Category: Travel

Automatic (Germany & Christmas)

It’s been nearly two months since I’ve written a proper post, so I guess I have a lot to catch up on (sorry). A lot has happened during the past two months, which (if you’ve been keeping up with my Facebook posts) many of you should know about. Back to the second week of November, which was an extremely eventful week… I ended up going to Aladdin (the musical) with Kim, which was really good! That Thursday, I had my job interview at an all-girls’ private school – the one that I had worked at for a couple of weeks in October. I loved this school because compared to every other school in London, there were no behaviour problems.. Parents are paying thousands of pounds per year to send their kids there, so the girls know they shouldn’t mess about. Also, I ONLY have to teach biology – not general science, meaning no chemistry (which I’m somewhat sad about), and NO PHYSICS (thank goodness! I’ll still never understand how to teach electrical circuits…). The other thing that I love about this school is that there aren’t any sets. In London, they arrange classes by “sets,” which is basically their ability level. For example, there might be 8 sets for one year group, so students would be arranged from top set (set 1) to bottom set (set 8). Usually the students in the bottom set are the ones who make their teachers quit (because they hate their job) and are usually the ones that I get when substitute teaching. They have no motivation and encourage each other to avoid doing work, because “what’s the point of trying if they’re at the bottom?”. It’s the dumbest arrangement and I absolutely hate it. This school has classes of mixed ability, so I don’t have to worry about any set numbers. And last but certainly not least, I get free lunch everyday. I figured I’d be crazy to let an opportunity like this go away, as I likely won’t find a school like this anywhere else – even in Canada. My observation lesson was with a Year 12 group on the topic of “Viruses” – a topic I knew very little about. I constantly read and researched it a few days before, and I came up with a pretty decent lesson. I was SO nervous when I had to present it, because I not only had a group of year 12 girls watching me, but also their teacher and the deputy head. After the observation lesson, I had a half hour interview with the headmistress of the school. Everything seemed to go well because a couple of hours later, I got a phonecall from the headmistress asking if I wanted the job! That evening, I looked at three flats in the area. I found a 2-bedroom flat with a girl who I got along with really well and I made an offer that evening. The rent is quite a bit higher than my last place BUT the flat is an 8-minute walk away from the school, so I’m cutting my daily travel time by about two and a half hours. I was on such a high that day – everything went in my favour! That weekend, I went to a rugby game with Becky and we actually won (They win quite often, but I had yet to go to a game where they didn’t lose). Then the next day, I went to a Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony in Green Park. I was only expecting about 30 people to be there but when we arrived, there was a huge crowd of people – hundreds had shown up. It was an incredibly moving experience – being at a Canadian ceremony while living in a completely different country. After the ceremony was over, Kim and I went for afternoon tea, which consisted of an abundance of snacks and sweets – I couldn’t even finish it all!
I was still required to stay at the horrible all-girls school that I was working at for another two weeks (I ended up working there for nearly four weeks) and every day that I was there, I felt more and more sure that I had made the right decision about accepting the other job. I put my room up for “sale” that week and it was snatched up by the first person who came to view it, so it was a VERY easy process. The next couple of weeks just consisted of me packing and getting everything ready for my move. By the last weekend of November, I was able to start the long and tiring moving process. Each round trip to and from my flat took about three hours, so I did three trips on Saturday and two trips on Sunday. It was another one of those moments where I completely underestimated the amount of stuff I had! However, as soon as I started the move, I just put some Christmas carols on and somehow tricked myself into making it enjoyable. Anyway, I got everything moved over by Sunday and then I started work at the new school on Monday. It was quite overwhelming at first… you can tell the girls are testing you out – the younger girls seeing how lenient you are/what they can get away with and the older girls seeing if you actually know what you’re talking about. And every girl can say 100 words with just one look. It was quite intimidating! However, after a few days, I got the hang of it and fell into a groove. I teach 11 classes (most classes only once a week, except for the 10’s and 12’s, which happen twice each) – one year 7, two year 8’s, one year 9, three year 10’s, two year 11’s, and two year 12’s. A lot of the year 12 stuff is so in depth, to the point where I’ve never learnt what they’re learning, or I hadn’t learnt it until university. Therefore, I find myself reading biology books in my spare time, trying to teach myself about certain topics. I’m required to mark something by every student at least once every two weeks and I have 222 students, so I’m required to mark 222 things every two weeks. I understood that accepting a full-time position would be a lot of extra work, but I think I had forgotten how much work it would actually be. I found myself starting to count down the days until I’d be going back to Canada again, which was not a good sign. I think I’m just stressing because this school has high expectations since it’s a private school, whereas every other school I’ve worked at, the teacher didn’t really care if they got through a lesson or not. I’m just trying to maintain a healthy balance of school and work, so it doesn’t completely take over my life. I’ve been trying to only do work at school and then do very little (or none at all) while at home.
The next couple of weeks were mostly filled with Christmas-related things – I went to Winter Wonderland, went out for dinner a few times, went to many Christmas markets, and did a weekend trip to Birmingham with Kim. The Birmingham market was absolutely insane and was jam-packed, but it’s supposed to be the biggest German market next to the ones in Germany and Austria. I got to go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, which was really good! I went to three 15-minute musicals, which were ACTUALLY 15 minutes and were awesome. I went to both Elf and Love Actually at the cinema, and I met up with a friend who I had met in Bruges last April. My neighbourhood even had a few reindeer in it at one point! The last day of my school was quite a different experience.. it started off with about an hour of just singing Christmas carols as a school, then the girls went to their homerooms to do secret santa, and then the entire school walked about ten minutes away to a church, where they actually had a service-like program, complete with a Boar’s Head Feast performance by the Year 13’s, a bunch of actual scripture being read from the Bible, and an excerpt read from The Christmas Carol (This all being done by a school that doesn’t belong to any religion). It was crazy for me to witness, as I don’t think anything like that would ever happen in Canada. My school finished a week earlier than all of the other schools – on December 15, so I decided to pick up some substitute jobs at some other schools for a week. It actually made me miss supply teaching! Throughout the week, I watched Life of Pi, two episodes of the new Planet Earth series, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I got PLENTY of free periods in order to get all of my marking done! There was one school that felt like it came straight from the 70s. It had long, dark hallways, which still had old-school posters, showing pictures of bad quality and kids with bad haircuts. The school had a smell that reminded me of my grandparents’ house. I honestly felt like I should be in a Degrassi show.
Finally, on December 22nd, I flew out to Cologne, Germany. The flight was an hour and five minutes long, so it sped right by. After I arrived, I spent the evening checking out a few Christmas markets. The next day, I did a bit of shopping and then continued with the Christmas markets since the 23rd was the last day that they’d all be open (and there were about seven to go to). It wasn’t unbearably cold in Germany, but the wind would make things pretty bad. That afternoon, I decided to keep warm by going to a Chocolate Museum (of course), which actually ended up being a Lindt Chocolate Museum (even better!). It wasn’t too bad, although it wasn’t my favourite. The thing that struck me most was that experts estimate about 75% of cocoa farmers and their families have never tried a piece of chocolate. It really puts things into perspective, and makes me realize how much I take for granted. Anyway, that evening I went out with a couple of guys from my hostel – one from China who’s living in America (Tony), and one from Australia (Dylan). We ended up spending much of our time in Cologne together, and we all ended up meeting in Munich again a few days later.
On Christmas Eve, Dylan and I went on a free walking tour through Cologne and met quite a few other people from our hostel – a couple of Canadians and a few Kiwis. We all went for lunch/dinner after the tour and then decided to just go back to our hostel and relax in the warmth. Beforehand, we went on a long search for hot chocolate after easily finding Bailey’s. However, most of the stores closed at 5 and when we finally found a shop, hot chocolate didn’t seem to exist. We made due with buying milk and chocolate bars, and the end product was totally worth it! After polishing off the bottle of Bailey’s and playing Uno, Heads Up, and Never Have I Ever, we decided to go find dinner. It didn’t end up being too difficult, as we found a kebab/pizza place about a minute away from our hostel.
The next day was Christmas! As I mentioned on Facebook, this was my first Christmas that I spent without knowing anyone. I was really looking forward to seeing what it would be like, and my experience did not disappoint. It’s difficult to explain without feeling like I’m offending people but in some ways, this Christmas was one of the most fulfilling that I’ve had. Back at home, Christmas is built up during the whole of December and then the actual day usually just consists of waking up, opening gifts, then sitting around and eating lots of food. And then it’s just over. Here, it was just a regular day without any gifts and I felt like I enjoyed the entire day. I started the day by going for lunch at an Asian restaurant for chicken satay (delicious!) and then went back to the hostel and visited with people during the afternoon. That evening, five of us (me, Dylan, and three Kiwis – Meg, Emma, and Jess) went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and finished the evening with a walk across the bridge to view the gorgeous cathedral. I FaceTimed my family when we got back to the hostel and then went to bed. Not once during that day did I feel sad or homesick, and I know it’ll be a Christmas that I’ll always remember and cherish.
The next morning, I headed for Munich. To get there, I decided to use Blablacar, which is basically an organized way of carpooling. You go on the website to see who you can catch a ride with and how much it’ll cost, and then ask for a ride – it’s that easy! I caught a ride with three other Germans and ended up arriving in Munich about six hours later. Once I arrived, I met up with Tony and some of his friends that he had already met there. We went for dinner and drinks, and I met quite a few new people. On Tuesday, I decided to go to the famous Disney-inspired Neuschwanstein Castle. In order to get there, I had to catch a 2-hour train to a town called Fussen. Unfortunately for me, the train was absolutely packed, meaning I had to stand/sit on the floor for the duration of the journey. I went for lunch and got an amazing smoked salmon tarte flambée, which is basically just like a pizza with cream instead of tomato sauce. Afterwards, I had to catch a bus to get up to the castle. The trek to the castle was crazy and reminded me of Banff, where so many people go to see. The view of the castle made everything completely worth it though! Absolutely gorgeous. The town of Fussen was really cute as well – the houses were all so colourful, and there was still a Christmas feeling in the air. I made the long journey back to Munich, this time making sure to rush onto the train in order to get a seat. I thought it was going to be a good trip until a couple came on with their six children (all under the age of ten). All of the kids sat on the floor in front of me and made noise, tickled each other, rolled around on the floor, and continuously asked their parents for more chips and food. About halfway through the trip, two American kids beside me were given their iPads, and then the entire train was silent. It was as if those six kids had never seen anything like it before, and they all crowded around to watch. I made it back to Munich and then met up with Dylan (who had just arrived that day) and Tony for dinner. I ended up trying a pancake soup, which was basically just chicken-noodle soup except instead of noodles, it used strips of pancakes. Weirdest concept, but it wasn’t too bad.
On Wednesday, I went to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. Dachau was one of the first concentration camps, and it was the only one that remained open through the duration of the 12-year Nazi rule.  I saw the crowded barracks (where everyone would have slept), the gas chamber, and the crematorium. There were 32 barracks and each was designed to hold 200 prisoners but towards the end of the war, they ended up each holding about 2000. I read about the perimeter fence and how prisoners would be shot if they’d try to escape, and how some crossed it just to end their own life. I also read (and saw pictures) about how the Nazis would play “games” by taking a prisoner’s cap and throwing it over the perimeter fence, only to make him retrieve it, and kill him in the process. It left quite a heavy weight on me, and many times I just couldn’t wrap my head around how such cruel events could have occurred. To lighten my mood afterwards, I decided to take a walk around the town of Dachau, which was actually a really nice town. I then went back to Munich to spend my last evening with Tony and Dylan before we all parted ways.
On Thursday morning, I took another Blablacar to Berlin, which took another six hours. Berlin is extremely quiet for a capital city, and I was told that this time of year is the busiest that it ever is. I could only wish it would be like that in London! In Berlin, I was still always able to get a seat on the underground and there were never huge crowds of people everywhere you went; it’s never even like that on a Sunday evening in London! That evening, I felt like I was coming down with something so I decided to take it easy and slept for a solid ten hours. The next day, I went on another walking tour. It ended up being three hours long and by the end of it, I was freezing so I decided to go to a mall and do some shopping in the warmth. I then went back to my hostel, went for dinner with a girl from Belgium to a baked potato restaurant (which was delicious!), and then had drinks back at the hostel. On Saturday, I checked out some of the still-open Christmas markets before trying to get to the New Year’s Eve street festival. However, I found out that we weren’t allowed to bring in any bags, so I decided to go back to the hostel to drop my bag off. I stayed there for awhile and then decided to give the street festival another go. When walking to the metro station, you had to be very careful of your surroundings, as people were lighting fireworks everywhere you went. I figured the safest way was for me to stay directly under the balconies of buildings, as many people were even throwing fireworks off of their balconies onto the streets. It was insane! Anyway, I stopped for dinner and then went to stand in the extremely long line to get to the street festival. Security was obviously at its peak (due to the Berlin events the week before), so there were multiple check points to go through. I stood in line for about 20 minutes and then I was literally about two feet away from the gate when they closed it and said they weren’t accepting anymore people through that entrance. Therefore, I had to walk all the way around the 2-km street festival to the other side and get through there. They had to pat everyone down and check their pockets and then 200 metres later, they’d have another checkpoint and they’d do it all again, and then 200 metres later, they’d have ANOTHER, and so on and so forth. I stopped between the third and fourth checkpoints because it was less crowded and I still had a great view. By the time I finally got there, about an hour and a half had gone by since I first stood in line. The Berlin New Year’s show is what any typical New Year’s show would look like in a big city – you have your hosts and then a bunch of performances (including Jermaine Jackson!) until the final countdown. I didn’t know any of the other performers, since they were all German. The countdown and the fireworks were great, and then the party apparently started at 12:30am and didn’t have an end time. I decided not to stay for the party since my flight back to London was the next day, but when I left the park and headed towards a bridge, there were fireworks going off everywhere. Commercial fireworks legally go on sale during the last three days of the year and people go ballistic buying them. I saw some fireworks go off under a police car and then looked over to find a group of about ten police officers holding a bunch of fireworks. Most people just set the firework in a bottle and light it, but you needed to watch where you were going, as there could be a firework going off four metres away from you. It was like a warzone! The non-stop sound of fireworks went on until about 3:30 in the morning. I honestly have no idea how people would even have that many fireworks to last them for so long!
The next morning, I had a few hours to spare before my flight so I made my way back into central Berlin at about 10am. It was like watching a zombie apocalypse, with people slowly staggering through the streets with a beer in hand. The streets were a mess, covered in broken glass, firework residue, bottles and trash. And occasionally you’d still hear a firework go off every few minutes or so. I went to the Brandenburg Gate for awhile, where they were starting a marathon, and then I spent the morning at the Holocaust Memorial Site. It was a really well-done museum with a lot of information that hadn’t been included at the Dachau Memorial. It also included information about different families, their histories, and their fates during the war. The thing I really respect about Germany is how open they are about their history. The entire world knows their history, and wherever you are in Germany, you’ll always find information about it. Everyone says that the reason for this is so that it doesn’t happen again, but then I sit there wondering why Canada’s not open about their own history. Why the textbooks sugarcoat everything to make the relationship with Indigenous peoples sound like it was only a minor conflict. Why I always have to explain the history of Canada to people I meet while travelling, and they’re completely shocked about the things that happened. And why many Canadian children don’t even learn the real Canadian history, depending on who their teacher is (I was lucky to have an awesome history teacher in grade 12, but I really didn’t learn about Indigenous history in depth until university), while German kids are taken to concentration camps and taught the whole story. It makes me quite upset actually, and I do think it’s somewhat pathetic because I feel like all Canada has done is just swept that dirty past under the doormat to forget that it’s there, when it should be openly acknowledged. I love Canada and everyone talks about how perfect Canada is, but I do have to remind them that we have our flaws as well, and that is definitely one of them. Anyway, after the museum, I headed to one last German Christmas market and ate one last bratwurst before heading back to London. And I returned to a wet ground (of course), once again surrounded by too many miserable people and it was there that I felt at home again. I got home at about 11pm, and went out with my flatmate the following day. Today, I had my first day back at the school (minus the kids) and tomorrow, school starts again. Next vacation is in six weeks! I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. Happy New Year! Love always
Automatic – The Mowgli’s

Warmth (Romania and Stonehenge)

