A longwinded February week*

It is February 27th and the school day was absolutely crazy. Instead of our typical day, we had a massive session of internals! I believe our final count was close to 20 kids. This layout would have been okay, but knowing we had to do this everyday for the entire week was a bit intense. Having so many kids in one small room for such a long period of time (they are not allowed to leave for anything other than scheduled bathroom breaks) is a grueling experience. Sometimes you have a mutiny on your hands and other times it is pure chaos!

As the days went on our team became more and more experienced and prepared with the students. We knew when to sit by the fire exit doors to guard them from runaways, we had more and more work prepared for the kids, and we developed a better attitude towards the internals. With this new attitude, we were able to keep the kids from driving us insane or losing our tempers. Towards the end, it sometimes became a game for us…how much we could annoy the kids. We smiled, laughed, and really did not let the kids get to us, which in turn, wound them up. What a beautiful cycle!!!!

This carried on the entire week. Some days were better than others. We had days of older kids, other days of younger kids, and sometimes a pure mix. In addition to these massive internals, we still had our time-tabled PSCers. Whichever one of us was granted permission to go to PSC during the time sometimes lucked out and other times had an even harder time over there; it was a nice break from referral though. This was school for the entire week.

My life outside of school looked like the following: Knowing that this was my second to last week in London, I was preparing myself to leave. With Monday being quite an intense day at work, I got home, went for a run, stopped in at the internet café, and went grocery shopping. No major events, but a nice relaxing night to myself.

Tuesday I headed straight from work to BUNAC to check my mail one last time. I knew I had a package and it happened to be from Grandma, with a bit of eatable love. From BUNAC, I headed for Barbican and the Museum of London. The Museum of London had been on my list but one I had not visited yet. Inside is basically devoted to the history of London. I only had about an hour to explore so I had to move quite quickly. This museum was interesting and answered quite a few questions I had in regards to London. Since it closed at 18:00, I had the rest of the evening. When I left, we had some snow flurries…ick. I made another stop at the grocery store to pick up some breakfast food. Being I was leaving London and backpacking Europe for 5 weeks, I came to terms with the need of planning. I had no clue where I was going or what I was doing. I went home, made dinner, did some reading, and basically befriended my Lets Go Europe guide. I picked some cities that sounded interesting. I also wanted to stay warm and decided to go south and not north (thanks Eric for the advice). My trip was going to include Ireland, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, France, Monaco, Switzerland, and Italy. I picked a couple of cities from each country that looked like they would fit along a nice path for me. This was the extent of my planning. I knew I had to buy a plane ticket or two and I put that on my list of to dos at school.

Wednesday night England was playing a friendly match against Uruguay. I met Kate P and we headed to her place in Maida Vale. I had not seen her place yet. Her flat was massive and she had a good setup. We coched at her flat for a bit before we headed to a local pub. The pub we chose was one Adam, JP, and I had walked past and seen a bit of American football through the window. The pub had looked like a classic English pub and I had wanted to go. The place was probably only a seven minute walk from Kate’s flat so it was not too bad. We watched the game and caught up on each other’s lives in London. After the match I walked the 15 minutes home and did some reading before bed.

Thursday evening was another check on my to-do list. Uxbridge is the place where all of our students go to hang out and they were always so surprised I had never been there. It is known for its shopping and having a couple of pubs. My friend Sarah, from Australia and works in the same school as me, said she would go with me. She met me at PSC, came in, saw the unit, and split a Stella. Foxy, Rebecca, and Lynda loved I was going out with Sarah and proceeded to tease me for the rest of my time in PSC. Lynda was gracious enough to drive us to Uxbridge. Once there, we walked through the shops for all of 30 minutes before we had seen Uxbridge (including five of our top-notch students…ha ha. Two of them had just shoplifted some sweets and felt the need to brag to us because we are “safe.” Anyways, we decided to check out the other aspect of Uxbridge, the pubs. We went to two classic pubs and then to a somewhat posh wine bar. After Uxbridge, we caught the good ole U4 and listened to my I-pod on the top of the bus. I played Sarah all of the excellent country tunes and she absolutely loved them (seriously). It was great, we each had a headphone and I was singing while she was clapping. From Sarah’s, we picked up her flat mate and went to Southall to the Grand Junction. What a classic time. Sarah and I picked 2 pound worth of crappy music. We loved the stuff we picked out and tried not to get too embarrassed.

Friday was Academic Review Day and this means NO KIDS!!!! What a great time!!! We worked quite a bit (getting the unit back into shape after the intense week with all of the internals). I must not forget that we did have a year 11 come over for a while after he had a physical altercation with one of the teachers. However, senior staff failed to tell us this was the reason he was coming over…how nice of them. After school, we met the other teachers at Goals and had some drinks until 19:30. Goals is always a great time and I really am going to miss it. I eventually made it home and sat around with JP and Adam around the dinner table for a couple of hours (as we always do).

Saturday I headed to Brighton, a town in South England on the coast. The train ride was only a quick 45 minutes from Central London. When I arrived the weather was perfect for Brighton; sunny and warm. The first thing I did was head for the pebble beaches and buy none other than massive fish and chips. I sat and enjoyed the weather on the beach and read some of my book. On to explore the rest of this small city and take in the nice fresh air! I watched the sunset from the Brighton Pier (one of its tourist draws is the amusement rides, food stalls, and games on the Pier that jets out into the ocean). The sunset was brilliant and made the trip very worthwhile. I was in a hurry to get home because that night was a birthday party times two. Tric and Tom were both celebrating their births at Tom, Rich, and JM’s place out in Hayes. I left Brighton on the 18:49 train, went home for dinner, and caught the train to Hayes and was at the party by 21:30. What a great time. Loads of people were there from school. We partied the night away and I had planned on catching the last train home (about 00:30) but was having so much fun I stayed on until 2:10. I had to catch three night buses home and in the process broke up a fight between a man on drugs and another drunk man, both angry at the other for being under the influence…how ironic. After this fight and with hostility still in the air, our bus pulled up to the scene of a recent accident and we had to wait for about 20 minutes for the paramedics to clean up a dead body off the road (had been hit by a car). With all of this, I finally made it home at 3:45…not bad after coming from that far out!

Being Saturday was quite busy and exhausting I figured Sunday would be low key. I woke up nice and early considering my late night (10:00) and went for a run. I returned, showered and decided to head down to Carneby Street near Oxford Street. Sarah and I had been talking about our favourite places in London and this was hers and I had never been there before. I went down and explored this trendy and a bit alternative shopping area. For the most part it was main stream but the designers and stores were not your typical main stream, they had some nice small shops for independent designers. All in all it was a nice place to wander around for a Sunday afternoon. This is one of my favourite aspects of London…no matter how long you live in the city there are always these amazing little pockets of life and character that are constantly springing up or purposefully being hidden from plain site. How I love it!!!!!! I returned home, grocery shopped, put together a pesto sauce with chicken and peppers, talked with JP and Adam, checked my email, and retired nice and early.