Kegel, Dusseldorf TV Tower, Boat Trip and The Tiger and Turtle.

What a busy week!  We're now on half term, thank goodness!!!

The week started with being interrogated by German health officials about whether or not we've had our MMR injections.  Both of us have (or so we thought, turns out Matt only had 1!), so we were both allowed into school.  Most people managed to get in, although some were waiting in reception for a few hours for UK doctors surgeries to open, so that they could phone for evidence of the jabs.  The whole of year 5 were out on Monday, as well as 2/3 year 6 teachers, and 1 year 4, most of the German and languages staff were out too.  So on Monday I was in year 5, with the English as a Second language teacher, and the special needs teacher.  We were meant to be off time table anyway due to it being  Enterprise Week, and a letter that had gone out about the Mumps said that we would be off timetable.  When I found out where I would be (5 minutes before the kids came into the building) we were suddenly told that there were in fact enough teachers in the school, so normal lessons would happen.  Ummm.... no year 5 teachers, no planning.  We winged it.  Absolutely and completely winged it.  One of the teachers who was in year 5 with me, was actually so impressed with how I handled the situation and took charge, despite having no warning of where I would be, she told my boss that I need to be paid more.  Always nice to get compliments.  Two of the year 5 teachers were back by lunch which was good.

On Tuesday I was in year 6 with the one teacher who was in.  So we had 3 classes split between the 2 of us, which was rather a handful.  We coped fine though, and managed to get some Maths and English in among play rehearsals and watching Matilda.  Needless to say we were all glad when Wednesday came to a close.

On Wednesday evening, we had booked (months ago) to do the old style of German bowling (Kegel) in the basement of our local pub, Shanke.  We had a great group, and really enjoyed ourselves.  I came 3rd out of 11.  Matt came 9th! HAHA!  They make their own alcoholic shots in Shanke, called Rhubarber schnapps, and we ended up drinking 3 bottles of it between 11 of us.  Our friends brother came to stay that night, but spent all of Thursday being ill!

Thursday and Friday were pretty chilled.  It was nice to be off work knowing that we still have a whole week to go.

Matt's parents and brother arrived late on Friday night, after their flight was delayed by an hour.  The flat was a bit crowded with 5 of us staying there, but we managed OK.  It was meant to rain over the weekend, but we managed to avoid it, and it was actually really warm.

On Saturday, we went into Dusseldorf.  We had a few beers along the Rhine, then walked to the TV tower.  With 3 people in our group scared of heights, I think we actually managed really well!  Matt even leaned on the sloping windows!

We had a pork bun for lunch, and of course an ice cream, then we went on a Rhine cruise to Kaiserswerth, a town not too far from our flat.  The cruise took 45 minutes, and it was all inclusive drinks, with the boys obviously made the most of.

I've only ever been to the area of Kaiserswerth right next to the tram station, but it's actually a very pretty old town, with some nice ruins, which we explored.

We went to What's Beef for dinner, a burger place, that does absolutely enormous burgers, and really nice chilli cheese fries. I had a lovely veggie burger with avocado.

On Sunday, we went for a walk through our local park and out the other side to visit Duisburg's monument, the 'Tiger and Turtle'.  It is branded as a walking roller coaster, and has steps so you can walk up most of it.  Again, our height phobia members of the group did amazingly well.  You get a lovely view of Duisburg from the top.  You can see how green and how industrial it is at the same time.

After going up the monument, we walked to XXL, the bar near school, for lunch and to watch the Monaco F1.  We came home for a look at our holiday photos from Florida, then went to Websters brewery in Duisburg town centre for dinner.  They do an amazing schnitzel there with an egg on top.  Delicious!

Our guests left early this morning, so now we have a week to ourselves.  It started torrential raining with thunder and lightening during the night, so the day is grey and horrible.  Not much incentive to leave the house really!

Birthdays, Ice Cream and Food Festivals

It's been a rather busy weekend.

This week I was off sick (again).  I am now finally feeling better, after 3 weeks of being ill with various things.  My chest infection finally got the better of me, and I only went back in for one day on Friday.  Other than being very confused by what day of the week it was, I had quite a good day, covering a year 6 teacher who was off sick.  We had a poetry slam, which a very shy lad won.  He is a lovely boy, who has grown so much in confidence this year.  He even performed his poem off by heart in assembly in front of all of year 5 and 6.  I got all misty eyed along with the other teacher watching him.  It was wonderful.

