Happy Days

With just one week left of summer vacation, I've made the most of my time, getting out and about to see more of the area. Last Saturday, I took the overland train out toward Windsor to go visit a new friend, Sheila, who lives in a small town called Slough. Sheila picked me up from the train station, and we had a most lovely lunch at her house. Then we took a drive around the countryside to check out some local sites. I really enjoyed seeing the gorgeous old buildings. The history in this part of the world really is fantastic. There's such a difference between "older" buildings in the States and "older" buildings in Europe.

Some of my favorite buildings we saw:

Love all these cool old doors!

That's the oldest building in Slough, located behind the old church.

Then we drove out into the countryside a bit more, in the direction of Eton College. The weather changed on us so quickly! While we were driving toward Eton, it's was brilliant and sunny. But then as soon as we arrived there, a massive downpour hit, and we had to stay in the car. Oh well, though. We've already decided that's just a good excuse for me to come out for another visit so we can go walk around through the town and campus.

The weather is still doing OK at this point, but wait...

Two minutes later, and it's starting to get grey.

The blue and the grey skies are starting to fight...

And, rain...
But, this field is famous for being mentioned in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor."
Windsor Castle is to the far left, way out of the frame of the photo.

We also stopped by the Eton rowing lake, a special lake Eton College had made for it's rowing teams. The lake was used as the rowing lake for the Olympics and will be used for the Paralympics, too. Security wouldn't let us get close enough to see the lake, but I did see this guy:

That's one of the Olympics mascots. He's called Mandeville. I don't really get it...

We then drove out towards Windsor so see if we could get a good view. The castle looks amazing, and I've decided it's definitely on my Must See list for later this year.

Windsor Castle. I found it odd that you can actually drive right up to it. Can't wait to come back for a visit!

The town of Windsor looked quite fun, too.

It was a successful, but windy/rainy, day!

The next big hoorah was the Notting Hill Carnival, which I went and checked out with another Fulbrighter, Cindy. Cindy is currently living about an hour outside of London, so she took the train in and we met near Notting Hill. The Carnival is a long-time tradition here, and it's the largest street festival in Europe. It's not actually a carnival, but more of an all-day extravagant parade and massive booze fest. We got there around 11 a.m. and people were already partying hard. :)  Since the event so big, the city actually shuts down the near by Tube stations, so you have to get a bit creative with your route. We had a nice walk through the Notting Hill area, though. I really loved the clean, beautiful rows of houses that line the streets.

This way to Carnival!

Woah, flowers...

Clearing the streets for the parade route. Major bummer for the BMW owner.

Once we found our way to the main streets, we took a few minutes to just soak up the chaos. Reggae and party music was blaring from all directions, the bass was so loud it tickled your ears, and the mouth watering smells of jerk chicken were pretty overpowering. It was awesome! We stopped at a booth so Cindy could pick up a little festival flair:

Cindy and her pretty head garland 

Then we stumbled around a bit and then found this little jem, completely on accident!

The bookshop from the movie "Notting Hill" YAY!

The rest of the afternoon, we walked around and checked out all the different parade shows. It was a vibrant party, and things were really starting to get crowded around mid afternoon. Sunday is family day at the carnival, so I can only imagine how wild it must get on Monday! Here's some of the pics I took throughout the day to give you a feel for what it was:

Festive bunting!

Window-side Rasta

Cooking up some bomb jerk chicken 

Some sort of chocolate pudding parade party...they were all covered in chocolate dancing like mad!

Other parade groups like this one had beautifully elaborate costumes

More awesome parade costumes

Clean toilets for a pound--what deal! :)

Cool island style drum line with dancers

Cute drummer boys 

Lots of Bobbies on the streets

Not sure what these people were squirting all over each other, but they were having fun.

Love the costumes

Live island band in the parade

More chocolate?

The cleaning crew? ;)

Everyone was hanging out their windows like this. So fun1

Just a few thousand people...no big deal.

Cindy and I enjoying carnival. Another successful adventure! 

Here's a video clip of the chocolate pudding dancers. Enjoy!

Pavement in the Rain

I lost my fabulous little umbrella today, a casualty of the quick shifting weather we had this afternoon in London. I really should have known better--it wasn't raining that hard, and the wind was blowing. However, that little $5 zebra print umbrella had seen me through the entire United Kingdom last month on my People to People trip, so I didn't think much of popping it open on the sidewalk (aka "pavement" as the locals call it). But this afternoon as I exited the Brixton Tube station, all it took was one whoosh of a passing double decker to flip that puppy inside out and snap it in half. What a shame; it was such a cute umbrella. I guess it's time to purchase a more adult umbrella anyways. I am, after all, supposed to be a classy city girl now, and perhaps at the age of 29 it's time to get myself a nice, sensible black umbrella. I do love a little flare, though.

