The New Year

After five very busy weeks at school we were off once again on a wonderful invention over here known as February break. Monique and I had a very busy January as we started training at the beginning of the year. I will get into that in a later post. We were looking forward to seeing more of Europe. The trip started with an absolute travel nightmare as we decided to vacation in Nice, but took a deter to Dublin for the weekend first. It was actually cheaper to fly to Dublin and spend the weekend, than to fly to Nice direct. This decision turned into a nightmare as we spent an entire day travelling from one airport to another since our early flight was cancelled. They have many discount airlines in Europe but they run on tight schedules. If they are overdue due to weather, they cancel flights and give you options. What a nightmare. We finally arrived in Dublin at just past midnight, missing an entire day, but OH WELL life goes on. We enjoyed our one day in Dublin immensely. We walk around the city and went to Trinity University and saw the famous book of the Kells and the coolest library I have ever been in. I also tried seeing a former student who is spending the semester in Dublin, but we never could get ahold of her. (Kelly i am talking to you). We went to the Guiness warehouse which is an amazing building and we told everyone that we met about our 6'9" irish friend back in Chicago. Mr. Woolley they are demanding you in your homeland. All in all the detour to Dublin was well worth it, even with all of the travel nightmares.

Cheers

Back into the Game

Once again it has been awhile since I have blogged. Teaching can be a very demanding mistress. When last we adventured, we had just returned from a beautiful week in Cyprus and much!!!! has occurred since then. We spent three days in London on our return and did after holiday shopping. London at Christmas was amazing, but by far the best story was the carnival in Leiceister Square. It is one of our favorite places in the city and we found the carnival by mistake. Monique and I went on some of the rides and of course Monique played some of the cheesy games, but you can never win at those WRONG!!! She won a six foot white tiger. See the picture of her bringing it back on the Tube, it was a riot. Everyone in London was staring. Priceless. We got back on the 30th to Mussey and the next day was Hogemany (new year's eve) This is a major event in Edinburgh and over 140,000 people took part. Brian bought us tickets to the Princes street gardens and we got to Cailih (scottish dancing) all night long. At midnight they send off fireworks from all seven hills and the castle. Tremendous. Then we had the largest mass singing of Auld Lang Syne which is a song of Scottish origin. It was one of the top nights that we have had thus far. Enjoyed it immensely. I will try to catch up over the next couple of weeks.

Cheers

Christmas in Cyprus

Hope to hear from some of my readers in the near future. I know people have been visiting by the counter, but comments have become sparse. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we were on our way to Cyprus for the break. The sun was much needed. It was never warmer than 75 degrees but the sun felt tremendous in the middle of winter. It is actually NOT that cold here in Scotland, and they do not get much snow. It sounds like winter is much worse in Chicago this year. We stayed just north of Paphos, which is a famous city that has seen the likes of the Romans, Greeks (Alexander the Great), the Byzantines, the Crusaders and the Persians. As an island it is literally at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe and played a crucial role as a port. I know HISTORY GEEK. Seriously though the ruins on the island were awesome. One day we went to Kato Paphos which is a UNESCO site that was a roman and byzantine town and then on the last full day we went to Kourion which is one of the most complete Roman towns anywhere and has the original greek ampitheatre, I was in heaven, plus the views were magnificant. We also met a lot of very nice people on the trip. We were the only Americans anywhere, and everyone wanted to know why we were there. We got to be regulars at some of the coffee shops in town. We also spent a day in Nicosea(Lefkosos) which is the only walled city left in the world. (since Berlin fell) Turkey invaded in 1974 and still control a third of the island. We crossed over to the Turkish Cypriot side which was very interesting to contrast. We also had an amazing meal on the Greek side. The best story of the trip however was probably the following: we rented a car and I have not driven since leaving the United States. We went out to the car and it was already dark. I went to the drivers side, because I was told they drove on our side of the road. To make a long story short they drive on the British side, since it was a fomer colony. It was dark, we did not know where our apartment was, and I was driving on the left hand side for the first time ever. I am still alive to talk about it. :) All in all, an amazing TRIP. Enjoy the pictures.

