Visitors From Newcastle

On Wednesday our friends arrived from Newcastle for the weekend.  Andy worked here for just one year the same year that we first moved to Germany, and we have kept in touch since.  They were very easy going visitors and did their own thing during the day.  We went for dinner on Thursday evening at Schanke, as Andy is one of the original founding members of the boys pub night known as 'Schanke Thursday'.  Girls were invited this time, which was nice!

On Friday evening we went to watch a football match at Monchengladbach's ground Borusia Park.  It was against Frankfurt, and was a seriously boring match.  Nothing happened AT ALL! It took us more than 2 hours to get there because it was a tram, train, then a bus to the ground which got stuck in traffic.  We ended up walking the last half mile in the rain to get to the ground on time, but still missed the first 10 minutes of the match - not that we missed much!  The away fans were more interesting to watch than the football, with their chants, flags and synchronized jumping.  We had a bunch of English lads in front of us who were fairly entertaining, in a horrendously chav-tastic way.  They were on a stag weekend, and had taken the stags football ticket, hat, watch and phone.  He did manage to talk his way into the ground after about 30 minutes of football, as wasn't best pleased.  He had some trouble persuading the stewards to let him in because there was a random drunk man sitting in his seat.  This man had to be forceably removed by 3 stewards.  That was quite entertaining too, but the football was rubbish!  It was an 8.30pm kick off, so we didn't make it home until 1am!

On Saturday, the boys lazed about, while I taught Lucy how to crochet - very successfully!

Then we went for ice cream, followed by cocktails.  We then met some friends in a local brewery called Websters for delicious schnitzels and beer cocktails.  A nice evening with good company.

The week at school was quite busy.  I had my buddy trip to the shops to buy some toys for the playground and classrooms on Thursday.  They were very well behaved and loved that Matt drove our mini bus, as he was having a joke with them.  We managed to get lots of toys and the kids enjoyed themselves.  The buddy badges even arrived that morning, thank goodness.  The buddies have been pestering me for 8 weeks about them!

On Friday, I barely had any lessons because year 3 and 4 were both on trips, so I got to work on some props for the Halloween disco on Monday. I made a coffin photo booth from a gigantic box, that is going to double up as a hiding place in the morning for some of the kids to jump out at unsuspecting people from! Haha, it's going to be great!  We also have a disco on Monday evening, which isn't too bad because i'm on photo taking duty, which I quite like.  We've got Tuesday off for a bank holiday too, so can't complain at all!

Dublin and Galway

It was half term last week! Yay!

We had a nice couple of days doing not much of anything, and were getting ready to head over to Ireland with two friends, to see another two friends who worked at our school last year.  The day before we were due to leave, our pal's lung collapsed (again - it happened around this time last year).  He was in hospital in Dublin for the week, and had an operation to fix his lung up, so it won't happen again.  He got out of hospital today and is in good spirits, but it was such a shame that they couldn't come to Galway with us.

We had a good time anyway, exploring the pubs of Dublin for a few days before heading to Galway on the bus (2 and a half hours on the coach).  

We stayed in the fabulously decorated Bloom hotel in Dublin.  The hotel wasn't brilliant on the inside, but it was right in the centre of Temple Bar, which is the place to be in Dublin.  I understand now why people say Dublin is so expensive.  Compared to London, which is where we were living last time we visited, we didn't think it was too expensive, but this time, compared to Germany, it's super expensive!  We basically pub and bar and restaurant hopped while we were there.  We met up with one half of the couple we'd gone to visit on Thursday night, going to an American style diner.  We've done nothing but eat for 5 days!  We've also listened to some really cheesy Irish 'traditional' music, which was fab.

We went into the whiskey museum in Dublin, which was brilliant.  It was a walk around tour, not really a museum, just 4 rooms done up like a victorian bar, a monks distillery, a secret drinking room and the room below with original bottles of the distilleries that used to exist in Dublin before whiskey production pretty much stopped.  Our guide was really good, and we learnt loads, especially about 'Irish wakes' - they started because whiskey that wasn't distilled properly would send people into a 3/4 day coma.  The family would lay the body out and wait to see if their loved one would 'wake' from the coma - too many people had been buried alive!  Gruesome! 

We did a whiskey tasting at the end of the tour, trying 4 whiskeys from different regions and distilleries.  We were taught how to smell and taste the whiskey, and to see what difference a few drops of water in it does to the flavour.

On Friday, we got the bus to the lovely town of Galway, which is like a seaside town, with a quay instead of a beach.  There is a wild stretch of land to walk around, which gives nice views of the far off hills.