Luckily for me, I am used to the rain, and so far, London's rain is nothing like the downpours we get in the PNW, although I'm sure that will change when we enter the fall and winter seasons. But still, I rather enjoyed the drizzly walk back to the flat because the smell of the pavement in the rain felt a little like home.

In other news, I have had an enjoyable couple of days. On Wednesday, I met up with another Fulbrighter, Kathryn, who has also been placed in London. We met down at Covent Gardens and had a nice visit and walk around the area, including a tasty lunch at a pub (of course!). Kathryn has been to England many, many times, and she lived in London years ago, so she is a bit of an expert on all things involving this city. I had such a nice time chatting with her and seeing some of her favorite spots. Plus we went into so many cute shops and I managed to find just a couple things I really couldn't live without. :)  I must also say, I was quite proud of myself for getting down to Covent Gardens on the right bus and finding my way back on the Tube. I think I am actually getting this public transportation thing down.

Do you know the Muffin Man?

Kathryn and I 

Later I met up with my exchange partner's friend Carlos to go see the new Bourne movie. I'm usually not really a fan of those action/spy/ridiculous-chase-scene movies, but honestly, it's just nice to be invited out to things, and I enjoy Carlos' company. The movie was actually pretty interesting, too.

Thursday was another exciting day, as I met up with my mentor teacher Lauren, and we went up to school for the first time. The GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education--the high stake exams students take toward the end of their secondary educational careers) results had just come in, and the staff in the building were excited about the high scores students earned in their tests last spring. The school I'll be working in is high performing, which is exciting and scary all at once. I feel like I have a lot to learn in order to keep up with these great educators. But I'm excited to jump in. I met a few of the staff members, who were all quite friendly. I also had a chance to briefly meet the head teacher (aka principal) but he was very busy, so we didn't have a chance to talk.

Lauren was wonderful, though, and she showed me around the school, including my classroom, then logged into the computer so I could spend a couple hours familiarizing myself with some of the curriculum. The lessons are all planned out, which will be nice as a new teacher, especially considering how many preps I'll have. For English classes, I'll be teaching Year 7 (11-12 year olds), Year 8 (12-13 year olds), Year 9 (13-14 year olds), Year 11 (15-16 year olds), and English Retake. For media studies classes, I'll be working with another teacher, and we'll have a Year 12 (16-17 year olds) group and a Year 13 (17-18 year olds) group. This sounds pretty overwhelming because in the states, we usually only teach 3-4 different courses total that we repeat with different groups of students throughout the day. But this kind of time table (schedule) is standard in UK schools. I think I'll also be sharing some of the English classes with another teacher, and I'm not sure how that all works, but it's good to know there is collaboration. Needless to say, there are lots of new things for me learn! To start out the year, I'll be teaching a Gothic Tales unit to the Year 7s, a novel called "Stone Cold" to the Year 8s, "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry" to Year 9, and "Macbeth/Oliver Twist" to the Year 11s. I've never taught any of these titles, and while the lessons are ready to go, I still need to familiarize myself with the books, so that basically means I'm going to be doing a lot of reading next week! :)

My head was swimming after my visit to school yesterday, so I enjoyed a quick trip to the pub later that night with Carlos and his friend. Today, I finally got my iPhone all set up (Horray!) and then took myself into central London to go see the British Museum. It's such a huge, beautiful building! Like many of London's museums, it's free to enter with donations encouraged.

The British Museum

Tennyson quote engraved in the floor in the rotunda of the museum. 

Even with map I bought, I still didn't really know where I was or what was going on, so I sort of followed the crowds of tourists in and out of exhibits. Some of my favorite things at the museum included the Arabian horse exhibit which explained how all Thoroughbreds essentially came from three Arabian stallions, the Rosetta Stone, the Olympic medals on display, and the gift shops (duh!).

The Rosetta Stone

These guys were pretty cool

He reminded me of my dog...which is ridiculous because my dog is a wiener dog, but still...

Doesn't this remind you of that creepy gate in "The Never-Ending Story"?

Olympic medals from the 2012 Games

Olympic Medals

The legacy of the Olympics in London. Those are past medals down below the vintage poster.

There's a huge Shakespeare special exhibit right now, and I really wanted to go check it out, but I was feeling a bit thrifty and didn't want to spend the 14 pounds they were charging. Instead, I bought a couple fun Shakespeare tea towels to hang in my classroom and a cool book about Shakespeare for the kids to use at school.

My fun tea towels (to hang in my classroom) and book about Shakespeare

Tomorrow I'm heading out toward Windsor to meet another new friend, Shelia. Last spring I had a fabulous student teacher, and her university supervisor is friends with Shelia. We have emailed a bit but haven't met yet, so I'm really looking forward to actually meeting her tomorrow and seeing her town. The weatherman says to expect light showers, but since I've killed my umbrella, I guess it's just me and my rain jacket. Not to worry, though. With or without my umbrella, I'll still enjoy the smell of the pavement in the rain.