…goodbye world! Well, see you shortly at least. It’s that time of the school year again – reports are due in a couple of weeks, but with a busy couple of weekends ahead of me I made a start this weekend. I’m about halfway. It really is one of my least favourite jobs though, just so dull. And fairly pointless. The parents only read the grades and personal comment. And who can blame them, I don’t think i’d be bothered whether my child “could describe pushes and pulls” or “use historical language” – yawn! Do they have friens? Can they behave? Are they doing ok? Job done. why do we have to write an essay on each child?! Pfff. So, moan over, I may be fairly sporadic in my posting, reading and commenting for the next few weeks. Please forgive me!
The rest of the week involved:
sunday…a day at the races with a picnic in the sunshine, great fun! then prawns on the balcony – summer is well on the way!
monday…Photo a Day prompt was ‘grass’ – I went to take a pic of the grassy land behind our building and spotted this heart in the dirt!
tuesday…I love fiestas! Day off – spent watching the pool for signs that they were going to start cleaning it, and sat outside for a drink relaxing in the sun with cesar.
wednesday…Photo A Day prompt – ‘what you’re reading’. I’m reading Moloka’i at the moment and I am really enjoying it!
thursday…Long, hot, busy day at work. ‘Nuff said!
friday…See above. Feeling really down on my teaching self at the moment. Don’t feel like I’m teaching them anything, I’m grumpy and houty all the time. I’m not enjoying me right now. Thank god it’s friday.
saturday…And back to the top, we’re busy report writing.
Not a terribly exciting week, but I survived it, and this late in the school year that’s all I can ask for!
How was your week – are you counting down to summer holidays? reading anything good?
This week has seen us go from cold, rain and winter coats on Monday to Summer well and truly arriving mid week!
Last sunday was another lazy one, in which I pondered again how I have managed without pyjama-loungewear for so long!
monday’s photo a day challenge was ‘someone who inspires you. You can read about that here. Although, on my mini cards I added Cesar too, who inspires me each and every day. Especially those ‘it’s not worth it’ days.
tuesday saw me waking up at 5.30 a.m…and getting up to clean the house! I feared I was turning into my mum. Luckily, it has not continued! It saw me arriving home to hide in the bedroom while cesar finished an interview for a documentary about game designers in our living area. It’s not a big flat, this was far from ideal. But I was very proud of him, so it didn’t matter!
wednesday I got to wear brand new GORGEOUS pink shoes, we reached the mid-20s, and Cesar and I had our first warm outdoor drink to celebrate. I had a lovely day both in and after work. the photo a day challenge was a favourite word: I chose wellington, because I like the way it sounds. What’s yours?!
thursday my class made model matryoshkas out of clay. they love it when we get the clay out, it’s always a really relaxed and enjoyable session. I love hearing them tell each other about their models and compliment each other, help each other and generally chit chat as they go.Post-work drinks to celebrate summer’s arrival with friends – another lovely day!
friday I arrived home to find that we finally have A SOFA!! We have been in our flat for coming up to 2 years now, and still not got round to getting one. Mainly because I dug my heels in and refused to have anything other than the one I set my heart on. the really expensive one that I set my heart on. that we couldn’t afford. But coming home to sit on the cheap Ikea one originally bought for Cesar’s office, but acquired for us instead was the bet feeling ever and I take back my original stand-point: I love having a sofa, no matter which one it is! (and despite the fact that we still don’t have a cover for it!)
saturday I was just TOO HOT to do anything. It has now reached the low 30s, and I suspect here it will stay. Unfortunately, the air conditioning doesn’t seem to have been informed that summer has come early, and there is no breeze whatsoever. I gave up on accomplishing anything and spent the day moving from desk to sofa to balcony and back again!
ooooooooooooooooooo….!! Ok, this is my tidy up song in class at the moment, partly because it’s summer and the sun is out and partly because I love hearing the children sing along with the ooooo bit!
I’m also walking on sunshine, because the lovely Bibsey Mama has bestowed upon me a sunshine award
I am obviously overflowing with inspiration and sunny-ness recently, as Heather at Sugardishme also gave me this award a while ago, so my answers to it’s Q and As are here. But, inspired by bibsey’s answers to the questions, I decided to answer them as my younger self…
Favourite colour: when I was little, I don’t remember having a favourite colour. I clearly remember choosing blue plastic snap in handles for my dressing table when I got it (SO exciting!) but I also remember choosing a pink carpet. I had a blue bed set that I loved, which was replaced with a pink one I loved just as much. I had a pink polar bear jumper…that was reversible and blue on the other side. You get the idea.
