On Gehry, the Nature of the Artist, and Inspiration

So I'm watching a doumentary on Frank Gehry the famous architecht who I had only barely heard of and only then because he's redesigning the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. I was aware of some of his surreal architecture but had never thought about it much.

So anyway, his psychiatrist is being interviewed (Ha! I'm sure Gehry loved that!). I'm working from memory so it won't be perfectly word for word here but he says something along the lines of:

"People come to me and they say oh I have this problem in my marriage, how do I handle this stress at work, how do I fix my life, my kids and so forth. When an artist comes to me he wants to know how to change the world."

Hearing that startled me because it hit home so directly. I've been mentally chewing on it ever since.

So in honour of Mr. Gehry here are some pictures of his architecture. I mean this stuff shouldn't even stand up let alone ever have been made. Why am I posting this? Good question. There's something about these buildings that inspires me. Gehry referred to them as the chaos of Democracy. I can't really put my finer on it but that's the point. It's about not walking the beaten path, about insisting in doing it your way, about making something be more than what it was thought that it could be, and probably about pissing people off who would say "No good. Building line must be straight. Bad Building. Baaad Building." And because I want one.

On with the show! Gehry seems very inspired by sails. This building in Manhattan was specfically designed to look like sails as inspired by a brief conversation he had with Barry Diller who owns IAC/InterActiveCorp which in turn owns Ticketmaster, the television shopping network HSN, online dating service Match.com and search engine Ask Jeeves. It's hard to tell from the picture below but all the walls are actually glass.

The IAC Building - Manhattan

If you look at the front of the Disney (below) building it looks like two sails. In the documentary he said he designed it that way specifically based on the shape and form of the two sails (fore and aft I suppose?) when their both filled with air. Unfortunately I have no nautical vocabulary to describe this.

The Disney Building - California

Think of standing between the two and facing to the right of the photo and you can see that they really do look like sails.

The Dancing House - Prague

I love this building. It's so bizarre. There's a triangle piece in the tower on the left that looks likea pin and it looks like it's deflated the tower on the left. I assume it was done on purpose.

MIT Stata Complex

This is only 1 angle but I love it! I want to live in this building. Or work in it. It is so wickedly cool. Unfortunately I think that MIT requires some sort of math skill to get in.

Guggenheim Musem - Spain - Two Different Angles

The first anglemakes seems to fall under that sail theme again and the second seems to imply a boat. Love it!

The Seattle Music Experience Building

First the above view of the whole complex. It looks like a heart to me. That's what I thought. Apparently it's inspired by the image of a shattered Fender Stratocaster. Uh ok...not seeing it. Doesn't matter. It's still cool.

The Seattle Music Experience Building

Below are two angles of the Music Experience Building. It's an incredible place. See more photo's and read about it at: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/emp_n/index.htm
I just love the way light plays off the angles. When the light hits it it becomes, in Gehry's words, a living thing.

The Art Gallery of Ontario

I believe this will be completed in 2008. I see a sail motif again. The only problem with this is that it's interesting but not daring. This makes it a perfect fit for Toronto. (oh snap!) I can say that. I'm grew up there and I'm leaving for a reason. (snap! snap!)

And thus ends our mildly informative and hopefully somewhat inspirational tour of Gehry.

Woikin for da man every night and day...

David here. Just thought I'd identify who I am so you know before reading the whole posting. :)

Well, the new job is going well. I went through day 1 and spent eight hours planning preparing and focusing what I'm going to train on. I'm a little intimidated because, even though this is a new help desk, the company has hired only people who have previous experience. Technically that makes my job easy although I worry they've heard everything I'm going to train them on before and will be resistant.

So today I woke up with a bit of a lump in my throat and went to work. I finally finished planning my first hour long training session and I got to sit down with Phil (my manager - awesome guy) and showed him what I was planning. He was happy with it. At 4:00 he walked up and said, ok I've got two people you can train right now. And I thought "OH CRAP!" I did the training thing and it went really well.

Here's a note to all those who said we didn't learn anything at York or anyone who says education programs are useless. I've tried teaching BEFORE I went through the education program and I've tried teaching AFTER I went through the education program and I'm telling you it's night and day.

