Sunset Over Duisburg

It's been a rather busy week at work, what with being the penultimate week before the Easter holidays.  I can't believe we only have 4 and a half more work days until Matt and I spend three wonderful weeks in Florida.  I'm so excited!

On Friday night, some girls from work all went to Bochum, a nearby town to our friends 'Moving House Party'.  We went straight to the pub round the corner from school at 4.15 for a few birthday drinks for another friend, and then got straight on the alcohol when we reached Bochum.  As you can see from the photo above,  I was very sensible and had a McDonald's on the train.  No one else did, and so it was a rather messy night, especially for the host, who fell down the stairs, had to be dragged to bed at 5.30am and spent Saturday feeling rather sorry for herself.  I left at 10.30 after an unfortunate bottle-to-the-face incident!  The host accidentally hit me in the face with a bottle of vodka.  TWICE!  I'm not kidding, you really couldn't make this up.  The awful thing was that she chipped my tooth.  I'm the only one who can see it, so it can't be that bad, but it feels like a crater.  So, not a particularly good end to the night.  Up until then, the party was great!

On Saturday, I went to the shops with two friends to get some last minute bits for the holiday, and of course we had lunch - fajitas at the harbour.  The weather has been cold but beautifully sunny, so it's been nice to get outside in it.

Here are a few photos that I have taken over the last couple of weeks from our flat's window.  This is with the 'sunset' setting on my camera, which enhances all of the colours to make them really dazzle.

This is what I have spent the day doing... (After a trip to the gym)

... this is what Matt has spent the day doing.  Though he did make it to the gym too...

Essen Illuminations

This week has been so slow!  Time is moving slowly because we now have less than 2 weeks until we go to America.  I can't wait to go!  Hence the slow moving time.

Yesterday evening Matt and I decided to go to Essen to see the illuminations.  The Grugapark in Essen has lots of art installations and lights set up throughout February and March.  Not sure what it's in aid of, but it's really cool!  The Christmas market in Essen was still up and running, so we stopped there for some food first (top 2 photos), then headed to the park, which was 6 euros to get in.  The park is gigantic, and we only saw about half of it in the hour and a half we were wandering around.  We, of course, stopped for cake and a glass of wine too!

It was nice to do something a bit different for an evening.  Today will just be chilling out.

Happy Mother's Day!

Book Week

This week was very busy at school, because it was book week!  I love book week because there are always lots of reading themed activities going on.  This year, children's author Robin Price came in to do some workshops, which was great.  The kids loved it.  The theme this year was adventure stories, and the week is always rounded up with a fancy dress day.  As you can see from the photo above, I went as Toothless the Dragon from 'How to Train Your Dragon', a fantastic children's book (and film).  Sean was Hiccup, my dragon rider, complete with proper chain mail, shoulder armor and shield (no idea how he wore that for the entire day) and sheep (dragons like to eat sheep in the book).

You can't see my tail in the picture, but I assure you it was just as fabulous as the rest of my outfit!  I kept taking kids out with my wings down the corridor, which is always fun.

Book week is always busy for TAs, because there is constantly things going on to take photos of, so I'm glad the week is done!

Matt went to England last night, for today's rugby match at Twickenham.  He is having a lovely time at home, and i'm enjoying having the flat to myself.  I went to a sleepover at a friends last night, and had a lovely time drinking wine and chatting.  The rest of the weekend will be filled with watching TV and not doing much else.  21 days until America!!!

Surprise Engagement Party

This week has been somewhat stressful.  The first week back after a holiday is always hard work, but this week I just seemed to be rushed of my feet constantly.  Some big-wigs for the school are coming in next week, so all the new display boards (8 of them) needed to be completely re-done with new displays, and we (me and the other TA) have 9 days in which to do it.  That may sound like a lot, but we're in our normal classes too, so its just getting done during our frees, of which there are not many, and at lunch and after school.  The displays are quite complicated because we want them to look fantastic, which meant lots of work.  We managed to get 4 completely finished last week, and there are two that are basically ready to go up tomorrow morning, so we've not done badly at all.  I'll take some pictures of them because they look great!