The highlight of my day was doing some play rehearsal with year 6.  They are doing a Shakespeare medley which is really funny.  One of the German girls has to do a cockney accent, and was really embarrassed about it.  So I held a cockney accent workshop with her.  It was HILARIOUS!  I did a few awful accents to get her to relax a bit, and wrote out some of the words phonetically to help her.  The accent came out somewhere between American and Australian.  I'd promised her that I wouldn't laugh, and I really worked hard to keep that promise.  So funny.

On Saturday, Matt and I went to the ice cream place around the corner from our house for 'lunch', if you can call just having ice cream a meal!

Guess which was mine?

On Saturday evening we went into Dusseldorf for two friends birthday celebrations.  It was Japantag, which is Japanese Day, so the old town was really busy with people dressed up in Manga costumes, and just some really random, non Japanese related costumes.  They love an excuse to dress up in Germany.  We went to the Irish bar to watch the English football final, and ended up staying until after 11.  Matt and I left then for a cheeky cocktail just the two of us, then managed to catch up with our friends for the very busy tram home.  It was a fun night.

Today we went to the Food Festival at the Landschaftpark in Duisburg.  I went last year and enjoyed some fabulous food, so Matt came along this year, with a couple of our friends.  Like last year it absolutely poured with rain, which was a shame, but it didn't stop us from enjoying a surf 'n' turf burger, a chorizo and potato wedges plate and for pudding, a snickers cup, and a selection of homemade marshmallows with chocolate sauce.  I must admit I did feel rather sick after those!

Work will be rather interesting next week.  We have now had 3 cases of the Mumps in Primary school teachers within the last few weeks, so tomorrow we all have to go in and prove through a signed doctors letter that we have had the MMR vacccination.  Matt and I have both had it, but only have it written in our baby books, not actual evidence, so we won't be able to go to school for the week!  We're thinking of going for a day trip to Movie Park, the local theme park instead!

Cologne Hen Party

This weekend was the hen party that I organised with a friend from work for our other good friend who is getting married in August (I am taking the wedding photos!).  The hen didn't know what the plan was right up until we got to the train station!

First we went to a spa in Cologne called Claudius Therme.  It was wonderful.  There are lots of pools, all different temperatures, all with quite salty water, one with copper, one that was really hot like bath water, a fast rapids, and a jacuzzi.  There were also saunas and outside areas for swimming, as well as a bar, where we had a few glasses of prosecco and a good chat.  We were meant to stay for 2 hours, but were enjoying ourselves so much that we ended up staying for 4 hours!  It was so relaxing, Matt and I are going to go for our anniversary, and add a massage in.  Wonderful.

After the spa, we headed to our hotel in the Belgian quarter of Cologne.  The hotel was nice, and inexpensive.  I was sharing with two girls, and we had a bed each in our room which was a nice surprise.  We thought we would have to share.  We got ready to go out, and then went to the above restaurant just down the road from the hotel, called Balthazaar.  The food was incredible.  I had a chicken tikka massala, which was heavenly, and some lovely sparkly rose wine.

After the restaurant we went to a few bars, and played some games, like Mr and Mrs, where the hen had to try to answer questions that we had asked her fiance a few days ago.  It was very funny, and she got loads wrong, so had to have lots of shots!

We had brunch the next day at the hotel, which was lovely, and headed home, all very tired and in need of a rest.  Luckily we have today off for a bank holiday, so we should all be nice and recovered by tomorrow when we go back to work.  I am going to work via the doctors, as I am still sick (3rd week in a row now).  Currently it is a very nasty cough that is making my breathing very laboured.  Hopefully I can get some anti biotics and be on my way, but knowing German doctors it will be a lot more complicated than that.

Today, we just went for a walk around the park for some fresh air, and are about to settle in with a take away and a movie.

Matt had a very busy week last week, catching up from being away for a whole week.  He went to the casino on Friday night, and ended up coming back with a fair bit of winnings, so he was pleased.

Brussels

I love 4 day weekends, and 3 day working weeks!  Well, it was only a 2 day working week for me because I was off sick on Monday.  I'm STILL sick can you believe it!  Very annoying, but it didn't stop me enjoying the wonderful Belgian sunshine for two days.

My friend from work and I left on Friday morning to get the train from Duisburg to Brussels.  We had looked up train times on Wednesday and knew exactly what we wanted, being sure not to accidentally choose an expensive, but quick ICE train.  We arrived at the ticket office in Duisburg and apparently the train that we wanted was a private one that they didn't sell tickets for at Duisburg!  So we had a 4 hour train journey with 3 changes instead of a 2 and a half hour train journey with 1 change.  Oh well not the end of the world.  We had snacks and prosecco to keep us amused.

