The Saturday Update

Well what a week!  It's been very busy with the end of term and school year.  It was really nice to see my year 6 class get their reports and celebrate their hard work this year.  As soon as school ended, it was Breminale time with the music festival here in Bremen from Wednesday until Sunday.  We were there again last night and the highlight for me was the fire dancing act.  It was amazing to watch at dusk as they danced with different forms of fire without getting burned!  This time the June Bugs left us alone for the main part which was nice too!  

Apart from that we've still been sorting things out for England and the big move when we get back.  Today we'll be finishing preparations before setting off on the long drive tomorrow before (hopefully) a relaxing couple of days in Whitstable together for Nico's birthday.  Can't wait!

Breminale

To celebrate the start of the holidays we went out last night and visited the free local festival that is on from yesterday until Sunday in Bremen - Breminale.

Breminale is great.  It takes place along the grassy banks of the Weser (where the extent of high tide gave me a bit of a shock last night).  There are bands from all over Europe and other acts such as comedians and dancers.  There's plenty of food and drink options there too.  The idea is that you buy souvenirs as well as your food and drink there to support the festival because it's all done for free.  This also means there is a great mix of people there.  As you can see from the poster, they make a play on the Bremen Town Musicians each year and this year's theme was bugs.  I found this quite appropriate as I made another new discovery as we left - the June Bug!  I've heard of them but never really knew what they were.  Last night swarms were flying about in the trees and in the crowds.  Of course, I reverted to childhood and flapped and screamed and totally embarrassed Nico into leaving the festival.  Ooops.  My one saving grace was that I wasn't the only one, women and men throughout the crowd were doing exactly the same.  My camera has stopped working unfortunately, but here's what the little horrors look like:

Holidays!

So finally the Summer holidays have arrived.  Another year is over, another exam class through and gone into the 'big, bad world', and another six weeks holiday arrived.  (For the none teachers reading this, rolling their eyes and groaning, I will swap jobs with you for a week and you will be begging for a six week holiday!)

In many ways I don't know where this year has gone, it's been a huge learning curve but so much has happened that it has flown by.  As I've said before, I am really looking forward to having a sense of progression with my classes next year as the first year that I haven't started a new school.  I'm very excited about it.

The holidays themselves will be exciting too, in fact I'm going to have to make sure I take some time to relax before the next year starts.  On Sunday it's off to England for two weeks of catching up with family and friends.  When we come back we have four days to pack our flats up before the big move and then it'll be unpacking and settling in before the new school year.  I can't wait!

On Dating Fellow Teachers

I've read articles on it in the TES, I witnessed it as a pupil and now I'm actually part of the trend that is teachers who date teachers.  According to the article I read, it is far more common in our profession that many others.  Indeed, at my former high school there are now three married couples teaching there as well as others dating other teachers there or teachers from other schools.  

It's my (rather subjective) opinion that teaching is quite a unique profession and despite the "ridiculous amount of holidays" we get, actually quite stressful.  I think this is one of the reasons we teachers cling together.  When you have been on your feet teaching groups of 24+ kids all day, marking a stack of homework and planned all your lessons for the next day, you need someone at home who understands that you are mentally and physically exhausted.  Of course it's not as bad as this every day or we wouldn't do the job but it's really nice to be able to go home and talk about your day to someone who understands exactly what you are going through and can lend a supportive ear. I've talked before about how we share ideas for teaching and that's another thing I love about our shared profession. 

However, sometimes dating another teacher can take its toll.  Over the last month both of us have had exam classes and marking and end of year reports and a whole host of other stresses at work and while it's great that we understand each other, two of us so stressed at the same time is not always productive.  The lack of energy between us meant that some things like cooking together went out of the window and we have been living on fish fingers and chips for a while! 

Which is why this week has been so great.  The school year is almost over, lessons are finished, reports are written and there's no more planning or marking for six weeks.  We're almost ready for our big move and just need to pack for our trip to England.  The last two or three days, we've cooked together, had time for each other and been out and about in Bremen sightseeing.  It's just like when we first got together nine months ago and I love it!