My time back here is already speeding by! I can’t believe it’s been two months since I was back in Canada and even moreso, I can’t believe it’s only two months until 2017. And it’s ALMOST Christmas!!!! London has been decked out in Christmas decorations since November 1st; it’s crazy. I’m loving every minute of it; I’ll take my pumpkin spiced lattes and my candy cane mochas, the decorated streets and windows, the Christmas sales… what’s there NOT to enjoy?! I’ve been back at work for a week since coming back from Romania and thankfully, I ended up getting a full week! Romania was great! When it came up, I wasn’t actually ready to go on holiday yet. Somehow, I was enjoying my time teaching in London. I don’t know if the kids were better cause it was the start of the school year, or if I’m actually getting better at managing them(?!).. Or maybe it was because I really only worked four full weeks out of the seven, so I wasn’t ready to leave. However, I went and I fully enjoyed my time! I flew from London to Suceava (pronounced Sue-CHA-vah) on Saturday afternoon, and didn’t arrive at the hostel until about 8pm that evening with the 2-hour time difference. Now why Romania, everyone asks me? Why SUCEAVA? Well, back in the year 1900, my great-, great-grandparents decided to migrate to Canada. They came from the region Bukovina, which at the time was part of Austria, but now is part of southern Ukraine and northern Romania. The city or town (Stawchan) that they came from no longer exists, so I was hoping to find out some information about it in Suceava, which has a Bukovina heritage museum. Anyway, Suceava was a place where pretty much NO ONE spoke English. It was also a place where pretty much NO ONE came to visit. Therefore, I was not only the only person in my hostel room, but I was also the only person in the entire hostel (Irene’s Hostel). And reception was only open 5-7pm, so I was REALLY the only person in my entire hostel.
Suceava was quite small and quiet, so I got through everything within the first day I was there. It was neat seeing all of the old ladies with their heads wrapped in handkerchiefs, reminding me of my Baba. That day, I took a walk around the city, checked out the fortress, and went to the Bukovina Heritage museum. The museum was really cool, with the exception of one house that almost gave me a heart attack when I turned a corner and saw dummies taking part in a funeral, with recordings of crying at a real funeral in the background. The museum was an outdoor museum that was laid out like a Bukovina village, with about 30 different houses and buildings that you could explore. I learned that the groom/bride gown was saved during a person’s life because that’s what they’d be buried in (I guess it would be good incentive to not gain weight after the honeymoon phase of a relationship). I also learned that funerals often took place in the spare room of a house and would take about three days, where people could come pay their respects when they please. I learned that a baby would not be recognized by the community until it was baptized, which my parents recently explained was why I got baptized at such a young age. I saw everything I wanted to see after that first day. Unfortunately for me, I booked three nights there. My original plan was to rent a car and drive into Ukraine to where my uncle thought the town that we originated from may have been. However, it turns out you need an international drivers license to drive in Ukraine, which I didn’t have. Then, I thought I may as well rent a car anyway and then I could explore the famous painted monasteries throughout the area. I booked my car that evening and spent the entire evening mapping out where I should go, only to get an email a few hours later stating they didn’t have automatic cars in Suceava. Lovely.
The next day, I took a bus to Vama. Taking public transportation in a city that doesn’t speak English is probably the scariest thing for me to do when travelling alone. I usually try to avoid it at all costs, and would rather walk hours instead of have to try to explain where I’m trying to go, figure out how much it’ll cost, when I need to get off, etc. I got to Vama okay, had a quick breakfast, and went to the Egg Museum, which must have the biggest collection of eggs in the world. The collection comes from countries all over the world, and has different kinds of paintings, carvings, and themes. It was really cool! It was so weird walking through the small town, where pretty much everyone had some type of animal in their backyard. Many had chickens, some had a cow, some had a pig, and most had dogs to watch over everything. Since I didn’t have any wifi or a bus schedule, I went and sat at the bus stop to wait for the next bus, which took about an hour and a half. While I was sitting there, an old man came and kept trying to have a conversation with me in Romanian. He would talk and talk and talk, and then in English he would say, “You understand?” I’d shake my head no, and he’d try again and again. I got off at another small town, where I decided I’d walk from to get to one of the painted monasteries, so I could at least see one. The Voronet monastery was an hour walk there and back, so it kept me busy for the afternoon. Everything in Romania has a photo tax, so if you want to take pictures at any of the museums, you need to pay the tax. I decided to pay the tax for the monastery and then felt cheated as I stepped inside and saw huge pictures that said “No photography inside the monastery.” It was really gorgeous inside though! I walked the hour back, got to the bus station and found out I had to wait another hour to catch the last bus back to Suceava. I had an early night because I decided I’d take the 6:50 bus the next morning to Brasov (pronounced Bra-shov).
The bus ride was about 8 hours but it went by quite quickly. On the way, it drove through the Bicaz canyon, and the views were spectacular. The colours of the leaves in Romania were insane! I wish my camera could capture it, but it’s something everyone will have to go see in person. There were so many stray dogs and cats throughout Romania; it was heartbreaking. I’ve figured out that I don’t think I have maternal instinct.. I have a CATernal instinct. I swear anytime I see or hear a cat, the first thing I want to do is go pick it up and give it a cuddle. I wanted to hold all of the cats! However, remembering when I got bit by the cat in Morocco and rushed myself to the doctor thinking I had rabies, I decided I’d have to go against every fibre of my being in order to not touch the cats. And the cats knew! They just kept taunting me, trying to get my attention. Anyway, I went to my hostel (the Kismet Dao), and then decided to go explore the Old Town. While walking through, I suddenly heard my name and turned around to find Kim’s friend, Taylor, who was travelling with a couple other friends. How crazy! I decided to join them for dinner, where I had a delicious traditional Romanian stew with polenta. Oh, by the way, McDonald’s in Romania offers Peaches and Cream pie instead of Apple, and it’s literally the best thing ever! I probably had at least five while I was there.
The next day (Wednesday), I woke up nice and early to have breakfast. The hostel had breakfast but all that it offered was cereal. I never eat cereal and if I do, I always eat it dry. However I thought it would look weird just eating up dry cereal and decided I’d give milk a go – how bad could it be? It’s been at least 15 years, maybe things have changed. Boy, was I ever wrong.. I sat there gagging, trying to get through my bowl of milk and cereal. It’s a consistency thing for me – the soggy feeling of grain in your mouth. Even writing about it, I get the shivers. It’s the same reason why I NEVER put ice cream on my pie or cake, or any other pastry item. It seriously grosses me out. Anyway, after breakfast, I decided to take the bus to Bran in order to see Bran Castle (or Dracula’s Castle). Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler, who was a man who went around impaling people. I later found out on my walking tour how it was done. First, you take a long, sharp object and you insert it straight into the anus of the person that you’re impaling. Then, you push the object at a 90-degree angle so it’s parallel with the person standing so that their legs will collapse and they’ll slide down the object, which will exit through their neck or head. A GOOD impaling will cause a person to survive like that for two or three days. How pleasant.. Anyway, apparently during this time, people didn’t have to worry about other people stealing their stuff and the crime level was very low, because everyone was scared of the punishment (obviously). Apparently during his lifetime, Vlad the Impaler impaled over 20,000 people! Rumours started that Vlad would drink his victims blood and blablabla, and that’s how the storyline for Dracula was created. However, in real life, Vlad the Impaler had only actually been in “Dracula’s Castle” once, and it was when he was imprisoned there for two days. So it’s more of a tourist trap, but I felt like I had to go, given the Halloween season. After the castle, I went on a walking tour back in Brasov, and then a few of us (two Americans and one German) went out for dinner to a restaurant called La ceaun, where I got to have Romanian cabbage rolls, which were absolutely delicious!
The next day (Thursday), I took a train to Bucharest. It was like a Harry Potter train, with little compartments to sit in, which was nice except for the teenager who decided to play his video games the whole time WITH SOUND. The teacher in me almost said something, but I did a good job of biting my tongue. I did a bit of exploring and then went for dinner. After dinner, I decided to check out the Parliament building, which is the second largest administrative building in the world (after the Pentagon), and on my way there, someone asked me for directions. I explained that I had just arrived and he said he had too (from Spain), so we went out for a couple of drinks and had a great conversation! On Friday, I took the tube to Hard Rock Cafe in order to get my drumsticks. However, on my way there, I found a beautiful park called Parcel Herastrau. I spent quite a bit of time there and afterwards, I went out for lunch closeby. The food in Romania is so cheap! The most I ever spent on a meal was about 40 lei, which is 8 pounds. For lunch, I went to a restaurant called City Grill, where I had a two-course meal for 21 lei – 4 pounds!
That afternoon, I went on a walking tour, where I got to find out a lot about the history of Romania. It absolutely blew my mind! They’ve really only had independence since 1990, so they’re as old as I am. Before that, they were part of a Communist period. I learned that the people would only get two hours of hot water each week, only four hours of heat each day – 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, and the food was rationed because the president (Ceausescu) decided to use most of it for exports, so there wasn’t enough to go around for the actual country. Obviously, many people had also been killed during this period. In December 1989, Bucharest had a Revolution, which also brought more than 1000 deaths. The president and his wife ended up in custody after trying to escape by helicopter and on Christmas day, the two were put on trial and were convicted for many crimes, and both were executed that day. The trial and the executions were shown live on television throughout Christmas Day, with the message “Merry Christmas Romania, you now have independence!” So insane!
On Saturday, I went to actually check out the parliament building and then another person approached me in the Old Town (from Germany). We decided to go for lunch to a place where we were sat right in front of the grill, so we could watch everything take place. That afternoon, I went to a homemade and antique market and made a few purchases, and then did some last exploring. On Sunday, I made the long trip back to London. On my flight, I was trying to find somewhere to put my luggage and I noticed a spot with just a jacket sitting there. I struggled as I tried moving the jacket to the side so I’d have room for my bag, and the man sitting there let out the biggest sigh ever, as if I was the biggest inconvenience in his life and he stood up. I thought he was going to move the jacket aside so I could put my suitcase up, he instead grabbed it from where I moved it, moved it back in the empty space, and sat back down. I was somewhat stunned, and the man beside me smiled sympathetically as he and the flight attendant once again moved the jacket so I could put my bag there. I had forgotten I was on a plane back to LONDON.. Of course I shouldn’t be expecting kindness. I ended up getting home quite late, after taking the bus back into London from the airport.
This week has went by quite quickly! I worked most of the week at an all-girls school that I’ve worked at before, but the behaviour is horrible.They’re looking for someone to take over a science position since the permanent teacher left (the girls told me that they made her cry). Anyway, Tuesday and Wednesday were absolutely horrible, but the behaviour got much better towards the end of the week. I don’t know what it is – I do things without actually getting mad at the kids now, thanks to the teacher that I observed back in Saskatoon. I find that the more you hound the kids to do work, the less they actually do. My method has actually been to just sit back and make them realize it on their own. Sometimes, they need a bit of a push.. I ended up saying to one my classes that if they want to talk instead of work, they can, and that’s their own choice. But ten years from now, when they’re all working at McDonald’s because they decided not to take their education seriously, it wouldn’t be my fault. I explained that they weren’t in primary school anymore, and that I wasn’t going to hold their hand and check to make sure they were getting all of their work done. That it was time for them to take responsibility of their education. And then I had dead silence for the rest of that class, as well as for the rest of the week! I have an interview and observation lesson this week for the school that I had worked at during the two weeks before my break, so I’ll have to see how that goes! When the head of science found out that I had an interview at THAT school, she had nothing bad to say about the school, “But I WILL say this… I’m not trying to convince you not to take the job there and instead take the one here, BUT being at that great of a school might cause you to UNLEARN your behaviour management skills…” Yeah… that’s a big concern… Anyway, my weeknights were also quite busy. On Tuesday, I went to the Close Talker concert for the second time this year! Once again, it was awesome seeing them perform and being able to have conversations with some familiar faces. On Wednesday, Becky, Charlotte and I went to the Bastille concert, which was absolutely amazing! It was probably the best energy I’ve ever felt at a concert, and it was so uplifting. My mood was great for the rest of the week! Thursday, I went to bed quite early since I was exhausted from going out two nights in a row and getting minimal sleep. On Friday, I went out for drinks with another one of the supply teachers from the school and then I went to a BBC radio concert. I expected it to be a classical music concert, but it ended up being some type of weird abstract genre, with random sounds and notes that (to my ear) sounded horrible. I ended up leaving during the intermission, partly because I didn’t want to stay for the rest and partly because I had an early morning the next day. On Saturday, I went on a bus tour with my former flatmate who was visiting from Italy. We went to Stonehenge, as well as a couple of small towns called Henley-upon-Thames and Avebury. It was SO cold, and I was wearing two sweaters and a winter jacket over my clothes. It was really neat to see Stonehenge though! The trip was from 8am to 7pm so by the time we got back, I was completely worn out. Today, I just did some shopping and cleaning, and I’ve started preparing for the possibility of moving if I end up getting the job at the school this week. I hope everyone’s been doing well, miss you all! Love always
Warmth – Bastille

Home Again (Saskatoon, La Ronge, and our Roadtrip to Vancouver)

Well, I’ve been back in London for over a month now, and it’s went by so fast! But this post isn’t about my time back in London… right now, I’m going to share about my time back in Canada. My trip back to Canada was quite long.. my flight didn’t leave until 9:20 that morning, but I still had to get to the airport by 6:45. I had booked a bus ticket to the airport, but I still had to get to the bus stop with my two suitcases so I decided to take an Uber for the first time ever. It was actually quite simple! I got up around 4:30 and called an Uber at 5, which got me to the bus stop with enough time to catch my bus at 5:30. However, once I got there, it said that because of road construction, the bus stop would be cancelled all day. Of course something like this would happen on my way home – does it EVER go smoothly?! I tried calling the number that was listed, which was out of service and then I started freaking out along with the other people who showed up at the stop. Luckily, a bus ended up coming! The bus driver said that it didn’t come into effect until 6am (even though the sign didn’t state that), so we lucked out! I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and I bought the newest Harry Potter book that was just issued at midnight. The first part of my flight was to St. John’s, Newfoundland. I then had two hours to find my luggage, take it through customs, and get food before boarding the next plane. There were two things that completely shocked me upon arriving in the Newfoundland airport. The first thing was that the people were a lot bigger – not huge, but a noticeable amount that I hadn’t been used to seeing in Europe. The second thing was how much water was in the toilets. This took about two weeks for me to get used to, and there were quite a few times when I’d start freaking out because I thought the toilet was going to overflow when I flushed it. Coming from Europe, where there’s about half a cup to a cup of water in a toilet (next to nothing), I was shocked when I saw the toilet bowl half full in Canada! Anyway, I got on my next flight, which was to Toronto but it ended up being a four hour flight. This was because there was a stop in Halifax, where I had to sit and wait for everyone to get off the plane and for everyone else to get on. I had started and finished my Harry Potter book during this flight.. I had another two hour layover in Toronto, and then my final part was the trip to Saskatoon. I got there at 8pm (3am London time), where my sister and Stephanie were there to greet me at the airport (my parents were at the cabin, waiting), and the three of us went back to the house to visit and unpack my stuff. By that time, I had hardly eaten because I was shocked at the $8-13 sandwiches at the airpot and refused to buy one. I had the shakes and was extremely jetlagged, but I somehow managed to stay up until at least midnight. The next day, my sister and I packed up my car and headed to La Ronge! We had a nice family week there, where we went on a family boat day (dog and cat included), did some puzzling, hung out by the fire, and just had a relaxing time. It was quite easy for me to feel at home again, and it felt like I had only been gone for a month or so, not a whole year! It was also a great way for me to get over my jetlag, but it took me at least a week to finally be able to sleep through the entire night. Once the weekend came, I was “allowed” to go into town to see my friends (the week was reserved for family time), and do my rounds at the Co-op. Not much had changed, except for all of the kids who seemed to have changed so much after a year!

