Now that I am half way through our trip, I am continuously getting asked what my favorite part is so far, but honestly, I don't have a "favorite part." Why? I am having the time of my life, and enjoying every day! This trip as a whole is my favorite part. Although that might seem silly, I have never experienced anything like this in my life. I am learning through so many experiences. I have experienced several completely different cultures. For the first time in my life I have experienced a language barrier. Not speaking the language is not a feeling you can explain to someone else. It has definitely given me a perspective into how an English as a Second Language student would feel in an American classroom. Traveling Europe is an amazing experience where I have learned so much. It is amazing how different the culture is here. I honestly like it better. It's much more detached and not so technology driven, but still just as informed with the same expectations here. I have met quite a few Americans while living here and their reasons for moving to Europe have all been very interesting. You can get newspapers for free at any street corner and there are two published each day. I admit I feel like an old person when I pick one up, but they're always so interesting. Here it is required by the government that a business person is not allowed to work over 35 hours a week and gets a minimum of 25 paid days off, plus 9 bank holidays. I am told that on average most businesses allow 35 paid days off. Maternity leave is also 2 years full pay and you can extend it to 5 years while still receiving eighty percent of your original salary. These are just a few examples of how the lifestyle is so different here! I am thoroughly enjoying the school that I am working with. The students are extremely respectful of the teachers. The staff is always encouraging us to try new things in the classroom. The parents are highly involved and constantly asking how they can help and what they should be working on with their students at home. Much Woolton has offered me so many wonderful opportunities and I am trying to make the most of it all while I am over here. Here are some pictures from my classroom!
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We started off our morning in London by taking the tube out to the Sherlock Holmes house. It was so much fun to walk through. All of the employees were dressed up like Sherlock Holmes characters. We spent a while playing with all of the magnification glasses and reading about Sherlock Holmes. Near the Sherlock Holmes house was Abbey Road, so we had to pose like the Beatles!! This was actually quite entertaining. There were obviously lots of tourists doing the same things as us, but since pedestrians have the right of way traffic has to stop for all the tourists taking this picture. Naturally the locals were not very happy having to wait for the tourists to take all of their pictures. When you would stop and take this picture, there would be a line of traffic honking their horns. It was rather funny to people watch here! After the Sherlock House and Abbey Road, we made our way to the Tardis and had a little Dr. Who fun for all my fellow fans who know what I'm referring to! From there we went to the National History Museum and went through the Dinosaur exhibit. I felt like I was in Night at the Museum. It was so much fun to go through the interactive exhibits. I would love to have free resources like this available for my students to visit. As an adult I am fascinated with all of the things here. For kids I can only imagine how amazed they would be. From the terrific museum we went to the parent trap house! After the National History Museum we went to the Parent Trap House across the street! This was a house that was in one of my favorite movies growing up. It still looks exactly the same. We had to reenact our favorite scenes before moving on to the British museum. By this time it was already rather late in the afternoon and we didn't have long until the museum closed. We got to see the Rosetta stone though! This is a piece of history that contained so much information for us. It was the main thing I wanted to see there! After the British museum we went to our hostel and began our journey back to Liverpool. I really enjoyed my time in London. I hope that I can make it back there before I return to the states. Everyone we met in London was extremely friendly and helpful. The city was much larger that New York, but I loved the style of the city. The only issues I had was with all of their pollution. For our weekend there the city was on high alert and all of the locals were wearing masks. It made my throat hurt and you could definitely tell their air was toxic. They had signs everywhere about working out outside of city limits because the air was too toxic. After getting back to Liverpool you could instantly tell a difference. I would recommend London to anyone as a MUST SEE!!
