I am tired after a long day.

Ant is tired.

new trousers

I went on a little shopping trip today--to Clapham Junction! It's just down the road and has a busier high street than Wandsworth. Also it has a fair few charity shops. The charity shops have quite good quality items and I bought a skirt from Oasis (£4.50) and a blazer from H&M (£7.25). What bargain! Then at a new shop down the road I picked up a steel gray trouser suit for £20 (wow!) and a pair of black trousers for £17. I spent the rest of the afternoon ripping out the hems in three pairs of trousers and rehemming them. (Actually I got tired before the final pair was finished. But I'll get back to them tomorrow, maybe.) While growing up I watched mum ripping hems and that acquired knowledge has come in handy. Almost any trousers I buy require adjustment.

first day of holidays

My first day not having to go to work... and what do I do? Go to work. Knowing that I had about one day's work that needed to be done over the break, I decided that my holiday would be much better if I got it out of the way near the beginning. So I set off to school this morning--granted it was about three hours later than usual!

The heating was off in my corridor, so I had a chilly day. But it was well worth it to get my one big task out of the way. As a bonus I went out for lunch with a colleague at a very nice cafe down the road--the kind of treat reserved for holidays. After lunch I shivered my way through lots of scanning and cleaning. When I left at 6:30 it was still light outside, which always lessens the burden of being at work late.

So it was a good first day of my holidays. Not the most exciting, but definitely productive.

Englishness

I have started reading a book called Watching the English by Kate Fox. Ant gave it to me as a wedding gift and April said that she thought it was fantastic. Ms Fox seeks to observe and report on the customs and eccentricities of the English. I am in an enviable position as an immigrant she says, since as Ms Fox puts it, minority individuals "quite consciously, deliberately, cleverly, and even mockingly pick and choose among the behaviours and customs of their host culture." It's a really interesting book that exposes conversation codes and behaviour codes of the English.

In the book, Ms Fox argues that outsiders coming to live in England are involved in English culture in three ways: influence, adaption, and adoption. Since moving here my adoption of Englishness has been confined to vocabulary. I talk of taking out the rubbish, putting things in the boot of the car, using aluminium foil to wrap food, eating tea (the main evening meal) and finishing with pudding. But this week I made a conscious effort to change my pronunciation of the word "half." I was reading a mental maths practice test for a year seven class on Thursday and when I got to the question, "Write down half of 28," they all asked what I meant. I repeated the question, but this time with the English pronunciation, and they had no trouble answering the question.

When I first moved here, Jayme told me that she had found it essential to change her accent somewhat. I can understand that now since I receive a lot of mocking and imitation from students because of my accent. (And their teasing always sounds so American! Grrr.) So I think that maybe she was right. I will have to change my pronunciation a bit more over time. She said she didn't find this particularly hard to do. So far the only words I have changed are half and snooker (the latter used to receive unbearable taunting from Ant whenever I said it). I thought that having an English husband would help, but unfortunately this seems to be not the case. It will have to be a conscious effort.

Current reading.

tonsils, sleep, and behaviour

A random fact I read today in the paper: Scientists in Michigan have found that children behave better after their tonsils are removed. "What kind of strange connection is this?" I thought. A quick search led me to the New York Times article which said that ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) can in some children be linked to a sleep disorder. And sleep disorders are treated in part by removing the child's tonsils. In a study about children having their tonsils removed, half of the ADHD patients were no longer classed as ADHD after the surgery. Wow! What an idea. I guess the connection between tonsils and behaviour is not as random as I thought. If only I was dual-trained in teaching and tonsil removal!

dinner party

Last night I cooked for eight in our first dinner party in ages. It was awesome to have Matt and April (our perpetual guests), Matt and Bree, and Andrew and Naomi visiting for a meal. And I have found a foolproof company dish that is easy and tasty every time. Yay!

Maple Hoisin Chicken
Make a marinade with:
1/3 cup hoisin sauce
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 T soy sauce
2 T rice vinegar
2 T ketchup
1 T minced garlic
1 T minced ginger root
Mix with eight chicken breasts and marinate for 2-8 hours.
Bake for 30-40 minutes at 200/400 degrees.

