Sunday, November 19, 2006

One of the good things about living in England and not owning a TV...

is that I have apparently been spared from all of the media coverage about that wedding that happened over in Italy yesterday. Somebody mentioned that a girl my age was marrying some crazy dude who used to be hot but is now very much not. And apparently he's waayyy older than she is too!

Being curious, I of course looked at some of the photographs and stories following this crazy "wedding", and realized that this couldn't be the Wedding of the Year because it actually isn't a legal union. Interesting...

Anyway, if you look at the wedding picture of Tom and Katie (I refuse to ever even utter that ridiculous name-combination that the media dreamed up), it appears that he is just a bit taller than her. Which is funny, because she has at least 3 inches over him when wearing flats. Even more interesting....

Getting married in a castle would be pretty fun. I won't lie and say that an Italian wedding with candles and torches and gorgeous flowers wouldn't be incredible. Then you look at who went to the wedding. Suddenly David and Victoria Beckam (why haven't they come up with a name for them??) are such good friends with the newly married nutbars that David is risking being kicked off of his soccer team because he attended the wedding instead of going back to his team as instructed. We all know that Oprah didn't attend - which is strange, but nothing Tom does anymore will surprise me (unless he allows Katie to rejoin Catholicism).

Will they last? I wouldn't bet on it, since he doesn't have the greatest track record for marriages. When it does end, the world will probably look on the inevitable messy divorce the same way they looked at Britney and Kevin: vague interest and the hope that they'll just go away soon.

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In the last week, I have put out some pretty miserable posts. Being completely aware of this, yet determined to participate in NaBloPoMo, I charged ahead and sat at my laptop with blurry, tired eyes more than once this week. This hasn't been easy and now I'm wondering why exactly I opted to try this, since it most definitely has not improved my writing. I don't want blogging to become something that is a chore.

If anybody is still reading this, I apologize for the state of these last several posts and will not be doing anything like that again. If I do continue posting everyday, I'll just put up a picture or two with a brief comment when I don't have anything to talk about.

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On a whole other note, I have officially become inducted into "Teacherhood". Two words:

Report Cards.

The mere mention of these tricky documents makes my mother shudder and brings on tales of hours spent in front of the computer, learning the programs that are used to create the reports (which seemed to change every other year when she was still teaching).

In England, they call them Progress Reports, and they are written by hand. Not a lot of writing either - I actually really like the format and will be spending a lot of time today working on getting them completed, so the kids can bring them home tomorrow. This is not something that a supply teacher should be doing, but there is nobody else to complete these for the class. And so when I was asked about these reports, I happily told the Head Teacher that "sure! I'd be glad to write these for you! They're supposed to go out tomorrow? Uh, is Monday fine? Okay - I'll do them on the weekend! Um... How do I write these?"

To his credit, he didn't act too shocked or upset that I not only didn't know how to write a Progress Report, but also had no idea that the school was handing these out this week. 'Tis the life of a non-permanent teacher though...

So here I sit, armed with several Progress Reports, hoping that I will be able to communicate the strengths, weaknesses, struggles, successes, and areas of improvement for each of the 30 children I've been teaching for less than a month. In Canada, teachers must be with a class for 6 weeks before legally being allowed to write Report Cards, but here I'm not sure what the restrictions are. Both the Head Teacher and Deputy Head are extremely supportive and grateful that I'm even doing this, so I have gotten a lot of support, and have been told to come early tomorrow if I need help with any of them.

Here's hoping that things work out...

I'm wishing for Tim Horton's more than ever today.



I will try to post something better tomorrow, but if you only see a picture with a brief little explanation (like the one of the payphone that was on the wrong end of a conversation), then just blame the report cards.

have a great Sunday everyone!


ps. I did write a post yesterday, but it was so bad that I've decided to just leave it as draft. Trust me - it would have been 5 minutes none of you would ever have gotten back.

2 Comments:

  • At 2:35 PM, Blogger BeechballBeatsCancer said…

    Good luck with writing those reports, Im sure you'll get them done no problemo - And if I could, i'd send you a nice big Timmy's Tea or Coffee because I know how it feels to crave them and no being able to have one - But now we know the perfect welcome home gift for you though! ;)

     
  • At 7:32 AM, Blogger Laura said…

    I liked the TomKat part of the post... ARG, report cards. I think teachers must be the only ones who dislike them more than students.

     

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