Hello Ian - It's Batman

So people here have no Halloween spirit.

I wasn't allowed to dress up in costume for work today, and had to still wear a dress shirt and tie. My boss is pretty cool, and fairly lax, so I pushed the line a little. I showed up wearing my Batman shoes, Batman belt, and my Batman T-shirt underneath a white dress shirt so the logo could still be made out.

My boss giggled a little when she first saw me but didn't complain. That was the best response I got. Several people told me they could see my t-shirt but in a disapoving manner - as if I couldn't dress myself properly. One person told me they liked the Superman logo. And one lady asked me if I was "planning on flying home soon" because of the picture.

I am the only one I have seen even remotely dress-up so far, and it's already late afternoon. (A side point: what kind of company schedules an hour long lunch break for 3pm during an employee's 9 to 5 shift?)

The Wind Down

Cardiff Castle was great. It was situated right in the middle of Cardiff's downtown core and was massive.

It's a very traditional looking castle with four straight, high walls forming a big square wall. In the center of the castle grounds is a tall keep surrounded by a moat. Very cool. On one side of the outer walls was the living area of the castle.



We went in for a tour and it was really neat inside. The last person who owned it decided to spend a LOT of money in decorating it in a medieval style. All of the rooms were incredibly ornate and very elaborate.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures indside, only out.

After leaving Cardiff, we made a slight detour, north, into Wales so we could visit another place on our list.

8. Tintern Abbey. Made more infamous because of poets such as Wordsworth. It is a very large and very run down abbey. Crumbling walls in the back, but the front was still standing in it's magnifisance.

It was beautiful.

I could just imagine what it must have looked like back when it was all done up with stained glass windows and such.

9. Bath. was a really nice city. We would actually like to go back and wander around a bit more. We saw a couple of roman inspired buildings that were apparently a architectual wonder. We wandered into the baths, but opted not to go for the tour, perhaps we will go back some other time to do so. It really was a beautiful city though.

After that, we drove back down to Teignsmouth, dropped John off and Ronnie was gracious enough to let us stay there for the night. She even fed us a nice fish and chips for dinner. We left them the next morning and drove home to Bournemouth.... but not without a quick stop in Swanage so Pete could see the thing he'd been talking about all week... Thomas the Tank engine.

Whirlwind Trip of Great Britain - Part 3 - Down To Wales

We left Scotland just before noon on Wednesday and headed south for Wales.

The weather was quite nice at first, and John navigated us through a back road short-cut to the major motor-way, by-passing Glascow. Our travel books had very little to say of Glascow, and we'd enjoyed Edinburgh so much, so we decided that one major Scotish city was enough.

It was at this point of the trip, just before the Scotish-English border that we stumbled across a black sheep. One of John's friends was convinced that they don't exist, and John wanted to prove her wrong, so we pulled over. We all climbed out and took pictures.

The next 20 minutes saw us find dozens of black sheep in almost every field to the border.

Then it statrted to rain. Then the traffic got bad. Then it started raining harder. It took us almost four hours to drive from Edinburgh to Manchester. It took longer than that to drive from Manchester to Birmingham - a trip of less than a third of the distance.

By the time it was dark we had left the traffic and rain behind and crossed into Wales. WE made the short trip to Cardiff - the Welsh capital - and set up camp for the night.

Thursday morning was spend joyfully exploring Cardiff's downtown - including castle and another comic book store.

Whirlwind Trip of Great Britain - Part 2 - Scotland

Edinburgh. When we checked into the hostel in Edinburgh it was around dinner time. We were told of a great place to eat that was very inexpensive as they had a special traveller's menu. We found the pub, called 'The Castle Arms' and it was really good, and cheap! £1.95 for a burger and fries. Very nice indeed! (So nice that we ate there twice the next day too!)

Tuesday morning we woke up in Edinburgh and went site seeing. We went into the Edinburgh Dungeon, a spooky tour of Edinburgh's underground. It was pretty cool, and Troë got a witch's broom from the gift shop as a souvenir (She also thought it might come in handy for 'The Wizard of Oz') Unfortunately, the broom is fairly large, and was the bain of the car travelling for the rest of the trip, or so everyone else would tell you.

John and Pete headed up for an inside tour of (6.) Edinburgh Castle, we were happy just to take pictures from the outside. Personnally, I find the outside of castles much more interesting, so I've found. If the inside of the castle is still intact, it is usually decorated with a more Victorian style than a Medieval style.