I headed back to Saskatoon on Sunday evening, and then my mom, Lauren and I started our road trip on Monday morning. We stopped to visit my Grandma for an hour or so, and things had changed quite a bit in that area as well. During my year away, she had been moved to a care home and her memory has slowly been going, so she didn’t actually know who I was when I came in. My mom had to introduce me to her, reminding her of who I was. It was quite difficult to see how much she had changed since the last time I saw her, but it was nice to see her again. We then decided to take the long way to Calgary, heading down to Swift Current and stopping to visit my Godparents in Medicine Hat. We arrived in Calgary later that night, just in time to have dinner with our family friends, the Hounjets and Randles. On Tuesday, Robyn, Lauren and I did a bit of wandering around and went out for lunch. We went to a fancy French bistro, where we decided to order three dishes and split them. Robyn order the beef tartare, which Lauren and I were both quite hesitant about, as I don’t think I’ve ever eaten raw red meat in my life, but it actually ended up being delicious! We did a bit of shopping, and later that evening we had a nice dinner, complete with boardgames and lots of visiting.
We left for Windermere on Wednesday morning, stopping for lunch in Banff. We settled for McDonald’s after seeing how expensive the Banff restaurants were, and then checked out a few of the shops while we were there. We got to Windermere that afternoon, and stayed at my Auntie Joyce and Uncle David’s cabin. The next day, we spent a good amount of time boating on the lake. It was so weird to me – to be able to have mountains on both sides of you when boating through the lake, but it was so nice and relaxing! This is where I finally was able to have a good night’s sleep after being jet lagged all week – it was amazing! We went out to a delicious restaurant for pizza that evening, and ended the night with a campfire.
On Friday morning, we made the long trek to Kelowna. We stayed with my cousins and their kids, and my Auntie Rose and Uncle Bob were also in town to visit! We had an amazing Ukrainian dinner that evening (which I would never turn away, with the lack of Ukrainian food in London!), which was so good! The next day, we spent the afternoon at the beach, and we also got to see where my aunt and uncle would be moving. It was a great visit! That evening, we spent hours on the deck watching the lightning storm, and stargazing.
On Sunday morning, we headed to Vancouver. The traffic was insane upon our arrival, and we ended up taking about 1.5 to 2 hours just to get IN to Vancouver, as the highway was backed up. We finally got through and stopped at the ferry terminal to pick up my cousin, Nikayla, who came to meet us from Victoria. Lucky for us, some family friends had a 2-bedroom apartment available that was on UBC campus. However, it was completely empty. And by completely, I mean no beds, no couch, no dishes, etc. We ended up “camping” on the bedroom floors, which was an experience in itself. That evening, we did a shopping trip to get our necessities and we went out for a nice dinner on campus. The next day, we went to Granville Island and I met up with my friend, Jeff (who I met at Bamfield), for lunch. Later that afternoon, we went to Lynn Canyon Park and did a bit of hiking before heading back to the apartment and having a sushi picnic on the living room floor. We also met up with Curtis and his girlfriend for a visit that night.
On Tuesday morning, we started our long trek home. We dropped Nikayla back off at the ferry terminal, made a stop in Abbotsford to visit some family friends, and this time headed north towards Jasper. We didn’t have a plan of where we would stop that evening, and decided to keep driving until my dad (who was back in Saskatoon on his iPad) found us a room in Clearwater. This was the first evening that my mom, sister and I had to ourselves, and it was nice to finally get to spend some time just with each other. We went to an AMAZING restaurant called Hop “N” Hog, where we sat outside and had a meat platter and a vegetable platter of delicious barbecued food. We left the next morning and made it to Edmonton that night, and then did the last part of the trip back to Saskatoon on Thursday. I ended up putting 7000km on my car during my month back in Canada, putting a year’s worth of driving in 30 days!
That evening, I met up with my good friend Crystal for dinner at Spicy Garden and had a nice visit catching up. Friday was my first full day back in Saskatoon (even though I had already been in Canada for 18 days), and if I’m completely honest, it was the first time I felt truly lonely. Maybe it was the fact that the last two and half weeks were so filled up, I didn’t think about it before, or maybe that’s just how I actually felt in my hometown, but I sat there thinking about how a year had went by and everyone had continued on with their lives for the past year without me, so was there even any place for me anymore? Where did I still belong? DID I still belong? And I was bored! I didn’t feel like I could just find something cool to do, like it was so easily done in London. I felt truly lost. I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it because that afternoon, I spent quite a bit of time with family.
The next day, I met up with most of my high school friends at Stephanie’s house for a barbecue. It was nice seeing and catching up with everyone, and again, it didn’t feel like I had been gone for a whole year. After dinner, we got a ride to Confederation Mall and started our Folkfesting experience. We went to the German pavilion for a while, and then made our way to Prairieland Park, where we stayed for the rest of the night. People kept wandering off or going home throughout the night, which was really tough on me because I knew that I likely wouldn’t be seeing them again before I headed back to London, and I didn’t get to say bye to any of them. However, there were seven of us left at the end of the night and we decided to take the bus to the north end and then go to Original Joe’s. We caught the bus at about 11:45pm and then about ten minutes later, the bus randomly stopped and bus driver said that another bus was coming, and it would be going directly downtown. Therefore, half of the people on the bus got off (including us) and we waited for the next bus. And waited… And waited… After another ten minutes of it not coming, everyone climbed back onto the other bus (which hadn’t left), and we started the long journey back downtown, through all of the other neighbourhoods. By the time we finally got downtown, we had JUST missed the last bus to take us to the northend and we were therefore stranded at the bus mall. I was livid. I had gotten used to 24-hour bus services, and I couldn’t believe that we didn’t have a way home at 12:30 in the morning. My drunken self promised my friends that I would be writing a letter to the city to complain (which seems to be what I do best). Luckily, Steph got a hold of her mom to pick up the people who lived on the west side and I was able to wake up my sister to pick up the northend people. Anyway, I DID end up writing a letter when I returned back to London, which I’ll explain more of at the end of my post.
The next day (Sunday), my loneliness came back again. That afternoon, I went to my Auntie Rose and Uncle Bob’s to visit with them and my cousins, and then they invited me for dinner. It was a really great visit, and time seemed to fly by, as the conversations kept going and going. I left at 9pm after realizing the time, and I met up with my friend Alyssa to have a visit over coffee. It’s those short visits with friends and family that really make me feel whole and complete again 🙂 On Monday, I met up with Steph and Laura for all-you-can-eat sushi lunch before I made the trip back to La Ronge. That week, I usually spent the day with family and then went into town for the evening. On Wednesday, Sherri had a birthday party for Nevaidah, who turned four this year! I remember hating when people would see me as a kid and exclaim how fast I was growing up, and now I’ve realized that I’ve become one of those people. It blows my mind that Nevaidah was born four years ago, back when I was doing my Eurotrip in Italy. It was a great week, being able to spend time with friends and see how much the kids had changed! Zipper and I even got a nice afternoon to relax on the lake!
I drove back to Saskatoon on Sunday night and then on Monday, my mom, Lauren and I did a day trip to Rosetown. We spent the afternoon with my grandma, who was much better that day! We also went to visit my aunt and uncle working on the farm, and then went for dinner at my cousin’s. That evening, we made a couple more stops visiting cousins before heading back home. It was a busy day, but it was so nice to see everyone before I left! On Tuesday, I met with Jono and his family for lunch, and I got to see how much his little one grew in the past year! Then on Wednesday, I met up with the Herbel’s for lunch, and had an awesome visit with them as well! That evening, I did all of my packing and had a visit from Steph and Bobby. Then, at 3:30 in the morning, I had to get up in order to catch my 5:30 flight back to London. The trip back was much like the trip there, except I had longer layovers. I had a six-hour layover in Toronto, and then a two-hour layover in St. John’s, and I made it back to London at 8am (1am Saskatoon time). The line to get through passport control was absolutely ridiculous, and I ended up having to wait 1.5-2 hours to finally get through. I then caught the bus back, and I think I arrived back at my flat at around 2pm (7am Saskatoon time), and I was absolutely exhausted! But I suppose I’ll save all that for another blog, as this is getting quite long and I still have to write about my government letters!
I ended up sending the letters during my second week back in London. It somewhat pained me to have to address the letters to “His Worship Don Atchison” and “The Honourable Brad Wall,” but I did what had to be done for the possibility of my letters being read. I’ve added a copy of my letter below:
To The Honourable Brad Wall,
 
Please understand that I have also sent a letter to His Worship Donald Atchison, but as this is also a Saskatchewan issue, I would like to bring this to your attention as well.
 
I’m a 26-year-old Canadian woman and I’ve spent most of my life living in Saskatchewan, but I have currently been living in London, England for the past year. I came back for a month this August to visit family and friends, and I was shocked and annoyed when the only night that I went out in Saskatoon, my friends and I were stranded downtown with no way of getting home. My friends and I went folkfesting on the Saturday night and left Prairieland Park at about ten to midnight. We all got on the bus and the bus drove for awhile and then the bus driver said that if anyone wanted to go straight downtown, there’s another bus coming in a minute. Half the people got off the bus and we must have waited for at least ten minutes, but no bus came. Luckily, the other bus hadn’t left so we all got on and took the long trip back to downtown. By the time we finally got downtown, the only buses there said “not in service,” and we found out that there were no more buses going to the north end of the city. Now, I understand that I’m coming from a large city where the population is far greater than Saskatoon’s population, but even before I moved to London, I had a major problem with the public transportation that was offered to Saskatoon citizens. I believe that it’s the city’s responsibility to get everyone home in a safe manner, ESPECIALLY when the city is putting on a major event. Saskatoon doesn’t have a nightbus, and it doesn’t have Uber. I understand that we can’t get Uber, but a taxi fare is way too expensive for the average person to pay for. According to taxifarefinder.com, a taxi ride for me to get from downtown to my house would cost $25, while a taxi ride from Prairieland Park to my house would cost $36. That’s absolutely ridiculous when minimum wage in Saskatchewan is $10.50. I doubt the average person is working 2.5 to 3.5 hours (aka over one quarter of a workday) thinking that this amount is going towards their ride home when they go out that weekend. I’ve never spent money on a taxi to go home after a night out, nor do I ever plan to. I would rather walk an hour to get home than spend money on a taxi, but even that wouldn’t secure my safety when there might be drunk drivers out on the road. I have to admit (and I’m sure I’m not the only person) that I’m scared to go out driving or walking on crazy nights, such as Folkfest weekend or New Year’s Eve, because I know that there are drunk drivers out there, and I don’t want to risk getting in an accident. And I believe that the lack of public transportation that’s offered is directly related to the amount of people driving under the influence. Many people would rather drive under the influence than pay for a taxi, and therefore they put their life and many other peoples’ lives in danger.
 
I remember watching those commercials as a child – those ones that basically taught me that having one or two drinks before driving was fine. We’ve all grown up with the idea that as long as we don’t go past that .08 limit, we can drink as much as we want before driving. Some people are so good at convincing themselves and others that they’re sober, and they’ll still get in the vehicle AFTER the .08 limit. Shouldn’t all amounts of alcohol be the limit though? The fact that I’ve grown up and I’ve known as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult that having one or two drinks before driving is “okay” – that’s a problem! I look at that and I think that it’s somewhat messed up that kids grow up with this idea instilled in their brains. There’s something wrong when most likely every Saskatchewan person has heard this at least once: “No, I probably shouldn’t have ANOTHER drink. I’m driving today.” The .08 limit says nothing. I have friends who could have 4 or 5 beer in a row and can still act completely normal, and I have friends who could have half a can of beer and already be tipsy. Does this mean that the .08 limit has only reached the latter friend? Likely not. Impaired driving is still the number one killer on the roads in Saskatchewan, and something has to be done about it. When my sister sent me an article titled, “Sask doesn’t see drunk driving as a problem ‘until someone actually dies,’” I KNEW I had to write this letter. Not only do you have to change the way you’re educating the citizens of this province, but you have to start offering affordable public transportation for everyone so that people aren’t tempted to drink and drive. If you can’t offer 24-hour buses, you should at least be offering bus services from downtown to each area of every major city until an hour after bars close – until 3am. Have a bus go back and forth to Lawson Heights Mall, have a bus go back and forth to Confederation Mall, and so on and so forth. That way, at least people can get closer to home, and THEN they can take a taxi or walk. 
 
I know it’s a long shot to send this letter and hope something will be done about it, but I sincerely hope that you take it into consideration. Families should never be scared to drive around their own city because they’re worried about drunk drivers. This is a serious topic and it’s always been a serious topic, but throughout my first 25 years of living in Saskatoon, I’ve seen nothing done about it. Do something. 
 
Sincerely,
Janelle Achtemichuk
Again, I sent these letters to Don Atchison (and the city council) and Brad Wall. I wasn’t really expecting a reply from either of them, but was hoping they’d at least be read at a council meeting or SOMETHING. I was hoping to get through to them in any way possible. To my surprise, the next day, Brad Wall had posted a lengthy Facebook post about drunk driving, which was also in response to a fatal drunk driving accident that had occurred that day. I have no idea if this had anything to do with my letter, but I was still pleased to see that something was being posted. The link to his post is here: http://regina.ctvnews.ca/we-have-a-serious-problem-premier-brad-wall-on-sask-drinking-and-driving-1.3066856 . Then again to my surprise, I actually received a response from Brad Wall five days later and he CC’d the Minister of Government Relations and the Minister Responsible for Saskatchewan Government Insurance. I’m not going to copy his letter for respect of privacy, but it was short response basically repeating what I had talked about, and agreeing that drunk driving was a problem. The good thing that came out of it was he recommended that I write my City Councillor, who happens to be Randy Donauer. I sent the letter to him as well and nearly two and a half weeks later (long after I had already forgotten about it), I received a really well-written response. He was extremely thankful for my letter and he was glad that I contacted him, and said that the Premier just gave orders to his cabinet to start a war on drinking and driving, and demanded they come up with solutions within the next few months. He also said that they’ve just completed a study of the transit system and have highlighted areas where it needs to improve, such as after-hours services, and service to remote areas. He said they’ll be introducing Bus Rapid Transit lines, with a new transit route system over the coming years. He also said he’d be forwarding my comments to the Manager of Transit, so that he can incorporate them into his consultation and planning. Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard anything from Don Atchison, nor do I expect to. I almost want to print the letter out, send it by post, and say that I’ve received replies from Brad Wall and Randy Donauer, and was just making sure he received my letter (as it doesn’t actually go straight to him, but has to go through other people), but I’m not sure if I should. The good news is that it’s making a difference, and I actually got two replies! I guess it goes to show that a drunken night complaining about it won’t solve the problem, but if you make your voice heard, some people might actually listen! I do have to say that I’m proud, and I’m hoping it will result in something good!
My time back in Canada flew by so fast! However, I feel like it was just enough time to enjoy myself, and recharge for another year in London. I do have to say how surprised I was, as so many people that I visited talked about how they’ve read all of my blog posts. And it was always the last people who I’d expect to keep up with my life in London! But it made me feel special, and I love knowing how many people have been devoting their time to read my stories – I appreciate it so much! It’s encouraging me to continue posting blogs, no matter how late they might be.. I hope everyone is enjoying the fall (but mostly winter) weather! Miss you all tons! Love always
Home Again – Michael Kiwanuka

Anywhere (Spain)

Here’s the latest blog post ever! This actually isn’t the first time I wrote this blog post… I had gotten motivation to write this back when I was on my flight home from Toronto to Saskatoon, and I spent two full hours typing out all of my stories – to the point where the person sitting beside me made a comment about how long I had been typing and asked what I was writing. Anyway, I made the stupid decision to write my blog in Notes on my computer (which I’m actually doing again right now – apparently I don’t live and learn) but because my phone hit wifi before my computer did, it updated my notes first. Therefore, when I turned on my computer to edit my blog before posting it, I was horrified to see that my post no longer existed. Needless to say, it’s taken a lot of motivation to get me to sit down and start this blog post again. Anyway, as most of you know I’ve already been to Canada and back, although that will be saved for another post. This post is dedicated to my trip in Spain! The last week of teaching was very quiet, and I only ended up getting three and a half days of work, mostly at random schools that I had never been to before. At one school, all of the students called me “Ma’am” instead of “Miss” and it made me feel like I had aged at least 30 years. The last day of school was on July 20th, which was a Wednesday, but I decided to just give myself those three days off since I figured I wouldn’t get work anyway.
On the 16th of July, I flew to Menorca in Spain. I was extremely concerned because my flight was due to arrive at 10pm and there were only two hostels on the island: one that accepted check-ins until 10pm and one that accepted check-ins until 11pm. I obviously opted for the 11pm one but I knew it was going to be a tight squeeze. When I checked in, the agent asked if I’d be checking in any bags (which the answer is always no in order to avoid baggage fees) but for the first time ever, I was asked to put my carry-on bag onto the scale. I wasn’t too happy when I saw that my bag was a kilogram over the allowed weight requirement. It must have been my lucky day because the agent offered to check in my bag for free! Anyway, everyone ended up checking onto the plane so fast that we actually left and arrived a half hour early. I still ended up having to wait for my bag to come out, and later realized that an older couple had it for a half hour until they saw their ACTUAL bag and put mine back onto the carousel. I then ran to the extremely long line to get a taxi. Well, it seemed like they only had two taxis on the entire island, because one would come every five minutes or so, so it took forever until I finally got my own. The taxi only took about 15 minutes but it ended up costing me 20 euro – the same amount as one night in the hostel! I got to the hostel with a half hour to spare, but all of the lights were out and there was no way of getting inside. Luckily, the hostel owner must have been watching on a tv screen, cause he showed up shortly after. Menorca is one of the three main Balearic islands (including Mallorca and Ibiza), but unlike its sister island Ibiza, it’s not a party island. It’s the most relaxed place I’ve been to in a long time. No one was ever in a rush, everyone was really easygoing and friendly, and people would stop for you even when you were three metres away from getting to a crosswalk (Note: This would NEVER happen in London, where the cars don’t even stop at crosswalks unless the lights tell them to. If a crosswalk doesn’t have a light, then you better run as fast as your legs can take you, because no car will ever slow down for a pedestrian). Menorca has more beaches than Ibiza and Mallorca combined, so the possibilities were endless! I was staying in a small town called Sant Lluís, which was about a 15 minute bus ride from the main town, Mahon. On Sunday, I decided to spend the first part of the day in Mahon to try to find a beach. Unfortunately after feeling like I had walked along the entire Mahon port, I never found one so I decided to take a bus to Punta Prima, which was somewhat of a busy beach, but I ended up spending the entire afternoon there. On Monday, I went to a beach called Es Grau with two people from my hostel – a girl from Chile and a guy from France. We arrived at about noon and the next (and only) bus to take us back was at 6pm, so we were pretty much forced to sit in the sun for six hours. The further you walked along the beach, the more private it got so we finally found our own private beach (with the exception of a nude couple who likely wasn’t too happy to have the extra company). The weather was scorching hot and I definitely started to feel it towards the end of our time there (Note: My back was so painful that I couldn’t even roll over in bed without waking myself up. For the next few days, I shed a whole layer of skin off my back so I had to start from square one all over again). We went back to the hostel to shower and get ready for the evening and then we decided to take the last bus to Mahon. We found a nice little restaurant and ordered a bunch of different tapas, which were absolutely delicious! My friend also ordered us a round of drinks called Tinto de verano, which I wasn’t too excited about because it’s red wine mixed with lemon Fanta. I was pleasantly surprised how much I actually liked this drink, as I always stay away from red wine, and I ended up drinking these for the rest of my holiday. However, I also started to notice that every time I had one of these drinks, my nose would get completely stuffed and then I’d sneeze for the rest of the night. Allergy to red wine perhaps? That wasn’t the only thing I found out I was allergic to during the holiday… Even though it looks like all of my holidays are a lot of fun and I’m enjoying myself (and they are and I am, don’t get me wrong), it’s during my holidays when I’m also usually in the most pain since I end up not using bottled water to wash my face and my skin spends the entire time going through multiple reactions. Anyway, this time it wasn’t only the water that my skin reacted to but also the sunscreen. I started to notice that every time I put on sunscreen, my face would burn and sting as if I was pouring some kind of acid on it. My hands also started reacting since they had the most sunscreen on them. Halfway through the week, I had to make a decision about whether I’d rather suffer through the pain of the sunscreen, or risk getting a burn. Eventually I opted for the no-sunscreen, as the pain was getting unbearable. Basically the sunscreen was blocking my sweat glands and because I was in a 28-degree place, my body would try to sweat but it couldn’t, so the glands would become infected and make multiple pustules on my skin, which would eventually break open and cause extremely dry skin. Obviously, one would put on moisturizer to get rid of the dry skin, but that would just cause another vicious cycle of blocking my sweat glands and make them infected again. Needless to say, I was in extreme pain during my holidays, especially when I had to put my raw hands in the salty ocean water… I didn’t even try putting my face in the water because whenever a drop of water would splash on my face, it would end up being itchy for 20 minutes. Anyway, because we ended up taking the last bus to Mahon, we had no choice (at 2am) but to walk back to the hostel, which took about one hour so we finally arrived at 3 that morning. It’s always so nice meeting up with people that you just mesh with! I often get annoyed when I hang out with people at hostels because someone will make a suggestion that no one wants to do, but everyone will agree since they don’t want to be rude. This time around, we all seemed to be on the same page whenever we wanted food, drinks, beach time, etc. It was awesome! 
 
On Tuesday, I woke up realizing how much I had burnt so I decided to take a break from the sun and go to the other main city of the island – Ciutadella. I spent most of my time wandering around, going to cafes, or shopping, but trying to stay out of the sun as much as possible. Even when I would HAVE to walk in the sun for ten seconds, I could feel my arms burning. After spending the day there, I went back to Mahon where there was a huge night market. They also had a bunch of entertainment outside – I felt like I was at a resort!
 
On Wednesday, I went to a different beach called Playa de Binibeca, but I made sure I watched how much time I spent in the sun once again. I went to the main beach for about an hour and then I walked to a small town about a half hour away (Binibequer Vell). I had lunch there and checked out some of the shops and then I walked about another half hour to a more private beach.
 
