside there was a travelling exhibition of American Dessert animals.  Bizarre!

We had some ice cream there, and then had dinner back at the hotel, which is an Italian hotel.  The Italian football team stayed there in 2006, the year they won the world cup.  Each room has a photo of a footballer in it, and that is the footballer who stayed in the room in 2006.  (lot's of football related things this week).

Today, we went to the inland harbour in Duisburg for lunch at an Italian place (again), and then for more ice cream, before taking our guests to the station to catch a train to the airport.  It's been a lovely weekend!  and really tiring.  Luckily it's only a 3 day week at school next week!