I am still away with the school - I thought Healthy Eating was high up on the agenda of policies when looking after young children!?!?!?
I have an outfit that I am really hoping to wear on Monday. I was hoping that a week away with healthy food and lots of activity would really help towards me looking and feeling great when I arrive to meet my potential new colleagues on Monday but alas, the fish fingers, chips and peas (only) option was not what I was hoping for, especially after the food that has already been on offer this week:
Monday
Lunch: Sausage, Mash and Veg followed by Bakewell Tart and Custard.
Tea: Baked Beans on toast followed by chocolate dougnuts.
Tuesday:
Breakfast: Cereal, toast
Lunch: Pasta bolognese with cheese followed by yoghurt
Tea: Chicken nuggets, chips, spaghetti hoops followed by angel delight.
Wednesay:
Breakfast: Bacon baps, cereal, toast
Lunch: Fish fingers, chips, peas followed by arctic roll.
Tea: Ham or cheese toasted sandwiches
Honesty, how is this setting a good example to the kids, who at school eat healthier than this?!?!
And, I am not sure my waistline is going to survive either! Even though I am being good and making sure that I am not having seconds, with no other option, and no way to get food from off site, I am scuppered!! Yesterday morning, I went for a run but today has not been the weather for it so far. I can see that I am going to have to spend most of the weekend in the gym doing sit ups to make sure that this skirt fits! Boo!!
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
The nervous wait...
On 14th Jan, I had finally put the finishing touches to my first international job application form. I had received several offers of help from my colleagues. After deciding this was because they genuinely do like me and it wasn't a cunning ploy to help me ship out, I gratefully accepted their help and we pulled apart every sentence that I had constructed and rewrote the lot, making it much more suitable for the positions that I was applying for.
On the closing date of the 14th, I bit the bullet and pressed send on the emails.....and waited.
And waited.....and waited some more.
The frustration set in and I have spent the last week wondering what I had written that had not encouraged them to send me an email back inviting me to an interview. After promising my Mum that I would keep her informed of any interviews, come Saturday I had no news. I felt hugely deflated after the excitement of making the decision to go which then slowly trickled away and left me feeling a bit hollow. I started to doubt if I was making the right decision and thought that I must have been wasting my time with the hours that I had put into the application form. I began to look at other jobs on the TES but nothing else was grabbing my attention. Maybe I had just deluded myself and really I should stay in the UK and see what else came my way...
So Saturday morning, I got up and went to the gym. When I came out, there was a text from Mum asking me to call her when I was free. But when I got home, her phone was engaged. Time to check the emails...
..And there it was! What I had been waiting for all week - an email from the Head's PA inviting me to come to London to meet some of the staff and interview with them. I waited for the rush of excitement but it as yet has not arrived. Neither has the nerves or the thoughts that I am doing the wrong thing. I guess this is my way of making sure that I stay grounded throughout the process. I have no idea what to expect from the interview. Teaching interviews in the UK usually involve teaching a group of kids and being observed and then a formal chat at the end but I am sure that there will be no kids around this time. Also, they want me there for an hour plus 30 mins beforehand to chat about living and working in Qatar, which I think sounds quite positive...who knows!!! ARGH!!! I have no option but to go along and find out.
So to take my mind off it all, I have spent the day, well at least an hour, trying to get an interview outfit sorted out. Joy of joys! One skirt is a bit too large, but comfortable. The other fits but is a teency bit too tight, although I can walk around and sit down in it. I think I shall live off celery and water all week (yeah, right!!) and decide next weekend!!
In the meantime, I am away with 40 school children for a week, so that should take my mind off things, mainly because I won't have time to think :-)
On the closing date of the 14th, I bit the bullet and pressed send on the emails.....and waited.
And waited.....and waited some more.