As for me I'm getting kinda homesick. After bitching about Toronto for years I'm actually missing it. Being in Wellington/Belleville is strange. I never realized how small Belleville was until Tuesday when I drove most of the way across town, paid a bill, and drove back to work again in 28 minutes. It's great that it's more laid back but the lack of options is startling. Then again, you've got whatever you need. In Toronto I can get food from 7 different countries on my corner - in Wellington I can't even order pizza past 9. It's a way different life. It is simpler though. It's easier to maintain focus here.

Anyway, I'm missing Genevieve too - Love you baby! Considering my minor culture shift her culture shock must be pretty intense.

I'll just keep plugging away at work and pray the whole visa thing works out. Argh.

Burns out.

Grand Central Station and talk of the Theatre....

Due to the housing woes (i.e. mainly the fact that I don't want to live with a bunch of filthy drunken frat boys, as proposed by Dave's school), I am still bunking with my lovely and generous family down in Chislehurst.

Currently living here are: myself (on spare matress on floor), my cousin Emma, my cousin John, his girl-friend Becky (most nights), Jane and my uncle Ron, 3 cats, and 3 lizards.

And there's only one bathroom.

Consequently, mornings are a bit like Grand Central station, or some Dickensian bording house, with girls thumping up and down stairs for their five-minute slots in the john, followed by five minutes at the breakfast counter (with the stool still warm from its prior occupant), all set the the dulcet sounds of yelling about who's got the hair-dryer and mum, what did you do with my jeans? no, not the blue pair, the black pair! No, not that black pair, the other black pair! And then, door slams at 7:30 and, in a whirl-wind of coats, everyone is suddenly gone, and the silence is not reassuring but somehow lonely and a bit of a let down.

But...I have located a new flat, as Dave previously mentioned. It's five minutes from the school and is brand-new, bright, modern, clean, with all new appliances and double-glazing, which always illicites approving murmurs over here. We'll move in on October 13th, which is a scant 3 weeks away, and gives us time to get our stuff together...maybe I'll even have a husband on these shores by then to help with the heavy lifting!

In terms of the theatre school...it's going well.

This week is mostly registration, meeting our tutors, going to classes on how to budget, lectures on the importance of proper hygene and frequent washing now that you are no longer living with Mummy (which sounds crazy, but you'd be surprised....I had a few run-ins with the personal hygeine problem at George Brown and it was NOT pretty. ) Pretty dull, and lots of hanging about, which is a pain when you have to travel 2 hours to get here each way, but all necessary stuff in order to begin properly next week. Meeting loads of nice folk, so that's good.

So things are looking up...hopefully tonight I will be able to FINALLY collect our 15 lonely boxes of shipped cargo from Stansted....fingers crossed y'all!

Good News...Finally

David Burns is now employed and Genevieve Burns now has a place to live. Whoo hoo!

First thing I thought of when I couldn't get to England was that I would have to find some sort of work here, but alas, I despaired that it would take a week or two to get work an interview and then another week or two to get hired...and then I'd be gone.

But sometimes strange things happen. A friend of my father's called and mentioned that he'd just started managing a call centre. I've been working in call centre's off and on for about 8 years now so my dad asked him if they were hiring. Turns out it's a very new call centre so they really need knowledgeable people. After talking to Phil (dad's friend) he thought I could train people. So I went in for an interview today and convinced the Operations Manager that, despite the fact that I'm only going to be around for 4 weeks (maybe more) I could really help them out.
She asked me to sit down and listen to some calls and inform them what I could do to help. I listened for about and hour and then noted the areas I saw for improvement. I prioritized what we should focus on based on their goals and needs and she hired me! Amazing how convincing you can be when you actually know what you're talking about. This type of training is something I've really wanted to do for a long time so it's a good match.

As for Genevieve, when she arrived at the house where the recruitment company was going to put us up she found it was an absolute pig sty. (is that one word?) There were at least 7 people living their, our bed looked slept in, there was underwear hanging on the staircase railing, moldy dishes in the sink and garbage on the kitchen table. We're not really picky but it was unlivable. That was Saturday but on Monday she found a nicer cleaner place that's a 5 minute walk from her school! And it's cheaper! We're going to move in with another student from her school named Rachel who seems super cool. All in all it's been a great two days. Things finally went right for a change. Genevieve described the house and it looks just like the one on the left minus the columns, 8 bedrooms, 5 fire places, 11 bathrooms, the brick exterior and the trees. It's a good size, well lit and clean though!

