Elaine's Adventures in England

I seriously am considering changing the title of this blog. Don't blame me if you never hear anything from Ryan. He would rather play his computer games than update you all on his life. So not my fault!!! But since my bossy bossy sister is telling me what to do (again, what's new eh?) I'll write a little diddy about his day. I will try my best to get him to dictate, at least so the details are accurate, but there are no promises. Maybe I should just start making stuff up. No one will ever know the difference. Except now I've told you all, so, yeah...(head hung in mock shame).

Today is actually a good day to start talking about Ryan because he had quite the day. He was observed today by his head teacher. She really liked his teaching style, and she said that he was doing a great job with his management of the class. He even made her laugh. He was trying to get the kids to write a dialogue between two characters in a book they are reading. He did a teacher demonstration with one of the kids, and something he said made the teacher laugh (I won't even pretend, I don't actually remember even though he did tell me less than an hour ago...)

He has 23 students (except for a long time he only had 22 because one was out with German measles). Ok, one quick story...the german measles kid was away for a week because of the measles, then another week, but the office wasn't totally sure why. At the end of the second week Ryan was waiting for the bus, and who does he see but german measles boy waving at him from across the street. Ryan turns to another teacher and asks, "does he look sick to you? yeah, me neither. He's supposed to have german measles!" Ok, so Ryan's stories aren't quite as funny as mine. I'll work on that.

So, yeah, he has 23 kids, and they are all pretty good. He was surprised on the first day that they were so polite. He handed out 10 books to each of the 22 kids (minus german measles boy) and he received 220 "thank-you"s. For those of you who are a little slow in math (hmgh...Steph...) that means that every child said thank you for every book. Are we all back on the same page?? Ok, good. (sorry, teacher talk coming out). I feel like I have already told that story. Sorry if you are reading that for the second time. To tell you the truth, I am not really sure what Ryan does all day. He does leave with me in the morning, and I have seen him get on a different bus, but he doesn't do any real work at home. Kinda reminds me of when he was in teachers college. Playing computer games on the couch was his idea of "homework". Here I am, all stressed out about marking and planning and teaching, and he is home hours before me, and doesn't do half the work I do. Ok, sorry, this isn't about me. He does make dinner every night. I think he knows that if he didn't make it we might never eat. Thanks for that honey.

Ok, one more small story (and I am sorry, but it has to do with me again...) There is one lady who cleans my classroom at the end of the day - she is super super nice by the way, she is starting to be my favourite lady in the whole school - and she was talking to me the other week about her son and how he was going through to be a teacher, and that he has his placements at none other than...da da da (sorry, that was my attempt at a drumroll)...Thomas Arnold!!! For those of you who are wondering why I am telling you this, Ryan works at Thomas Arnold. Come on people, try to keep up!! Anyway, I was just thinking how small of a world we live in. I thought Canada was small.

Speaking of living in a small world (well, not really, but I'm gonna say it anyway), you know how people say that everyone has a twin somewhere in the world? Just go with it, people do say it. No, I don't know who these people are. Anyway, I think that everyone that I know has a twin in Romford and surrounding area!! Just to name a few, I swore I saw Laura Restoule get off the train the other day, and yesterday we saw Chris Tuulos driving a car. And Ryan thought he saw Chris Douglas, but he honestly didn't look anything like him. I couldn't figure out who he was talking about, and seriously, he's only met Chris once, so I didn't know how he would know what he looked like in the first place. There have been many others too. I think I might start keeping a list so I can tell you if I see someone who looks like you!! No Bronwyn's yet. She is one of a kind.

Well, I think I am going to stop typing now. Although this is not really work, it is making my wrists hurt. And besides, I have all weekend, right? We are going back to London tomorrow, so I will blog about that too.

Love you all!!