Favourite animal: this has never changed. I remember having one of those walking raccoons (a bit like these dogs My sister had one of these, I was way more unique! hehe! – but a raccoon that walked) and pretending it was a lemur. Raccoons were my second favourite though – because they had the same kind of tail!
Favourite numbers: when I was between about 5 and 10 we went to menorca 3 times, and each time stayed in the same apartments. There was a little office near the pool where a spanish lady worked (I suppose she did some sort of admin for the apartments, I don’t know) and she taught me to count to ten, say hello etc in spanish while we stayed there the first year. The next year, I was so disappointed when we went back,. because she wasn’t there. I learnt to swim that year instead though!
Favourite drink: I lived on blackcurrant juice and lemonade for a long time. Even at breakfast time. It was the only thing my mum could get me to drink. Later, I branched out into coffee too, and used to take a flask of it to school in my lunch box. Healthy stuff.
Facebook or Twitter: obviously, these were non-existent back then. If I’d had a choice, I probably would have liked twitter better, since it has more stuff to read and I read everything I could.
Passion: stories. Reading and writing. I loved them – as I just said, I read anything I could and wrote anything I could – diaries, garden journals, letters, cards, but mostly stories – I wrote hundreds and always wanted to be an author when I grew up.
Giving or getting presents: is there really a child that would say giving?! the best presents ever were Erika, my doll and her cot and pram; presents from people’s holidays (I loved the crayons my Grandma and Grandad’s friends brought me – they were in a case you could open and shut – how cool is that?! haha!) and by far the best my toy kitchen. I screamed and cried and had a real tantrum about having to leave the shop where I had been happily playing with it (and I really wasn’t this sort of child, I rarely made a fuss about anything). Little did i know my parents had already bought me one. Presents I never got, but wanted for years: Frosty the snowman slushy maker and a talking Teddy Ruckspin.
Favourite day: Tuesday and Thursday mornings were playschool. After playschool, mum would pick me up and we would either stop at the bakery and buy a cornish pasty and a gingerbread man for me, cream cake for her, or at the chip shop for fish (her)/sausage (me) and chips for lunch as a treat. In the chip shop, I used to sit on the counter and the men would give me some chips or a potato scallop while I waited. (They still own it now – love it! Best chips ever!) Then we’d go home and eat them watching half of Sesame Street, then changing to BBC 2 to watch Mr Benn or Bertha or something similar.
Favourite flowers: all the flowers in the garden, for making potions one their petals fell off (that my mum was then lucky enough to have applied as part of her beauty treatment), or daisy chains, or caterpillars (where you use the stem and poke it through the heads of otehrs to make a flower caterpillar).
Again, not everyone likes awards, so feel free to ignore if I pass you this and you don’t do them, but know I’ve passed it to you because I think you are interesting and creative and good to read!
Quinceberry – one of the first blogs I found when I uncovered this wonderful online world! Life, art…and poetry every Wednesday!
Awkward and Beautiful – journalling, journalling, journalling! Her own gorgeous pages, tips adn ideas; links to inspiring things elsewhere and ace photos of her week!
Another post based on Fat Mum Slim’s photo a day challenges. This was the challenge on Monday this week, and I chose an old photo:
This is me, when I was about 3 I think, playing with a farm my Grandad made me. With me is my aunty Gill. (She’d probably die if she knew this photo was now available for all to see. I don’t think 80s hair and fashion were kind to anyone.)
When I saw this challenge, I was stuck. I’m not someone who finds many people inspiring – I find lots of separate things people do inspiring, I am proud or admiring of many people for what they are like or what they have done. But I’ve always found it hard to say “so and so inspires me”. Maybe it’s just the word. I remember being in secondary school. I’d been sent to the head, because teachers were ‘concerned’. I remember her asking me “Who inspires you? Do you have some role models or people you’d like to be like?” Me: “Um, not really. Courtney Love?” I don’t think this was the sort of answer I was meant to give. It probably wouldn’t have helped my case, but luckily she had no idea who I was talking about, so we moved quickly on to the next few awkward questions.