Strange synchronicity on the job front, makes you wonder if there's someone looking out for you.

Anyway, off to work tomorrow. Whoo Hoo!

P.S. Happy anniversary Genevieve. Sorry I can't be there. I love you!

Disaster

VISA REJECTED!

So the package arrived from the British High Commission yesterday at my mother's house. I was gleefully ready to drive back from Wellington. My mother opened the package and it contained a letter stating that the Visa I applied for was not the correct visa.

Apparently the recruitment company has been using what's called a Holiday/Work visa for teachers coming from Canada. This visa is intended to allow people to travel on holiday to England for 1 year and also to work during that time. The restriction on work is that you can't work over 195 days of the year. Since a school year is 9 months teachers fall under this number. Apparently this year a large number of Canadian applicants were refused. Apparently if you ticked off the box stating you would be working you were rejected. If you checked of the box stating you were going on holiday you were accepted. Once again... honesty is not the best policy.

So now I have to re-apply for a spousal visa. I would have done this to begin with but my recruitment company was resisting sending me a letter confirming employment and a letter confirming my housing. Why? I don't know! Genevieve has had the same problem with the school. You get responses like. "We don't do that." Then you ask why because after all it just means typing a letter for 5 minutes on a computer. Their response is generally "We don't do that."

Anyway, I'm 4-5 weeks from getting over there as I have to go through this whole process again.

On the upside I may have a job starting as early as this week in a call centre.

My family and Genevieve's family have been wonderfully supportive through all this so thanks to everyone...Dad, Louise, Mom, Brian, Genevieve's Mom, Dad, Grandmother, Aunt and Uncle and everyone in England.

And now we wait.

A Ray of Hope

I got a call from my mother today and apparently the British High Commission called and said my visa is in the mail! It should arrive Friday or possibly Monday. I'm heading back to Sutton tomorrow (Friday) to await its arrival. Hopefully it arrives and I can get a flight out same day...or at least before Monday. Amazing how this news has opened an emotional door I thought I'd lost. I've literally felt completely flat for days and days. I thought I was just getting old and worn out but it turns out I was just FREAKED OUT! England heeeere I come!

Oh...Rent. Terrible. I know I know. You love it, it was so moving, the singing was so wonderful. I'm going to forget about your feelings and say: WRONG! Unfortunately I can't contest the cachy-ness of the songs. LA VIE BOHEME! Goddamn it! LA VIE BOHEME! Take this song out of my head! Remove the (One song) rest of (Glory) songs from (One song) from my (before I go) head (Glory) before I kill myself. I can sing the whole FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED MINUTES by heart and I've only seen the movie once. This movie is way to way too bouncy and it's trying way to hard. It's also very cliche, or so I thought. Maybe it was hard hitting in the early nineties or to the Broadway musical crowd who can't believe they've seen a drag queen or someone shooting heroin or gay people but I've seen this all before and done way better.

Proof: Great acting. I think they messed something up in the movie version cause I just didn't quite get if that Dad (Anthony Hopkins) had been crazy the whole year he and his daughter (Gweneth Paltrow) had been doing math together or not. Completely confusing. Great performances though. Paltrow is amazing.

Cleaning House

Well, today was action packed. I spent the day cleaning the house here in Wellington with the 'rents. I know it doesn't sound exciting but at least I wasn't in couch mode all day yesterday.

