I was stressing so much about not even being able to get to the school from Gatwick airport...I was all by myself, dressed for the Artic (cus I couldn't fit everything in my bag...), with a huge backpack, a togbag and a laptop (a real site i'll tel you!) and i had to make 3 CHANGES before I got to Stonehouse.
It was sad leaving Cath and Al cus I had really enjoyed staying with them-it was like being at home in their cute little flat, but it was also kinda exciting finally starting my Gap Year-meeting the other gaps, the staff, seeing where I would be living for the next year and finding out what my job actually entailed.
ARRIVAL
We got met by Chris Guest (soon to be nicknamed Crystal), Ben, Kate and James. Chris would be in charge of us for the year-sorting out our timetable, taking queries etc etc. Kate is the thorn amoung the roses, being an Aussie and al :) but she'd devine! Ben is half half. He's Australian, but went to school in Pretoria for 3yrs and James is a good old Bosch boytjie. Lynne only got to the school the next day.
We all trungled down to the village pub, the Woolpack. This would soon become the place for us to hang out at night. (seeing that we don't actually have many other alternatives in this new little village we soon learn to call home) We just had a 'Welcome to England' drink, chatted roughly about what kind of things lay ahead for us and afterwards, had a little tour of the school.
It's crazy!! The prep school (where we are situated) has an astro, indoor swimming pool, covered playground, music school, drama theatre/asembly hall, dining hall, 2 boarding houses, tennis/netball courts, football/rugby fields and other school things (classrooms, library, office, change rooms, staffroom etc)
ACCOMODATION
Firstly, the Gap Flat is where the 4 girl gappies stay. This is the top floor of a building called Ryeford which is the main school building. The bottom floor is the dining hall, the office, library and staffroom. Then the 2nd and 3rd floors are classrooms, then there's the flat...and yes, for those that are paying attention, that does mean we have to climb 3 flights of stairs everytime we need to get something from the flat, call someone or run up and fetch something stupid like a whistle or swimming cap for games... It's a really cosy student flat :) There are 4 bedrooms, a bathroom, a little walk through kitchen, a room with the washing machine and tumble dryer and a lounge. We've all decorated our rooms with photo's of friends and family from home. My room also has maps up of places i've been/am going and a year planner calendar on which I've roughly planned out where I'll be going during which hols. The boys stay in the boys boarding house (cus they only usually have 4 gaps, not 6) where they have a bedroom each and a bathroom to share. But they spend most of their time up in the flat anyway.
We like our little set up in Stonehouse. We even have a SERIOUSLY slow computer in the flat which is almost always logged onto someone's facebook page...we've all become addicts since being here. We probably each check our page about 5 times a day at least...We have a stereo which can play cd's and be connected to an ipod which is so handy seeing that we all have an ipod :) the music varies with who's in charge and what kind of mood everyone is in. Sometimes we settle for the chilled David Gray, Plush, Fray vibe and other times we have party tunes which can sometimes be heard from the lower floors. Then there's also a tv which hasn't been tuned to any channels, but is perfect for watching videos and dvd's. We're all getting in touch with our childhood again :) So far we've watched lion king (numerous times actually), aladdin, dinosaur, aristocats, pocohantus, the land before time, 101 dalmations, jungle book, all dogs go to heaven, braveheart, note book, 10 things I hate about you, gladiator, moulin rouge, high school musical (which is crap!!), sound of music, anchorman, happy feet, coach carter, freedom writers and the list will go on as the year does. Quite an impressive list if you ask me. It's very handy having a boarding house :)
FOOD
The dinig hall food isn't too bad. Some days are better than others, but there is no doubt in my mind, that I was spoilt at home with my mom's amazing cooking! Even my dad's scrambled egg is better that the one here, and that's saying something! (maybe thats because they don't use salt, pepper or cheese-what the hell?!?) I also miss choosing what and when I feel like eating at lunch etc. The best meals are probably the burgers and chips, the egg mayo wraps, the spicy wedges, the coronation chicken salad a la Emma and of course brunch! Wow brunch is so good! It's like the highlight of our week . It's every Sunday up at the senior school. It includes sausage, egg, bacon, hash browns, baked beans, toast, museli, yoghurt, cereal, muffins