We had an early start, but I met two girls from our group at the London Eye at 9am. We spent 30 minutes rotating around the Eye getting a birdseye view of the city. We also got a commentator for what we were seeing during our ride. everything looked so pretty and peaceful during the ride. This was one of the highlights so far in London. We bought day and night tickets so we could see London twice because we could not decide when would be the best time to go! From the London Eye, we walked across the West Minister Bridge to Big Ben and the Westminster Abbey. I did not know prior to visiting London that Big Ben was attached to the house of parliament. Having these two attractions so close made for lots of tourists in one small area, so we didn't stay for long. Admiring its size and beauty, though, was enjoyable. After leaving Big Ben, on a search for somewhere to eat, we passed two very large and active protest groups. One was protesting for dolphins, chanting about saving the dolphins. Then the other, and much larger protest, was regarding ISIS... which is taken much more seriously and to heart in Europe. It was intresting to listen to the people protest in a peaceful manner, stating what they thought the government should do, and to take action regarding ISIS. We ate lunch at a pub called The Central, near the base of Big Ben. This is where we got our local meal that everyone was recommending. Steak & kidney pie is now one of my favorite foods I have had since I have been here. It's a close tie with the Dutch butterballs. I would recommend it to anyone traveling through London! After fueling up, we were off to Shakespeare's Globe, London Bridge, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and Borough Market. These sights were all within two or three block of each other, which made it really nice for us! The tube made traveling from one region to the next quick and efficient. I think it is required you sing the London Bridge song a minimum of 5 times when crossing it, am I correct? I know that I certainly did! It was a really windy day and I don't think being on a bridge over a river was helping! The tower was really interesting to see and to learn about how it worked in its working days. If you wished to enter the tower, you would have to walk through the yard that always had at least two lions. Friendly, right? The Tower Bridge is not nearly as famous, but it certainly stands out more compared to London Bridge, which I was surprised by. The Borough Market was my favorite part of London. I am finding that although all of the tourist sights are pretty to see, it is the markets I enjoy. I think this is where you are truly experiencing the culture of the cities. This market is the oldest market known to date that is still open. The Borough Market opened during the 13th century and has been open every day since then. At this market you could find all kinds of fresh food. I was really happy to finally get some fruit! Since it is too cold in England to grow fruit, they have to get it from other places, making it expensive and not common in meals. You don't realize how much you enjoy your fruits and vegetables until you have to go without them! Don't worry though, you will find potatoes incorporated into every meal.. and you think I'm kidding. Reguardless of where you travel in the UK, it is always the same when it comes to their potatoes. At this market we all got fruit, some fresh granola, and juice that had been hand squeezed with no sugars added. It was quite tasty. From here, we were off to China Town! This is where we got some tasty Chinese food for dinner. Next to China Town in Leicester Square is where the real adventure awaited! Amongst all of the street performers and talented performers was ... wait for it... M & M World! This was 4 stories of fun for three college girls! It was now time for our night ride on the London Eye! I am not sure which I enjoyed more the day or night ride. During the night ride the entire city was sparkling, it was an amazing sight to see. It was worth the three more dollars to ride the London Eye twice, I would recommend it to anyone! After our second time around the London Eye we went to go get some drinks at a pub on the river. It was a wonderful day full of lots of adventure and walking! I fell in love with London today.
Our first adventure was off to Platform 9 3/4, for all of you Harry Potter fans you know exactly what I'm referring to! It was quite entertaining all of the things that the had to make the experience authentic. I had quite a few laughs at all of the things people came up with to do in their pictures.