We finally arrived in Brussels to blazing 30 degree sunshine, and lots of tourists.  We had expected it to be a bit quieter due to the recent events, but all that was different was a big police and army presence.  You couldn't walk down a street without passing someone with a machine gun!  I found it quite comforting though to have such a visual security presence.  Needless to say, everything was fine, and we encountered no problems.

Our hotel was ridiculously cheap (due to the bombing recently), so we ended up in a 5 star hotel for just 60 euros each.  Our room was lovely, and the hotel was literally on the next road from the Grand Place (the centre of touristy Brussels).  Perfect!

We wandered to various tourist locations, such as the Manequin Pis, which is a little statue of a boy weeing into a fountain.  He is famous, and has about 40 different outfits to celebrate various things.  We went back on Saturday and he had one on.  We mostly just ate and drank for two days.  We had a wonderful Cesar salad, a goats cheese and bacon salad, a nutella and banana waffle, glazed macadamia nut Hagendaas ice cream, a huge cheeseburger from 'Quick burger', pick and mix from a sweet shop, and some wonderful Macaroons from a posh chocolate shop.  As well as lots of relaxing drinks in the sun, people watching and being really judgy about what everyone was wearing, while enjoying ALL the mojitos, wine, speciality beers, cosmopolitans and bubbly from the hotel's 'bubble bar'!  Wonderful.  

We went into all the little touristy shops, and spent a long time choosing some beer and a glass for Matt.  We had a really great time.  The train on the way back was 4 and a half hours!  and was hotter than hell, so it was quite uncomfortable.  We got home at about 5.30pm.  

The flat is roasting hot, and really dirty because lots of leaves and dirt fly in when the skylight windows are open, but you need them open constantly! Today I am just having a chilled out day.  Matt isn't home until Wednesday, so I can just do nothing, and try to get better.  I'm sick of being sick!

Mum and Dad's Visit / Year 6 Summer Residential to Willingen

We had a really nice weekend with Mum, Dad and Lola-pup last weekend.  It was really relaxing, just hanging out, looking at holiday photos, chatting and catching up.  It's nice to have guests who don't demand anything and are just happy to go with the flow.  We went to a cafe in Dusseldorf called Bastions which was amazing.  They had the best (and most gigantic) cheesecake ever.  I went on about it so much that lots of people from work have now been there over the past week!

The relaxation came to an end on Monday morning, when I headed off for 5 days of torture with year 6 on our 'summer' residential.  We had snow blizzards and hail for 5 days solid.  Most of the activities were outside, so we were all freezing cold, and some activities had to be cancelled.  It was like a week of wet-play.  Everyone was a bit stir-crazy by the end.  Trying to keep spirits up was really hard work!  We did have some good moments; the go-karting was fun, as was ice-skating (two very sweet boys held my hands and led me around because I was so crap at skating).  The team building was good, even though most of our kids were truly horrendous at working in a team.  They had to climb a Jacob's ladder in pairs, which was fun to watch.  The kids also went swimming, and I sat in the cafe with my book and bought them all ice cream, which was nice.However, there was a lot of down-time, when last year (when they went a month later) was filled with playing games outside.  We couldn't do any of that, so we were stuck inside a lot.  We had nothing planned one day until 2.30, so we went for a walk in the hills.  The blizzard got so strong, we had to turn back after 30 minutes!

The evenings were OK, but they didn't sleep at all on the first night, and they were awake early every day.  I got a 4am knock on the door for medicine too, which wasn't fun.

The final day was fun; we went to the Tierpark, which was a bizarre place, full of petting zoo type animals, little rides that the kids could operate themselves (we could only use these for the last 30 minutes of our visit because the snow had made them dangerous to use).  All around the park were these odd little huts full of dolls depicting a famous story, ie snow white, or rapunzel.  They had creepy music to go with them, and were just the most strange things!  I ended up walking around the park with one of the boys, laughing hysterically at these dolls (I may have gone a bit crazy by day 5 afternoon).  We had fun anyway!  Below are some photos from the park...

I'm blogging today because I (inevitably) got sick after the trip.  I was fine on Friday night, when we went to the pub for lots of wine, and on Saturday when we went for burgers and to see Captain America 3 at the cinema.  But Sunday morning I woke up with a sore chest and very sore throat.  Everyone at work is panicking at even the tiniest hint of illness, because one of our friends has been in hospital this week with mumps.  I'm fine though, I think I just needed an extra day to recover.  I'm sure i'll be OK for work tomorrow.  We're off on Thursday and Friday this week anyway, so I only have to survive for two days at work before a long weekend!