and fruit. Other meals from the prep-school include mince, mince and more mince. No, its not that bad, there's lasagne, chicken (which is over cooked or has no flavour), jacket potatoes, roast turkey (which is plasticy), baguettes (which is either chicken or cheese) and then my beloved salad bar. You can only have one serving of protein. So if you take the hot meal, you can only take salad from the salad bar. But if you just get something from the salad bar, you can have 2 small protiens and salad. These proteins could include an egg, cheese, tuna, ham or any other cold meat from the previous meal. then there's always a dessert or fruit and yoghurt. It's quite weird getting 2 hot meals a day and eating supper at 6pm. Breakfast is cereal, porridge, toast and something hot (beans or egg or spagettios or pancakes)
ODD ENGLISH
They almost speak a whole different language here, which sometimes makes our conversations hard to understand. For example pants (like work pants or tracksuit pants) are known as trousers...for them, pants refers to underwear. So if I told someone to hurry up, take their pants off and get into their pijamas, they think I'm a tad perverted. Or when I say someone if sick, they think that to be actually throwing up. When all I'm meanig is that they're feeling ill. Another misconception is the jersey. To them a jersey is like a rugby jersey and the jersey we refer to is a jumper. A flapjack here is the equivilant to a crunchie at home-they don't have our type of flapjacks (only pancakes and crumpets). And those bean bag things (bed bug/happy hugger) that you put in the microwave to heat up is referred to as a wheatie bag. So at night, in the boarding house, I find myself asking if anyone has a wheatie bag they want me to warm up. The worst one of all, which just confuses me and leads to interesting conversations is the difference between supper and tea. For them, tea is the main meal at 6pm which is equivilent to our supper. But then, at 7:30pm in the boarding house, they have what they call supper, which is more like a snack/tea. It can be a bowl of cereal, toast, packet of chips (crisps for them), yoghurt, fruit, cake, biscuits, scones, tea. juice, whatever. It's all good as long as I don't come back asking my mom what time tea will be, whether she's washed my jumper and encouraging her to make flapjacks when I actaully want crunchies...
DUTIES
I have lots of different duties which in nice-means nothing gets too monotonous to handle and allows me to get involved in lots of things with different students and staff members. (It's so weird being called Miss Heany :) makes me feel so old, but important too!!)
My duties include boarding, milk, maths, games (hockey, netball this term) swimming, post, office, staffroom, astro, pre-prep play and PA to SA.
Milk- This sounds odd, i know. I was rather confused when I first saw this on my timetable, but it's quite simple actually. It happens during break time (not lunch. just a 30min break at about 10:45) I have to set oytr the fruit, poor milk and water into cups and then supervise that each child takes only one piece of fruit and a glass of milk or water. Once they're done, I pack it away and wipe off the table-nothing too stressful.
Maths-Mrs. Wheatie would be proud. :) I don't have to take a class by myself or anything, but i'm basically there to walk around answering questions and helping out the bottom set of Year 7 (equivilant to grade 6) Sometimes I have to take George into a seperate classroom and work through the worksheet or go over a test with him privatly. He's has a concentration problem, so he needs someone to keep nagging him to carry on working-that would be me! :)
Games- Sport is biult into the school day which is such a good idea! Get's everyone active for a bit and opens them to some team spirit. So after classes at about 2pm for the younger years and 3:30pm for the older ones, they have either netball or hockey. Next term it changes to Rounders and Athletics. I have netball on a Monday, hockey with the boys on a Tuesday, Badminton or tennis on a Wednesday (with whoever is not involved in a match) and hockey with the girls on a Friday. (thursday is my day off-best invention ever!! closely followed by brunch of course) Games sessions can include me taking a group aside and leading an exercise, playing with them cus they lack numbers (or need to see how it's done), umpiring practise matches or just helping one of the other staff members doing whatever they need. For any one who has never tried Badminton, I highly recommend you give it a go!It's so much fun and often on a Wednesday, Lynne and I are just needed to walk the kids over to the senior school, so we get the lesson to just play around ourselves which is awesome!! The one day, all the other kids had to try beat us in a rally-not a chance :) We kicked ass!!