Anyway, as I thought about, the person I kept coming back to was Gill. She’s a bit crazy (a common phrase in my family is “typical Gill”) and tact is an unknown quality (and yes, if any of my ‘real-life’ friends read this there would be an ‘ah, so that’s where it comes from moment). I associate her with laughing and fun.
The most inspiring thing about her though is the fact that no matter how difficult, she sticks it out and does what she wants to be doing. Yes, she works a crap job that she doesn’t like all that much in order to do this, but the rest of her life is all about getting out there and really living! I keep trying to write more on that, but none of it does her justice. Suffice to say – she is the life and soul of everything, does funny, outrageous and embarrassing things without a second thought – how can that not be inspiring!
This week was a funny one. In theory it was an easy-as, should have time to rest and get our energy back sort of week. But in reality, it felt longer than ever.Still, it was overall a pretty great week, even though I still feel wrecked and ready for the Summer holidays to come NOW.
Sunday last week can’t have been very exciting because it has already become something of a haze in my mind. Skip.
We had Tuesday and Wednesday off as holidays here, the rest of Madrid also took Monday off, as did all the other schools here. Us? Nope, in we went for one day. Don’t even get me started on how annoying this was, especially since, as I may have mentioned a million times, we have had no half term so a nice 5 day weekend would have almost felt like one and made that a bit more bearable! And especially since nearly all the kids went away. I had less than half my class in. As did everyone else. did we teach anything? nope. Did they learn anything? Nope. Was it nice getting to spend some time playing in the lego? Yep. Better than an extra day off? Nope.
So, Tuesdayand Wednesday I enjoyed a lie in, I went to the gym and I transformed into efficient and helpful translator-secretary for Cesar for my days off. And I loved it. I could happily get used to working at my desk, at home, stopping for coffee as and when, fitting the gym in while it’s quiet and not packed with other post-work people, having a real proper break for lunch, not having to talk to people I don’t feel like talking to. And most importantly having loads of time to art and potter in the time when he had nothing for me to translate. I was very relaxed and made him promise to hire me as soon as they can!Wednesday also saw us embark on a good spring clean, including the balcony, which looks all clean and ready for spring time suppers!
Thursday was one of those days where I get hugely excited then massively stressed because the thing making me hugely excited is also hugely difficult to get sorted! It’s Cesar’s birthday at the end of the month. I’ve found a gorgeous hotel spa I wanted to book for us. could I work out how to get there from the website? google maps? emailing them? No. Aargh. (As it turned out, it was on the website I’d just completely missed it. Oops.)
And Friday was the sort of day that left me feeling great! I was really proud of myself on Friday. Partly for surviving the longest week in the history of short weeks. And mostly because I made a phone call in Spanish. You heard me. but I’ll say it again, because I’m still just so amazed with myself for doing it – I made a phone call in Spanish! To put this into context: I HATE phone calls. I am awkward and stressed when on the phone. And this is in my own language. so trying to make a call to someone I don’t know, in a language I can barely speak was a huge achievement. I finally had to give in and rig the hotel. But it was worth it, the nice man on the other end had the patience of a saint and the hotel is all booked – it’s here – and I can’t wait! the hard part now is keeping it a secret! I also took two dresses to be altered, posted mail art and went to bed early – best friday night in ages!!
Saturday was another great day. I went to a wine and cheese fair with some friends – the sun was out, the entrance was a euro and then we had many many free samples of wine, bought some nice bottles (and some cheese – bleurgh! – to keep cesar happy when I got home!) and generally had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine with good company and chatter. Katie and I stopped at a vintage fair near home and dreamed of how our houses would look if could actually afford anything in there, still it was fun to see all the old furniture and knick-knacks (and I still REALLY want an old phone and typewriter – they can go on my desk when I become a full time secretary…!)
So, the end of A-Z left me relieved, tired, pleased to have (pretty much) stuck with it, and then wondering what on earth was I going to blog about now with nothing handy like an alphabet to keep me focused. The answer? Fat Mum Slim’s photo challenge.
I won’t be posting everyday though – a month of that was more than enough (for you and I both, I know) – but once or twice a week, I’ll choose one of the photo prompts from that week and blog it up so to speak. If you’re really desperate to see the rest of my photographic genius (and I know you are – cue shameless self promotion) my pics are on my instagram: tpr
So, Day 1 of May: Peace
For me, peace is that foggy-brained time of morning when I wake up before I’ve properly woken up and the house is dark and quiet and still. The neighbours have finally shut up. Cesar has finally stopped working and come to bed. The botellon (outdoor drinking combined with crap music played on tinny car stereos at a volume no-one needs, essentially) has either not started for summer or has died down into hometime for the most part. My alarm has not yet started shouting at me. My brai is not awake enough to be thinking thoughts too deeply yet. All is calm.