On Thursday, I spent the day with an Italian guy from my hostel. I was determined to go to Cala Galdana because it was supposedly one of the nicest public beaches on the island, and it did not disappoint! The beach was huge, and the water was clear no matter how far you went out. We stayed there for about an hour and then had lunch, but I was determined to go to the NICEST beach on the island – Cala Macarelleta. We made the long trek through the forest, but it was so worth it because we got beautiful views of all the beaches. The walk took us about an hour to get to the first beach – Cala Macarella, but we continued on to Cala Macarelleta, which took about another 20 minutes. It was one of the hottest days there, and we had little to no shade. It’s a good thing cardio doesn’t bother me, but stairs do and I nearly thought I wasn’t going to make it towards the end. Drinking my warm (almost hot) water didn’t help… The beach was so nice, but it was also pretty crowded due to its popularity. And you know it’s hot when your nail polish starts melting on your toes! Not only that, but when I got back to my towel after going for a swim, the pages of my magazine were ripped out. I thought someone had tripped over my magazine, pulling some of the pages out with it, but no – the sun had melted the glue of the magazine! We stayed there for about an hour and a half before we had to make our trek back to where we came from so we could catch the final bus back to Mahon. I decided to stay in Mahon for a little while longer before heading back to the hostel later that night.
 
Friday was my last full day in Menorca, unfortunately. Usually towards the end of my week of holidays, I look forward to getting back home and getting back to my routine but this time, I really wasn’t looking forward to leaving. Even the bus driver knew who I was by the end of the week! I would recommend Menorca to everyone; it’s the perfect holiday destination! Anyway, that day I went to Son Bou, which was another really nice beach but for the first time since I got to Menorca, there were clouds in the sky and the wind was absolutely horrible. I had to keep cleaning off my towel and then every time I went into the ocean to clean off, I’d get sandy within five minutes. I decided to call it a day and decided to go have a late lunch. While I was waiting for my meal, a commercial came on with what I thought was a joke. “Right now, there are donkeys that really need a friend…” When I looked up, I saw it was anything but that. Apparently if you spend 2 pounds per month, you can adopt a donkey, become Facebook friends with it, and even go and visit it! Maybe one day I’ll get a donkey… After eating, I went back to the hostel to pack my things.
 
The buses to Mahon don’t start running until 8am each morning, but my flight to Barcelona left at 8:45. I absolutely refused to pay for another taxi to the airport, so I decided to walk to Mahon and then take the bus from there to the airport. I had to get up at 6am and leave by 6:15 so I could catch the 7:15 bus. I had to run the last few minutes, hauling my suitcase behind me and I made it on the bus just in time – it literally closed its doors and left as soon as I stepped on! I got to Barcelona at about 10:30 that morning and dropped off my suitcase at the hostel so I could go explore. Here, it had increased in temperature (with the average temperature in Menorca being about 28, while the average temperature in Barcelona was about 33). I actually didn’t like Barcelona when I first got there, as it was much more city-like than I had thought. It was just like being in London, and I wasn’t too happy to be there after leaving quiet Menorca. I just wandered around that day, and then that evening I went to La Festa Catalana, which was a festival showing many sacred and rare dances. The next morning (Sunday), I took a three hour walking tour, which showed me all of the sites, including where Picasso grew up and where Columbus brought back his spices from North America. I was planning to go to the Picasso Museum that afternoon because it was free, but the lineup was at least five blocks long – it was insane! I then made my way up a huge hill to Castle Montjuic, where there was a free jazz concert that evening. It was so awesome to be there, and it was such a great atmosphere! Monday I did a lot more walking around and I checked out the Barcelona beaches.
On Tuesday, I caught a bus to Madrid. The bus ride was about 7 hours long, but it went by quickly. When I got off the bus in Madrid in the underground parking lot, I was shocked at how hot it was down there. It was like I was standing right next to a warm engine and I couldn’t wait until I got upstairs to cool off. However when I got upstairs, the temperature didn’t change. The average temperature in Madrid was 38 degrees! That’s almost a 90 degree difference compared to the -46 weather that Saskatoon had last winter; it blows my mind!
 

On Wednesday, I did another walking tour. Afterwards, I went out for lunch with three other girls from my hostel before we went to the Parque del Retiro. We found some shade and stayed there for a few hours, just to keep cool. That evening, I decided I should probably go to a Flamenco show while I was in Spain, so I found a really cheap 12 Euro one at Sala La Garrocha. It was insane how much emotion was put into the dancing and singing! The next day, I had to go back to London. I decided to go for churros and hot chocolate before leaving, which were absolutely delicious! I then did a bit of shopping before making my way to the airport. I got home around 11pm that evening and had two full days to pack, before heading back to Canada! 

Spain was a fabulous time, and I’d recommend it to everyone! I think I actually preferred Madrid to Barcelona, and I absolutely LOVED Menorca! I’ll work hard on getting my Canada blog posted soon, I hope everyone’s doing well back home! Oh, and by the way, I’m somewhat famous now! Remember when I was in Luxembourg City and I was sitting at the Chocolate House and a photographer asked if he could take pictures of me while I was eating? Well I made it onto the website! I’m on the bottom stream of photos on the “Kreationen” tab. http://chocolate-house-bonn.lu/kreationen/ I can sign autographs when I come back home 😉 Hope everyone has an awesome rest of the month! Love always
 
Anywhere – Passenger 

Love Today (Difficulties at School, & France)

Well, I finally reached half-term break. And I never thought it would get here! Unfortunately, now it’s already over 😦 This half-term was a lot longer than usual (not only literally, but mentally and physically too). Normally, half-terms are six weeks long, but this one was seven and I spent it with the same kids everyday instead of changing schools every few days. Before I agreed to take the position, this school was my favourite school to work at, but that quickly changed within the first week of my short-term position. I basically ended up getting bullied by 11-16 year olds for the entire time I was there. Why? Because for some reason, the kids here think they’re entitled to everything. Including being disrespectful. Kids threatened to report me. Kids ACTUALLY “reported” me (once cause I wouldn’t let a student go to the washroom – the teacher he complained to obviously didn’t care, and another time cause a student didn’t like the groups I chose for drama class – again, the teacher didn’t care). Physical incidents in my classroom became at least a weekly thing. Everything was my fault. Kids wouldn’t own up to anything – whether it was that they were talking (“I didn’t say anything!), chewing gum (“I don’t have anything in my mouth! Why do you accuse me of something I didn’t do?!”), being out of their seat (“I was asking for a pen/ruler/eraser!” – when there’s clearly one on their desk), being late (“No, I’m on time! The clock in here is wrong!”)… I was constantly blamed for everything, and the students told me that it would be my fault that they didn’t do any work because: I didn’t have spare pens for the 20 people who asked for them on the daily, I was talking too much, I was going too slow, I was going too fast, I “didn’t tell them about a test,” I “didn’t teach them that,” I wouldn’t let half of the class go to the washroom during a single hour, I wasn’t being strict enough, I was being too strict with giving them behaviour points, the list could go on… The kids here have no problem with telling you everything that you’re doing wrong, and why you’re a bad teacher. On my last day before the break, one of the students said that the next teacher would accept them as they are, unlike me. Good luck with that… Anyway, I had quite a few temper tantrums (by the students, not by me). I was once called every swear word in the book (f***ing idiot, slut, b****, etc.) by a student before he stormed out of the room and slammed the door, all because I asked him to switch seats. I had one student get extremely upset because apparently I didn’t tell them about a quiz: “You didn’t tell us this!” “Yes, I said it about three times last class. It just so happens that only the four people who were actually listening are the only ones who know about it” (and those four backed me up and claimed that I had said it). “No, you didn’t! I hate it when teachers do that! I’m reporting you to the head of science.” “Okay, great. But can you do it after class? You’re wasting class time right now…” “I don’t even like science! It has nothing to do with my life!” “Science IS everyday life…” “No! It has nothing to do with my future. I’m working with kids when I’m older, I won’t need science for that!” “So, what if one of the kids you’re working with has diabetes.. how are you going to know about glucose in the blood, and insulin levels?” “Well, that won’t be my responsibility.” “Yes, it will.” “Well, I think…” “No. I think you’re being ignorant.” The entire class was quiet for once, and a couple of students were giving me thumbs up in the background. Sometimes these students just have to be told how it is. And this student ended up working really hard in every class, and helped me out in class after that event occurred. Anyway, by the fifth week, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was miserable, I was coming home everyday completely hating my job and my life, and then I’d just stay in a bad mood until I went to bed, and wake up in a bad mood because I didn’t want to go to work. On Tuesday at lunch, I wrote my agent and told him I was done. He said he’d talk to the school, but said to expect someone to approach me by the end of the day. I was covering a math lesson that afternoon when the head of science walked in and asked if I could come talk to her after school. On my way there, the vice-principal saw me in the hall and asked if I could talk to her. She was fully determined to get me to stay, and said she was willing to support me in any way that she could in order to keep me there. She asked if there were any specific classes causing problems (obviously the year 9s – in both my science and drama classes), and asked for a list of names of problem students. She then said she would email the head of science in order to get some support set up. I went to the head of science, who did pretty much the same thing as the vice-principal, and tried to get me to stay. Obviously, I can’t say no to peoples’ faces, but it didn’t seem I was really given an option to leave anyway. When I checked my email, the vice-principal had not only emailed the head of science, but cc’d about 10 other staff members in it as well. She also said that I would be sending out an email with a list of all the problem students, and the events that have occurred with them. Therefore, I spent one or two hours that night preparing an informative email for the other staff members. The drama department was extremely supportive, and put all of the students who I listed on report, so they had to reach three targets every drama class or else they’d have one hour detention. This really helped with getting the students to actually participate, as most of them used drama as a “sit and catch up with friends” class. However, I never heard the end of it from the students who were put on report, “Miss, did you talk to Miss So-and-so about me?! Why would you do that? She thinks really highly of me and now she’s going to be upset!” or “Miss, why did you put me on report? Did you put so-and-so on report too? Because he/she talks way more than I do!” One student even gave me the silent treatment for the entire class (yay!). The science department was supportive for about a week, and then the support went back down to normal. They put a different teacher in each one of my classes. The teacher just sat there and did marking, but just them being there helped so much. The first time it happened, the scariest teacher was there. I’m even scared of him! Some of the most talkative students pulled me aside and asked why he was there. “Well, because I talked to the vice-principal about the behaviour of this class.” “Is he going to be here the entire time?!” “I don’t know what his plans are.” “Well, can’t you ask him to leave?” “No, I quite like this. This is the quietest you’ve ever been, and you’re actually getting work done!” “But can’t you say you want a different teacher? Like a nicer one?” “No, you had a nice teacher and you took advantage of it.” “Well is he going to be here next class?” “I’m not sure..” “Well if he’s going to be here, I’m not coming to class!” “Okay then, that’s your choice.” After about a week, teachers stopped showing up to class and the year 9’s went back to their old ways. The year 8’s had also gotten quite bad. There was a lesson where I decided to let them do group work, and the class got completely out of hand. The head of science barged into the classroom (this wasn’t the first time she’d done that) and got extremely upset with the class for being disrespectful not only towards me, but towards her and the entire science department. “Now that you’ve shown us that you’re unwilling to work with miss, with me, or with the science department, miss and I will find the driest, most boring lessons that we can find for you. You’re each going to be given a textbook and you’re going to have to read the textbook every lesson and answer the questions. If you don’t know the answers or if you need help, miss won’t be helping you. From now on, the textbook is your teacher.” Great! Now I had one class that I didn’t have to deal with. And any time someone put up their hand, I just shook my head no. Towards the end of my time, I let the students know I wouldn’t be coming back. And while there were a couple “yes!”‘s, most of the students begged me not to leave. Especially the year 9’s, who vowed that they’d be better if I stayed (doubtful). One student asked if I could name my first daughter Tatiana (after her), to which I replied, “I don’t think I’ll be having kids after this experience.” Anyway, my agent ended up calling me and asking if I’d go back on Monday and Tuesday after the break, to which I replied yes because at least I’ll be tied in for two days of paid work.

One thing that I’ve grown to love while being at this school is challenging the students. As in if they share information or an idea that I know is totally bogus, I’m going to call them on it and do a mini-debate with them. The students are so narrow-minded (as we all most likely were in high school), so it’s always entertaining for me to watch them squirm, trying to come up with evidence to support their ideas, and to present them with other views. The students usually like it as much as I do, because soon they’ll smile and realize that their idea is just as bogus as I thought it was. The students are serial liars, but this is the one time I can really question them without them getting super defensive and upset (unlike when I see a phone out or I see someone chewing gum and I ask them to put it away and they reply with “Put what away?! I don’t have anything!” – Literally happens at least five times a day). One day, the students were talking about another student in the school, who has decided to identify as a female, and throughout the year has started changing her appearance, putting in hair extensions, joining the girls’ phys ed and dance, changed her name, etc. (This isn’t the first time this student has been brought up in one of my classes). Anyway, the conversation eventually progressed into whether or not it would be okay if they punched said student based on if she was a girl or a boy. I then decided to join in on the conversation and just said, “Maybe you just shouldn’t be punching anyone, and then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.” “Wait, you know who we’re talking about?” “Yeah, she’s in one of my classes.” The group of guys started laughing at how I said she. “Well, I think we’re supposed to start referring to her as ’she’…” “Who said that, did Mr. Jones?! (The school principal)” “No, but if that’s what she wants to be seen as, then we should respect what she wants.” One of the boys made a comment, “Well only until he undergoes the procedure will I start referring to him as a she.” “Ummm no, because the procedure is changing the sex, and we’re talking about gender.” “What do you mean?” “The sex is what biology says is male or female – ex. sex chromosomes, reproductive organs, etc. Gender is what society considers is male, female, or somewhere in the middle. Therefore, the procedure really has nothing to do with confirming what she identifies herself as.” The boys then decided to go back to their other conversation… And again, I asked why they would ever need to punch her in the first place. “Well, if he hurt my sister, then I’d have to do something about it. So if I punched him, it’s not really about what he thinks of himself as, it’s how the rest of the world sees him and what they think is okay.” “Ummm no, definitely not. That’s what I was saying before. Gender is a spectrum made by society and how society thinks a male or a female should be perceived. Who’s to say that someone is more or less masculine than someone else? If we put you guys in a group, and numbered each of you from most masculine to least masculine, who makes those rules? Society does. So if said student wants to identify herself as a female, then we respect her wishes.” One student ended up asking if I was on the debate team when I was in school and I said no, why? He was like, “Well, you just have an answer for everything!” I’ve learned that while being here though; the students keep me on my toes, and I know I’m going to have to have an equal comeback to whatever remark a student throws at me. No, you’re not going to burst if I don’t let you go to the washroom. No, you’re not going to die of thirst if I don’t let you get water.

Even though it was quite difficult at work, I still tried keeping myself busy when I wasn’t working. A couple of weeks ago, Jess and I went to Forbidden Nights, which is like a Magic Mike/Cirque de Soleil show, but they keep it classy. I’m pretty sure I was smiling from ear to ear during the entire show, and I’m also pretty sure I managed to record most of the show! After the show finished, they cleared the chairs and made a dance floor, where Jess and I spent a good amount of time dancing (Again, Jess and I both claim we “never dance” when we go out, but somehow every time we go out together, we end up on the dance floor…). We then decided to head closer to home since it was close to midnight and the metros/trains stop working at that point. It was on our way from the Putney train station to the bar when I decided to change out of my heels, but upon taking my shoe off, I looked closer… “Is that blood?!” I showed Jess and yes, nearly half of my shoe was covered in blood. Meaning it had to come from somewhere. I looked at my foot, which was also quite bloody. No pain though! And oddly enough, I never ended up feeling any pain even the day after, or during the healing period. To this day, I still have no idea how it happened. I used to drink responsibly, but apparently that part of my life seems to be over! I guess now that I’ve had nearly a year of not having to DD, I really have no more excuses. I also ended up going to Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, the musical. The set was absolutely amazing! I spent a day shopping in Camden Market with Kim as well, and we found an all-you-can-eat sushi place (finally!), where we explained to the bartender how to make a paralyzer, and ended up paying a crapload of money for it.

For the week off, I decided to go back to France and spend some time with the family there. The cheapest (and longest) option was to go there by bus, which cost me 45 pounds there, and 14 pounds back! It also ended up taking about 10 hours each way, with only one quick stop at border control. I finally arrived in Paris at about 7:30 on Saturday night. Being in Paris for even ten minutes made me realise how much I missed it, even though I didn’t even know I missed it in the first place. All of the familiar sights, smells, sounds – seeing smiling people, hearing French being spoken – I was smiling from ear to ear. I felt the happiest I had been in a long time. I was somewhere familiar in a place that comforted me. An onslaught of different emotions took over me. Even though I couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face, I also started tearing up within ten minutes of being there. I was flooded with memories, and I think just the realisation of how unhappy I might have been finally hit me. I knew I was unhappy with my job, but I didn’t realise how much weight it was putting on my emotions and my well-being. I spent that night in a hostel that was located in my favourite area, Montmartre. I was able to walk around the area, enjoy the atmosphere, and I went for dinner at my favourite restaurant, which has a piano bar. I started with French onion soup, had roast chicken with fries, and finished with apple pie. During my meal, I was extremely emotional and kept tearing up since the last time I had been in Paris was almost four years ago. When the server asked where I was from, I could barely say a full sentence without wanting to burst into tears. ‘Come on, what’s going on?! Hold it together!’ I kept telling myself. And then after dinner, I went to the steps of the Sacre Coeur, where everyone gathers to sing songs. There, I let out all of the emotions I was feeling. I had never allowed myself to release any emotions during my time in London because I had went back into my stone-faced, no-crying-allowed routine. In France, I’m very familiar with crying in public places, as it’s happened multiple times, so this seemed to be the place where it felt safe to let go.