Swimming-I have swimming every Monday. James and I take it in turns to get in the pool, meaning we don't have to get in every week luckily. Depending on whether you have the top set or bottom, you're required to do different things. It could go from teaching them how to not dive like Mr Bean anymore, but stand up and avoid belly flops...not the easiest thing!! I sometimes just have to let them belly flop before I can see what's actually going wrong...hehe. Other times you have to help those that aren't that confident to believe that they won't drown if they put their head under the water-this takes some serious convincing skills! I had this one boy one day who would just turn to me and say 'it's just hard' I was like: 'yes Luke, but it won't get easier the longer you wait' then I'd get the same response to everyhting i'd said to him already: 'It's just hard'
Post- This basically means I act as the school postman for the day. I have to take the out going and internal post from the prep-school to the senior school (5min brisk walk). When I get there, I drop the out going post in the postroom, drop the senior school post in the necessary staff pigeon holes and take the post for the bursary (from the prep-school along with the post for the bursary which i collected from the senior staffroom) to the bursers office (3min walk) When I get there, I drop off their post, collect any outgoing post they have aswell as their post for the senior school and prep school. Then it's back to the senior school where I have to weigh all the outgoing post and seperate it into the necessary catagories (size and destination) and write it in the post book. Then I put whatever post I gt from the bursery into the relevant pigeon holes, collect the post that is in the prep-school pigeon hole and go back to the prep school where I put the post in the relevant pigeon holes again. I left out the details cus I didnt't want to confuse you :) But I don't blame you if you're planning to re-read that and see if it was actually english. all in all, it takes about 45min-1hr, depending on how much there is and how fast you feel like walking.
Office- The beloved office...my office day is a Friday. The gappies even have a desk, near the secretaries one, where we have a phone, a pen, paper and a computer. When the post comes in, it is our job to ditribute it to the necessary people's pigeon hole. We also answer the phone in our posh phone voice: 'Wycliffe Preparatory School, Good Morning' and then try and figure out what the lady said when she introduced herself. Most of the time, I'm just dealing with Jack's mother, or Lucy's mother as far as I'm concerned...no idea which Jack or Lucy, but life goes on. If they want to talk too quickly and not say their name properly, the Jackand Lucy's mom it is...Other jobs for office include sticking addresses on envelopes, stuffing the envelopes, filing, photo copying, laminating, making tea/coffee, finding people or students or updating the Database. It brings endless hours of joy! It is nice that Mr Palmer (headmaster) usually walks through and chats for a bit. He's sucha legend!! Very aproachable and you can joke around with him. He wears a different tie every day-one day there was even one with the SA flag on it! Naturally, most times I chat to him, SA winning the world cup comes up in the conversation as well as just how hard I'm working :) He jokes that he has to change his checking to see if the fire alarm works to a Thursday morning (perfectly scheduled for my day off)
Staffroom- This can often mean a free period, but it basically consists of little jobs that the staff need done and haven't been able to or are just too damn lazy to do themselves. It mainly includes laminating and photocoying but can even be tidying up science labs (as I would know)
Pre-Prep Play- 45min of children aged 5-7 supervision. Depending on the weather, they play outside on the 'adventure' playground, on the patio with different sorts of toys (balls, skipping ropes etc) or watch television. Either way it's pretty boring and just involves me telling them to play nicely,apologize, take turns with the toys, stop teasing, pushing and leaving out eachother etc etc. Some of them are really cute! Others are little devils-like the older boys!
PA to SA- Traslation: Personal Assistant to Steve Arman. Every Wednesday morning, I do whatever little jobs Steve has for me. This term, it meant I typed pieces of work, created headings, printed pictures and backed things on colourful card for his displays. He's a history teacher, so I designed and created the displays for his classroom. One being of the Spanish Armada and Henry VIII and the other being of the one classes' research on Ryeford (the school building) many years ago. Not exactly the most thrilling job and not ideally suited to me I don't think (being as artistic and creative as I am-which is not at all) but it's not too bad.
Before we came, w got told we would have to bring smart clothes to wear in the office-what we didin't realise is that we'd have to dress smartly EVERYDAY! In the office or not... (this includes a saturday by the way cus the crazy english have saturday school!!) So we've learnt what we can get away with as smart (basically just respectable taken to the next level) and had lots of fun at the beginning dressing up to go to work.
SNOW
We had only been here 3 days and it snowed!! It was amazing!! So white and cold and wet :) but still awesome! It was my first time in snow...Apparently we were really lucky cus it doesn't usually snow where we are. Myself and the other gaps thought it was a nice 'Welcome to England' suprise :) Everyone else thought we were crazy going outside and playing in it...The next morning, it l;ooked like there was a white blanket outside, covering everything.
I've been lucky enough to have already hosted Julia, Kelly, Catherine and Alan. It's been great showing them around the school and the flat etc. Now they understand what I mean when I say i had to run across the bridge (for example) Mom, David, Steph and Delano are on there way too, which I am very excited about! Hopefully I can show loads more people around!! :)
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