After getting our geek on we were off the the Buckingham Palace. We planned it just right so that we would be there for a guard exchange. This is such an interesting tradition to see. All of the guards had their traditional huge black fluffy hats. There were also bands marching in all of the new guards. The whole process took about an hour. Every time a guest would enter or exit the palace it would be by carriage although it would have all of the windows covered, unfortunately. I made sure to confess my love to Prince Harry from outside the gates, we set our wedding dates and the invitations should be arriving in the mail anyway now. The road leading up to the palace was beautiful, the landscaping was amazing. From the palace we went to the Hyde Park. On the way we passed through a WWII memorial. This memorial was different from ones back in the states, because this is where a bombing occurred. Learning about WWII at Mulch Woolton is completed different and so much more fascinating that my experiences growing up. So much of the war happened at Liverpool's docks, Manchester, and London. These three cities are all places that the children are extremely familiar with. When they talk about specific battles they refer to buildings and ruins that are still there today. Just WWII alone is 10-15 weeks of the students history lesson in Year 5 my teach told me. I enjoy being here and seeing the respect and pride the cities take in their memorials to this day. Hyde Park was a beautiful place, and the perfect stop for our picnic. It made you forget that you were in such a large city. In this park was a rose garden with roses bigger than your head! They were also in every color you could imagine. It was quite picturesque. There was also a memorial walk through this park dedicated to Princess Diana, and naturally we had to do the loop! It was beautiful the whole way around, and different signs highlighting her life along the way. We were off to Piccadilly Circus from here, a great place for live music and some wonderful culture! Along the way I got distracted by some sparkly tiaras in a jewelry store though, after posing next by a few for pictures an employee came outside. I was quite embarrassed, but he was actually asking me to come in. He told me the story behind each crown and their store. This was actually jewelers who design the royal families jewelry! I was in shock. He continued on telling us all of the high light pieces they had for various members of the royalty. Although, you were also able to purchase a few of the items that the royal family was selling that goes to various charities depending on the piece. All of the jewelry in there had been worn by the royal family and had a picture of them wearing it at the event. Let's just say even the pieces that were for sale were quite a few shinny pennies. I spent a lot of time walking through gawking at the beauty of it all. After awhile of talking with some employees they took me into the back where they were actively making some jewelry for the Royal family. They also showed me where Prince Charles had carved his name into a glass display case back there from when he was in the shop one day! One of the jewelers working there had designed the diamond skull that the queen requested and was auctioned off for 150 million dollars to someone from the states. I had heard about this piece on the Today show back at home and it was amazing to meet the man who made it! This was all by so much luck of me gawking at some sparkly pieces, but wow I was so lucky to have stumbled across this amazing opportunity! We finally made it to Piccadilly circus after our little detour and it was so nice to sit back and enjoy all of the entertainment going on. I felt like I was in time square back at home. We got to enjoy some Dave Mathews Band and cold ice cream on this hot day at the circus. From here we walked through Camden market and Portobello road market on our way to Oxford Circus and Oxford Street. Oxford Street was like the Magnificent Mile, high end shops as far as the eye could see! Oxford circus was a lot like Piccadilly, but much more fancy. We didn't spend long here before we had to go back and get ready for our play! I went with five other girls to go see Wicked! This was my first time ever seeing Wicked and I was pretty excited to finally go see it. The play was at Apollo Victoria theater. We had great seats for the play, the stage was so intricate! I was amazed at all of the detail and how good the play was. I wasn't sure how the story line was suppose to fit into The Wizard Of Oz until the end, but it all pulled together at the end! It was so interesting to learn the back story of it all. I loved the play and hope I can make it back to London to see another one. After the play we were all starving and went out to get some food and drinks. It was quite delicious, but in London it seemed that the whole city shuts down at 11:30. We went to a few places hoping to stay out a little later before we began to notice that all bars and restaurants close at 11:30. Most definitely different from eating establishments back at home. This was kind of a bummer, but we still had our fun! Today we got to go back into the primary school for the first time in what felt like forever. I'm so glad we got to go into the schools. We are done with our university seminars and will be going to school every morning from here on out. At this point we're expected to start doing a lot more teaching in the classroom. I'm excited to start doing more teaching at Mulch Wolton because there is such a difference in the school compared to the states.