The other stressful thing this week was that yesterday was the surprise engagement party that Matt, myself and two other colleagues threw for a couple at work who got engaged over Christmas.  There were several occasssions this week when we were sure they were onto us, but we managed to get them there completely unaware!  The night was a huge success, and everyone had a really great time.  I was so nervous that when I had finally calmed down (after the couple had been there for at least half an hour!) I decided to break my dry spell since New Years Eve, and have a glass (or 5) of wine.  Wine has never tasted so good!  I managed to get some good photos too, despite the bad lighting, by playing around with a few settings on my camera.  The ones of when they first came in were a bit blurry because I was shaking so much!

This week, we also had our lovely friend Andy here.  He worked at the school last year, but went back to Newcastle this year.  He was on half term, so came to stay with us for a few days.  It was great to see him, and such good timing that it coincided with the party.  A really good weekend all round.

Duisburg Zoo

Two zoos in one week!  I've basically turned into my zoo-obsessed friend Louise!  This time it was Duisburg zoo, with two pals from work.  We had a lovely time, and I got to practice using the camera a bit more.  My friend Sean is very photogenic and I got some great photos of him.

Playing with a few colour settings on a lovely peacock...

a gorgeous baby Alpaca, and a Red Panda...

The Dolphin show is fantastic, and I love the picture below of a cuddly baby Koala.

It was a nice day, and it's been a nice week off (despite having a cold for a couple of days and not being able to do much).  We both feel relaxed, and ready to go back to school for a very short half term.  Only 35 more sleeps until America!!!

Munster

This week is half term! Yay!  Although the half term has only been 5 weeks, it's been tiring (January has never been my favourite month), and we were ready for the break.  Just to make things even more hectic, Friday was the start of Karneval - this is a big thing only in our state, Northrhine Westphalia, and it is a 4 day celebration of the start of lent.  The English are happy with just pancake day, but the Northrhine Westphalians need 4 days of fancy dress and drinking vodka shots at 7am on the tram.  It;s horrendous, and really not my thing at all.  Last year, Matt and I went to a cottage in the middle of nowhere to avoid it all, and this year we had no plans to experience any of the mayhem.  

I went to Bochum, a nearby town with a couple of girlfriends from work for dinner (pizza and a white chocolate and banana filled waffle, yum!).  Matt had some people over to watch the start of the 6 Nations rugby.  They were still over by the time I got home, and it was nice to have a chat with everyone.  They all went out to the local pub at about 10, and Matt got home at 1am!  I'm not drinking alcohol until we go on holiday, and it's going very well so far as part of my healthy eating kick.  I'm continuing not drinking for lent, as well as giving up chocolate I think! Wish me luck!

On Monday we decided to go for a spontaneous trip to Munster, a nearby medieval town about an hour and a half on the train from Duisburg.  We decided to book a hotel and make a proper trip of it.  We arrived, and realised that it was Rosenmontag, ie, the biggest drinking and partying day of Karneval!  We didn't think that a small town like Munster would have a parade but apparently we were wrong!  There were people in fancy dress everywhere, and lots of drinking on the streets.  We had a coffee to take stock, and decided that we might as well embrace Karneval, only to discover that the parade had been cancelled due to the high winds!  Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!  I was actually disappointed!  We think that Munster may not be as bad as Cologne or Dusseldorf where the huge parades are, so may possible come back next year for the parade, just so that we can say we experienced Karneval while living in Germany.  We'll wear fancy dress next time too, so we don't stick out as much!

Having realised that the parade was cancelled, we decided to look around the town, except everything, even the cathederal was closed.  All the classy, nice restaurants were closed too because of the drunks.  We ended up having some drinks in the hotel and after a wander in the rain to find a restaurant, had a Dominos pizza (didn't think you could get them in Germany, so we were pretty happy to be honest!).  We saw a heron in a park too.

On Tuesday we decided to go to the Allweather Zoo - it has lots of covered walkways so you can get around in the rain.  Very useful as it turns out; the torrential rain started at about 2pm.  It's a really good zoo though, with lots on offer.  We even threw fish into the penguin area to feed them.  The animals have large areas, and all seem pretty happy.  It was a really nice day, and a highlight was the seal show.  They have a horse museum there, (not the most interesting place I've ever been), which had a small exhibition of the Natural History Museum in London's Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  It's my favourite exhibition, and I was thrilled to be able to see some of the fantastic photographs from this year.

I was really loving that big cats at the zoo. So many great photos of them. This next one is my favourite. I think the bars actually add to it.