Red Carpet

Aunt Lynn...here you go!

Welcome to the English half-term. All schools in England are closed this week for half-term; hence I have the week off from school. This is both good and bad because I have the week off but I am also not getting paid. Although no school, I have arranged five jobs with my catering company.

I must apologize for the typo- I have Andy's birthday written down as October 20th, so I am not sure what happened. Maybe when I was typing I was confused with Angie's birthday April 23. Sorry Andy.

Last night I worked one of the greatest events. I worked the National Television Awards after party. Basically it was like working the Emmy's in Britian. The red carpet, thousands of screaming fans, and cameras everywhere. I worked behind the bar and served 100s of people (about 700 were there, most of them being celebs). The sad thing is that since I do not watch much British TV, I was unable to recognise any. My coworkers were in awe at all the people they saw.

The past week has been a very exciting and relaxing week. Tuesday I went for a nice long run, through Little Venice and down into Regent’s Park. The run was along the canal so it was very nice. The closer I came to Regent’s Park, the bigger the houses were. Massive mansions appeared with pillars and private gardens along the canal. On my return, I ran past a small park with a caged in football field and a basketball court. I decided to check it out, so I turned off the path and walked up to investigate the different activities. A football match in progress and a peculiar sport, basketball but only with your feet; leave it to the British. To score, the player had to kick the ball into the hoop off of a bounce. Not my sport, too much coordination involved.

On my walk to this court, I stumbled upon a drug deal. A quite interesting place for one to go down, in a neighbourhood with a park full of kids; it was your standard deal, a clean cut guy purchasing and your dodgy looking man selling. They were ducked down below a wall and I happened to walk all of one meter from them and glanced over to see everything happen. The two blokes were quite spooked as I was. I continued on my way and pretended like I did not see anything. As I returned to my path, I passed both of the guys and one tried talking to me (the dodgy looking dealer). I had my headphones on and continued like I could not hear him (even though I had my music off). After about twenty seconds of him following and whistling/yelling to try and get my attention, I was back to the path and ran off. No harm done. Now I must assume you readers are not very happy about this and I am probably better off leaving this out, but I reasoned that this is part of my experience and I wanted to share it.

Following this not so great story, the next day I was on the train and there was a blind man riding further down the carriage than me. At one stop, a man stepped on the train and was probably 25 dressed in a nice pin stripped suit. He had that British look to him, keeping to himself. The train was approaching the blind man’s stop and he needed to get off. He stuck out his cane and started walking to an exit. His cane bumped into the well dressed man. This business man told the blind guy to wait a second because he was not sure which side of the carriage the platform would be on. So they waited together. When the train stopped, the business man told him what side the exit was on and asked if he needed any additional help. The blind man said no he would manage. However, the business man got off the train, even though this was not his stop, and guided the man to the exit of the station. This whole exchange put a huge smile on my face; a stranger going out of his way, getting off the train and helping another in need. I think the incidents from above help to explain the dynamics of London life. The good and the bad all rolled into one.

Now for a run down of my school. I work in a main stream secondary school for years seven through upper 6th form (11 -18 years old). The school is 1400 students and they come from all different backgrounds. I work with two types of students. The first being students that have been assigned internal exclusion. These are sometimes really naughty kids who are on their way out to full expulsion or others who are just suffering from immaturity (hanging from rafters…). We can have anywhere from zero to three in a day. We have teachers from their lessons send work over for them to complete. Our job is to give them this work and make their day as boring as possible. They sit in a room and cannot talk to each other and have to stay in their room.

The other type of student I work with are ones whom tend to be disruptive in his or her lesson. They have a set time they are allowed over (i.e. Period 2 on Tuesday and Thursday). These pupils I have been able to get to know through my two weeks there. Sometimes they come in high, angry, hyper, you name it. We also have teachers (English and Maths (yes, with an S, crazy Brits)) that come over and lead the lessons for this set of pupils. Our main job is to keep order and provide support to the teacher. Sometimes there is no teacher so we lead the lesson. It is really an on your toes type position.

On days we do not have any internal exclusion pupils; I wander the corridors fifth period. I get to chase after kids bunking their classes. I am a glorified hall monitor with more authority. It is actually kind of fun because it is the same group of kids always in the hall. I now know them by name and their excuses no longer work because they have all been used and have never held true. Oh how students think we are so thick (British for dumb).

I work with two lovely people. The first is my supervisor, Peter. He is probably 24 or 25 and has your true British sense of humour. He enjoys picking on me for being tall and American. He has been a great help for me learning the ropes of the job.

The next is Lynda. She is probably late 40s and has been doing this for a couple of years. She has an amazing touch with the kids and can talk some sense into them. She has also been a great help for me at the school.

Wow this post is a long one.

This weekend I took my first trip out of London. I went to Bury St. Edmunds to visit a long lost friend from middle school that I had not seen in probably eight or nine years. She is in the US Air Force and is stationed near Bury. On Friday night she had a Halloween party that was quite crazy. One guy came with burning torches that he spun around his body in the garden. There were loads of really creative costumes. I was one of maybe four people who were not Air Force. It was fun because they were all linguistics and spoke many different languages.

On Saturday we cleaned, watched Control Room (a movie about Al Jazzerah, the Arab news channel, and its take during the Iraqi war). This was a very good movie and I would recommend it to all. There really is no major political bias in the movie, not your Michael Moore movie, so all you Conservatives out there could maybe handle seeing this film. We then went to Cambridge for sushi and on to another Air Force party for Saturday night.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to get to drive. I drove my friend’s car! It was quite thrilling. We went into Bury to explore. It is a quaint little town with an ancient abbey. The town was really nice and lovely. I had the traditional English breakfast (trivia question…what is a traditional English breakfast?) I also went on to the Air Force base. It was really out of this world. Truly a slice of America: all American stores, American currency, American products. After listening to my friend and all of her benefits, the military is huge and has a massive budget. (A nice choppy paragraph, but oh well).

One of my highlights in the past week was walking to the train station from my flat and seeing a car with a John Kerry bumper sticker. I was pumped. It was really neat to see the Brits displaying their opinions on a bumper sticker. I had a huge smile and wished I had my camera.

So here ends this massive entry. I hope you did not fall asleep or swear to never read this again. In reality, I could have made this at least two or three times longer with stories about pupils making out in my class (what a sight that was). I could have also spoken of many other activities I have partaken in this last week. But for your sake and mine this mindless chatter will end.

Thank you to all whom have phoned me, sent mail, emails, and entries. I appreciate them all! Have a safe week!


Peace