For those of you who don't know, couch mode is a terrible place to be. It usually begins with me waking up and thinking...I have nothing to do today (which is almost always incorrect). Then I lie on the couch for hours and just flip channels. As I do this I sink deeper and deeper into the couch until only my eyes are visible from between a cushion and one finger stretches out to depress the up arrow on the remote. The farther I seep into the couch the darker my depression gets until I'm completely destroyed. I get anxious thinking about things I should be doing like eating, showering, going to the bathroom...breathing. But I keep avoiding them until I finally drag myself out of my pit and have a shower. This usually involves and immediate brightening of the mood followed by the phrase "I feel better!" Couch mode can last hours, a day, or - as in this summer - weeks at a time. Yesterday it lasted until about 5 when I went jogging. I always have the same thought when I get clean and moving. Why did I wait so long to do this? I feel so much better! But therein lies the deep mystery of couch mode. It's secret is as elusive as Unifying Theory of the Universe. One day a great man or woman will crack the secret and our entire world will change. Until then...I lie in my pit and suffer.

But enough of that!

So yeah, I cleaned the windows. Cleaning windows is very rewarding actually. You see immediate and startling results. I've also discovered that 1 Bounty paper towel is wort 2-3 normal towels. They're not shitting you in those ads.

I got bored so I rented a couple of movies. I rented Rent cause as a theatre person I think it's my duty to eventually take this in. I have a feeling I'm going to hate it but we'll see. I also rented Proof which is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play. I'd heard of it playing in Toronto. Sounds good. Anthony Hopkins/Gweneth Paltrow and Jake Gwheneaaynnayanaynaananal or however you spell his name. I think there's a few more "y"s and "a"s but I got tired.

I'll let you know how they are.

And...no I haven't got my visa yet. They're supposed to actually look into it and get back to me in a day or so. Nice eh!

You may now have pie...

...rhubarb pie, that is.

Since it is so intermidanbly dull to simply sit around and bewail my current lack of shipped cargo boxes (or delightful husband for that matter!), I've been taking matters into my own hands and have been doing some baking.
But not eating the baking...those of you who remember the infamous fry up of last Sunday (which is still working its way through my spleen and lower colon) will recall that a health and fitness regime was pledged to begin that day. I've been sticking to it, with a rigorous program of yoga, running, and pilates to be followed daily (boredom is a wonderful thing and will make me slim yet!)
However, there's the urge to bake. So I cleverly came up with the idea that I would bake something that didn't necessarily appeal to me - something I would glean pleasure from making, but not be tempted to eat in one go in a frenzy of gorging.
Hence - pie.
Also, rhubarb is a typically English dessert-thing, thus I figured I'd better learn it's secrets so as to further ingratiate myself with the locals and blend in seamlessly. Plus, although my grandmother used to make pies out of it, I'm pretty much a rhubarb virgin.

...and we can't have that, now can we?

The first thing that went wrong was the top crust - which I forgot to roll out and add to the pie, which I had lovingly blind-baked, filled, and popped into the oven. I blaim the English and their measuring system - they bake with scales and weights and gas ovens and yard sticks, and the whole thing threw me off my game. Had to improvise a top crust with a variation on a crumble - so actually, I've make a new hybrid dessert: a "pumble" or "crie". I think "pumble" sounds better, but let's put it out to the blog world...what do YOU think?

Still no sign of my cargo or my husband...maybe tomorrow I'll make a cake.

Another Day Goes By

"We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic."
-Susan Jeffers

Ain't it the truth.

Another day here in Wellington. I got up this morning and ran around with my Dad on some errands pertaining to the theatre thing. That was fun. Got in his '83 rabbit convertible and listened to some rock 'n' roll along the way.

Called the British High Commission and they said to call them Wednesday as that's when they'll get an update on my file. Hopefully it should say it's complete at that point. If not, apparently they can push it a bit at that point.

Went for another walk/jog today for another hour. I call it a walk/jog because I spend about 70 % of the time walking and 30% of the time jogging but that ration will eventually reverse itself. It felt good. Exercise is a great way to focus. What happens is you end up in excruciating pain so, fortunately, you can't really think of anything else! I'm now determined to lose weight and get in better shape. I even found another blogger who's doing this. She has a blog on the side under my blog links called "Flip This Body."

Anyway, I'm waiting patiently for my visa. I'm praying I get some sort of resolution by Wednesday.

That's it for now.

Beautiful Subways?

Ok, I'm officially addicted to Randomly blogging. For anyone who doesn't know if you press that "Next Blog" button it selects a random blog and sends you there.