The next day, I met up with my friend Beatrice for lunch, where we talked for hours and then she invited me to go to church with her. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to come along and then I made my way to Rambouillet afterwards. The kids were really excited to see me, and it was nice to see all of them again! It’s crazy that it had already been five months since I last saw them; time just flies! Within five minutes, the dad said I’ve lost weight since Christmas which was somewhat weird to me, since during Christmas I was actually going to the gym and watching what I was eating and now, I’m doing nothing haha However, France is not the place for a person doing a paleo diet (which is no gluten and no dairy). With baguettes and cheese at every meal, I guess I had to cheat quite a bit more than I usually do this week. On Tuesday, I went to Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to check out the shops, and then I headed into Paris to have coffee with Beatrice. After that, I went to Le Perray to have dinner with the first family that I au paired for. Alexia is now 19, and she’s in her second year of med school! And Julien is 15/16 and is just learning how to drive. It sure makes me feel old! It was nice to catch up with the family though; it was weird to me because I find having conversations with them a lot easier compared to having conversations with the other family. I feel like I understand them a lot better, and I’m more confident in trying to speak French, which isn’t the case with the other family. On Wednesday, I spent most of the day playing with Elsa: playing barbies, house, drawing and colouring, and watching a movie. It was nice to just forget about all of my adult responsibilities, and be a kid again. However, when Antoine came home from school, he came into Elsa’s room to see me, and Elsa told him to get out. They continued fighting and Antoine said that I didn’t come here to only see her and that I wasn’t HER Janelle and that the world didn’t revolve around her. But Elsa still won when she told on him, and he was forced to leave. The fight continued at dinner time when Antoine explained that it wasn’t fair because Elsa got to play with me all day. Elsa replied, “Well, you all went to Disneyland without me.” Which I guess she had a point… On Thursday,  I did a bit of wandering around Rambouillet and then I came back and spent my last evening with the kids. Since they seem to continuously be on their electronics (Antoine playing video games, Elsa watching tv, and Alice Skyping with her friends), I went out and bought some games and crafts for them to do. We did some painting and I taught them how to play skip-bo, which was nice! The next morning, I went to the Celtique to have coffee with one of the old servers there (to anyone who kept up with my Celtique stories 7 years ago, it was ‘funny guy,’). It was a bit awkward with the language barrier, but it was overall really nice to catch up with him!

I came to France during the worst week possible. There was a scheduled strike on Wednesday and Thursday, so I wasn’t able to go to Paris at all. Then, during the entire time that I was there, it rained non-stop. I know it’s rainy in London but even though it rains almost every day, it usually only rains for 20 minutes to an hour and then stops; it seldomly rains for the entire day. Here in Paris, it was literally the entire day, every day. To the point where buildings and roads were getting flooded. Elsa had school cancelled on Wednesday cause her school had flooded, roads and parking lots had water that reached the tops of vehicles, the street of the hospital was flooded so the police had to use boats as ambulances.. It was crazy! Anne said that the last time this happened was in 1909. So when the strike was lifted on Friday, I was so thankful since I needed to get back to Paris in order to catch my bus on Saturday morning. However, because of the rain, one of the walls next to the track had collapsed, which blocked the train tracks between Rambouillet and Paris. Therefore, we found out that only two trains were leaving that day. I was quite panicked, wondering if I’d make it back to Paris that day, but luckily when I went to the station, they had added more trains onto the schedule, and I was able to take a slow train back to Paris. The height of the river Seine was insane! Traffic lights were nearly covered, shops that were on the riverside had disappeared, I’ve never seen anything like it! That day, I went for a walk around the Promenade Plantée, which used to be an old railway that travelled over Paris, but they made it into a garden that you can walk along, and see different parts of Paris. The entire walk is about 4.5km, and there wasn’t any rain! I then made a quick trip to the Eiffel Tower before going back to my hostel. My bus left at 9:30 Saturday morning, and was scheduled to arrive in London at 6pm. But as we know from my past travel experiences, not a lot ever goes as planned. Due to the strikes, the bus wasn’t able to take the Eurotunnel on the way back and instead had to catch the ferry. We went through customs at about 2:30pm and then the driver did a headcount 45 minutes later. He said that the ferry left at 4pm, so hopefully everyone would be back by then. Then at 4:05, he made an announcement saying that we were still waiting on one more person to come through customs, and we had missed our ferry. He also said that since it was half-term break, the 5:15 and the 5:45 ferries were fully booked so we might have to wait for one after 6pm. The girl who we were waiting for still hadn’t been released, but came to get all of her stuff off of the bus and go back. Luckily, the 5:15 ferry ended up having room for us, so we ONLY ended up having to sit around for 2-2.5 hours. The ferry ride was 1.5 hours long, so we got to the other side at 6:45, 45 minutes after we were supposed to arrive in London. Then we made our way to London and arrived at the station was 8:15, 2.25 hours late! By that time, we had been travelling for 11 hours and 45 minutes, and everyone was cranky, tired, and ready to get off the bus. But wait, it can’t be that easy! We were stopped outside the bus station by the police, who kept asking the bus driver questions. Apparently, they were suspicious as to why we came so late, and decided that they were going to do a baggage check. BUT no one was allowed off of the bus until they were ready for us. So we literally sat at the bus station in London ON THE BUS for 30-40 more minutes, while we waited for the police to say it was okay to get off and claim our bags, so they could start the check. By this point, kids were crying, people were freaking out about connecting trips, and everyone was in a bad mood. We were finally let off the bus to collect our luggage and then we had to give it to the police, who put it through the metal detectors. I was concerned because I brought my favourite French sausage back, so I wasn’t at all surprised when the police officer came up with my bag and asked whose bag it was. I said it was mine, and he replied with, “Do you have a knife?” And everyone looked at me with shocked faces. “Um, no?” “Like a folding knife?” “No.. I have fingernail clippers?” “Can you open your bag and show me where they might be?” So I did… “Oh yeah, that’s it.” Phew! Then we had to go through the metal detector – take off our belts and empty our pockets, just like in an airport. After that, they took all of our passport information and manually typed it onto their iPads. I finally left the station at 9:15pm, 3.25 hours after I was supposed to arrive! Therefore, I didn’t end up getting home until after 10pm. On Sunday, I spent the day getting ready for the new week – grocery shopping, cleaning, unpacking, etc. Then that evening, I went to Mika! His concert was amazing, probably one of the best ones I’ve seen! He just seems like a really down-to-earth person, where you leave thinking, “Wow, I’d really like to be friends with that guy.” And his voice is incredible! I (as well as everyone else) was just awestruck at the notes he could reach; I could listen to him for hours! Now I’m back in the real world, but at least I only have six more weeks left until summer holidays!

Home is where the heart is, and a piece of my heart will always be in France. It was the place where I’ve done most of my growing as a person. I came there as a young, shy, naive, and depressed 18-year-old and it was there where I overcame that depression, where I went way outside of my comfort zone and pushed myself to the limits – not only forcing myself to talk to people I didn’t know (which at that time was extremely difficult for me), but doing it in a completely different language. Not only leaving the comfort of everything that was familiar to me, but moving to a completely different part of the world. It was there where I learned to budget my money, with my 2.50€/hour pay rate (when going out for coffee or coke would be equivalent to two hours of work). It was there where I learned how to take other people’s crap not only with a smile, but followed with a, “what can I do next?”, which has allowed me to continue working in other crap jobs and know how to deal with crap customers, bosses, or students with a smile. And it was there where I learned how to play mom to three kids almost overnight, three kids who I’ll love unconditionally for the rest of my life. Even though it was a struggle, even though there were times when I thought I wouldn’t make it, when I’d call home crying, I pushed myself through. And I created friendships and relationships that will last a lifetime. Being there has really made me start comparing that life to the life I have in London, and I can only wonder if London will have that same effect on me five years from now. One last thing (because I know that this is getting quite long)… I just want everyone to know how happy this makes me. To see that people are taking 10-15 minutes out of their lives wherever they are in the world to read what I’m doing in my life means so much to me; you have no idea. It’s so neat to see the different countries that are taking part in reading my blog, and I can usually figure out who belongs to each one, so thank you 🙂 I hope everyone is enjoying the warmer weather, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in less than 8 weeks! Love always
Love Today – Mika

Lonely Cities (Birmingham, Worcestershire, Stratford-upon-Avon)

Well, since my last post, I’ve had my birthday and I’ve done a weekend trip! Last week on the day before my birthday, we ended up getting hail for about four minutes! The kids started freaking out, and lessons came to a stop as all of the kids looked out the window. It was the first time we had ever had some type of snowfall all year! The teachers were talking about it in the staffroom, wondering why we had hail at the end of April, and then it finally clicked… I ALWAYS have snow on my birthday! I’ve had about two birthdays without snow, and this time it was trying to strike again! It was the weirdest thing… Anyway, that same day, one of the kids made a comment that she was going to get me a birthday card for my birthday and I replied that my birthday was the following day. The class started freaking out, “Miss, what do you want for your birthday?!” “I don’t want to give out any C-points (bad behaviour points)!” “Okay, miss!” Well, on my birthday, I’m pretty sure I’ve given the most C-points that I’ve ever given in a day! I also ended up having a physical incident between two boys in one of my classes, and had to stay after school to write up a report. That evening, I went out for dinner, drinks and dessert with my flatmate, which was quite nice! I was so happy when the week was over; it was such a long week! That Monday was a bank holiday, so we had an extra-long weekend. Jess and I decided to make a last-minute trip to Birmingham, which is about 2.5 hours north of London. I contacted as many people as possible on couchsurfing and surprisingly, someone wrote back and said that we could stay with him! We arrived in Birmingham around noon on Saturday, dropped our stuff off at Joe’s house, and then joined

another couchsurfer, and the four of us made the trip to Worcester (pronounced Wuh-ster), Worcestershire (pronounced Wuh-stah-sher, so weird). We checked out the cathedral, the river, and then went to the Worcestershire sauce factory. Unfortunately, they don’t allow people inside, but we could smell the sauce all the way down the road; it was lovely! We then went for dinner in a pub that used to be an old church. It was so cool! The stained glass windows were still there, and it still looked like a church with the pews removed. The dj even set up where the pastor would stand. Well I must have not paid attention to the couchsurfing profiles because that night, Jess and I realized that we’d be sharing Joe’s room with him. Jess and I shared his bed and then he slept on the floor, which was somewhat weird… The next day, Joe, Jess and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon, which is where Shakespeare was born. We got to tour his house, and then go to the church where he was buried. I’m not much of a Shakespeare fan, but it was still really neat to see! On Monday, Jess and I went to Cadbury World! We could smell the chocolate while walking from the bus stop; it was delicious! They had a 4D chocolate adventure, a tour of the factory, tons of samples, and even a ride similar to the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyworld, except chocolate-themed. This past week has went by a lot more quickly! The kids have been a bit better, which has been nice, but now I’ve been having more problems with the teachers and feeling belittled by them. Anyway, thank goodness it’s the weekend! Three more weeks at the school 🙂 I got to go to the Close Talker concert on Wednesday, which was great! Kim and I were looking for a place to go for dinner before the concert, and happened to find Chris on the sidewalk, so we joined him and the band for dinner. It’s always nice to see some familiar faces here in London!

I’ve seriously been contemplating whether or not I should put this part of my life in my blog, considering most of the people who read my blog are family members. But I’ve also gotten multiple requests to write about this, so I’ve finally decided what the heck, I’ll do it (Obviously while keeping it G-rated and sugarcoating it a bit)! So as people most likely have gathered, I’ve always put dating on the back-burner of life. It definitely has never been my number one priority, and I’ve always made sure it would never get in the way of my goals. Therefore, I’d never consider any of the past dating relationships I’ve been in as long-term or serious relationships, as pretty much all of them started in the summer and then would fizzle out once university started back up again. I also made sure I didn’t date at all during my two years of education, because I knew I wanted to teach abroad and I didn’t want anything or anyone holding me back from that. And now I’ve realized that I’m finally where I want to be, and I don’t really have anymore excuses left. But let me tell you… it’s extremely difficult to meet people in London! Whether it’s for dating purposes, or just meeting new friends even.. Everyone always has somewhere to be, people don’t have friendly conversations on the bus or the train, the only people I interact with on the daily are under the age of 18, you get the picture. And there’s an IMMENSE lack of wedding rings in this city.. I actually think that people are so caught up in their own lives that they just end up staying single forever. I don’t really want to be one of those people, so I decided to try the whole online dating thing. And unbeknownst to almost everyone, I actually started it before I even moved to London so that when I got to London, I could maybe have some dates set up. And that’s exactly what happened.. I was still staying in the hostel when I had my first date! I wrote Guy A first, he seemed nice, played rugby, had a nutrition degree, but lived about two hours away in Kent. He ended up catching a ride with a friend to London, and he came to where my hostel was and we went for coffee until the cafe closed. Anyway, we ended up talking on the phone every night before and after meeting. A couple of weeks later, I had finally gotten settled in my place and we decided to meet up again. This time, we went for dinner, coffee, and basically talked until he had to catch the last train back home. Eventually, phone calls stopped, texts became less and less, and questions went unanswered. I had been ghosted. For those of you who don’t know what the definition of being ghosted is, urbandictionary.com defines it as: “When a person (male or female) leads on another person into thinking they’re interested in them. After leading on this individual they “ghost” them and disappear. This is usually indicated from no responses through text, phone call or email. Ghosting is performed by selfish people and ones who don’t believe in karma. Because what goes around, most certainly comes around.” Well-said, urban dictionary.com! I was quite disappointed, and decided to wait awhile to get back into the dating scene. Anyway, a few months later, I decided to try out the whole online dating thing again. Because let’s be honest… swiping left or right makes the one-hour trips to school go by a lot faster! I met up with Guy B and he took me to the Sky Garden, which is a bar at the top of one of the tallest buildings in London, with the nicest view. It would have been a very romantic setting, but I felt that the conversation was quite forced, and I wasn’t feeling it. I’ve learned to start arranging first dates on school nights, so I always have the excuse that I have work in the morning. So I used that excuse, but then there’s always the awkward saying goodbye part, where it’s like, “Crap, is he going to try to kiss me? He looks like he’s thinking about it, and I definitely don’t need to deal with that right now. Quick! Reach out for a hug, keep it friendly.. Turn your head to the side. Phew! Kiss on the cheek.” I left that date feeling really unsure about online dating.. It seemed like the guys I was interested in weren’t interested in me, and vice versa. Unfortunately, I had already set up another first date for the following day (haha) so I decided to just get on with it, and then stop online dating for good. I met up with Guy C at a German pub. He was an Australian engineer, who loved to travel and had been living in London for quite a few years already. He ticked off all of my boxes and conversation easily flowed for seven hours straight, to the point where we got kicked out of the pub cause they were closing. The chemistry was even there, and I thought about how lucky it was that I decided to go on this last online date. We had arranged for a second date a week later, and on the day that we were supposed to meet up, he wrote me about being sick and asked if we could reschedule. And I bet everyone can guess what happened.. Ghosted again. I know what being ghosted is like all too well. Why, you ask? Well, because (and I’m not even kidding) I have never NOT been ghosted in my entire life. Yup, that’s right. Out of every guy who I’ve somewhat been seeing or dating, (unless I’ve called things off myself) NONE OF THEM have had the decency to just be like, “Yo, I don’t think this is gonna work out, sorry.” They’ve all just peaced out, stopping all communication, with no explanation, no apology, nothing. Which is probably why my opinion towards men is so negative. And BECAUSE I’ve dealt with this so many times: wondering when he’s going to write back, thinking every ding of my phone is from him until after a week goes by and I finally convince myself that no, I’m never going to hear from him again, I now know all of the warning signs. I know when guys are thinking of ghosting, I know when a guy makes a false promise of meeting up soon, and I know when a guy has sent me his last message. And those first few warning signs are when I start clocking out, just so it hurts a little bit less when it actually happens. The only thing I can do is change the way I write my messages in hopes that they’ll feel a bit more guilty about the cowardly thing that they’re about to do (Hey, two can play at this game…). I’ve always been the type who doesn’t date just for the sake of dating; I date because I can see a relationship progressing. So of course, I was once again hurt when the two guys that I actually connected with both just ghosted on me. And I sat there feeling sorry for myself, and thinking I’m never going to date again because I’m much happier just being single and not having to worry about anyone else. And if I go on another date, I’m just going to end up being ghosted AGAIN cause that’s all any guy ever does (<— Oh look, a bit of foreshadowing…). And then after awhile, I thought: Wait a second… why should I have to avoid dating just to avoid getting hurt? Why do I feel like when I go on a date, I have to impress the other person, when I already know that I’m a good person and if they can’t see that, then too bad for them? Why should I even go on a date with the mentality that it’ll progress any further? Why should I owe that person ANYTHING? I’m living in one of the biggest cities in the world, I’m 25 (now 26) AND single; I might as well take advantage of it! The chances of running into someone that I’ve dated in a city of 9 million people are slim to none. And right then and there, I decided to change my attitude about online dating. My friends and I call it my new MENtality. I was going to date MY way. As in go out and just enjoy MYSELF. No expectations, no plans of taking things further than a first date. Hopefully have a good conversation, take any free drinks or meals that come my way (hey, it’s not like I sit there expecting them, but if they’re offered then why not?), don’t expect anything more, and move on. I don’t owe these guys anything. They don’t owe me anything. Hopefully I’ll just have someone nice to talk to for the evening! So then I started setting up those first dates. Guy D was a teacher who had actually taught in China at one point, nice guy, not interested but it was a good chat! Guy E was also a teacher from Canada, who had been living in London for as long as I had. Funny thing is when talking on POF, we found out that both of us would be in Edinburgh at the same time, so we decided to both book the same 12-hour tour (that Loch Ness tour that I did). I guess I wouldn’t really consider it a date, but moreso of a meetup with a complete stranger for a 12-hour bus ride haha Longest “first date” of my life though, and I’ve had many long first dates! Guy F was English and we just met at one of my local pubs. Guy G was South African but has been living in London for a few years, and yet again we met at a pub. Guy H was English and he was my first Tinder date! Met at a pub.. And since then, I’ve given online dating a rest for awhile because I went on my two-week holiday and met that one Australian guy in Amsterdam. And we met up a few weeks later, but the romantic holiday feelings just weren’t there anymore, and I was ghosted once again. But have no fear, I have reopened my dating account! So I’ve now become an expert on first dates aaaand I’ve gotten at least 20 free drinks (but who’s counting?) and a few free meals. The only difference between me and all of the previous guys I’ve dated is that I at least tell the person that I don’t see a second date happening. And maybe this whole ordeal is just horrible of me, and everyone is going to judge me and think I’m a terrible person. But frankly, I’m just sick of being treated the way that I have been in the past. And who knows, maybe London HAS turned me into a heartless bitch (‘scuse the French..). Honestly though, if I fall in love while I’m in London, it’s likely because I’m mentally unstable and I can’t actually think clearly because my job has driven me crazy.

