Competitions and Katniss

Another week gone, and ive officially been at work for two months! Its slightly scary how fast the time has gone, I mean we're already into March and it still feels like January to me, which might have something to do with the weather still being cloudy and cold..

This week has been one of the best weeks yet I think! It's gone so quickly I cant really believe it!I spent half the mornings this week on duty doing the usual, and the other half skyping people (because time difference is a thing I'm always up at 8am half asleep on skype) It was so good to catch up with people and actually be able to talk to them rather then the odd message on facebook. And also to hear a New Zealand accent, which I hadn't heard in a couple of weeks. Its funny that english accents are now normal for me to hear and when I hear a kiwi one it sounds odd. But sadly I still sound completely like a kiwi, despite having spent the last two months surrounded by english accents! I'm hoping by the end of the year I'll have an accent (in the hope it'll make me sound more grown up and sophisticated so people don't notice that I haven't matured at all...)

Whole house night on wednesday was possibly my favourite one to date (I know that might surprise you after my enthusiasm over open mike night..) It was a night of dodgeball, I mean how could you not enjoy that?! The boarders were split into four teams and played against every other team, but that didn't mean that the staff didn't have anything to do.. We wore sweat bands and painted warrior stripes on our faces, and took it upon ourselves to referee the games in the most entertaining way I have ever witnessed (lets just say there were cartwheels and ninja-rolls and whistles every time a kid got out, which was every 30 seconds or so)
Once the kids had all played each other in their teams, the winning team got to play the staff. There were 7 staff against probably 15 kids, so the odds weren't in our favour, but that didn't stop us. I mean when you put 4 pe teachers, a music teacher, an ICT teacher and the head of boarding in a competition against kids, you know they're going to take it very seriously. We were winning (obviously) so we thought we'd make it harder for ourselves (pretty much one of us was mature enough to let the kids win) and invited all the kids to face us. So that about 40 kids against 7 teachers. I think you can imagine how that went down...

Our team photo. You can tell by our faces that we took it very seriously.

Friday was another fantastic day, as it was book day so all the teachers and kids (except for the year 7's who were too cool) dressed up as their favourite character from a book. I think I managed to pull it off considering I was told about the dress up thing on wednesday, but that didn't stop me! Thursday night at 10pm I was trying to sort out something to wear, and I ended up spending Friday morning as Katniss, complete with a braid and a cardboard bow. I was pretty stoked with my costume, and everyone knew who I was (thank god)! I had to get changed for senior games tho, and it was a good thing I did because if I'd stayed dressed up I fear my bow would not have survived an hour of intense bench-ball. It was only intense because there was a member of staff on both teams, and you cant loose to the other (which is why the other teacher playing kept pushing me out of the way so his team would win. But because I am such a ninja it didn't work and my team was victorious every time. Not that I was being competitive or anything...)

The weekend was pretty great considering I was working. There were hardly any kids in so everything was relaxed and easy-going for a change. On saturday nights we always watch the voice because the kids love it for some reason, so I spent half the night “supervising” them watching tv (basically watching it with them) and then once they'd all gone to bed, we went to the local for some drinks, and ended up staying till 11pm because we just kept talking (mainly about rugby which despite being a kiwi, I have very little understanding of, so I just nodded along which seemed to work)

So far the only thing that I haven't gotten the hang of here, other than the odd thing we call something else (if I say gumboots instead of wellington boots, or togs instead of swimming costume I get really odd looks) is doing my own washing. I know it sounds stupid but I just hate it! I mean I got used to the London underground faster! But so far I haven't shrunk anything, or accidentally changed the colour of my clothes so I'm doing alright, I just can never be bothered to put on a wash until I have no more clean clothes.
I can even tell apart the coins now, so hopefully there'll be no more shopkeepers getting impatient while I shuffle through all my change trying to find the right coin. Hopefully..

Just because I took hardly any photos this week, here's one of the woods where the kids have forrest school. It's a pretty great place to work.