The frustration set in and I have spent the last week wondering what I had written that had not encouraged them to send me an email back inviting me to an interview. After promising my Mum that I would keep her informed of any interviews, come Saturday I had no news. I felt hugely deflated after the excitement of making the decision to go which then slowly trickled away and left me feeling a bit hollow. I started to doubt if I was making the right decision and thought that I must have been wasting my time with the hours that I had put into the application form. I began to look at other jobs on the TES but nothing else was grabbing my attention. Maybe I had just deluded myself and really I should stay in the UK and see what else came my way...
So Saturday morning, I got up and went to the gym. When I came out, there was a text from Mum asking me to call her when I was free. But when I got home, her phone was engaged. Time to check the emails...
..And there it was! What I had been waiting for all week - an email from the Head's PA inviting me to come to London to meet some of the staff and interview with them. I waited for the rush of excitement but it as yet has not arrived. Neither has the nerves or the thoughts that I am doing the wrong thing. I guess this is my way of making sure that I stay grounded throughout the process. I have no idea what to expect from the interview. Teaching interviews in the UK usually involve teaching a group of kids and being observed and then a formal chat at the end but I am sure that there will be no kids around this time. Also, they want me there for an hour plus 30 mins beforehand to chat about living and working in Qatar, which I think sounds quite positive...who knows!!! ARGH!!! I have no option but to go along and find out.
So to take my mind off it all, I have spent the day, well at least an hour, trying to get an interview outfit sorted out. Joy of joys! One skirt is a bit too large, but comfortable. The other fits but is a teency bit too tight, although I can walk around and sit down in it. I think I shall live off celery and water all week (yeah, right!!) and decide next weekend!!
In the meantime, I am away with 40 school children for a week, so that should take my mind off things, mainly because I won't have time to think :-)
Monday, 10 January 2011
Excitment and intrepidation!
It is 2011 - a new start for some with New Year's Resolutions being banded about. Not my thing, but I do feel that this year is going to be a good year. A year of excitement and new beginnings.
I have been in Birmingham for 3 years now and although I feel quite settled here, it doesn't feel like my permanent home. I have no ties here - no boyfriend, no mortgage, no family. Just a few good friends and my job. I rent in a shared house which I think of as my own but I know that it is not 'mine'. 3 years ago saw me starting a new life for myself in a strange city. I had never been to Birmingham before and I landed up here after finding a teaching job (and a boyfriend) in the area and thinking that it seemed like as good a place as any to make a fresh start in.
But now, even though I love my job and I work in a school judged to be 'Outstanding' by OfSted, I feel like it is time for a change. I am fed up with a run of boyfriends that seem to excite me with possibilities of a future one minute, only to discover that they are not going to stand the test of time. Life feels like it is stalling a little. My job is so unique in the set up that I teach in - a Competency based total curriculum where I only teach Year 7 - that I am not getting the GCSE teaching experience I need to become a Head of Geography/Humanities and my current line managers, the Directors of Key Stage 3, seem very settled in their current roles so I cannot see that I could be promoted into one of their roles.
So I allowed the thought of working abroad to take hold in the back of my brain and like a weed it has started to grow stronger and stronger in the darkness at the back there and before I knew it, the thought of leaving the country to go and work in a foreign country had taken hold with deep roots.
There have been several big mental hurdles for me already - and I haven't even posted off my first job application yet!! The biggest hurdles have been talking to someone who works for International British Schools to start finding out about how to deal with finances, National Insurance contributions, Pensions abroad (as well as my UK Teacher's Pension), tax free earnings, bank accounts, schools and knowing which ones have good reputations and which ones to avoid. It feels like a teaching minefield to me at the moment!
The second hurdle was telling my boss and close friend, Charlotte, that I was considering leaving the department to travel and work abroad. She was very sad to hear my news but could understand why I was considering it.
And the biggest hurdle so far..... telling my parents! My friends keep asking me how old I am in a sarcastic manner - I am 27, but totally worried about telling my parents that I am thinking of leaving the country! For them, it is bad enough that I live in Birmingham and that it takes me between 3-4hrs to get home in the car, let alone being in a different country and being at minimum, a 7hr flight away, plus airport time and transport too and from the airport at both ends of the journey. My mum still cries now when I leave them to come back up to Birmingham and the emotional guilt I am currently feeling about putting her through this is quite bad. But I do keep reminding myself that it is my life and that if I don't do this now, then I am less and less likely to do it in the future. And while I have no ties, I think that it is the perfect opportunity to make my move. And you never know who I will meet while I am away or what I will see.