Speaking of a change in mentality, I used to think the best in everyone – that everyone had something to offer. Now I’m at the point where I get suspicious if someone is being nice to me. I now believe that no one will do anything nice for me because they only have an ulterior motive. I’ve started to just hate dealing with people in general. Why? Cause here, everyone lives with a ‘fending for yourself’ attitude. Everyone has somewhere to go, and you’re the only person who’s going to get yourself there. People have stopped worrying about the people around them. When I went to Birmingham last weekend, someone accidentally ran into me and actually said, “Sorry!” I  remember looking at Jess with a shocked look on my face, thinking, “Where are we?!” People here make plans, only to cancel them. It’s happened time and time again, and I don’t understand what the point of making plans is if you’re not going to follow through with them. The students here have an excuse for EVERYTHING – nothing is their fault, the blame is always put on someone else. And after dealing with some of the teachers, I’ve realized that that mentality never really fades. No one wants to own up to anything, everyone just wants the easy way out. Frankly, I’m at my wit’s end, and I’m sick of not being appreciated and not being respected. From the students, I’ve learnt to expect it (even though it still isn’t right), but not from the teachers. However, it’s happened on numerous occasions. I come home everyday just fuming, literally hating my job and hating people. I count down every single day and urge myself to just get through it, “You only have 15 days… you can make it.” But is it really worth diminishing my sanity, my happiness, and my self-worth? I’ve always lived trying to do the right thing.. when I give someone my word I stick to it as best I can, I don’t back out when things get tough. I’d rather have integrity and do things the hard way, than be a disappointment to someone else. But then I often find myself being walked all over and taken advantage of. And there’s never been a time when I’ve regretted the morals and values that I have, but there have been multiple times when I’ve wished people would stop messing me about because of them. So who knows how much longer I’ll last over here… I LOVE it in London, but the combination of everything else is getting to be too much. Anyway, I have a great weekend planned so that should lift my spirits! Hope everyone is doing well! Love always

Lonely Cities – Tigertown

Seeing Stars (Amsterdam, Belgium, and Luxembourg)

Hi everyone! My holidays are coming to an end 😦 But I figured I might as well write about them! Since I last wrote, I only had one more week left of work before my holidays. I had also lost my keys during the last blog posting, and I ended up getting a call from my work a couple of days later and the bar had found my keys! So that was quite a nice surprise. The last week of work was the longest week ever! Even though I was working at my favourite school, the kids were on their worst behaviour ever.. likely because the holidays were coming up. That week, I was approached by the Vice Principal and the Head of Science, and both asked if I’d like to come back after the holidays as a full-time teacher since their science teacher was leaving at Easter. I’m still not wanting to take a full-time position, as I don’t want to have to worry about preparing lessons during my holiday, and I don’t want to have to mark. Also at that school, all teachers are required to stay until 5pm everyday and since it takes about an hour and ten minutes for me to get there, I don’t usually end up getting home until 5 if I leave right after school. I talked to the Head of Science about what my responsibilities would be and she said that the work would be supplied for me and I could keep the same hours as I have, but I might have to give feedback to the students. I was still hung up on the distance and the hours. This school felt like their students were falling behind, so they’ve added an extra period to each day and therefore the schooldays are a lot longer than every other school I work at. So I (thought I had) said I’d think about it, but then the next day, about six other teachers AND the principal came up to me and said that they were so excited that I was joining them! I was so confused and I tried to replay conversations in my head, because I didn’t remember actually agreeing to anything. However, then I got an email from my agency saying that I was assigned to the school for the next seven weeks! I wrote my agent and explained that I hadn’t actually agreed to anything, and he asked me to get it figured out. So on my quest looking for the Head of Science, I ran into the Head of Humanities and she exclaimed that she had wanted me for humanities, but science got me first. By that point, I realized that they were pretty desperate for teachers, and that I had the upper-hand. Might as well take advantage of it! I found the Head of Science and said I wanted some more details before I made my final decision. She was kind of taken aback and said that she thought I had agreed, and I said that I still had to think about it. So I fought for no planning, no marking, and the same hours (basically what I’m already doing now, except I’ll have my own classes and they’ll all be science). And then I talked to my agency and explained that I was concerned about the distance, so they offered to pay me ten pounds more each day! I also said that I’d try it out for the next seven weeks (until the next break) and then possibly extend it until the summer. So now I won’t have to worry about not getting work or not getting paid, and I still get my freedom! And I’ll be able to build the classroom relationships with the students that I don’t normally get to build as a supply teacher. So it’s pretty much a win-win situation, minus the transport. On the last day of school, I had a conversation with the teacher who I’d be replacing. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so passionate about teaching! He decided to leave because he felt like the school had too many rules and guidelines as to how you had to teach (which just started being implemented during the past two years). He explained that teaching is an art and it can’t be robotic like that, and I could really see how much he cared about the students. I think he’s the first teacher I’ve met here who hasn’t complained about teaching, and it was really refreshing to hear!
Anyway, my break started two Fridays ago, when I went to the Ellie Goulding concert with Becky and Charlotte. We went out for a late lunch first and good thing we went quite early because the service was horrible. It took us nearly 30 minutes just to get a drink! We had standing tickets at the concert so we were quite close to the stage – it was great! John Newman opened for her and while I recognized the name, I didn’t know any of his songs until he started performing them all. Ellie Goulding was really good as well! The next day, I had to get to the station so that I could take a bus directly to the airport. Unfortunately for me, I had to print out my bus ticket, as they wouldn’t accept mobile tickets. I knew I had limited time so I made my way to Putney (the next neighbourhood over – about 10-15 minutes away by bus) and asked a printing company if they would print out my ticket. He said I just had to email it to them and he would print it out, but the website wouldn’t let me send it on my phone! So he directed me to an internet cafe and I ran over there. I tried to print out my ticket there but the printer wouldn’t work! The man there was like, “Okay, well try it on another computer then.” So I tried it again and still nothing. The man was on the phone so I secretly emailed the ticket to the printing company, and then told him that it still wasn’t printing. “Well, you’re doing something wrong.” “No I’m not! This isn’t going to work, I’m going to have to go somewhere else.” “Okay, bye.” I ran back to the other place and he explained that I needed to pay minimum 1.50 and asked if I wanted multiple copies of my ticket. No, one is fine; I’ll pay 1.50 for it… I ran back to get my stuff and then started my journey to the airport. As usual, my trips to the airport are always hectic so I wasn’t surprised when the train service was cancelled to the station, therefore requiring me to take a bus to another station so I could catch the train there (and nearly doubling my travel time). I still made it to the bus stop in time but then the bus ended up being about 10-15 minutes late. I ended up being the only person on the bus because another bus had picked up everyone else. However, on the way to the airport, we were making a left turn and suddenly I heard a big thump and the driver braked so fast! Some idiot had tried to squeeze through on the inside lane when obviously, a bus needs two lanes to make a turn. So then the bus driver had to get out, get all of the driver’s information, take pictures, hold up traffic (EVERYONE was honking), which made us another 20 minutes late. I made it to the airport in time to still have a quick dinner before boarding the plane. The flight to Amsterdam was only about 50 minutes, but it was the worst flight I’ve ever been on. And I love flying! It wasn’t just your normal everyday turbulence, but we were doing constant freefalls. I was in the very back of the plane so I could hear all of the carts sliding around, and stuff falling off, and when the flight attendant went, “Oh my God!,” I decided to start freaking out as well. The final drop I swear lasted for like 3-5 seconds and it was during that time when I actually thought I was going to die. The lady beside me screamed, and she ended up crying for the majority of the flight. I think there was a sigh of relief throughout the plane once we touched the ground! I didn’t realize how tense I was until my whole body relaxed at the end of the flight. The prices of hostels were absolutely insane for Saturday night (as in 150-200 pounds for the night!) since it was Easter Sunday the next day. However, I found a considerably cheaper place (still quite pricey though) in a hostel about 40 minutes outside of Amsterdam. I decided to stay there for one night and then move into Amsterdam for the rest of my time there. I had to catch a bus from the airport to the hostel and on the bus, I ended up sitting next to an Australian guy (Zac) who I spent the majority of my time in Amsterdam with. It was actually his birthday the next day, so we spent most of Sunday going to pubs throughout Amsterdam. However, the buses back to his hostel only ran until midnight and we didn’t realize that until about 1 in the morning. We went back to my hostel until it closed at 3 and the hostel owner kicked us out. We asked if we could just look up directions outside before I came back in, but then the hostel owner locked me out and wouldn’t come to the door despite our constant knocking! So we spent the rest of the night on a bench in the train station waiting for the trains to start again at 5:45 that morning. After that, I headed back to my hostel and found out that there was a different night door! ARGH, the hostel owner could have told me! So I went in and I was able to sleep for about three or four hours before I had to wake up again. That day, I was able to meet up with my cousin Janine and her friend Roxan! We had lunch and then Zac met up with us and we did the Heineken Experience at the brewery, which was pretty cool! It was really interactive compared to other breweries I’ve been to. On Tuesday, Roxan was pretty sick (and ended up getting tonsillitis), so Janine and I went shopping and checked out the different markets. Then, we went on a Lovers Cruise (I had to replace Roxan), and we had pizza and Heineken while cruising down the canals of Amsterdam with a whole bunch of couples haha I then had to say bye to Janine since both of us were leaving the next day 😦
On Wednesday, I took the train to Brussels. It was actually pretty intimidating at the Brussels train station because there were police and guards everywhere! They were basically surrounding the entire station in their camo uniforms and with their camo trucks, carrying guns around. I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but once I got away from the station, it wasn’t so bad! Honestly, that was probably the safest time for me to ever go to Brussels since their security level was so high. However, my hostel was eerily quiet… I rarely saw anyone! That evening, I had some mussels and then I went for a walk around the area. There was a huge memorial site set up due to the events that happened the week before, which had a huge impact on the city. I ended up walking through the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, one of the oldest shopping malls in the world. As I was walking through, one of the salesmen tried to coax me into his store and even though I constantly refused, he continued trying to persuade me. Well, what did I have to lose? I decided to go in. He took me to the back of the store and I said, “Just so you know, if your intention is to try to get me to buy something, it’s not going to work.” He looked SO offended, “I don’t want you to buy anything, I just want you to try this product and talk to you.” He took out this hand scrub and rubbed it on my hand, and then proceeded to tell me that it was made with 24-karat gold. “What?! How much does this cost?!” “Well, this container is 500 euro.” “What?! How much did you put on my hand?!” The amount of money on my hand was probably more expensive than the clothes I was wearing. Anyway, he did the whole works.. moisturizer, etc. Then told me that yes, the scrub is 500 euro, but FOR YOU, I’ll give it to you for 100 euro, and I’ll give you the scrub and moisturizer for 150. Ha, I knew that was coming. No, not interested, sorry. Okay, well what are you doing tonight? Want to go for drinks? I pulled the old, “Sorry, I have a boyfriend” card, and I’ve never seen someone recoil so fast! “What?! Is he here?!” He looked so nervous, looking all around him. He quickly escorted me out the store haha
On Thursday, I started the day off with a walking tour, which ended up being three hours long but it was a good way to see Brussels. Brussels’ claim to fame is its statue called Manneken Pis, which is a tiny statue of a little boy peeing. That weekend, he was dressed in a police uniform, as a tribute to all of the hard-working service people in the city. The leader of the tour was so appreciative of us being there and said that the terrorists will not destroy them. The only thing they can do is make people afraid, which they’ve already done a good job of since the hotels and the tourist industry has had so many cancellations since the attacks. She thanked each of us for not being afraid and for still coming to visit Brussels, and to keep spreading love around! 🙂 After the tour, I went to the Musical Instrument Museum, which has over 8000 instruments. You get an audio guide in the museum, and you’re able to listen to each of the instruments while you walk around the museum. It was pretty cool, as I had studied quite a few of the instruments before, but I had never seen them in person.
On Friday, I took the train to Bruges. This was by far my favourite place during my entire trip! It was so picturesque and peaceful, and everywhere you looked was absolutely gorgeous. Since it was such a beautiful day, I started it off with a canal tour, which took about 45 minutes. Then, I went to the De Halve Maan brewery. This was probably the best brewery tour I’ve been on in terms of information. Most tours I go on, the information of making beer is all there, but I never fully understood how it was made until I went on this tour. Of course, I got my free beer at the end of the tour! I went back to my hostel and met my two roommates, Celsey (from Australia) and Matt (from Ottawa), who I spent most of my time in Bruges with. We went on a walking tour, which was again about 3 hours. After that, we went to one of the pubs to try out their 11% beer. They only allow people to have maximum three glasses per sitting since it’s so strong! I definitely felt it and I only had one! On Saturday, Celsey and I went to check out the markets, and I bought my very first original painting! Again, the artist’s wife thanked us for coming and for not being afraid to come, and explained that their hotel normally has all 22 rooms booked up every day and that week, they only had 7 bookings total! It was weird that so many people were so appreciative of something that I didn’t even think twice about doing. But it was nice to know that we were somewhat making a difference, and fighting the fear! We decided to check out the windmills of Bruges and then go to the nearest town called Damme. We were originally going to go by boat but we missed the last boat by ten minutes! So we decided to walk the 6km trek. Once we got there, there was a windmill that we were actually allowed to climb into! It had three levels and you had to get to each one by climbing extremely steep stairs. It was my first (and likely only) time in a windmill! It made the whole walking trip worth it. We decided to get a crepe and hot chocolate in town, as we had gotten quite hungry by that point and then we planned to take the bus back. However, we found out that the bus only came three times per day, and we once again missed the last bus by ten minutes! So we ended up walking the whole way back as well. By the time we got back, we were completely worn out, so we met up with Matt and went for dinner at a place called Humpty Dumpty. The restaurant must have forgotten to put in our order or something, because we ended up waiting and waiting and waiting for our food, while watching everyone around us get their meals before us. Although we were starving, we luckily had good conversation so it wasn’t that bad. I don’t think we ended up eating until about 8:30 though. After our extremely long 3-course meal, Matt was determined to find hot chocolate. In Belgium when you order hot chocolate, they usually just give you a cup of warm milk and a plate of chocolate, so we wanted to try it out. I was skeptical because in my opinion, you should always have more chocolate than milk in a hot chocolate. Am I right? However, after walking around for over an hour, we never found our hot chocolate 😦
On Sunday, I made my way to Luxembourg which took about five hours. I had to stay in a bed and breakfast because there weren’t any hostels available, so it cost A LOT more than what I’m used to paying. But I got a nice queen-sized bed and an ensuite bathroom all to myself! That evening, I went to the Chocolate House, which had the hot chocolate that we were looking for the previous night. It was actually so good; I was pleasantly surprised! The next day, instead of waiting for the walking tour at 2pm, I decided to do the self-guided walking tour. During it, I stopped at the Chocolate House once again for lunch, where I had a salmon quiche with a caramel latte. When I was served, a photographer came up to me and said that he was taking pictures for the new website, and asked if he could take some pictures of me enjoying my food and drink. Do you know how difficult it is to pose for someone while drinking a boiling cup of coffee?! Kind of an awkward experience haha but I guess I’ll see if any of my pictures are up on that new website! Part of the tour was to see the casemates, which are an underground system of passages used for protection under the castle. They were pretty cool to see! I did a lot of walking through the city’s old town, and its green area, as Luxembourg has a lot of it! On Tuesday, I went to a town on the border of Luxembourg and Germany called Vianden. It’s a cute little town with a castle, so I got to have a castle tour! I usually never go inside castles, so I think this was one of the first times I actually went inside one. The town also has a chairlift to go up the mountain but because it was raining, I don’t think it was running so I sadly didn’t get to try it. I went back into the city and then stopped at the Chocolate House one more time before going to the airport and heading back to London.Screenshot
On Wednesday, I went to the Hans Zimmer concert, which is one of my favourite movie composers. Little did I know, he wrote some of the music for the Lion King! Why Elton John gets all of the credit, I don’t know. So he played that, as well as Gladiator, Crimson Tide, The Da Vinci Code, Batman, as well as many others. It was really good! On Thursday, I went to get my haircut. I had gotten a groupon-type thing, and since the salon was only a month old, there weren’t any reviews online. I decided to just go for it and get my hair cut off, as the hairdresser seemed to know what she was doing. She said that in her seven years of cutting hair, she’s never had anyone donate their hair to charity. However, when she cut the first braid and I saw how short it was, I started freaking out! It was waaaaay shorter than shoulder length! However, I just tried to stay calm and convince myself that it would all grow back eventually. She offered me a glass of champagne (which helped!), and she convinced me that I would love it. And I did! I’m still not sure how I’m going to style it like she did, but hopefully I’ll get the hang of it. On Friday night, I went to the London Coffee Festival with my flatmate. We had VIP tickets so upon arrival, we got goodie bags (complete with a sample bottle of Bailey’s), and then we were offered a free rum coffee cocktail (which wasn’t very good). Then we were able to go through the entire expo, which must have been about 200-300 companies, each sampling their products. We got to try different coffees, chocolates, teas, everything! It was pretty cool! Then after the expo was done, there was a launch party with a DJ. We stayed for a bit and then headed back home.
This morning, I decided to go to the walk-in clinic because my throat has been really bothering me the last three days. It wasn’t like a sore throat, but it felt like I had swallowed something huge and sharp, and it had gotten stuck in my throat so every time I tried to swallow, the muscles would squeeze around it. I had never felt anything like it before, and I didn’t have any cold symptoms so I knew it was something different. I ended up having to wait nearly two and a half hours at the clinic, as there were no doctors and there was only one nurse taking all of the patients. All I had to do was open my mouth and the nurse was like, “Oh! Yeah, I’m getting you antibiotics.” So this weekend, I’m stuck in bed with tonsillitis. I have to take two tablets four times a day for ten days. And she said that I had to rest my voice for four or five days, or the infection will spread further down my throat and hit my voice box, and then I won’t be able to talk. So that’s fun! I’ll be sitting in my room watching tv shows all day. She said as long as I do minimal talking today, tomorrow, and Monday, I should be good to go back to work when school starts on Tuesday. Anyway, I hope everyone’s doing well with the spring/winter/spring in Canada! I definitely don’t miss that… Love always