Outside the castle we ran into a street performer who was in the movie "Braveheart". He let us take a picture with him in exchange for a donation to a cancer charity.

For lunch we again visited the pub, and believe it or not, Troë ran into someone from Canada! It was a teacher whom she took her PDP course with, and was now teaching in London while her husband goes to school. They were is Scotland for the half term break, same as us - weird... Troë, Pete and John all had burgers again, but this time Adam decided to try Haggis. It was quite tasty, and in the end everyone tried a bit - even John.

After lunch we found a free museum, which held paintings by Monet, Rembrandt, and their most expensive piece worth about £800,000,000!!! - a piece by Titan. The rest of the afternoon was spent souvenir shopping (perhaps a few Christmas presents were bought as well...) and finding out the locations of local comic book shops.

Edinburgh was definitelty our favorite city so far!

Castle The Third - Alnwick Castle

After our self-tour of the wall, we were off to find Alnwick Castle. A little fun first, though.







Alnwick Castle.

It was huge! Wow, what a castle! It had a large outer wall structure with several keeps/ outposts in the outer walls. They had even arranged things so tourists could walk along the outwalls, just like the original inhabitants had. In the center of the outwall structure, there was a large castle, complete with a courtyard where we could eat lunch, and, of course, a gift shop.

The inside of the castle proper was also huge. Like usual, though, photography wasn't allowed inside. The castle was home to loads of expensive china and rare paintings. Also, we learned the the organizer of the plot in the "gunpowder, treason, and plot" (associated with the Guy Fawkes treason) lived in this castle at that time.

This famed castle was where several movies have been filmed, including the first Harry Potter movie and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. After we left, all we could say was, 'wow!' It was definitely the best castle we've ever been to.

Whirlwind Trip of Great Britian - Part 1 - Up Through England

The first few days of our trip North saw us more than double the number of places we had seen together in our book "1000 Places To See Before You Die". As a couple, we have now seen five of the thousand.

3. Stonehenge. An hour or two of Pete getting used to driving in England saw us arrive at Stonehenge. The highways run right past the historic monument, so it wasn't too difficult for us to find. Royal Heritage, a organization that mainains a lot of England's historically important locations has set up fences around Stonehenge, so no one is allowed to actually touch any of the rocks. For a £5 fee, however, they would let you get within 100m of the structure. We opted to not pay, and unstead we stood 150m away and took pictures from the highway fence.

4. Stratford Upon Avon - The Birthplace of William Shakespeare. This was a place that Troe was understandly excited to visit. We toured the birthplace and childhood house of Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife) and picked up a bunch of interesting facts about the bard. (For instance, Shakespeare's first child was concieved before his mariage to Anne.) After exploring the house grounds - which included an Elizabethan garden maze - we drove around Stratford trying to find Shakespeare's grave. His birthplace was clearly sign posted everywhere, but we'd just seen a 400 year old house and we in the mood for something a little more morbid. Sadly, on our own we could not find Trinity Church (Wikipedia's listed site of Shakespeare's grave), and the locals we talked to were no help. So we set off North again.

Newcastle. We made it into Newcastle fairly early in the day on Sunday. After exploring the very very large mall (probably larger than Metro-Town), we checked into the hostel there. Then we went exploring some more. On the way down to the river front, we found a small castle in the middle of the city which had some pretty cool passage ways down to the water front. .We also had a nice dinner at a Chinese/Mongolian buffet and then walked along the river front to see the Millenium Bridge. It was actually really cool. Apparently, it is the only rotating bridge in the world! Also, we had amazing views of Newcastle's Center for the Arts.


5. Hadrian's Wall. This is somewhere we learned of only since moving to England. Apparently, when England was the Northern-most end of the Holy Roman Empire (circa 100 C.E.) it was the subject of frequent raiding. Most of this was from the Scotish clans raiding south. To prevent this continued rading, the Roman Emperor of the time, Hadrian, commissioned the building of a bloody great wall across Britain, seperating England from Scotland. The Roman Empire fell before the wall could be finished, and this was almost 2000 years ago, so not very much of the wall still remains. Still, after only a mild bit of English back-country driving we were able to find a decent strip of the wall to explore and a ruined church.

