Holiday Time

This is my favourite time to be a teacher. School Holidays!!! It's lovely having 3 & a half weeks stretching out in front of me... Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn't gloat too much, I know a few of you get a bit annoyed with me rubbing it in!

I picked up mum & dad from Heathrow yesterday morning, they had a good trip over. They were knackered though, with several days of not sleeping properly. It's great to see them. They must have had a good nights sleep & be feeling better because they are out on a walk as I write this. Tomorrow I am taking them to the London Irish v Sale Guinness Premiership rugby match. London Irish are my local team & play at Madejski Stadium in Reading. Sale are top of the table at the moment & Irish are third, so it should be a cracking game. It also happens to be the St Paddy's day match, being the closest home game to St Patrick's day. I haven't been before but have heard it's a great day out, with bands & entertainment, basically one big party with a bit of rugby thrown in for good measure!

On Monday I'm doing a one-day booze run to France with Steve & Rich. Steve needs to pick up some more wine for his wedding on April 8th. He had enough to start with but was so well organised & got it so far in advance that he has ended up drinking some of it! I'm looking forward to re-stocking my celler, I can pick up some of my favourite NZ whites & Aussie reds for half the price than you can in the UK. In fact some of the kiwi wines are cheaper to buy in France than they are back home! (not quite sure how that works...). I think that the little car we are taking is going to be fairly close to the ground on the drive home!

On Wednesday it is off to Scotland for Steve's stag do for several nights, then when I return from that I haven't got much planned. I'll probably do a bit of tripping around the UK with the olds, & I also need to hit the gym pretty hard, as that was a bit neglected during the last couple of weeks when I was flat-out at school... Speaking of school, I could probably benefit from a day or 2 up in my classroom as well, sorting a few things out...

Another weekend bites the dust...

Well another weekend is over, & that means only 3 days till my Easter holiday!!! Even better, it means only 4 days till my parents arrive! I'm rather excited about that, in case you didn't notice...

This weekend was a good one, I had a hen do on Saturday which was a lot of fun. We went quad biking in the afternoon which wasn't really my scene. I seem to have this innate fear of speed, & don't tend to enjoy anything where I feel like I'm out of control. It's why I didn't really take to mountain biking or snowboarding. I personally blame it on a spill on the luge at Rotorua when I was 10 or 11... I basically went sliding head-first down the track, chipping a tooth & grazing half my body in the process! A psychiatrist however would probably just tell me that I'm a control freak...

Anyway, back to the quad biking. I did end up enjoying it after all. We were on a track & had an hour or so just practicing, getting used to the bikes & the track, then we did some time trials (I didn't come last!) There were 8 of us, & we were all rather cautious to begin, leading the instructor to make some disparaging comment about how we were marginally faster than a group of grannies he'd had in the previous week! (how rude...) We did get better however, & ended up really going for it by the end of the session. I had one rather unfortunate incident where I took a corner far too fast, lost control, & crashed off the bike! Luckily we have to wear a safety wrist cord which cuts the engine if we come off, & the bike didn't land on top of me. I still managed to do a bit of damage to my right arm, my elbow hurts when I try & straighten the arm, but I figure that the fact that I can move it means it isn't broken! Come to think of it, my wrist is rather sore as well... Just as well I didn't have a rugby game today, the opposition cancelled because they couldn't put out a team (I think they were just scared of us...).

After the quad biking we went back to the bride-to-be's parents house for a couple of drinks, then headed out for dinner. It was a really enjoyable night. She is the fiance of one of my good mates from school, & I'm in the rather unique position of also being invited to the stag do! See, I really do mean it when I say that I'm just 'one of the boys' at school... The stag do promises to be a lot of fun. We leave in a week & a half for several nights in Scotland. We fly into Inverness & pick up a hire car. The first couple of days involve staying in a bunkhouse & knocking off a few Munroes (Scottish hills over 3000ft). We then drive to Edinburgh to meet up with those who for whatever reason couldn't/wouldn't go walking. It'll be me & a dozen or so blokes! Bring it on!!!

Well. thats about all from me, I've ended up writing far more than planned. The next time you hear from me I'll be on holiday. YAY!!!

The Rugby!

Well, its been busy times here, & my good intentions of trying to keep this blog fairly up to date have already gone astray! I had a great weekend, on Saturday I travelled to Cardiff with a mate from school to watch the Wales/Italy 6 nations rugby match. All I can say is the Millenium stadium is a FANTASTIC place to watch a game of rugby. Some of you Hamiltonians might remember Josh Sole. He played a bit for Waikato in the NPC & is a good mate of my brother. He has spent the last couple of seasons playing professional rugby for an Italian club, & has managed to get himself into the Italian team. Each player gets allocated 2 tickets for every game, & my brother couldn't make this match so very kindly donated the tickets to big sis. It rocked! We were in the Italian section & spent the whole game shouting "Italia, Italia" at the top of our voices! For those who aren't up with the play, Italy ended up drawing 18 all with the Welsh, which is a fantastic effort for them, although they did deserve to win. Josh played number 8, so got a fair bit of action... All in all it was a great day out, & I must confess that a fair amount of guinness was consumed throughout the day...

OK, so I admit, I didn't actually take this photo on the left, it was on a BBC sport website, but I thought it was pretty cool. He's doing all right for a Hamilton lad.

On the Sunday I had my own rugby, & we had a good 22-5 win. It was actually our last league game of the season which is bit of a shame, but we still have a cup match to play in a couple of weeks. I'm playing for Reading Ladies which is a pretty cool club. You should check us out at www.readingladies.co.uk. I believe I feature in some of the 'Brownie Camp' photos, which were from our end of season do last year! The english are obsessed with themes, we have them for nearly every single function, as you can probably tell if you have a look in the photo gallery on the website!
Aside from that, I'm just busy with the usual school stuff. We break up for Easter a week today, & then my mum & dad arrive here a week tomorrow. YAY!!! I'm really looking forward to seeing them, its been over 2 years... My school gets nearly 4 weeks holiday at Easter so I'm a bit spoilt really...

Home sweet home!

My flat. I'm attached to one end of the girls boarding house where I'm the assistant housemistress. The boarding house is to the left of the fence. It's not a bad place to live, only one bedroom, but big enough for me...

The view out the back of the mansion. To the left of the lake is a huge area of woodland, and there is a golf course out to the right, along with some staff housing. Over three-quarters of the staff live somewhere on the estate, so it tends to be a fairly social place...

This is my school. Not bad huh??! Apparently it was the original homestead of John Walters, who is the guy who founded the Times newspaper. I never fail to be impressed by the sight of this building.

Welcome to my blog!

Gidday, I thought it was about time I set one of these thingamajiggys up... Might make it a bit easier for those at home especially to keep up with my news, without having to rely on my infrequent, overly long group emails! For those that have forgotten, it's been over 3 & a half years since I left NZ's fair shores for the UK... Where has that time gone??! I'm working as a maths teacher at a school just out of Reading (which is about an hours drive from London for the uninitiated). It's a boarding school so I get to live on site. It's all rather lovely really, an old mansion building, acres of playing fields and woods, & a private lake for good measure... Things could be worse... Anyway, intro over. I'll do my best to update this as often as I can.

This is my maths department. Not a bad looking bunch for a group of maths teachers huh??! You've got Scottie, the short bald Canadian (the tie kind of gives him away). I should really say nice things about him, he is my head of department. Then you've got the two kiwi boys, Ric on the left, & Rich on my right. This photo was actually taken at Ric's wedding, which is why he is looking so chuffed! These guys rock, the coolest maths department in the world!!!