Hello there!

And here I am again. A couple of things happened during te past 6 weeks. Ofsted came in (sort of school inspection) and I made a trip to Cornwall (pictures on my flickr site). First about Ofsted. I didn’t know that the English people could be SO stressed out about things. But they clearly have no trouble with it if they know Ofsted is coming. They even work during the weekends (9 to 5) to make sure everything is in tip top condition when the inspectors arrive. And they are only here for two days!!!!

But they way I saw collegues of mine completely lose it (growing more tired because they couldn’t sleep at night) over the prospect of an inspection really made me think. Should I be worried too? Should I feel more stress than I am actually feeling? But I didn’t feel that way. And even when the inspectors were in (three of them) I did what I always do. Teach, laugh, make music, joke, etc. That was apparently good enough for the Ofsted inspectors cause they gave the school an overall “good”. In Ofsted terms that is very good I was told and it means they leave you alone for three years. The next day, when the inspectors were gone we had champagne during lunch. Can you imagine? Alcohol while you are working? Of course the kids weren’t supposed to smell anything so after the champagne (I had two actually) the chewing gum was passed around.

And now I am just back from Cornwall. I went by car, it was a 400 mile drive (620 km), and it was beautiful. Just a very hard wind and loads of rain. But if you talk about the weather to the locals they say: Hey, it’s Cornwall. The legend of King Arthur also originated in Cornwall and you could visit his so-called castle called “Tintagel”. Next to that you can go to the most southern point of England called “Lands End” (I wonder how it got it’s name) and see the last (or the first) house of England. Although the weather wasn’t really sunny the wind made the sea rougher and that made the pictures so much more interesting. All in all it was a great holiday and I am well rested to get into another six weeks of teaching before we have another week of holiday.

So Aad and Inge, to answer your question, no I didn’t quit but I was trapped in a stressful environment that made blogging not my first priority. Sorry about that. I’ll try to keep it up now. Oh yeah by the way… I shaved my head!

Greetz,

G.

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