....

Ive moved house. My new address is http://lamaisondemilleplateaux.blogspot.com/

last week in england

So am back in the cultural epicenter of pennant hills.
Not quite London, but hey. My mummy and my Lil bro are here.
I'm now faced with the daunting task of finding housing, a job and other things like furniture, as i even sold my bed thinking i would be trekking round Europe for a lot longer than two months.

yet I'm feeling surprisingly optimistic about the whole situation and things should fall into place methinks. perhaps that is the result of spending all day in bed. Still haven't got used to Aussie sleeping patterns.

here are some pics from my last week in England....

last weekend in london... for the time being.

Well we tried unsuccessfully to get into V festival this weekend with out prebooking tickets.
Shit ay? It meant wandering around chatting to touts most of the day.
They were mostly very scary people and we got yelled at and called many different things because they were asking really ridiculos prices.
So I think I got a taste of the london underground mafia.
My favourite encounter was when This massive solid muscle of a man was towering over us, yelling "listen" listen" and when he had out attention, repeated those words just for effect. To show how hard he was.
Luckily we left without Jake getting beaten to a pulp, as he had the nerve to tell the tout it was bit too much money.

So we went to london instead and had a great night out at a club which had this amazing room, filled with red curtains, chandiers and golden ornate mirrors, they were playing really funny dance music. My cousins cousin had me in stitches the whole night as he was a complete party animal and by the end of the night knew everyone in the club. Although he appears to not remember it at all.

Pictures...

bored of blog....

Allora...
I havent posted for awhile coz so much is going on and I would rather be doing other things than writing posts for the blog and I end up writing indiviual letter essays anyway.

So I will keep posting pictures but wont be writing so much from now on.

Went to london last weekend, had a ball. Saw the tate, as you do... had to stop myself from drooling over many of the exhibits. So many amazing works and artists. Hung out mostly in Camden on saturday....




Since then finished work had the finishing work party as you do... managed to tell a completely inappropriate joke to a bunch of teachers as you do... you know the baby in the blender one? oops.
will post photo's later a friend is holding them hostage. for good reason.

Have been going on lots of walks in the countryside with SI, which has been absolutly wonderful.....





prossimo la settimana, Italia
Come si dice, more wine?
AHHHH... Piu vino!

London

My brain is a bit fried from being sick all week, with the flu and my wisdom teeth coming through, I still went to school to teach though.
So I don't have much to say other than I guess I have been whinging a lot, I managed to get through the entire season of "the office" and watch about 3 films.

Last weekend was brilliant though, OK just a few words about that....

Last Saturday, I took a group of mostly unimpressed Italian students to see the sights of London, despite not having ever been there myself. It worked out well though, I got paid to go sight seeing and I guess in a way baby sit a group of kids that are much to old for that rubbish. They were much more interested in flirting and trying to look cool than in Big Ben and the history of Buckingham Palace.
The other leader thankfully knew London better than me and so lead us around all day and gave me the grand tour.

What could have been a rather boring day turned out to be quite fun as
mister and I devised a running commentary on the courtship rituals of Italian teens. It mostly involved the boys showing off their fake tattoo's while the girls wore clothes much too small and not enough of them for weather so cold and wet. Hanging about the boys giggling and making sure they had the arm of a girlfriend for support.

some photo's...



Also later that night, All the kids( by kids I actually mean adults, just needed to clarify in case anyone gets offended.) of the dunster house and I went round to the Freeman family BBQ.
Was Great!!!! Got to meet all my cousins plus many more semi-related people. They had me in stitches, This side of the family has a very dark sense of humor and (I think, Mr cardigan man can correct me if I'm wrong) we got along wonderfully.

One of my cousins works in a hospital and he was telling me the most disgusting stories he could think of, kept me entertained for ages.

Some more photo's....




Yeah.. so that's about as much as my brain and sore mouth can handle right now.
Am going out to eat Thai with the teacher's this evening and in upcoming news I will let you all know how the shooting of a video I'm making goes.
Some of the teacher's have agreed to be in a dance video, One is a professional dancer, the others however..... well it should be interesting
and f*^%^£ing hilarious.

One more photo, This is my wonderful cousin who I would always rave about back home.
Introducing the beautiful Miss H...


She's finally back in eastbourne and I took this photo after she came back from a wedding at chalk farm. Its the farm that Orwell's animal farm is based on. How historical Huh?

Ze first two weeks...

So time is passing so quickly here and I am loving every minute of being surrounded by all things english.
The first week of school was quite chaotic but I feel I am well adjusted now to the time difference and to the general
teacher-y tasks I must perform. One unexpected side effect of being an english language teacher is my grammar and spelling have improved ten-fold.( Duchess, I'm sure you you would be very proud of me.) Although there have been a few embarressing instances where 12yr old italians have corrected my spelling.

So much has happened in the last week, I'm actually stuck for a place to start....
How bout some photo's then?




These are two of my classes, Arn't they lil cuties.
(when they behave and do what they are told, which I might add isn't as often as you might think.)
nah... actually, they're pretty good kid's.

