Caitie's Travels

The countdown is on!

I have had a pretty amazing final week in London. It started on Wednesday with the second State of Origin game, which I watched at the Shepherd’s Bush Walkabout Pub with a couple of hundred like-minded aussies… although there seemed to be an inordinately large amount of NSW fans in attendance! Unfortunately Queensland lost, but at least that will make for an exciting third game in a couple of weeks. It’s exciting to think that I’ll be on camp by then!!

On Thursday night I went to see the Graham Norton show with my housemate Sandra and her friend. The special guests for the night were Cameron Diaz, Bear Gryllz and an American Comedian. We were very lucky and ended up with front row seats, a mere 10 metres away from the guest couch! The show was hilarious, especially when Bear demonstrated his survival skills by filtering Graham’s wine through his sock (that he pulled off his foot). Then all the guests had a drink of the filtered wine!! Following this Bear nonchalantly put his wine soaked sock back on his foot. The audience was in hysterics! At the end of the show the guests walked right in front of us, we could have touched them they were so close. It was kind of surreal to be so close to people you would usually see up on the big screen… You almost forget that they are real people sometimes! I thought they were all really funny, honest and down to earth people.

Friday was my last day of supply teaching, which I was just a little bit excited about! It was an average day, and I was very glad to get home and relax. The girls were going to come over for a dvd night, but they were all sick so I had a nice quiet night watching movies with my housemate Sandra instead!

On Saturday we all got dressed up in our finest 80's costumes and headed to a roller disco at Vauxhall. It was so much fun! There was fluro clothes and legwarmers everywhere you looked, not to mention to horribly bright eye make up and crimped hair! After a couple of hours rolling around the floor we put on our dancing shoes and headed to the Walkabout Pub at Temple. We danced up a storm on the dancefloor and stayed til the wee hours of the morning, afterwards making sure everyone got to their buses safely to take us all home to bed. The next morning my legs were quite stiff from all the skating and dancing (not to mention gym session). It was a great send-off. I spent the Sunday recovering and beginning to pack up my belongings to be shipped home or taken to Canada, and after starting up my computer realised that it was in the process of dying! I spent a while sending texts and photos back and forth to my brother back home to try and diagnose the problem, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was broked beyond my capabilities! A bit of googling brought up a reasonably priced company in the local area who boasted same day service... sounded like we had our winner! Just one more thing to add to my list of things to get done over the next two days!

On Monday night I headed out to dinner with the girls for a last farewell before I left. We met at Thai Square in Covent Garden, and enjoyed a very scrumptious thai dinner. I enjoyed spending a nice meal with the girls before I headed off, though it was sad to say goodbye to them all! It has been great having a really nice group of people to share my time in London with, and its always good to have other friends going through the same emotions with teaching!

Tuesday was spent frantically trying to get all the last minute things done, eventually ending up at the Teddy Bears Picnic with the Brownies in the park. I ended up running quite late as my laptop was late getting fixed, but it was still a really nice afternoon and the girls had a great time picnicing with their teddy's! It was a nice way to celebrate my time with them in London. It has been really interesting seeing how Guides works in another country, and seeing the same old frustrating things happening here as well! At least it is reassuring that its not just us, that other people have the same problems and annoyances that we have. Puts everything in perspective really! I will miss being at Guides every week for the next couple of months, but hopefully we can organise some sort of penpal system with my Guide unit back home.

Wednesday was quite a calm day really, I spent the morning doing final packing and then headed off to the airport. The flight was quite pleasant, as I had upgraded to club class so felt like a princess in a nice comfy chair with good food and arm space! It was nice to just sit and relax after the crazy couple of days. I arrived in Toronto to clouds and some rain, but it was so very humid! The weather here feels very similar to Queensland's weather, so I should feel right at home. I found the backpackers with no problems at all and settled in, trying to keep myself awake for a bit before heading to bed for some well deserved sleep!

I’ve learnt a lot in 6 months of teaching in London. It has been really challenging at times, but also really rewarding. I’ve proven to myself that I can survive in tough situations, though I much more enjoy working with friendly kids who actually want to be at school! What teacher wouldn’t though?? I’ve collected a whole heap of ideas to take home with me, and I’m already starting to think about how I want to organize my classroom next year, regardless of what grade I have. Teaching in London has made me realize I do love teaching, and its also opened my eyes to how great Australian kids and schools really are. Its been an amazing experience… but I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my travels!