Pete's here

Pete arrived in Bournemouth yesterday afternoon having spent the previous two days in Paris. We've been looking forward to his arrival for a little while now - and I was quite impressed to see that he's been lugging around a dozen cans of CANADIAN beer, and a bottle of French wine. (English beer is piss, and the bottle wine we bought for a pound at ASDA was even worse.)

To celebrate, we had Hannah over last night for dinner and games. And drinking.

Now, today, Pete has gone to Rossmore with Troë following a promise of being allowed to play indoor football after school. We've warned him about the students, and he's read the blog - but the lure of English-style football was just to much. Hopefully he survives.

John arrives tonight and then we leave for Scotland tomorrow morning at 10am.

So nackered!

Last night I had a soccer match in Portsmouth - which is more than an hour's drive away. I went straight from work to the club to meet the girls for the bus. Kick off was at about 7:45 and I didn't get home until midnight. We lost the game, but it was probably the best we've played yet, the team is finally beginning to work together like it should. The first half was crap, but the second half we all really pulled it together, and we won the second half at least 1-0 (score ended up 1-4). If only we had played like that all game, we would have won. Oh well, hopefully we can keep it together for next time. I am absolutely exhausted now though. I can barely keep my eyes open at work today.

Only one and a half days left.

Pete gets into Bournemouth today around noon. Adam only works half a day today, so he's going to go meet him. John is coming in tomorrow, and then on Saturday we leave for Scotland! Exciting!

Games Night

Games night last night was much better recieved by our new British friends, than Thanksgiving was.

Three teachers from Troë's school (Hannah, James, and Annette) came over to our flat last night for a few drinks and some games. Several more teachers were invited, but as our flat is ridiculously small, perhaps it's better that not everyone could make it.

We played Bohnanza first. We had introduced this game to Hannah last weekend when she was our sole Thanksgiving dinner guest, and she was eager to play it again - probably because she wanted to play something where she would have an edge over James and Annette. The game went alright, even though James and Annette were both pretty confused for most of it, and ended in an unpresidented four-way tie for first place. James lost.

Our guests all enjoyed Bohnanza, but next they wanted to play something a little different; so we played Settlers of Catan. Surprisingly (especailly since they had all been drinking), all three of them picked this game up really fast. They seemed to really like this game, especially Annette who kept saying how much she loved it - this might be beause she won the match, though.

All three of them seemed to enjoy themselves thouroughly, and James and Annette said they'd bring some more games over next time - maybe even "Risk".

So...

So... tonight we have some parents night thing at school. No, it isn't a parent-teacher conference, it's a induction night of sorts. We are suppose to run workshops or something like that so that parents of prospect students can come see how, ehem, wonderful our school is and send their kids here next year. I have to say I feel a little odd about hyping a school that I wouldn't send my kids to in a million years. Oh well, I just plan to answer any questions as honestly as I can, while not saying anything bad about the school - in other words, be vague. It's just too bad this thing had to land on a Thursday, now I have to miss soccer practice.


So... I am so jealous of John and TA going to all those movies every week. Movies here are soooo expensive. It costs £7.50 - which makes it about $15.00 - for each of us. Yikes! As such, we have been reluctant to go to the cinema yet. If you have a certain type of mobile phone, Wednesday is two for one.... we don't have this type. Time to make some friends...


So... Adam and I are having a games night this weekend! That's right, our first overseas games night! We don't have our large library of games to choose from like back at home, but we did bring a few. And then there's always a new group to try '4 on the couch' with!! Only, I'm not sure 4 people would actually fit on our couch. Hrumph.

Two weeks and counting

Our weekend was pretty good. We went out to a disco club on Saturday with some of my friends from work, so that was pretty fun. Then on Sunday we had a nice turkey dinner, but most people who were supposed to come ended up cancelling, and so there were only 3 of us. The dinner was good, but I definitely messed up the gravy somehow, it was pretty gross. I'll try again some other time, I guess.

A new TV show started here as well, it's called Robin Hood - yes, based on the mythos. It's not bad, actually - for a British show. I don't know you Canadians will get it because it's British, but if you do, it's worth checking out.

Two weeks till Scotland and fun. Can't wait.

Wish I had a long weekend too!