Strangely, my other ‘peaceful’ place is often the metro. Bear with me. Yes, it often looks like this:
which, ok, is not exactly serene. However, those odd days when it’s slightly less busy. Even better, those days when I get to sit down. Those days give me half an hour of calm-before-the-storm. I don’t need to talk to anyone, I don’t need to do anything. I can take those 30 minutes and read, listen to my iPod or just people watch.
The most important part of that for me is I don’t need to talk to anyone. Now, I know this makes me sound grumpy and unsociable. but, in truth, I’m just not a morning person. Most people I work with get the bus into work in the mornings, which I could do just as easily as the metro. I get the bus home with them nearly every day. But in the mornings I choose to get the metro by myself and walk up the big hill by myself instead of pottering round the corner from the bus stop with others. Because, in the words of my friend (who actually was the one to point out my need for the metro in the mornings the other day), if I got the bus “I’d have to sit and chat politely to people I really didn’t want to be talking to at that time of the morning.”
So for me, that pre-wake-up waking up and the metro to work are where I find peace in my day. Where do you find peace?
And, just because it popped into my head while writing this:
things I think are yuck: cheese. early mornings. tinned tuna. smelly people. smelly anything. (unless it’s a pretty smell). sick. 5 day weeks. school dinners. bananas. cauliflower. blowing noses. dog poo (ok all poo, but as a teacher of young things I still thing dog poo is the yuckiest!). the gross dead people bits on bones, csi etc. bins and bin-smells. croquetas. surprise maggots in fruit.
what is yuck for you? (no-one is allowed to say chocolate or mushrooms, because they are ace!)
And that brings us to Z which is for Zzzzzzz – what I intend to do all month next month. Starting now!
Well, ok, starting soon. But, a last moment to thank all the new people I’ve met through this challenge, or through extension of this challenge – I’ve found so many new blogs I love and it’s so nice to have visitors to agree with my hatred of bras, love of dresses and so on Thank you all for taking the time to read and comment – I really hope you’ll stick around post-Z!
Last Sunday saw a washing disaster – I inadvertently washed my gorgeous, newly altered, worn-once dry-clean-only dress in my bundle of washing. Ruined. luckily, I did manage to find it again on eBay and am awaiting its delivery again, having paid for it again, and will then be taking it to be altered again, before I can wear it again!
Mondaysaw the fabled Spring wardrobe clear out finally happen. Winter clothes are up on the top shelves of the wardrobe, summer dresses are ironed and hung up, and three bag-fulls of shoes and clothes are ready for the charity bin.
On Tuesday, I finally got a Cadbury’s Easter Egg – thanks mum! those of you who have been reading for a while know how much I miss Cadburys over here, so my parcel containing creme eggs and a (ever-so-slightly-melted and mis-shapen) flake easter egg was VERY welcome!
I was SO proud of myself on Wednesday – I came home from work exhausted, but still forced myself to the gym. Luckily Cesar came with me, otherwise I’d have been there with my t-shirt inside out, but I went and that’s the important thing! And I finally feel like I’m starting to lose a bit and look better this week (I’ll have changed my mind again by next though, so let’s not get too excited!).
Thursday saw the arrival of another parcel. This time containing two vintage pink dresses, from the lovely Just Vintage, who also included a really cute necklace as a surprise gift – not much makes me happier than surprise gifts! I need to go and get them altered (what a surprise! Does anyone else find they need this many dresses altering before they can wear them?! Nearly everything I buy needs fixing!) but I can’t wait to wear them!
Friday involved the usual post work drinks, which saw me rather drunker than usual (I’m going to blame tiredness) so Saturdaysaw me recovering with a pyjama day playing my guilty pleasure Triple Town on the iPad and eating take away pizza. I feel much better today, and am off to the gym again – yuk!
What about you – Any exciting parcels in your week? Been tackling the almost-bikini-weather challenge too?
Ok, I had to internet-cheat for ‘x’ – I couldn’t think of anything except xylophone, and really what do I have to say about that?! So, I did a bit of goggling for ‘x’ words, and came up with xanthippe – an ill tempered woman. Perfect I think.
