Edinburgh

Today I am leaving for Edinburgh. Not straight away but with a slight detour. Not because I have to… but because I want to. Next to my goal of teaching and living in England it is also my goal to see some of the sights. Therefore I thought… lets be smart (me being smart.. yeah right :P) and connect the useful with the fun part. Thursday I have to be in Edinburgh for a British Council meeting and I have plenty of time to drive around England for the time being. I am planning to see Wales today and tomorrow and in the next few days I plan on driving up the westcoast of England. So it is G signing out for ten days or so….. I’ll tell you all about it when I come back.

Greetz,

G

P.S. We won our poolmatch Wednesday with 9-1 (YEAH!!!!! :D)

Half term

Before I tell you about half term I would like to thank Aad en Inge for their survival packet. Damn! That is some good stuff. I just got it today but I am already attacking the liquorice like a mad man 😛 Thanks again. You’re lifesavers. I would also like to thank Remko en Lucinda for their card from Greece. I read you are having a great time. Same here!

Next week is half term. “Herfstvakantie” as we would call it. I’ve hired a car and I am going to drive up to Edinburgh. I’ll probably leave on Saturday and I expect to arrive in Edinburgh on Thursday morning. I am taking my time to get up there to see as much from the country as possible. I am going up along the westcoast and I plan on going back along the eastcoast. Thursday and Friday I have to be in Edinburgh anyway because I have a meeting there with some people of the British Council. All Language Assistants (like myself) who are located in Great-Britain will be there and we’re having a two day meeting there. It will probably be load of fun to meet new people so I am looking forward to it.

Hope to have updated you again so far. I will tell you all about Edinburgh next week and I might tell you (if I played well) how my pool match went tonight.

 See ya,

 G

Hi all!

Because my internet connection was temporarily out of order I couldn’t update my blog. But it is fixed now so I am looking forward to telling you all about the past few weeks. First of all I have to do as I promised. Tell you about the English school system and explain what assembly is (if you look at the pictures you can at least see what assembly looks like). First the English school system.

Education in England is divided into: primary, secondary, further and higher education. Compulsory education lasts for 11 years; statutory schooling ages are between 5 and 16 years. Children are legally required to start attending school at the start of the term after their fifth birthday either on 31 August, 31 December or 31 March, however children often start earlier than this. Pupils are required to stay in school until the last Friday in June of the school year in which they reach 16 years of age.

Pupils in compulsory education follow the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum is divided into four Key Stages

Key Stage 1: 5 to 7 years old

Key Stage 2: 7 to 11 years old

Key Stage 3: 11 to 14 years old

Key Stage 4: 14 to 16 years old

Assembly is done throughout these years. It is done everyday and it is against the law not to. It is also compulsory for the schools to do something religious during assembly. Either in the form of a hymne or a prayer.

I have to teach now so I’ll try to write something this afternoon.

Ciao,

 G

Weekend

This weekend I went to a club in Colchester. There are no clubs in Dovercourt and I really needed to get out so out I went. Through a girl that lives at my B&B I met this English bloke who studied Dutch at Sheffield University and he lives in Colchester. I could sleep at his place so that was great.

We first went to a pub called O’Neill’s. There was some live music which was quite nice but of course the club was all I could think about. Little bit of dancing, little bit of drinking, you know the drill 😉 Little did I know that the clubs in England close at 01:00u!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

There I stood at half past one in the morning out on the street again mentally prepared to go at it all night. Now I know why all the English people drink so fast. They need to get pissed before the place closes. The DJ wasn’t that great either. He played a lot of rock (which is quite interesting in a club where you would expect….. CLUB MAYBE???? :-P). But all in all, the night was quite fun. Had a good night sleep in a room with an in suite bathroom 😀 and a double bed. Great stuff. The next morning we got up at 10, we slept at half two or something so who can blame us ;-), and we had a full English breakfast which was really nice.

The rest of the weekend was really relaxing and I even managed to get some pictures of the sea while a thunderstorm was raging through Dovercourt (pictures taken by Big Bird :-P). You can see these pictures at my flickr site as you probably know by now (for the nitwits, right bottom corner of my blog ;-)) and you can also view some photo’s of my school that I took today.

I was very happy to get permission to take pictures of assembly, which is something completely new to me, and of the kids waiting in line at lunchtime. Hope you like them. Now I’m off to some Martial Art. Don’t know what it is yet. I will tell you later together with the explanation of what assembly is.

Greetsz,

G

Address

For anyone who wants it, and also for the people who don’t ;-), my address in England.

Olav Agaatsz
9 Bay Road, Dovercourt,
Harwich, Essex. CO12 3JZ

Let the mail come in!!!! 😛
G