Subways of the world beautiful? What? Check it out: http://metroart-subways.blogspot.com/

Here's a sample of three of them:

Soviet Union:

Stockholm:

And TORONTO! (been there!) Cool Optical Illusion.

Ok I'm a geek.

Fry Up (get that down 'ya!)

My first real morning in Britain, and I have consumed the following for breakfast:

fried tomato
sausage
bacon
mushrooms
pro-biotic yogurt
grapefruit from tin
3 cups milky coffee, bodum-style
1 egg

and the cream of the crop, drum roll please...

3 small, dainty slices of black pudding. Which is not some lucious chocolate dessert (for the ignorant among you) but rather, organ meat. Mmmm, nothing like a nice plate of offal to get your day off to the right start. Actually, it's pretty tasty, and I'm weirded out to confess I actually quite like it! It must be in the genes or something.

It's certainly a change from the modest small pot of lo-cal yogurt and pious fruit segments I normally ingest. Don't worry - I did at least manage to turn down the lashings of hot toast dripping butter. Regime of health, yoga, and jogging to begin tomorrow...as I shall have time on my hands until school begins on the 25th.

Very warm and sunny in Chistlehurst today (which is the small, village subhurb to the south east of London where my aunt Jane and family live, and where I am crashing for the moment)
Above is a photo of the church in the main square (or at least I hope it is, if I attached it properly!)

Still no sign of our shipped cargo - another round of endless phone calls awaits today. Good thing I have been so thoroughly fed!

Genevieve Lands, I'm bored.

Genevieve landed safe and sound this morning at in London England where she was met by her Aunt and Uncle. Unfortunately the 15 boxes we shipped over have gone AWOL. I'm not sure what's going on but last I heard Gen was going to call the shipping company we'd gone through and try and figure it out with them.

So Genevieve is staying with her lovely family in London. Thank God they're such wonderful understanding and helpful people, they've really been great.





As for me, well, with nothing to do I've decided to try and sleep my way through this crisis. I figure I'll wake up and I'll be in London. I'll be so well rested I won't have to sleep for weeks and my school will consider me the best teacher ever. I'll be promoted to Head Teacher (principal) by December and it'll all have been worth it.

As you can tell I'm already starting to go a little stir crazy.


Today has actually been pretty good. I got up and did some writing and then, miracle of miracles, I went for an hour walk/jog! It's the first exercise I've done in 2 months. I've determined to lose weight and get in better shape over the coming months. My body is completely seized up. My shoulders hurt...probably cause I'm lying on them all the time. My back hurts, I have no energy. So too that end I've quit drinking as well. Well I've cut down to almost zero. That alone gave me a huge boost of energy.





My brother Anthony and his fiance Candace came up for dinner so that was fun. There they are...ok I sort of woke Anthony up and forced them to pose.





I'm off to Wellington again tomorrow. I can help Dad out with his theatre company tasks for a few days and work on something instead of sitting and worrying.

That's all for now my faithful readers.

All Photo's Available on Flickr

I've set up so I can upload all my photo's on to a site called Flickr. It's a fantastic site. Click on the Logo on the right hand side to view all my photos.

Frustrated Incorporated

You no longer need to be a member of Blogger to post a comment. Post away y'all!

Well, for those who don't know, my British visa has not yet arrived. The upshot of this is that I couldn't leave for London today. Genevieve did as she is a British citizen and doesn't have to deal with the cold and unmoving bureaucracy that is the British High Commission.

Get this: There's only one way to get a visa in Canada. You have to send your passport and all required documents to the British High Commission in Ottawa and wait for them to send it back. Not sure what to do? They charge you $2.80 per minute to call them! Crazy!

Anyway, I'm still waiting. I can see the suggestions being posted so before you do don't suggest any of the following cause they've already been done:

1. Yelling at them.
2. Demanding Service.
3. Asking for a manager.
4. Calling daily.
5. Getting passport back, traveling to England and re-applying from there. It appears that you MUST apply from outside the country. If I tried that I'd have to return to Canada and re-apply.
6. Getting some sort of notarized letter stating that my passport is unavailable due to processing time, traveling to England, then getting my documents sent to me.
7. Yelling.
8. Calling my Member of Parliament.
9. Praying.
10. Calling the passport information office in Toronto. It's a recording.
11. Canceling the application and having the school in London apply for a work permit for me from their end.
12. Asking the consulate to rush.
13. Faking an English accent.
14. Yelling
15. Beating head against phone receiver incessantly and hospitalizing myself.