Seeing Stars  – BØRNS

Edinburgh (Scotland)

Hi family and friends,
Sorry I haven’t written in quite awhile.. now I feel like I’m just living life over here, and people might get bored of reading “I got up, waited for a phonecall, got called and went to work, the kids didn’t behave, I went home and made dinner, watched my tv show and went to bed” over and over again. But I DID just come back from Scotland, so I might as well update everyone on that! First, I guess I’ll give you a brief update since my last post. The past six weeks went by extremely fast, and they were a lot more enjoyable compared to the term before Christmas. Maybe I started to change my attitude around… In London, everyone is extremely cold here, and it was very difficult to get used to at first. I used to take everything so personally and I’d wonder why everyone was so mean! And then Christmas came and for a day, everyone was in a good mood. I think I just carried my good mood on and decided to just keep killing everyone with kindness. My biggest fear is that this culture will get implanted in me and I’ll come back to Canada acting like a jerk. So yes, I’ll say ’thank you’ when I get off the bus, sure I’ll smile at someone on the sidewalk, yeah I’ll ask that old lady if she needs help carrying her bag down the stairs. And I’ll feel good about it, because I might have made someone’s day better if only for a second. So my mood has definitely felt a lot more positive! I spent three of those six weeks at the same school, which is a school I absolutely LOVE working for. For the first time, I didn’t mind going to work cause the kids were (comparably) well-behaved! Most of the kids actually said, “Thank you” when walking out the door at the end of class. I’ve shared multiple moments on Facebook, such as my sex ed experiences. The kids were hilarious! I just loved teaching them because they were so curious about EVERYTHING, and I’m pretty sure most of them didn’t even know what sex was. I also felt glad that I was there, cause the kids seemed really open to asking questions, and I don’t feel like they would have gotten that opportunity had their real teacher been there. I explained to the kids that an ejaculation emitted up to 250 million sperm and it was basically like a big race and if that ONE sperm hadn’t gotten to the egg first, they wouldn’t exist. The kids went absolutely insane! “Wow, I am SO blessed!” “Miss, are you impressed that I won that race?” So entertaining.. However, there WERE some classes that I wasn’t so fond of. Throughout all schools, there seems to be a common theme of students poking holes into other peoples’ water bottles. I see it absolutely everywhere I go, and I don’t get it cause I don’t ever remember that happening when I was in school. Anyway, one morning, I was on my way to work and I was standing on the train and my back was feeling really weird so I put my hand there and realized that my entire back was wet! The kids had poked holes in my water bottle the previous day and I didn’t notice cause it was nearly empty at the time so when I filled it up before school and put it in my backpack, it emptied out all over me. I was SO not impressed cause it took at least three hours to dry so for that amount of time, it likely looked like I wet my pants. Darn kids! During the last two days before the break, my agent said they desperately needed a science teacher in the northeast part of the city (aka the EXACT opposite direction of where I live). This would require me to travel nearly two hours each way(!). Since it was the week before holidays, I kind of HAD to take the job since I wouldn’t be guaranteed pay. But when I got there, the man in charge was under the assumption that I agreed to stay for the next few weeks (which my agency has STILL not brought up with me – not surprising). So not only is the transportation way too long, but the kids were not good at all. I did agree with the man that I would stay for one week after the break (since that would guarantee me pay), but then I don’t think I’ll have the patience to stay anymore.
In other news, our landlords said they wouldn’t be renewing our 6-month contract due to “redecorating purposes.” While this is probably for the best (since they made our stay a living hell), it still would have been nice to have the option to stay if we needed to. Considering I’m supposed to be moving in 9 days and I still haven’t gotten a new place set up. We’re also concerned that they won’t be giving us our fees back. They took 4-weeks’ rent money as a finders fee and a void protection fee, which is basically used in the case that we don’t stay for our full 6 months and don’t find a replacement tenant, those fees can be used as security for rent. But technically (in my mind), they should be able to give those fees back once they get our last month’s rent (which they did three weeks ago). However, they said they won’t give the fees back until we check out and they make sure everything’s okay. BUT in that case (and this is the law!), they should have put the security deposit in a protection scheme (which is basically given to the government so that neither the landlord or the tenant can touch the money until the returned amount is agreed upon). This scheme was put into place when landlords started charging tenants for ridiculous (and made up) damages to flats – like charging 250 pounds to replace a lightbulb. Since our landlords didn’t put the fees in a protection scheme, they can’t really use the money as a security deposit. We’re under the impression that they always keep the fees and get new tenants every 6 months, and that’s how they make all of their money. But who knows.. All I know is I NEED that money in order to afford a new place. So I guess I’ll find that out in about ten days.
Other than that, I’ve just been enjoying life! Cooking, baking, trying out new restaurants, shopping, etc. And I just got back from Scotland! Actually, Scotland has never been on my list of places to go. For some reason, I just never felt the need to go there. However, a week before my break, I realized that ticket prices had gone way up and because I was already stressing about having enough money to move flats, I decided to just pick the cheapest place and fly there. Which actually was Germany.. but next up was Scotland and I made a last-minute decision to make the trip there. And am I ever glad I did! I’ve seen so many places now, that many of them are nice, but not many of them shock me. Edinburgh did. From the moment I got there (at 11pm, mind you..), I was in awe of everything around me. It’s an absolutely gorgeous and picturesque city! There were many moments during the week when I seriously contemplated moving to Scotland, since my visa would still be valid there. Anyway, my first day there (Sunday), I realized what I forgot (cause I ALWAYS forget something). This time, it was my toque. Which I figured would be easy to replace since there was a Primark in Edinburgh, which is the cheapest store ever (and is where I do my weekend shopping!). First, I went to check out the castle.. I didn’t actually go inside cause I thought it was too much money, but I quickly found myself getting extremely cold due to the wind. I made my way down to the main street and stepped into Primark, which had all of their bathing suits and spring stuff out. When I asked about winter hats, they said they didn’t have any. So then I went into H&M, which was the same story. And I literally repeated the same thing over and over again all the way down the street, until the last stop was a Scottish store that sold knitwear (which happened to be on sale, score!). So I was able to get a toque, which helped me survive the rest of the week. After that, I walked through the castle gardens, and then decided to get a good view of Edinburgh by climbing the Scott Monument. It’s something like 287 steps in a spiral staircase, which was SO narrow and most of it didn’t have a hand-rail. Of course, the only way up was the only way down so when someone was coming from the opposite direction, you really had to work together in order to pass each other without having someone fall down the stairs. At one point, I had someone lift and push me up in order to get past him haha The view was absolutely worth it though, and gave an awesome view of Edinburgh! After that, I made my way to the National Museum of Scotland, which was somewhat boring so I didn’t stay long. BUT I did find out that Scotland’s last wolf was seen more than 250 years ago. So that’s a fun fact! Kind of blew my mind… Afterwards, I went to The Elephant House, which is a cafe that apparently was the birthplace of Harry Potter. Apparently it was cheaper for JK Rowling to buy a cup of coffee than to pay for her heating bill, so she’d come to the cafe to write the first Harry Potter book. It was pretty cool to see, and the mocha and brownie that I had did not disappoint! That evening, I went out for dinner with a couple girls from the hostel, which was nice since it was Valentine’s Day and all. One was also a teacher in the UK from Ontario, and another was English.
On Monday, I caught a bus to Glasgow, which took about an hour and a half. Glasgow definitely had more of a city-feel to it, and didn’t really have much charm compared to Edinburgh. However, I tried to make the most of it! That evening, I went walking through the city but everything seemed to be closed, so I didn’t find much. However, I went to this AMAZING vegan restaurant! I was really able to treat myself to the food in Scotland, cause even though they use the exact same currency, the price for a meal was about half as much as it would be in London. It was crazy! Anyway, at this vegan restaurant, I had a buffalo tempeh burrito (stuffed with coca cola(?!) black beans among other things), a tomato-butterbean-kale soup, and then for dessert, I had a raw chocolate and avocado cheesecake. So good!
On Tuesday, it rained the entire day so that kind of limited what I could do. I decided to check out the Glasgow Cathedral, which was really nice! I then came upon this restaurant called “Steak, Cattle, & Roll,” which sold milkshakes. I had the best milkshake I ever had in my life – a nutella & dark chocolate milkshake. Absolutely amazing! I actually went back the next day to have another one… I had a falafel burger there, with fries, coleslaw, a corn cob, and some chicken wings. Of course, I couldn’t eat it all, but the prices were once again unreal! I then spent the rest of the night hiding from the rain by checking out the mall and the shops.
 
On Wednesday, I went for lunch at this great Italian restaurant. I had caprese to start (tomato and mozzarella with basil), and then I had a tomato-mushroom-chicken risotto. After that, the rain cleared (thank goodness!), so I decided to check out the Necropolis, which is essentially a huge cemetery with a great view of Glasgow. It was quite muddy, but I made it to the top without wiping out! I then went to the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, which gave information and showed paintings from different religions around the world. It was pretty cool, looking at all of the differences! I then took a short walk downtown before heading back to my hostel for the night.
The next morning, I took the bus back to Edinburgh. I had lunch and checked into my hostel, and then I went to the Surgeons’ Hall Museum, which is basically an anatomy museum with real specimens of every single thing that could go wrong in your body. Like there must have been at least ten thousand jars of random stuff. It was interesting! But I definitely felt sick towards the end of it. I don’t know how many times my mind went “Oh. My. God.” when looking at some of the items. I learnt some cool things though! First of all, apparently surgeons were in need of bodies way back in the day because they wanted to study more anatomy, so there were actually gangs who went and stole bodies from graves because they would make so much money off of them. Not only that, but there were two guys who owned an inn and they started killing the tenants, so they could sell them to a professor who would use the bodies for his anatomy lectures! I also learned that before stitches and staples were a thing, some cultures used ants to close wounds because the ants would bite the edges of the wound, and then the bodies would be twisted off. The jaws stayed behind and would keep the wound closed! Pretty cool! Other than that, I saw everything. I saw a tumour in every body part that you could imagine. I saw a lung with tuberculosis. I saw a scalp that was torn off because the person’s hair got stuck in machinery. I saw an IUD in a uterus. I saw an x-ray of a coin in someone’s throat. And then I left the museum feeling sick to my stomach, and wondering what was wrong inside my body haha You’re lucky because we weren’t allowed to take pictures (out of respect for the bodies) so I don’t have any to share. After that, I did some more looking around the shops and then had dinner before getting ready for bed.
For Friday, I booked the Original Loch Ness Tour, which was 12 hours long and started at 7:45 in the morning. It was moreso a bunch of driving; we covered nearly 600km, so a trip to Calgary! 🙂 It was crazy how we were able to see every season at some point. There was rain, there was snow, there was rain in snow, there were coloured leaves like fall, there were green fields like in the summer. It was crazy! I tried haggis since it was my last day there. It was actually haggis in a baked potato, and it was so good! We also did a 1-hour cruise on Loch Ness, which was pretty cool as well! On the boat, I had a Whiskey Chocolate, which was basically hot chocolate with whiskey. So I got to try two of the official food/drinks of Scotland! Didn’t see Nessie though 😦 I got back feeling so tired and quickly went to bed because my flight left at 7:15am the next day, so I’d be getting up at 5. My sleep didn’t last for long because at 2am, everyone else seemed to come back from a pub-crawl or something, and decided to spend the next hour talking, giggling, yelling, etc. So when my alarm went off at 5, I felt like I hadn’t had any sleep. I made it to the airport on time though, and got back home by 10:30. And that was my week! This weekend, I’ll likely be packing my stuff up so it’ll all be ready when/if I find a flat to move into next weekend (fingers crossed!). I hope everyone’s doing well! Miss you all tons! Love always
Edinburgh – The Lake Poets

Edelweiss (Austria)

Hey everyone, hope you all had a great holiday! I was so not looking forward to going back to work but luckily, I haven’t gotten called in too many times. My holidays were really enjoyable! Just enough time to refresh myself for another six weeks of teaching. The first few days, I did a lot of baking and relaxing. On Sunday, my French family came to London for the week! They had rented an apartment for the week and had one extra bed, so I ended up staying with them until Christmas Eve! I went over Sunday night for dinner, and I got to see the kids another three years older (Alice was 12 but turned 13 on Christmas Eve, Antoine is 11, and Elsa is 7!). I’ve unfortunately forgotten most of my French, so it made it quite difficult to communicate with everyone, especially since the kids speak so much faster and use words that I don’t understand now haha it worked out cause Alice has really good English now (probably equivalent to my French) so she would speak to me in English and I’d speak back to her in French. It was good practice! On Monday, we went to the Natural History Museum first thing in the morning. After that, we went to Winter Wonderland and then we checked out m&m’s world. Elsa and Antoine were both sick, which kind of concerned me since I was sharing a room with Elsa and I didn’t want to get sick before going to Austria. We ended up taking both of them to the clinic (I was there to translate) and the doctor diagnosed them with a chest and throat infection and gave them antibiotics (which scared me even more)! Luckily, I didn’t end up getting sick but I was seriously contemplating spending the rest of the week at home. On Tuesday, Emmanuel stayed home with Antoine and then Anne, Alice, Elsa and I went shopping because Alice wanted to shop for her birthday. We only lasted until lunch and then we went to the National Portrait Gallery for awhile (not really my thing, but oh well). On Wednesday, we went to Camden market, which is a HUGE market that I’ve always wanted to go to. Unfortunately because the kids were sick, we weren’t able to spend too much time outside but it was neat to see nonetheless. After that, I had to go back home so Alice came with me and we made gingerbread cookie dough to bring back to the apartment so we could make cookies there. That night, Alice and I made cookies and then Elsa helped us decorate them the next morning. On Thursday, it was Christmas Eve and it was Alice’s birthday!

We tried to go to Tate Modern, which ended up being closed. Then we went to Covent Garden, which was SO busy! It started POURING rain (sideways) so we went back to the apartment to dry off (since we were all absolutely drenched – umbrellas don’t help in those situations). That’s how my iPod had died before so I was guarding my iPhone with my life this time! Once the rain stopped, we headed over to the Portobello Market and then went back to the apartment to spend some more time together before I went back home. It wasn’t too tough of a goodbye this time, since I knew I’d be going to France sometime in the next six months. I made my way back home and got back nearly at the same time as Jess (who was in Amsterdam for the week). We watched some Christmas movies before going to bed to wait for Santa to come. The next morning was a pretty lazy day on my end. Jess made an amazing Christmas dinner and we watched movies pretty much the entire day. Absolutely everything closes in London on Christmas Day, including public transport, so we pretty much had no choice but to stay at home. We even thought about going to the cinema but that was closed too.

The next morning, we started our journey to Austria! In London, we have an app that tells us what buses/trains to take in order to get somewhere, which usually comes in quite handy. Because all of the trains and most of the metros were closed on Boxing Day, we had no choice but to take a bus to the airport (which would double our travel time – taking two hours). This day, the app told us to go to a bus stop (by bus) and then take another bus directly to the airport. What it didn’t tell us was that we had to reserve spots on that second bus ahead of time, as well as pay extra for the ticket. So when we got to the bus stop, we waited and waited for this bus that never seemed to come. Finally, we figured out it was a van that would come every so often to pick people up. I looked it up online and figured out that it was completely booked up for the entire day. By that point, we were kind of freaking out but we found out that there was a coach bus that also goes directly to the airport. However, we’d have to take another bus to get to its station. The bus only came every hour on the hour and we got there at about 11:10 so we had to wait 50 minutes for the next one. However, if we caught that one, we’d get to the airport JUST in time to catch our flight at 2:30 (as the bus takes about an hour and a half). We booked our tickets online, which cost 15 pounds each and were non-refundable, and then we waited. At 12, the bus hadn’t come so we waited for awhile but then got extremely anxious when it still hadn’t come by 12:15. I tried to track down the bus online but the website couldn’t find the bus. So I had no choice but to call the company (and get charged 14 pence per minute, so dumb). I talked to one guy who tried to track the bus and put me on hold twice for over ten minutes each time. He said the bus wasn’t trackable, but he took my phone number and said he’d call me back when he figured out where it was. By that time, we were freaking out because even if the bus came, there was no way we’d make it to the airport on time. Taxi rides cost about 80-100 pounds so there was no way we’d be doing that. Luckily, there were two other guys at the stop who were waiting for the same bus so we decided to call an uber which ended up costing us ten pounds each! We still weren’t sure if we’d make it in time though, as the trip would take about 50 minutes. On the way there, the guy called me back and said they found the bus and it would arrive at 1:15 (an hour and fifteen minutes late – later than the next bus would be) and asked if that would work for us. I replied no, our flight leaves at 2:20 so we wouldn’t make it on time. Luckily, he refunded me (which now that I think about it, I never got any money back…) We made it to the airport about 40 minutes before our flight. Luckily, Gatwick is so organised so we were able to smoothly make it through security and we even had time to run and buy lunch to take with us on the plane. It was a stressful trip, but we made it! We got to Salzburg about two hours later and made our way to the hostel. We booked two beds in a six-bed female dorm but when we got there, we were surprised to see that the room was composed of two bunk beds and one queen-sized bed. The only spots available were one on the bunk bed and one on the other side of the queen-sized bed. How weird! Luckily, the other girls arrived later so she switched and Jess and I just shared the queen bed. Better than sleeping with a complete stranger! The next morning, I woke up extremely early to get tickets for the Sound of Music tour. It was a four-hour tour and it showed us the house and gazebo in the movie, as well as many different parts of the Do Re Mi song in Mirabelle Gardens, and then it also took us to Lake Wolfgang, and the church where they got married in the movie. It was a really good tour! That day, I got to try my very first strudel, which was so good! Since the tour ended around 2pm, we still had a lot of time to explore afterwards. We went to Mozart’s birthplace and Mozart’s house, which were pretty neat! Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but they had a lot of his pianos and his violin, as well as a whole bunch of information about his family. We were able to buy a Salzburg card, which was awesome! It gave us free transport as well as free entrance into all of the museums and attractions. We also did a bit of shopping that evening, since the boxing week sales were so good! On Monday, we went to the Natural History Museum so that we could watch the shark feeding! It had some pretty good exhibits, as well as some really nice aquariums. After that, we made our way to the cable car ride, as it was included in our Salzburg card. It was somewhat scary but so worth it, and was really cool to see Salzburg from up above (an altitude of 1776m!). After making our way back down, we went to the Steigl museum, which was also included on our card (along with a Steigl mug and three 2-oz samples of beer!). I hardly made it through my beers before I was unable to breath and it was then that we realised that most of Austria’s restaurants have a smoking and a non-smoking section, and we had chosen the smoking section. After finishing our beer, we moved to the non-smoking section and we ordered dinner, which was SO GOOD! I know I can always count on breweries for having good food 🙂