This is a wonderful dish that takes no time during the evening you are serving it. I made a couscous side dish and a fresh salad with rocket and that's it. Delicious and easy.

so close!

There is only one more day until my two weeks holidays. I am eagerly awaiting them. I stayed late tonight to clear some stuff off my desk in advance of tomorrow. I had a busy day with no non-contact periods, a parent meeting before school, a parent meeting on my lunch hour, and an after school maths department meeting. That's busier than usual!

It seems like a shame to enter the holidays so tired. I feel like slacking off now so that I can really enjoy them. During the time off I need to do some work, like preparing our homework booklets for the new half-term. I need to find us a dentist. Ant and I will be doing a hotel review in central London for two nights. And I will be doing some sightseeing, as usual. There are still lots of things to do in and around London.

a fantastic weekend

I spent the weekend away visiting my friend Jayme and her fiance, Donald, just outside of Southampton. Jayme is my oldest friend--we met when I was four and she was five and I had moved to Miramichi. We were fast friends. I remember that when I was in grade one she took great delight in teaching me grade two math, an early boon to my maths career! We played together nonstop until I moved away just before I turned ten.

Jayme and I.

Jayme's fiance, Donald, and I.

It was a friendship built to last. We have been in contact for all the intervening years and still really enjoy our time together. She is now an English teacher with an English fiance, and they are planning to move back to Canada in the summer and get married in October. It was really lovely to spend the weekend with them and catch up.

It was a relaxing weekend with enough sleep (yay!). On Saturday Jayme cooked us a fab breakfast (her favourite meal of the day), and then we tuned up Jayme's new (eBay) bike, Donald's bike, and his mum's bike for me. It was a bit of a scary proposition for me to be cycling, since I have done so only a handful of times in the last ten years. But it is true what they say about remembering how to do it.

Sidebar: I hope Ant won't take it as a personal slight that I went cycling this weekend. He has been urging me to do it since we got to London. He is an avid cycler, but I am seriously scared of sharing the road with the drivers in London. They drive fast on tiny roads. There is no space for the cyclist most of the time and the drivers don't care. Ant, of course, has nerves of steel and cycles blithely through any traffic jam. He keeps telling me how short and enjoyable cycling would make my commute to school, but I disagree. I refuse to try.

New Forest.

Fortunately for my fear level, we decided to cycle to the nearby village of Lyndhurst through the New Forest. It was used as a hunting ground by King Henry VIII. We went along a gravel track for the first section of our journey. The forest was beautiful, with ivy growing up the tall deciduous trees. Then we hit an area that had no tree cover and, due to the rain the night before, was a huge mud puddle. We walked our bikes through that squelchy mud for quite a time and Jayme vowed we would be returning home later on the road (to my dismay).

The village of Lyndhurst.

Lyndhurst is a lovely little village with quaint shops and narrow streets. We had lunch at a cafe, and browsed in the little shops for most of the afternoon. We finished with a stop for tea and cakes (yum--apple toffee fudge cake). Our cycle home on the road was scary but after a few stress breaks I made it back. We were all tired and a nice night in with food and wine was very enjoyable.

On Sunday we had another great breakfast and then headed out to a village called Beaulieu. Jayme bought some beautiful fake roses for her bridesmaids, and I got a present for my mother. (Heehee, my mum may read this and she will wonder what it is! Cackle, cackle.) We had a roast dinner at a nearby pub--I had roast beef, roast potatoes and parsnips, Yorkshire pudding, green beans, mangetouts, and cauliflower, with masses of gravy.

The view from Lepe. The Isle of Wight is in the background.

A sailboat off the Lepe coast.

We drove on to Lepe, on the coast. It was windy and the water was very choppy. We saw a windsurfer who was clearly having a grand time. And my weekend was also grand. It was relaxing and also interesting, a good mixture of staying in and going out. Jayme encouraged me regarding my job and showed suitable shock when I told her some stories of how the school is run. I feel energised enough to make it through the last week until Easter holidays--a glorious two weeks off.