The only thing I haven't tried is crying into the phone. I have my pride.

So it looks like I may be here another week or so. Hopefully my visa arrives this coming week. I have no control over this so I really can't do much but wait. Fortunately the school I had been speaking to is holding my position. Don't worry, if they don't I can still make the same money supply teaching.

I now have a photo blog at flickr.com. I'll post a link on the side of my page somehow at some point but here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_n_gen/

I'll be posting most of my photo's there from now on. It's an amazing site. I could really get addicted to this stuff. In fact I already am!

Yours in Suspended Disbelief

David

Pictures!

The House in Wellington. Small but lovely. I'll miss ya!

And here's the front of the house. If you look in the reflection of the window at bottom centre you can see me and Lake Ontario behind me.

And here's the view from inside. Not bad eh?

Here is the room of eternal discussion. You can always count on sitting here and talking about politics, the enviroment, health care, or religion. All the biggies.

David...What are you doing? Genevieve in the Kitchen. Isn't she lovely?

Mrs. B makes a list

Things I've been doing lately in Prince Edward County:

1) going to the Picton County fair and looking at all of 700 pound pumpkins and massive pimply gourds.
2) tramping romantically through muddy sandbanks in borrowed boots, getting devoured by mosquitos
3) buying juicy fat red tomatoes the size of baby's heads at farmer's roadside markets
4) being barked at by big black farm dogs on some of my most romantic tramps in borrowed boots
5) listening to the CBC
6) trying not to panic when strangers talk to me about the weather, their cows' rhematism, their mother's advanced dental work
7) bottling wine (or at least, sterilizing bottles and arguing about how best to go about bottling the wine)
8) reading. and reading. and reading!
9) finally adding a post to this blog-thingy which obsesses my husband late into the night....:)

County Livin

So Genevieve and I have survived our last party in Toronto (although she just barely) and are residing at my Father and Step-Mother's house in Wellington Ontario. Prince Edward County is a beautiful Island just south of Belleville. In fact, here's a map!

(Once I posted this I realized you couldn't really read the map. Wellington is the second brown blotch over from Picton.)

On the far left hand side there is actually water but it's a very narrow channel. Prince Edward County (referred to as simply "The County" by people in the area) is amazingly beautiful and jam packed with artists. It's an amazing place. A lot of people know it because of the Sandbanks Provincial Park. It's one of the longest, if not the longest, stretch of fresh water beach in North America. It's got actual sand dunes and it's quite amazing. There's a huge camp ground there. The area is undergoing a transformation lately as it is discovered by Urban dwellers and retiring boomers. In 2000 the first winery opened here and more have followed so now you've got beautiful landscape, vineyards, a thriving artistic community and... well... what's missing here... oh...a theatre! Don't worry my father is working on getting a professional theatre company up and running here. Hopefully it'll be a go by next summer! Here's keeping our fingers crossed.

Ok, I'll stop talking like a tour guide now. We got here this afternoon and I'm feeling really relaxed. We'll be here until Tuesday and then we're going to my Mom's house in Sutton until Friday. It's small town living for us for the next week!

Many thanks to all who showed up at our party last night! Thanks especially to Maureen who threw the shindig.

I know it's all me posting so far but Genevieve will post shortly!

The 411 on the UK

It occurred to me that some people may not know the whole skinny on what Genevieve and I will be doing so here's the scoop.

After years of being a professional it's back to the books!

Genevieve - my lovely, adventurous, talented and courageous wife - flew herself to London England and auditioned for some Master's acting programs in the spring. Personally I would never have dreamed of doing something so brave myself but that's my wife for you! She will be attending East 15 in Loughton which is just North West of London. I'm thinking it's like being in Markham or something. At least in terms of distance from London.

Here's a link to her school if you are interested in finding out about it.

http://east15.ac.uk/index.shtml

You can tell this place is serious by the tortured actor suffering on the front page!