Most of my students are either italian, spanish or russian (with the occasional hungerian) and in a bizzare way, my 3yrs of high school italian (which I thought I would never use) is actually starting to come in handy.
I'm finding the phrase "non basta silenzio" most useful.
translated - "not enough silence"
What's more it gives me the upper hand in class even though I only understand a few words of what the kid's are gossiping about when they should be doing work, they think I know italian... but am just being a good english teacher by only talking to them in english.
So it does maintain a little bit more order in the class then there otherwise would be.

I'm also starting to learn german from Anja (pictured far left below)



I can say... slug, snake, dirty, how are you? good thanks, cheers and ask for help.
learn't in that order.
Also in the picture above is Simon (obviously the boy) Sara and her high school friend ( whose name escapes me this moment, sorry)

Have been visiting the local pubs... when I haven't been dog-tired from getting up at 5am to do lesson planning and teaching for 8hrs a day.
The other teachers I work with are brilliant and they have me in stitches, real comedians. Theyr'e from all over the world too.
So finally joined them for a night out at the pub last friday..... oi.
The combination of trying to keep up with the teachers and activity leaders who are "well solid lads" and of course not as solid lasses but who are all still used to drinking pints..... meant I was by far the drunkest one there.
I mean, I am pretty small in comparison to these P.E. teachers in training that have biceps twice the size of my head.

Still... during the course of the night I managed to ( apart from being generally an obnoxious loud mouthed okka drunk)
walk slap bang into a huge metal pole mid-sentence in front of everyone, keep disappearing inbetween pub-hopping for a toilet stop, ( for those of you that know me well this won't be that shocking, however in front of your co-workers who you will be spending the next 5 weeks working closely with, it's probly not the best way to impress them.), danced very badly at the local surburban meat market club,T.J's.
and the best part which I don't remember.... managed to be carried to a fellow teachers place, where she proceeded to mother me. Making sure I had enough water and all that jazz.

Yup,.... Saturday was not my finest day, neither was monday, when even the teacher's who weren't there that night reminded me of all of the events listed above.

Anyways, Sunday I got to meet some more cousins. Mark, Caroline and the cutest 7yr old ever, their daughter, Ruby.
Simon joined us and we all had an amazing lunch at their house. We also did some Sightseeing of Hastings and Rye. Which have really cute reallly really really old little gingerbread type shops and houses and I also got to see my first infamously english, pebble beach in hastings.
I forgot to take digital pic's on this outing so to appease those who have been emailing asking for pic's.
Here are some from my walk today out on the sussex down's. It doesn't get dark here till 9.30pm, so great!
Plus I got the arvo off, Woot!





There's so much more to say but will have to leave it for now, must go to bed.
Besides Ive rambled enough.

Pommy land!

So I've been in England four days now and I think I'm adjusting quite well.
I'm certainly drinking more tea.

The actual plane ride was sweet as, from KL to Heathrow
I had four seats all to myself, So just stretched out, ate a lot,
watched video's and napped. A bit like being unemployed really.
Simon, my cuz (who is just two weeks older) met me at the airport. I was staggering along, according to Simon
looking like a snail because of my pack, when out of the sea of faces
these long tanned arms just reach out and give me the biggest hug. Took
me a while to register it was him,haven't seen him since I was 16, so its been about ten years.

On
the way back to my cousins house, There was this amazingly full rainbow
which I'm taking to be a good omen, it spread from one side of the
downs to the other.
So beautiful.... The landscape here in the south is very typically English countryside,
all the cliche's you conjure in your head when I say that, that's pretty much spot on. Doesn't make it any less foreign and amazing to my Aussie eye however.

In
this part of East Sussex all the ground beneath us is white chalk, so
when you get to the cliff's on the shore, they are a brilliant white.
Sara and John (new mum and dad) my older cousins took me to Beachy head yesterday.



Apart from the starkness the other things that struck me were....
the way the wind rippled the long grass on the Downs (rolling hills) in the most beautiful way so the land looked like water. I' might make a video work inspired by this.

The
horizon, where the sea meets the sky is fuzzy, it creates a really
strange blur effect on your eyes. I'm so used to being able to see the
exact point where the two meet.

We also went to this really cute, really frigging old pub called the tiger inn.
My red-headed friend was correct. English beer is heaps better than Aussie beer.
I had a local brew called Harvey's, subtly fruity and not gassy at all, room temperature and really damn nice.

This is the place I'm staying....



, apart from the kid's Ive already mentioned, there are two German girls who are working for the school too. They are incredibly sweet, are in their 20's and have a rather large shoe collection, much to the families amusement and constant teasing.
Poppy and Rosie, one of whom you can see in the photo above. Which are the sookiest Labradors. their favourite past times
include sleeping and standing in doorways to obstruct passing humans,
begging for scraps at the dinner table and eating apples from the
garden, which makes them a bit crazy-like and their wee smell funny (so
i am told)
Soon Hannah, My other cuz will join us and it will be a very full house.

there is so much more to say... about the history of the eastbourne, family anecdotes I have discovered, my first day at school.
But I feel Ive ranted long enough for the time being. Plus soon we are going to be heading around to Brighton on John's boat, weeee heee! Then later tonight I will get to meet my grandfather's brother, who I am told is quite similar to gramps.
lots of love to all ya Sydney folk.
mwa
ana