What Are They Doing?

I set off for work this morning heading down to the bus stop to get the 7:15 am bus. When I arrived there were other people there so I knew the bus was still on its way. So I waited and waited and waited… A bus went past in the opposite direction and seeing as we are only a few stops from the end of the run, I knew it would soon be coming back our way. So I took note of what the driver looked like to see if it would be the same bus that came back to pick us up. We waited and waited… the 7:25 am bus never arrived. We waited and waited… By this stage I was getting pissed off because I thought I wouldn’t make it to work on time. A bus finally came at nearly 7:40 am and it wasn’t the bus that had gone past in the opposite direction earlier! So I don’t know what happened to the busses and their drivers, perhaps the end of the run is like the Bermuda Triangle!
After my stressful morning, I got to work on time and had a good day. I just hope tomorrow morning is not so stressfull.

Filed under: General

We woke up on Saturday morning to absolutely beautiful weather. The sun was out, the sky was blue. We decided we had to use the great sunshine so we went walking to Chorlton and the water park. It was great to see so many other people doing the same thing. In the afternoon we met up with Sandra for some coffee. We went to an Armenian cafe. Sandra ordered coffee and a ciabatta. Tony and I just ordered a drink as we had already had lunch. Although it must have been Tone’s lucky day as the man made one extra ciabatta and gave it to Tone on the house. We also ordered some little biscuits and turkish delights and they were so tasty. We will definetly go back there. We came home for a quiet evening in, reseaching our trips and booking accommodation.
Sunday morning saw us awaken to stunning weather again. Although this weather was exciting, it also depressed us a little. Not having access to a car we can’t really take full advantage of the good weather. If we had a car, on a day like today we could just take off somewhere for the day. This has made us decide that after our trip to Spain we will seriously get in to the car hunting! We didn’t waste today though, we took a trip out to the Aviation Viewing Park at the Manchester Airport.
The Manchester Aviation Park was unreal. Although we had to pay to get into it (1 pound) it was such a great idea. The park was situated right beside the runways of the airport and had raised viewing platforms to give a better view of the aircraft. There were loads of people out there with some serious plane watchers that knew the aircraft by their callsigns. The highlight of the park though is the retired Concorde. Concorde G-BOAC was the second Concorde delivered to British Airways and holds a number of records; 4 crossings of the Atlantic in 24 hours and the highest commercial passenger aircraft ground speed at 1488mph. Another interesting thing that we saw was a Tupolev TU154 aircraft which is a Russian built commercial jet that I’ve never seen in Australia. It was just what I thought a Soviet built aircraft would be like - dirty and LOUD!
After a few hours out here we decided that we couldn’t handle the cold any more and went to wait for the bus home. Of course, as is our luck, the bus didn’t show for ages. At least this time there were other people there waiting too. Thankfully when we arrived home our house was nice and warm with the heating on. We warmed up further with a hot chocolate and then spent a relaxed night before having to face the next working week.

Filed under: General

We went out for curry tonight. It was awesome. We went to the Shere Khan on the “Curry Mile” in Rusholme. Rusholme is a curry lover’s paradise - a 1 mile stretch of road lined with curry houses. We ate far to much as usual - I had my normal Butter Chicken (Chicken Makarni over here) and Carmen continued her fondness of Lamb Rogan Josh. Anyhow, when we left there was this hold up of traffic. Down the street we saw the reason. There was a “gang” of around 20 bicycle riders cruising down the main road. They all had shiny bling on their bikes and flashy things on their wheels. The highlight was the designated music bike - a bike with a trailer carrying a boomin’ system crankin out some techno. Normally the hotted up cars slowly cruise up and down Oxford Rd on the weekend nights with their stereos booming and neons flashing. I think these cyclists were making a statement.
While we were waiting for our bus we also saw another crazy vehicle cruise up the road. An 8 wheel stretched Hummer. I just looked for some pictures of and attached one for all to see.

