first week at work

I have finished my first week at work. On Monday, I had the day off. Then on Tuesday I trekked a 2.5 hour round trip to Bedford. I taught religion to year 7 and 8s. A bit nerve-wracking as I don't have a history in religious education. I turned up and was given the textbook and it was really easy!

On Wednesday I had another day off. It was good because I could do a couple of errands that popped up. Thursday, I went to Kettering; an hour round trip, and taught History and Science to year 7 and 8s. Friday I had the best day. I went to Corby and taught English to years 8 and 10. This was a bit harrowing. Supply teaching and all that. I really liked this school because their discipline policy was the strongest. I know that seems a funny thing to be so concerned about, but especially as a supply teacher, to not have a policy that is defined and strong, you don't know where you stand with the students. If you know the policy you can follow through with some semblance of normality for the students who actually want to do the work and you have another arsenal to attempt to control the students who don't want to.

I also taught German to years 7, 10, and 11. I really enjoyed this. The students were given work and they weren't able to finish the activity because they didn't understand the words. My level of German really helped them.

I am going to Bedford again on Tuesday, to a different school. I really don't mind the commuting, I'm just worried about the money. It's costing an average of 20 pounds to get to a school and back because the buses in Wellingborough don't start until too late to make connections with trains etc, so I have to take two taxis in the morning. Once I get registered with the pay company, they should be able to reimburse me with some of the money. I will be saving up to buy a car here and then I should be able to spend less money and less time on commuting and more on travelling!

Do not have sex in this country

10% have herpes
89,838 new cases of genital warts every year
121,986 new cases of Chlamydia, 1 in 10 in Britain
49% of 18-24 have never used condoms
1800% increase in syphilis in the last decade

Northampton

Yesterday Erin (a Canadian over here) and I went to Northampton. We basically went to look around and see what was available outside of Wellingborough. Once we were there though, we found it was Historic Weekend or something like that. Basically all their historic buildings were available to go look at in a bus from the war era. It was pretty good, best bit was that it was free!

yes, I watch a lot of TV

Australia is actually ahead of the UK in all the programs that I used to watch (except the Bill and Australian made programs) A couple of weeks in the case of NCIS but entire seasons in the case of channel 7's 'fasttracked' shows - Grey's started last night with the last season that we had shown a couple of months ago.

My holidays haven't been all that adventurous; tv has been my friend. I've caught up on lots of Gilmore Girls, Charmed, Scrubs and have become entirely obsessed with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It's a program in which a team of designers demolish a house and recreate it from scratch for people.

Television is my friend...

Day Rider into the City please

... is what I asked the bus driver for this afternoon. He looked at me and said, you can get a ticket to Northampton at the Church Road bus stop; on the relevant bus.

Ooops. I meant town centre. It's confusing people here.

Holidays

I am on holidays for the first time since 2005. I love it.
Jane's here at the moment. She's washing up our breakfast dishes and washing clothes.
We went into the town centre (see, I stopped calling it the city) and went op-shopping. Jane bought a jumper, that even though we made fun of it, it is quite nice.

I bought 15 apples for `1 pound, 4 oranges for 1 pound, 5 peaches for 1.50pound and 12 eggs for 1.80 pound. Considering Jane's jumper was 4pound, it's pretty cheap buying at the market.

The difference between Australian supermarkets and the supermarket that we go to here (sainsbury's) is that the fresh food section in Australia is massive. I'm talking massive! In Wellingborough, it's one row, which includes the fruit and the veges. And it's not as cheap as at the market.

Bad quality food

I will never poo-poo Australian meat ever again.