The town has lots of character - with bars, little individual shops, and plenty of jewellery stores selling 'Cladagh' rings which the town is famous for.  There was a lovely craft and food market, and a beautiful cathedral.

We had some amazing fish and chips while we were there, as well as the worst curry I have ever had in my life.  My tikka tasted like tomato soup, and it made me rather unwell!

On our last night, Saturday the 4 of us went to the local dog track.  Our friends had never been before and loved it!  My bets won two races!

It was such a good week with our pals, and we were sorry to leave the beautiful Emerald Isle.  I'd love to go back, rent a car and properly explore the country.

A DIY Weekend

It was nice only having 4 days of work this week due to the bank holiday on Monday, however by the time you get to Friday the day off seems like a really long time ago!  Moral this week seems to be going up slightly at work, which is good.  We're all trying to focus on chatting about things other than work, which helps.  Matt has taken on another child to tutor, so the holiday funds are going steadily up - a holiday to look forward to is very important!  I've been telling people about our tutoring money pig/ holiday fund, and about 4 people at work have started doing the same thing too now.  I wasn't going to be tutoring this week because my day is normally Monday and we were off, but I got an email at 12.30 on Friday asking if I would go that evening.  I didn't really want to on a Friday evening, but i'm glad I did.  The parents were grateful and I got some money for the pig, so I can't really complain.  I didn't even miss out on the pub because they were still there after i'd finished!

On Thursday we had out first book club, which went well.  We've been reading World War Z, which is a zombie apocalypse book.  I thought I would hate it but I actually really enjoyed it.  We went for dinner and drinks to discuss it, which was nice.

On Saturday, we mooched about during the day, and went to a friends house warming party in the evening in Dusseldorf.  We didn't end up getting back until 3.30am!  And then Matt got up to watch the Formula 1 at 7!  He is off tutoring now, and i've been doing some DIY.  I made the above/below lamp and attached our bells/lights onto our bikes. It's getting very dark in the mornings now, and both our front bike lights broke at the same time!  

I'm so glad we only have one more week until half term!  We could really do with the rest, and I can't wait for our Dublin/Gallway trip at the end of half term.

A Long Weekend

The long weekend has finally arrived!  It's reunification day in Germany tomorrow, marking the day when the Berlin wall came down, so we get a bank holiday to celebrate tomorrow.  Since we had such a busy weekend last week, we decided not to make too many plans.  Matt went to see Duisburg football team play yesterday, with the partner of one of my work friends.  The group are all German, but made a real effort with Matt and he had a fantastic time watching Duisburg win.  It's nice to have friends outside of the school group.  My work pal and I went shopping and for lunch instead, and then met the boys in the pub after the football.  I went on a bit of a crafting spending spree, and had a brilliant time doing it!  I have a bit of a plan to hand make as many Christmas presents as possible this year...  The trouble is that I also bought loads of projects just for me to do too, so we'll see how I get on.

Today, I am not feeling too great.  I knew the cold was coming for about two weeks now, and I knew it would hit just in time for the long weekend.  I did manage to go to the pub on Friday night with friends, and made it through Saturday, but today I just don't feel great.  It's a good excuse for sitting watching TV and crocheting anyway.

The week has been a mixed one.  All of the staff seem quite unhappy at the moment, including me, but I had an impromptu meeting with the head of Primary on Friday, and he has made some suggestions for how things can improve for me.  I also had a really great lesson with a year 3 English class on Friday morning, so left on Friday feeling fairly positive.

It was science week at school this week, with the fantastic theme of Space.  We went on a trip to the planetarium on Wednesday, which was all in German, but was great fun anyway!  The kids really enjoyed it.  I was meant to go both days (y4-6 one day and reception-y2 the next day) but got called into pre-nursery to cover instead.  Not my favourite place to be!

Anyway, on Friday morning, the teacher said that we would be doing rocket poems and I offered to show the kids some photos of my trip to NASA, including some of the rocket launch we saw.  I also took in the apollo mission fabric patches that we got at NASA which the kids adored.  This class are quite noisy normally and have two very difficult boys, but the whole lot of them were glued to my every word!  Then they produced really good poems afterwards.  I showed them a photo of the rocket garden, and the enromous rocket and where they build the rockets, then we watched a video of the launch.  A great lesson.

The naughty boys are really into archaeology at the moment (they are digging up the grass at lunch time claiming to be searching for fossils), so the same teacher has asked if I will show them some photos from my digs.  The class obviously responds really well to first hand experience, so hopefully I can get them enthusiastic about archaeology too.