Cheers

Musselburgh Grammer School

Except for two of the field trips that I have been on I have not really talked about life at the Grammer as they refer to it around here. MGS is just like an American high school except that they incorporate the last two years of middle school along with the high school pupils. There are also high schools in Scotland, but they also have all six grades. They are referred to as S1,S2,S3,S4,S5 and S6. I am teaching students in S2-S6, so my S2 pupils (that is their name for students) are younger than any students I have taught before. Also the average age of a student, say an S5 which would be like a junior in the states is generally a little younger. Most students graduate when they are 17 even if they go the full 6 years. Many also leave school after the fourth year, which is the year of mandatory nationwide tests. Those that do not go to University tend to leave at this time. Students can also leave after their S5 year if they already qualify for "Uni". Many of these students take a GAP year (along with alot after S6) A GAP year, which I think we should get in the states, is when the students either travel, donate their time to a good cause, or get work experience. A number come to the states for camp America. They have a more prescribed curriculum than we have (mike woolley would not like it) and many high pressure tests from S4-S6. For that reason there are three different grading scales that I had to learn this year and none of them are like ours. I just finished grading S4 prelims before break which is their practice for their main exams in May. There are alot of other differences. Please leave questions in the comments section and I will answer them in later blogs. The picture at the top is the school and the one at the bottom is my Higher class (S5 and S6) with the electoral map of the 2008 election.

Cheers

Christmas in Edinburgh

I am now heading backward over the past month of activities. We are on our way to London to go on the trip in my previous post. I am going backward a week to my birthday. We went into Edinburgh to see the city at Christmas and it was brilliant. The main area of activity in Edinburgh is the Princes street gardens, where we will be for New Year's or Hogemany as they call it here. During the month of December the gardens have a huge ice rink and tons of what we would call carnival rides, but they all have a winter flair. (something you could not do in Chicago, especially with all of the snow you guys have had) In addition to the rides and decorations there is the German market which is hundreds of shops set up along the street with all sorts of intriguing items from across Europe, but with a German focus. There is mulled wine, sausages, crepes and great arts and crafts, although some of it is of lesser quality. When you stand in certain places the city looks absolutely spectacular. After spending a number of hours in the area, we walked across to high street (the royal mile) and down to the grassmarket area looking for a restaurant called Blue. The reason we went to the restaurant is that the Kelly's got us a gift certificate to this place online before we left last summer. We found the place and had an amazing lunch, of course taking pictures for the Kellys. We then wound our way back along Princes street where all of the shops are with Beth and Monique stopping in many places looking for bargains. I of course spent most of my time in the local book store looking at guide books for Cyprus. All in all it was a tremendous birthday, my first in a foreign country.

Cheers

Failing miserably to keep up to date

It is the Thursday night before the last day of term. I know that I have been horrible keeping the site up to date, much to Ms. Corrigans chagrin and Mr. Kelly's happiness. A lot has happened since my last blog and I did not even finish talking about my October break. Much of what has been going on is at school, where my focus has been of late. However, tomorrow at 12:00 we are leaving from Waverly station in Edinburgh to go to King's Cross in London, from there we have to get a train to Gatewick airport where we have a hotel for the evening. We are then getting a plan to Paphos airport in Cyprus and driving to the Royal Coral Bay Resort where I plan on collapsing for at least 36 hours before I begin to explore. We will be in Cyprus until the 27th, yes Christmas on the beach, never done that before. We return to London for three days after Christmas shopping in Notting Hill before returning to Musselburgh and going to the Princes Street Gardens for Hogemany on New Year's Eve. Other than that we are not doing much over the holidays :) So I should have lots of photos for everybody over the next two weeks. In the meantime here are some of the final pictures from our October break. We left London and went to a little town on the south coast called Combepyne which is where my cousin Debbie and her husband Robert live. They took us to Lyme Regis which is well known from the movie the French Lieutenant's Women. We had some perfect days of weather and the English channel was delightful.

All our best to EVERYONE over the holidays and may all your travels be safe.

Cheers

October Break

They have this fabulous idea in Scottish education call October break. So we had of from Oct. 10 to Oct. 20 and decided to do some exploring. We will have six weeks in total off during the year, so hopefully we will have many adventures. My parents were in town after spending a month in Sweden, Estonia, Russia and the Ukraine. We decided on a nice jaunt down to London again and then to the south coast to vist my cousin Debbie who married an englishmen years ago. Since we only spent less that 48 hours the first time down, we thought we would spend more time and do some of the tourist stuff. On the first day, by accident we went by the fountain that they built in memorium for princess Diana, it is in the middle of Hyde Park and it was a beautiful October day. We then had tea and crumpets at Harrods department store. We then went to St. Paul's Cathedral. After dinner we dropped off my parents at the hotel and went for a late night walk around London, ending again in Leicester square. The next day we went and saw the tourist hot spots of London. We went first to the Tower of London where you can find more history than in a book, not to mention the priceless crown jewels. We then went to the number one tourist spot in the world the London Eye. I will be honest, I had no interest in going on the eye, but it was a pretty cool experience and everyone should try it at least once. The pictures that are included from the first two days are Monique at the Princess Di memorial, Monique with a beefeater (which is what they call the guards at the tower) and finally some shots of London from the top of the world.