Town Hall Tour

Last weekend we decided we didn't want to see every weekend pass us by while we were lazy and did nothing.  So yesterday we put our new plan into action and as the weather wasn't on our side we decided to visit the town hall for a guided tour.  We have tried to do this on a couple of occasions already but it is always sold out.  So yesterday bright and early we went online and booked our tickets.

Unfortunately that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth almost.  When we had booked, we wrote down the reference number and trotted off down to the town hall for three pm when the lady on the door wanted to know where our ticket was.  We gave her the reference number (or tried) but she had no list and insisted we had to have a ticket.  (This wasn't printed anywhere on the confirmation email - we even double checked last night).  So following a mad dash to the tourist office and back and a conversation with the woman there who seemed to be on her own planet, we were the last in for the tour and missed the start.

The woman who let us in did offer to let us have a tour in English but since I noticed this week that my listening skills are better than ever in German and I feel bad for putting Nico through the stress of concentrating in English all the time, I said no.  This turned out to be a little mistake too because while I picked up a lot, in some rooms I understood almost nothing.  This was again due to the way the tours are run.  It's so popular that they have three tours simultaneously and the floors are really creaky so while the thirty of us in one group are trying to listen, the sixty people in the other two groups are walking round, talking and generally making lots of noise. 

All of these complaints aside, what I did hear was generally interesting and what I saw was quite impressive.  And while some of the tour covered points I had heard before (the large model ship that hangs from the ceiling and has real working canons), there was a lot of new bits.  For example, I never knew a blue whale once swam up the Weser and got stuck!  It's picture and jaw bone still hang in the town hall.

It's definitely worth a visit and I hope we'll be keeping up this new plan of discovering our region after the move, but make sure you get a paper ticket and take the tour in your own language.

The Saturday Update

This week I have stayed the same again.  This is hardly surprising except that I might have expected to put a little more on.  I've been very good on the exercise front and very good while on the trips since all the snacks the others were eating weren't gluten free but the evenings have not been soo good.  At the moment though, with everything that is going on, I'm happy to stick with staying the same until we get settled in the new flat and I can get cracking again.

As the blogs this week have suggested, it's been a mad week with trips on four days and trying to sort things out for the move and the holiday.  Yesterday was the retirement party of a colleague and I was a little annoyed with myself at only really getting to know her at the end of the year.  Next year I'm going to make more of an effort to talk to everybody and get to know people at school.  This year has been more about settling in and getting used to the system but my German's improving and I want to fit in better at school and not leave it until I probably have to leave next year to get to know people.

Another thing also hit home with the retirement speeches.  I'm really looking forward to the next school year because it will be the first time that I am teaching at the same school for two years in a row.  Since I qualified I've taught at three very different schools in three years and I'm looking forward to the relative break of already knowing the system now and being able to concentrate on my lessons more.  It seemed a little crazy getting so excited when I then heard that the colleague had been at the school for thirty three years!  That's longer than I have been alive!  It's also something I'd really like to do though - find the right school for me and stick with it.  I'd better get a move on (or maybe not given the pension set up).  It's hard not knowing what's coming in the next year, and although I'm being given a year off that trial, I'm not looking forward to it the year after, on the other hand, I don't want to jinx it but each period of not knowing has always brought me something better.  I can't imagine how things can get much better than they will be in September but I'm ready to find out!

We found it!

Project Week is sadly coming to an end.  It's been fun but absolutely exhausting too.  I didn't expect it to tire me out quite so much but between the weather, all the walking and screaming kids, it has done.  Luckily today is a shorter day with the kids presenting on what they have done this week and us saying goodbye to the colleagues who are leaving us this year.

In amongst all of the trips with school this week, Nico and I have been making preparations for the big move.  We realised with England and everything, how little time we actually have left to sort things, but we're on with it.  It hasn't all been work though.  One day we had time to call in to the cathedral and if you remember the mouse I mentioned a few weeks ago - we hunted and found it.  Here it is!