car crashes, houses and work

Finally started work and what a nightmare it has been. There are not enough geography teachers until the new one starts in three weeks (an old lady called Wendy!), they are looking to move away from laptops but haven't ordered enough textbooks and a list of other moans all at the same time as starting to run a department.

Right, moan overwith. I was getting a tad fed up with the school but then the kids turned up. I thought they were going to be hard pushed to live up to King Edward's pupil standards but they are really running the KES boys closely. The kids are polite, neatly dressed, conscientious and above all, make it enjoyable to turn up to work for. All the complaints are quickly forgotten and you just get right on back to the classroom.

The first week in actually teaching (preceded by two weeks of teacher training and INSETS!!!!) has been a duty week. Normally I would have a good teacher moan about duty week but there is something quite pleasant about patrolling the school when it is 30 degrees outside. This week's duty of sitting by the outdoor swimming pool has been particularly arduous!

Back to the INSETs. The first one was an 'expert' on being a form tutor. The fact that she had never stepped inside a classroom in her life did not matter - 'she had done a course in the US' was clearly her main qualification. I think that this course in Chicago was clearly full of people full of themselves. 'Children are like trees' ' let them grow and care for the fallen apples'. I am not even making this nonsense up!

'How do you feel about your own self' 'how does this activity make you feel'

My reply was something along the lines of 'this is nonsense there is no way we would have time for this' - by the time you have done the register, given out detentions, checed little Pedro's lost bag, checked what activities people have signed up for, checked uniform and checked homework planners, there is very little time to put down the fertiliser of love and watch the fruits blossom into a caring child'. Fortunatly, this lady was only in for half a day and then I am sure she went off to another school or maybe another course.

I have also moved into the house (photos above). Clare had a list of criteria that needed to be filled: local park (check x 4), outside space (check), roof terrace (check), 2 double bedrooms (check), a study/nursery (check), spanish type design (check), 2 bathrooms + an extra one for the maid (check), a bath (check). I managed to get everything apart from the pool. However we will only be a ten minute walk from school where there is a free heated outdoor pool for us to use!!!! I cannot wait to bring up mini Pitt in our spaciuos new home.

The only problem with the house came when I had to go to el banko with the landlordo. We drove there sharing quality conversation (with my pigeon spanish and his pigeon english), and then waited (a Peruvian passtime) for an hour to get served. Finally we got the money and although I needed to go to work ,which was around the corner, he insisted on driving. A nice gesture but when we stopped at the traffic lights, the car behind smashed into the back of us without even trying to brake. The look of terror in el landloro's eyes was horrifying but nobody was hurt apart from the bumper fell off.

I finally got into work to find the TV switched off (the only reason I was going in was becasue they have cable and I could watch the rugby!!!). So after a car crash I dont even get to watch England lose to Ireland (probably for the best as swearing in school is never a great thing to do in your first week).

Adios muchachos