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Today was a much better day then yesterday (thank goodness). I think tomorrow will be even better though. Tomorrow is what they call a Student Review Day. Every student in the school has to come in for a 10 minute interview with their form teacher to discuss points like: the positives and negatives of their school life, what their interests are, what their goals are and how they can improve themselves at school. Then they move on to another teacher in the hall for another interview where they set specific “SMART TARGETS”. These are realistic goals that they set for themselves (with the guidance of the teacher), goals that will help them improve their schooling and results. I think the idea is that they are trying to make the students responsible for their own learning.
My job is to do the initial interviews with my form class. I think this will be interesting and give me a chance to get to know them. It also means no planning or preparation and a bit of free time during the day to get organised for next week - bargain!
My good day was let down a little by my bus trip home. I don’t understand the logic of bus drivers. I caught the 111 from Picadilly(in the middle of the city). So many people piled on here that it was already nearly full. We were leaving Picadilly and another 111 came in, so it was basically only 2 busses behind the one I was on. Then as we drove the route our bus driver kept stopping to pick people up, we were getting more and more full and yet the other one behind us was nearly empty! I would have thought that these guys would communicate with each other on their radios and the empty one do the pick ups seeing as ours was full but maybe there is some rules about bus driving that I don’t understand. The joys of public transport.

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I am glad to be home tonight, for some reason I am shattered. I think I had one of those days where if a student could get on my nerves they did. And when you teach approximately 80 students in a day…, well I will leave the rest to your imagination. It will be early to bed for this little chicken tonight!
I have become quite addicted to Sukoku puzzles and look forward to doing some on the way to and from school. I was proud today I completed 3 in my travels throughout the day.
I arrived home to Tone organinsing Bangers and Mash for dinner - yummy! We are just trying to think what Australian meal we can have tomorrow night to celebrate Australia Day. I hope that you all enjoy your day relaxing in the sun listening to triple J’s hottest 100. There is a bar in town called the Walkabout which is full of Australians so perhaps we can stick our heads in there for a drink to celebrate.

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I am loving it! The tram rocks compared to the bus. To get to school now I catch a bus into town and then a tram out of town to school. Instead of taking about an hour and a half to get to work it now takes me just on an hour, sometimes I am home by 5 pm and I even beat Tone! This defintely makes work much easier to handle. Go the trams!!

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After Christmas I started working at a new school. At the time I didn’t really know why I changed schools, it was still just as far away from home and it mean’t that I had to start all over again getting to know the school and the students. I am glad I did! I am only teaching music (no more maths) and I feel like I am teaching! The school is what they call a split site school, that means they have two separate campuses (one about 7 minutes walk away from the other). I teach music to years 7,8,9 and 10 on both campuses (yes this means I get a nice walk once sometimes twice a day between schools!). I work with Paul who teaches some music classes and all the music technology classes. He is one of those inspirational teachers who make you want to think of new and innovative ways to teach the students. I have never seen a music department which is so well resourced ( I will have to take the camera to school and take some photos to show everyone). In the classroom that I teach in on the East Campus there is a drum kit, amps and electric guitars, a piano and 30 working keyboards with headsets. At the classroom I teach in on the West Campus there is again the same equipment but this time with about 15 computers with music software on them! This is not all - the music technology department (one on each site) has 30 computers with midi keyboards and head sets! Could you imagine having this in Rosewood!!! It is amazing how resources make a difference to your teaching and the students learning. Most of the staff are really friendly and they always smile and say hi. All in all, the school has a totally different feel to the last one and I am glad that I left my comfort zone!

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We decided yesterday not to come straight home from work but to meet up in town and have a few drinks in some bars in an area of town that is called the Northern Quarter. It is a nice area of the city with quite trendy bars. We had dinner in a place called Yates’s where we scored a bargain of 2 meals for 5.95. They were quite tasty too. We then met up with Dhana and Craig in a bar called Bite. It had a live dj mixing music downstairs. Craig was actually heading out on a boys night so his friend met up with him and then they headed off to other pubs leaving the three of us in Bite. We had a few more drinks here (I tried a draught cider which was disgusting and Tone tried a raspberry beer which was actually really tasty - even I could drink it!). The music here, although good music, kept getting louder and louder as the night went on so we decided to try somewhere a little quieter. Just down the street a little bit was another bar called Simple. It had a great atmosphere (less noisy and smoky) and so we stayed here for a drink. The night was great fun, and we were home in bed by 12:30!

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