The program is geared towards film and television and it's current big claim to fame is that Mike Leigh - the director of Secrets and Lies graduated from the school and is currently on the board - I think. I believe he's involved somehow but don't quote me on that.

From One Side of the Desk to the Other

Having just completed teacher's college I am about to embark on that nebulous and daunting journey called "first year teaching."

I have obtained what is called "Gauranteed Supply Work" which breaks down like this: The recruitment agency I'm involved with gaurantees me 8 working days in a two week period (which is 10 days). If I don't work that many days they'll pay me for 8 days anyway. It's supply teaching which is something that I wanted to avoid but there's also a school that is interested in me as well. They want me to teach science in the morning and drama and sports in the afternoon, which sounded ideal, until they told me it was a school for children with behavioural and emotional issues.

I thought about it and declined as I didn't feel it would be fair to myself or the children involved since I don't have enough experience dealing with children to handle kids like this. The recruiter said they were really interested in me and suggested i supply teach there the first week and if it doesn't feel right I can just move on. I agreed to this and then I talked to the principal via email and did some research on the school and I'm actually very keen to check it out. The school has very good reports from board inspectors including high praise for teacher commitment, student engagement and achievement. Class sizes are limited to 8. There's a TA in every class and there are support staff who deal with learning disabilites. It looks like it could be very challenging and very rewarding. This is what I'm hoping for. I'm actually quite gung-ho to get there and see what I can do.

Here's a map of where my school will be located:

http://www.axcis.co.uk/map/45067.html

If you zoom out a bit you can see Loughton is directly north of it which is where Genevieve will be studying. I have no idea what kind of commute this will be which leads us to...where we will be living!

The answer is...I don't know exactly. The recruitment company has placed Genevieve and I in a room in a house but we haven't got the exact address yet. We should get it tomorrow. I assume it will look something like this ----------------->

The house will be filled with other teachers who are from abroad. Genevieve and I are also looking to move in with students from her school because it'll probably end up being cheaper.

On Essex and the Chav

Genevieve and I will be living in Essex which is reknowned for something known as a "Chav". What's a chav you ask? I'd never heard of these people but every time I mentioned Essex to anyone who knows London they always do the same thing. "Oh...." (toss head back and smile) "Essex. Essex is full of Chav's." The best I could figure out was that Chav was their term for "white trash" but Chav's look far more interesting. I did some research of my own and found out that they're likely to wear a burberry baseball hat, sport bling, be into hip hop, and be white. None of this made any sense to me so I delved further. Where else to go but Wikipedia?

it seems that the Chav has singlehandedly brought down Burberry.

"The Burberry clothing brand, which quickly became synonymous with the "chav" subculture, ceased production of its branded baseball cap in 2004, in an attempt to distance itself from the stereotype."

Well if they brought down a major brand they can't be all bad!

Here's a link that gives a detailed description of the Chav:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav#Elements_of_the_stereotype

Personally I can't wait to meet these people. In fact, I'm almost certain I'll come back as one.

Resting in the Eye of the Hurricane

Well here it is. The BLOG!

We are currently sitting in the poverbial eye of the hurricane. On one side we have the whirlwind of activity that has been us trying to extricate ourselves from Canada and all that is familiar here.







On the other side we have the excitement and hard work that await us in England.


Genevieve and I spent the last few weeks of August packing up our items, selling them, throwing them out, and (my personal favourite) leaving them on the street and pretending we'd never known them. Things were pretty crazy.

We're now staying at Madeleaine's house (a crazy and wonderful friend of ours) whilst Genevieve and I finish working this week. Then it's off to my Father and Stepmother's house in Wellington, back to my Mother's and Stepfather's house in Sutton and then on to the plane and off to England. Genevieve are flying first class so hello free drinks baby!

Right now is pretty calm. We'll be bouncing around for the next couple of weeks but then we're off to the Tornado of fun that will be London England. I'm a little concerned about having to walk in to a foreign classroom with no time to prepare and teach. It's not like I haven't been through this in Korea though and at least the kids speak English!

First post done. I'm off to figure out how to run this Blogger thing. Stay tuned.