I love travelling - I have driven to Mongolia from London in a Fiat Panda 3 years ago, and last Christmas I did a very similar thing, driving from Dakar in Senegal to Cameroon. Foreign countries don't scare me and I love being emersed in another culture away from all the tourism. I am really hoping that I can be brave enough to do this, to move away on a 2 year contract to a foreign country. At the moment, I am thinking that Qatar is my best option with the other options being Hong Kong and Thailand.
So, this evening, along with beginning to write my first international application form, I have also ordered a book from Amazon - Qatar: the complete resident's guide. Bring it on! I am going to be an expat!
I have been in Birmingham for 3 years now and although I feel quite settled here, it doesn't feel like my permanent home. I have no ties here - no boyfriend, no mortgage, no family. Just a few good friends and my job. I rent in a shared house which I think of as my own but I know that it is not 'mine'. 3 years ago saw me starting a new life for myself in a strange city. I had never been to Birmingham before and I landed up here after finding a teaching job (and a boyfriend) in the area and thinking that it seemed like as good a place as any to make a fresh start in.
But now, even though I love my job and I work in a school judged to be 'Outstanding' by OfSted, I feel like it is time for a change. I am fed up with a run of boyfriends that seem to excite me with possibilities of a future one minute, only to discover that they are not going to stand the test of time. Life feels like it is stalling a little. My job is so unique in the set up that I teach in - a Competency based total curriculum where I only teach Year 7 - that I am not getting the GCSE teaching experience I need to become a Head of Geography/Humanities and my current line managers, the Directors of Key Stage 3, seem very settled in their current roles so I cannot see that I could be promoted into one of their roles.
So I allowed the thought of working abroad to take hold in the back of my brain and like a weed it has started to grow stronger and stronger in the darkness at the back there and before I knew it, the thought of leaving the country to go and work in a foreign country had taken hold with deep roots.
There have been several big mental hurdles for me already - and I haven't even posted off my first job application yet!! The biggest hurdles have been talking to someone who works for International British Schools to start finding out about how to deal with finances, National Insurance contributions, Pensions abroad (as well as my UK Teacher's Pension), tax free earnings, bank accounts, schools and knowing which ones have good reputations and which ones to avoid. It feels like a teaching minefield to me at the moment!
The second hurdle was telling my boss and close friend, Charlotte, that I was considering leaving the department to travel and work abroad. She was very sad to hear my news but could understand why I was considering it.
And the biggest hurdle so far..... telling my parents! My friends keep asking me how old I am in a sarcastic manner - I am 27, but totally worried about telling my parents that I am thinking of leaving the country! For them, it is bad enough that I live in Birmingham and that it takes me between 3-4hrs to get home in the car, let alone being in a different country and being at minimum, a 7hr flight away, plus airport time and transport too and from the airport at both ends of the journey. My mum still cries now when I leave them to come back up to Birmingham and the emotional guilt I am currently feeling about putting her through this is quite bad. But I do keep reminding myself that it is my life and that if I don't do this now, then I am less and less likely to do it in the future. And while I have no ties, I think that it is the perfect opportunity to make my move. And you never know who I will meet while I am away or what I will see.
I love travelling - I have driven to Mongolia from London in a Fiat Panda 3 years ago, and last Christmas I did a very similar thing, driving from Dakar in Senegal to Cameroon. Foreign countries don't scare me and I love being emersed in another culture away from all the tourism. I am really hoping that I can be brave enough to do this, to move away on a 2 year contract to a foreign country. At the moment, I am thinking that Qatar is my best option with the other options being Hong Kong and Thailand.
So, this evening, along with beginning to write my first international application form, I have also ordered a book from Amazon - Qatar: the complete resident's guide. Bring it on! I am going to be an expat!
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