After school two other girls and myself caught a bus to city center, with our bags packed from the night before, ready to go to London! It felt like in no time we were getting off the train and walking to our hostel. By the time we got there, we were all ready for some good food! We got an Italian dinner and yummm! It was quite delicious and filling. From dinner we went out exploring what was within walking distance of our hostel. We got pretty lucky and found several places we really liked, we spent the rest of our night socializing with some new friends we had met. This is my first overnight field trip experience and it was an overwhelming start with 57 2nd graders eagerly waiting for the train to pull into the station at 8:30am. It was a two hour train ride to York, and with 57 kids I thought we would never get there! In England there aren't designated school buses, but they can rent busses for hire like a taxi. When the schools go on a field trip, the students have to be dropped off at the station and picked up there by their parents. From the station we began our walk to the hostel. After checking in and getting settled in their rooms, which they were so excited about, we went to have lunch outside. We let the kids run wild and burn some energy after lunch because they had plenty to spare. The first museum we went to visit was a Viking museum. The kids were going crazy. This was a younger age of students than I have worked with in the past and they were all wound up about this trip. The museum had a setup of what an old Viking house would be like and the kids got to see what their daily lives would be like. It was hard for some of the kids to understand that a one room house would sleep 10-15 people in that era. We went onto a ride that followed a boy their age through his house and village. The ride was like King's Island, where you sit down and strap yourself in. The ride moves exhibit to exhibit and explains the scenario. The exhibits were very realistic and the students and I found it fascinating. At the blacksmith, you could smell the fire burning and see him working on his pieces. In the boy's home you could see his mom cooking and smell what was for dinner. Being immerged into the environment of the Viking era truly helped the kids relate, especially since it was a young boy telling the story. When we got out of our ride, we walked through the museum and listened to speakers. My favorite part was when an employee passed around what looked like a large brown rock. After all of the kids had passed it from person to person, she told them it was actually the largest fossilized human poop recorded in history. It even made the Guinness world records! All the kids were rather disgusted that they didn't find this out until after touching it, but I was crying I laughed so hard at their reaction. From the Viking museum, we went to an archeologist Vikings dig. The kids dug in four different levels, which represented four different eras, the lowest dig sight being the oldest of the four eras. I wasn't too impressed with this museum because they did not do a good job explaining to the children the meaning behind what they were doing/discovering. It seemed the kids were more just playing in sandboxes. We left and headed to the city wall. In the middle of York is a 2,000 year old castle. Around the castle was the city wall, which is still functional. We walked the perimeter of the city wall, which took quite a while with so many small children. We stopped along the way and explained all of the various functions of the walls. The boys loved learning the holes in the walls were used to shoot arrows out and they liked the trenches that surrounded the city walls. Experiencing these things in person truly caught their attention. From the city wall, we walked to dinner. Serving 57 kids was chaos, but interesting. Of 417 kids at Mulch Woolton, there is only one child with a food allergy. I found this fascinating. Last summer I had worked at a daycare with 18 kids in my classroom and 16 of the kids had food allergies, most with a list of things they were allergic to. So, you can only imagine my surprise when I found out that out of 417 kids, only one child had a food restriction and it was a nut allergy. Could this have something to do with how you're raised or the cultural environment? Putting all of these kids to bed was.... an experience we will call it. They were truly bouncing off the walls at this point. A special thanks to the parents who loaded their kid's suitcases with sweets. Since the kids were only 7 years old, this was the first night away from home for a few of them, so naturally they were homesick. Then you had some rooms who decided to stay up until 3 a.m. jumping on beds. Sleep is for the weak is what I am telling myself at this point after 12 days of continuous traveling. Who needs an alarm clock when you have 57 2nd graders? Not me, that is for sure! The kids began waking up around 5 a.m. and once one was up, they woke up their entire room.. too kind of them, I know. We tried to contain them to their rooms until 7 a.m., but I wouldn't call that too successful. We were at breakfast downstairs by 8 a.m. eating and getting ready for another day full of learning. After breakfast we went to a train museum. This museum was actually really cool. We split up into groups of 5 for the museum. I had my kids line up like a train and we would say "Choo Choo!" before moving from one train to the next. They though it was the coolest thing ever! There were at least 25 different trains, each one you could walk in and see the engineer's room. My boys loved taking turns being in the engineer's room and I had to drive them out every time. I learned the first train to haul passengers was in England. Even better, it was in Liverpool and went to Manchester. After the museum, we got to go on an open window (burrr) train ride around York. The kids were pointing out all of the new things they knew about trains, persistently asking the conductor to blow the horn. We had accidentally lost track of time and we had to sprint, literally sprint, to the train station to catch our train. I had to carry 2 kids the last 100 meters; we were that close to missing it. After leaving the museum, it was time to head back to Liverpool and the kids instantly fell asleep as soon as the train took off. From this trip I got to know the kids really well on an individual basis and I also picked up numerous tricks for classroom management on field trips. This was a lot to take in, but I feel I learned so much from this experience. The respect the students have for their teachers in England most definitely helped this experience be a positive one for everyone involved, but I still feel like I am more prepared for my own field trips one day. I can't upload pictures with the adorable kids, unfortunately, but here is the pretty town of York: Here are some pictures from my 10 days of travel and all of my incredible experiences! Unfortunately, I was unable to load images with the mobile app while I was traveling, but better late than never. |