This is getting to be really hard. I can deal with kids that are rude, some that tell me to 'f- off' or call me a bitch or whatever. I think the hardest thing to deal with is when the whole class (pretty much) ignores me when I am trying to teach a lesson. It seems that I could be giving out diamond rings for all they care, and it's really tiring sometimes.

We watched a film last night called 'In the Cut' with Mark Ruffalo (sp?) and Meg Ryan, it was a really strange movie. The story line was ok, but the characters seemed to do and say things that I found really unrealisitc, so I didn't really like it.

I am really looking forward to the weekend cause we are going to this disco dance thing on the Bournemouth pier, so that should be fun. We are also having a couple people over for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Don't ask me where they are going to sit, we haven't figured that one out yet.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

And I Thought "The Toilet" Was Weird...

The other guy who works in my department, John, is a little odd. He's middle aged and hates people - especially customers. He spends all of every shift hiding in the stock rooms or "running errands" that don't need to be done. He's practically never on the sales floor and he has this habit of always explaining to you why he's busy. Presumably this is so people think that he is actually working.

I asked Keely, the girl who's been training me about John, and she told me that technically he has the exact same position as me, but no one makes him do any actual work because he's been with the company a long time. Even the floor and department managers openly joke about how John avoids work and wastes time.

So I wasn't too surprised when I bumped into him on the floor and he told me that he "had to go somewhere" and then abruptly hurried away from the customers. Then, about thirty seconds later, Rachael - the floor manager - came over and asked me if I knew were John was hiding. I laughed and said that John had to go "somewhere" (making air-quotes). At this Rachael composed herself and replied, quite seriously, "Oh, good. At least he's not slacking off." No sarcasm in her voice at all.

I was quite confused until a co-worker explained to me that "go somewhere" is British slang for "use the washroom".

Comics

Having had the day off yesterday, I decided to take a trip into Poole to revisit the comic shop that we discovered with John a few weeks ago. Troe had a soccer game, which gave me free reign to geek-out.

The store was sweet (as I have previously mentioned). I picked up the last couple of issues of Astonishing X-Men and Batman, as well the new issue of Y-the Last Man and Justice League of America, and the double-sized 100th issue of Ultimate Spiderman.

For those of you who don't know, comics usually have both the Canadian and American selling prices printed right on the cover. The usualy do not, however, print the prices for other countries. So, over here the comics don't have UK prices on them and stores seem to be able to charge whatever they want. I was worries that this situation would suck for me, but as the store in Poole simply charges £2 an issue for most regular North American comics. This is comparible to Canadian prices, and maybe even a bit of a deal for me.

Also, the guy who runs the store offers a 10% discount to people who have regular accounts at his store. This is common with a lot of comic shops. I talked to the guy at the store about it, and his system is much more customer friendly compared to what I've encountered in the past. I can call him at anytime to add or drop a title from my pull list. And if I'm interested in something new everyone is talking about, he'll let me start buying that at discount price too. No minimums number of titles or required advance notice.

So I set up an account buying Astonishing, Batman, Fables, Y, and JLA on a monthly basis. Even though I bought the newest Ultimate Spiderman, I'm unsure about continuing to collect all of the Ultimate books on a monthly basis; so I didn't ask for those. The guy at the shop was really nice and gave me the account discount on my purchases that day.

stupid kids...

Yesterday my soccer game went ok. We tied 3-3. I played ok, but I wasn't feeling too great because I have a cold. I am feeling a bit better todyay though, so that is good.

There was a very interesting incident at the end of school today... there was a boy in my new tutor group (that's home room and CAPP, and yes, now I have a home room and have to teach CAPP) that was waiting to come into class outside of the door - this was during lunch so I was in the staff room. Anyway, there were several other students throwing things at him and laughing, etc. Normally a very nice student, he got very angry with the others, and his friends were just standing there and watching. So, he punched a window of my classroom, and broke it. My first day with a tutor group, and one of them breaks a window. Perfect. I expect it will mostly be the others that will get into trouble though and not him. I said to him, 'well, punching a window may not have been the best option in your position, but at least you didn't punch a face.'

On a brighter note, I had my first students in for detention today at lunch, and she wouldn't stop crying. Maybe she won't misbehave in class anymore if my detentions make her so upset.

Just so that everyone knows, if someone asks us something in the comments part, we usually answer with a comment in the same part. I don't know if anyone checks the comments or what, so I just thought I'd say.