On Tuesday, we caught a train to Vienna. That evening, we did a little more shopping and looking around. On Wednesday, we went to the Vienna zoo, which was a pretty nice zoo, and it’s the oldest zoo in Europe (It opened in 1752)! You can tell that the animals are well taken care of and they seem pretty happy at this zoo, which was nice to see. They even had some of the old historical cages on display, which was so crazy to see, as it was such a small area for a bear or a lion. After that, we went to look at schonbrunn palace, as it was right beside the zoo. It was absolutely huge! Vienna was much colder than Salzburg, so spending time outside was quite difficult. Especially since during the trip, my boot literally started breaking apart, seeping in water so my feet were permanently cold. After warming up in McDonald’s for awhile, we made our way to the Ferris wheel of Vienna, which was a crazy long line-up! We finally got our one turn around the Ferris wheel, and then spent a bit of time downtown. On Thursday, I decided to check out the cemeteries, since Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and Schubert were all buried in Vienna. It was the coldest day so far and it was absolutely freezing! For the majority of the time, I couldn’t feel my feet at all. So both cemeteries were really short trips haha Beethoven’s grave was gorgeous! I kind of feel bad cause he seems to have been forgotten about since most of the focus is usually on Mozart. After the cemeteries, I warmed up for a bit and then checked out the market before heading back to the hostel. In Vienna, they have a New Year’s Trail, which is basically 12 different stages along the streets of central Vienna, each providing its own genre of music – oldies, classical, dance music, etc. Because it was completely outside, I put on as many layers as I possibly could and then I made my way to Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, where they had a Philharmonic Orchestra performing. It was so nice to see! And every time a waltz was performed, the older couples in the crowd wouldstart dancing. After an hour or so of that, I met up with Jess and we made our way to the DJ section, which was a huge dance party. We danced the night away (literally… For three or four hours). There wasn’t a countdown for New Years; everyone just started cheering when their phones turned to January 1st. We hung out for quite awhile and then went back to the hostel to get a bit of sleep before getting up and catching our train back to Salzburg. It was raining when we got to Salzburg, so my feet once again got cold and soaking wet, and when we got to the hostel at 2pm, we were disappointed to find out that reception was closed until 5pm. So we walked to the nearest McDonald’s to hang out for three hours before checking into the hostel and resting there for the rest of the night. We caught our flight back to London on Saturday morning, and the line-ups to check-in and to get through security were absolutely insane! Then they started boarding late, and people had to get on a bus to be moved to the plane, which was literally a 30-second walk away (which slowed down boarding even more). Our flight was only two hours but then it still took us 4.5 hours after arrival for us to get home! With our luck, the train happened to be cancelled that weekend so we had to catch a coach bus (which cost us 12 pounds each and took about 1.5 hours). Then we had to catch another two buses to get home once we got back into London, which took another 1.5 hours. We FINALLY got home at 4:30 and then used the evening to relax and unpack. Sunday was my catch-up day, where I did loads of laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning before going back to work on Monday.
Once again, we wouldn’t be guaranteed pay the first week since it was the week after a holiday. On Monday, neither of us got called in so I went shopping to buy some new (much-needed) boots. That night, there was a monthly Canadian Expat Wing Night in London, so Jess and I decided to go check it out for the first time. One guy brought a huge box of Timbits from home since he got back from Canada the previous day, which was a nice surprise! Most of the people were middle-aged, but I had a good conversation with the oldest guy there, who just had his 50-year reunion from graduating at McGill! So he told me stories from the 1940s and 50s, which was pretty cool. On Monday, I was also told that I’d have a job from Tuesday to Friday (thank goodness!), but it wasn’t at one of my favourite schools to work at. The kids don’t do much work and are quite disrespectful. The last time I was there, one of the classes were writing a test, and I happened to notice that one of the students had two tests in front of her. Then she “dropped something on the floor,” and as she went to pick it up, she gave one of the tests to the person behind her. So I went and asked for it and said he could hand it in as is; he seemed pretty upset. Then, as the girl was still “looking for what she dropped,” the guy beside her swapped their tests so that when she got back up, she could fill out his test for him. I didn’t notice it until I went to collect tests, I asked for her test and it was in his hands. So I told them I’d be writing the three of them up for cheating and they’d have to rewrite the test. I still didn’t know the last guy’s name though, and he refused to give me his test cause then I’d know his name. Finally, at the end of class he gave me his test, but he had scratched out his name and wrote down someone’s name who was absent (so they’d end up getting trouble). I remembered the name and made a comment about how it was weird that this person wasn’t in class, and this guy kept getting more and more upset cause he’d keep trying to outsmart me and it wouldn’t work. Anyway, the following week was insane. The classroom was an absolute mess every day by the end of the day, kids would fight each other, and no one would work. Apparently, this class has already went through two science teachers since the beginning of the school year and the second one had given his notice of resignation that week, so they are currently in the process of finding a third teacher. My agent had told me that on Friday, he would let me know if the school would need me for another week, but once I found out that the teacher gave his notice, I wrote my agent and told him that I wouldn’t be coming back the next week. And good thing I did because this past week, I only ended up working a total of two days (one full day, and two half-days!). So I got quite a bit of (paid) time off, which was nice! Already counting down the weeks until my next holiday (four more weeks!). Last Thursday night, I met up with Helena (my friend whom I met in France, who was also an au pair there) and we went to the Billy Elliot musical. The kids in that production were SO talented, I couldn’t believe it! They could tap, do ballet, sing, act, and they didn’t look older than eight.
Anyway, yesterday we found out that the landlords weren’t going to renew our 6-month contract due to “decorating” or something. I wasn’t too surprised, and I had started looking for a new place before I even found that out. Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to find a place in London, and you usually have to pick a place on the day that it’s posted. Since our contract doesn’t end until the end of February, I’ll likely have to wait until about two weeks before we move out before I start looking for a place. And of course, looking for two bedrooms makes it that much more difficult! But hopefully it’ll all end up working out.
I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays as much as I did! Miss you all tons! Can’t believe it’s already been five months since I left.. Love always
Edelweiss – The Sound of Music

Hundred Miles (Morocco)

Well, this week has been amazing! For those of you who don’t know (and didn’t catch on to my Facebook posts), I spent the past five nights in Morocco. It was nice to try out not only another country, but a completely different continent. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Africa! So crazy! I still spent Saturday in London, where I spent about four hours carving a pumpkin. Then, Jess and I went into central London to do some shopping and to check out an event called Thrill the World. Basically, it was a planned flash mob where people dressed up as zombies and danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” song (also notice the play on words with his “Heal the World” song). This dance was arranged so that it would be done at the exact same time as multiple cities around the world, and they were trying to break the record for being the biggest Thriller dance in the world (I’m not sure if they actually beat that record or not…). The downside to this is that in London, the dance wasn’t scheduled until 11pm, so it was quite cold outside by the time it actually happened. It was an interesting experience though! The next day, we got an extra hour to our day, as daylight savings time was either starting or ending (still don’t really understand how it works…). That morning, we had a fire alarm mishap, where the fire alarms all went off and we couldn’t get them to stop. I called the agent and about an hour later, he showed up with another guy, who told us it must have went off because of the steam from the shower. Anyway, I spent the rest of the morning packing for Morocco and then I made my way to Gatwick Airport, which is actually a really simple trip from our flat. Going through security was the smoothest process I’ve ever seen. Instead of lining up along the security belt (like pretty much all airports do), they had about 5 or 6 lineups perpendicular to the belt. So people at the front of each line had their own section of the security belt and could easily set their stuff in the bin and set it on the belt.

Then after going through security, you go to the end of the belt, grab your bin and take it to an empty station (there were about 15-20 of them), and then you could take your time putting all your stuff back together, putting on belts and shoes, etc. without having to take up space at the end of the security belt. I was extremely impressed! Once you get through security, they make you walk through the entire duty-free department store in order to get to the gates. It was like walking through IKEA, with the twists and turns, except this time you were twisting and turning through alcohol, perfumes, cigarettes, and watches, among other things. Finally, I made it to the end but here, they don’t tell you the gate number until about ten minutes before they start boarding. I found a quiet cafe to have lunch while I waited to find out my gate number. The bathrooms here were pretty well-organised too. Each sink had its own hand dryer, which was behind the mirror, so you just had to hold your hands under the mirror in order to dry off your hands. I finally found out my gate number and headed over. There, they also did things a bit differently.. They had to scan your ticket and passport in order for you to enter the gate. So then when they actually started the boarding process, there wasn’t a long lineup to scan everyone’s tickets. I think Gatwick has some pretty good ideas that actually work! I flew with Air Arabia, and the flight lasted three hours. It’s so crazy that in three hours, I can fly over multiple countries and reach a different continent whereas from Saskatoon, I’d just make it to Toronto in the same amount of time. The flight started off with a “Travel Prayer,” which I though was kind of cool. The tv screens had English subtitles so I was able to understand what the prayer said. Then the flight started! They didn’t have individual TVs, just the one tv in front of every 4 or 5 rows. They played Mr. Bean’s Christmas special, and then they played a show called ‘Hole in the Wall,’ which is somewhat self-explanatory. Basically there are three people standing in front of a pool of water, a wall comes towards them with awkward-shaped holes in it, and the people have to try to match their bodies to the shapes of the holes in order to not get pushed into the pool. All the players really sucked at it so pretty much everyone just ended up in the pool. I arrived in Morocco at about 8pm but by the time I got through customs and got a taxi, it was about 9:30 when I got to the hostel. I was starving by that point but because it was Sunday night, not a lot was left open so I settled with getting some Pringles to hold me over for the rest of the night. That night, I had a bit of trouble sleeping, as a prayer reminder started early in the morning (they do it six times per day: at 5:15am, at sunrise-6:40am, at noon, at 3pm, at 5:30pm, and at 7pm), so there’s kind of a megaphone that blasts through the entire city and multiple men pray/sing on it for about 15 minutes. During this time, tv’s are turned off and you notice many people wandering off on their own. After the prayer happens early in the morning, all the roosters are woken up and all I hear for the next couple hours are cockadoodle-doos.

The next morning (Monday), I had breakfast and then three of us (an American and a Welsh person) decided to explore Tangier together. We just kind of wandered around and got lost in different streets (with a bit of help from the locals, who were intently watching us and would let us know when we shouldn’t go a certain way). The cool thing about Tangier is that next to Arabic, French is the most common language (then Spanish, and THEN English), so I was able to try out my French. Moroccan French is SO clear and so easy to understand, so it wasn’t too difficult to get back into the hang of it, after not speaking it for three years. Anyway, during our walk it started raining so we ran into a close cafe until the rain passed. After that, we were starving so we headed to Cafe Hafa, which was recommended to us by one of the hostel owners. This cafe overlooked the entire Strait of Gibraltar and on a clear day, you can see Spain on the other side. It used to be frequented by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones! It’s well-known for its Moroccan tea (which is offered in every single cafe you go to), which is sweetened mint tea and is delicious – I had at least one every day that I was there! After lunch, we decided to head back towards the hostel and take a walk through the markets. Then, we took a taxi to Hercules’ Caves and timed it JUST RIGHT so we were able to watch the sunset, which was amazing! The story behind Hercules’ Caves is that Hercules used the cave as his resting place after finishing his twelve labours. We were actually quite lucky because they caves had been closed for the past two years, and only reopened a couple of weeks ago. After we got back to Tangier, we joined up with another person at the hostel (a Canadian) and went for a late dinner at another recommended restaurant. We told the chef to make wherever he wanted so he made different types of tajine – a traditional dish, which is pretty much a stew. I got to try shark for the first time! It was good, and didn’t taste like anything other than another type of fish.
On Tuesday, I got up and had breakfast. Then me and another hostel-goer went for Moroccan tea and had a good visit. It’s so weird going in some of the cafés because in this one especially, I was completely outnumbered by men. It was completely full and I was the only female in there. We then went back to the hostel, met up with another girl (another American) and the three of us went for lunch. After walking around aimlessly and failing on finding the restaurant that was recommended to us, we gave up and walked into a random one (or rather, the chef walked up to us and urged us to come inside). They served us a lot of food: a salad each, fries each, tajine, couscous, skewers, and mixed veggies – half of which we couldn’t eat. And then when we went to pay, we were all shocked at the amount, as it was the most we’ve ever been charged for a meal. Which made us a lot more careful about choosing restaurants in the future, and making sure we didn’t just let them “make whatever.” After that, the guy left to move onto the next part of his trip, and the other girl and I decided to do some shopping in the markets. I found a few treasures and then stopped myself from buying any more, even though everything was extremely cheap! We went back to the hostel to drop everything off, then met up with another guy and the three of us took a taxi to Cap Spartel, which is a lookout point where the Mediterranean meets up with the Atlantic. After that (because we were in the area), we asked to go to Hercules’ Caves since the other two hadn’t seen it yet. Then on the way back, the taxi driver asked if we wanted to stop by the camels and of course, I said yes! I bartered with the camel guy to let me take a picture on the camel for 40 dirham (about 2.60 pounds). I was just expecting to sit on it for five seconds, snap a picture, and get off. But he actually got the camel to stand up, and then took us for a short walk. The other girl decided to ride one as well and since the guy had already tried it before, he was our personal photographer and snapped a bunch of pictures for us. Being on the camel was a bit scary haha mostly just when it stood and sat because it bows down really fast, which makes you lose your balance really easily. I also felt like I was tilted to one side the entire time. But it was so cool! Definitely one more thing to check off my (non-existent) bucket list! After we got back to the hostel, Marie and I tried to find another restaurant and once again got lost. A kid told us he’d show us the way and took us on an extremely long walk in the opposite direction. I became more and more sceptical, as I didn’t think we were THAT far off from the restaurant. The kid took us to a completely different restaurant and I recognised it as the restaurant that the hostel owner specifically told us to avoid. So I said we weren’t interested and finally escaped, and then I took her to the restaurant that I had been to the evening before.
On Wednesday, literally everyone left me haha I even had the whole room to myself! But that meant for the first time, I’d be wandering around Tangier alone. Before I got there, I read that it was a touristy place where everyone hassled you, but I had never found it that bad. Probably because I was always with someone else. On Wednesday, I started to notice it quite a bit more. I decided to check out the beach and take a walk along it, as I hadn’t seen it yet. But I also noticed that there, I was followed a lot  more. It was all harmless, but it made it more difficult for me to enjoy myself. Once I got to the other end of the beach, I saw a McDonald’s so I decided to take a break there! I needed to test out the McFlurries, as I do in every country I go to. Unfortunately, they only had M&M and Kit-Kat 😦 nothing too unique. I opted for the Kit-Kat one and then headed back towards the hostel. After hanging out there for awhile, I decided to go back to Cafe Hafa to check out the sunset. It wasn’t as great compared to Hercules’ Caves, but it was still really relaxing! After that, one of the hostel owners took me and his other friend to a sushi place for dinner, which completely blew my mind considering we were in Morocco haha it was really good though!
On Thursday, I decided to see if I could walk to Cap Spartel and then check out the hiking trails over there (since I didn’t want to pay the full taxi fare on my own). I was thinking 2.5 hours isn’t that bad, but I underestimated it and forgot that most of the trek would be uphill. I also couldn’t figure out how to get to the coast, as it was all walled off so I ended up having to walk along the main road, which was extremely hot with no shade and no wind. I guess I should also explain that in Morocco, women are still objectified so it’s important to stay covered in a sweater and pants, and even then you still get stared at and the men try to talk to you. Therefore, wearing jeans and a sweater while hiking in hot weather isn’t the best combination. I made it to a park, and then I was able to cut through the park in order to get to the coast, and then I decided to just head back down into town, since it was way past lunchtime and I was starving. By the time I finally got back and was able to eat, it was around 3 or 4pm. I had a bit of a scare because the night before, I had been playing with the cat that frequents the hostel (but doesn’t technically live there) and it scratched me. So after talking to my mom about it, and her copying and pasting a whole bunch of stuff about rabies from Google, I started freaking out and decided to walk to the nearest clinic. As I waited in the waiting room, I actually started to feel not only scared, but stupid. Out of all the ways people die, I basically risked my life because I couldn’t resist playing with a cat… After what seemed like the longest wait ever, I was finally let in. The doctor seemed confused as to why someone with a tiny cat scratch was sitting in his office. I had no idea what the French word for rabies was, so I had a difficult time trying to explain my concern. Eventually, I think he understood but said I shouldn’t need to worry, as it didn’t look infected. He wrote me a prescription anyway, in case anything changed within the next week. Hoping, it’s nothing though!!!!!!! I went back to the hostel and spent the rest of the night visiting with all of the new people who came for the weekend.
The next day (Friday), I headed back to London 😦 My flight was at 1pm, so I got back to London at 4, and got home around 5. Then, I just did some laundry and relaxed for the rest of the night. Jess is away for the weekend, so I’m going to have to figure out how I’ll spend my Halloween weekend! Hope everyone enjoys their Halloween! Love always
Hundred Miles – Yall feat. Gabriela Richardson