Eating my words....

I'm finding myself eating my words for breakfast this morning, because last night I witnessed something I never thought I would EVER see. For months now, I have been getting a kick out of the ridiculous continuous fascination with boy bands in England. The definition of a boy band is a musical group made up of men who do not play instruments, but all of them sing (for those of you who were wondering... Grandma). Best American examples would be Backstreet Boys, N-sync, Boys to Men, and New Kids on the Block, all of whom were popular in the 90's. 

Anyways, over here their biggest 90's boy band was called "Take That" made up of some guys- one being Robbie Williams for those who know him. Believe it or not, "Take That" is BACK, and they love it here! But unlike America, where Boy Bands died in the States for the last 10 years, they have continued on strong here. Looking at the bands that this country is putting out, most of them all involve multiple men singer.

 My favorite one of course is, "The Wanted". I have been getting a chuckle every time I see anything with their faces on it. They look like a bunch of overly manicured metro-sexual men who would not be friends in real life.

Now we can't forget JLS. The country voted them to win X-factor a couple of years ago and this year, One Direction, a boy band made up of actual boys. They might have been 15, I'm not sure...looked like it!

I have been almost mean in saying that boy bands don't exist anymore in the States and England is crazy for keeping them around, but what do I know. I haven't been on U.S. soil in the last three months. I could be totally wrong. Who knows?

Back to what I witnessed last night… Sometimes you just want to watch American T.V. to have that connection with back home, so I watched the American Music Awards. In my opinion, the performances were mostly bad and the acceptance speeches were weird, but nothing prepared me for the end. The last performance was a collaboration of New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys. A nine grown men group sing-a-long to their old hits. I mean, it was interesting to see what 10 years of age does to someone, and a lot of them still looked pretty good, but really? I sat there speechless, not able to share this phenomenon with anyone because everyone else was asleep.  I've spent a lot of time trying to defend the States and their musical tastes and then this? I guess words are going to have to taste pretty good this morning. YUM……

Keep in mind that this award show happened over a month ago, but I just saw it last night...We're a bit slow over here!

Christmas movies!

I didn't grow up watching the old Christmas Classic movies. We've been spending December watching any Christmas movie we can get our hands on. From the Home Alone 1 and 2 to the classic Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby...we've watched them all! Tonight we are planning on watching, It's a wonderful life. I really wanted to share one of the scenes that I love from the movie, A Christmas Story...

Howarth

On Saturday made our way to Howarth. It snowed on Friday, so we didn't know for sure if we were going to be able to make it there, but we had heard that they have wonderful Christmas activities. After taking a train to Keighley, we took a steam train to Howarth. They were having some trouble with the train in front of us so we had to wait a bit for our train to leave. This allowed us time to have a cup of tea and explore the train and the train station. 

When we got to Howarth, I was surprised...I've never seen a village completely uphill. We walked ages uphill in the snow to get to the main street. The streets were cobblestone and very cute with all of the snow. The main street was filled with unique store and shops. There was a walking nativity that caroled all the way up the main street. Afterwards we ended up going to a pub and enjoyed warm food to help us warm our feet. We are really loving pub food, maybe it's the closest to American...I'm not sure. It was a very cold and exhausting, but fun day. 

View of the main street looking back downhill...

Santa always knows the right way...

Lidget Green Christmas party

After 3 months at Lidget Green it was time to have some fun!

It required a lot of hard work to blow those
balloons up in the first place...just to let them go.

On Friday night, we were invited to our schools Christmas Party at the Guidepost Inn. For there meals there an entire room is full of people and a 3 course meal is served in one go. Lidget Green took up 3 table there out of the 8 in the room. I must say though, we (our staff) were the rowdiest by far! Maybe it was the fact that is was a time to let loose, or maybe it was the fact that we are surrounded by kids all day requiring us to act like adults and when the kids aren't there we can act like children. I'm pretty sure that was it! The hotel had put horns (like the ones you would get at a birthday party) on the table along with balloons that once filled and let go would fly like a missles! Not a smart idea with our group. I'm not sure if the horn blowing stopped at all for 2 hours! There were contests for who was louder. There was getting ones attention by blowing on it continuously. There was scaring people by the unplanned honk. It was ridiculous- in a good way! But, as you scanned the rest of the room and tables, no one else was blowing on their horns, or soaring their balloons like missles...just us! Funny enough, at one point, one of our lone male teachers grabbed a horn out of someones mouth and smashed it and this caused the other side of the table to whoop and cheer! One less horn to be blown- was all they were thinking! It was such a good night!

Yorkshire Pudding, Roast Beef, veg- potatoes and carrots (no sprouts)

Apparently the meal that we ate was 30 quid, but I'm hoping that some of that cost went for the atmosphere...the food wasn't anything fantastic. The food was 20 times better at Barbara's Christmas dinner! I did eat prawns and like them for the first time in my life...

We sat with our principal (a.k.a. headmaster) Mike Pope. He is a busy man and we hadn't much time to talk with him since we have gotten here, but he has always shown us great hospitality and you get a sense that you are appreciated. It was good to actually be able to talk with him and since he is not our boss in the same way as the other teachers, there wasn't the same weird feelings.

I wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with my problematic crown!

No kids around means a time to act like kids! :)

The second table of teachers!

After the meal, there was a dance floor with a D.J. that was absolute random. It may have been because he was dealing with a crowd from like 5 decades...Anyways, we danced it up and had a lot of fun. I don't dance for other when I do dance, I dance for me...In other words: I didn't care what I looked like when I danced and because of it, it was a BLAST! It may also have helped that there were 97.3% women present...and the other 2.7% were unavailable men! :)

Christmas at the Jones'...

This past Sunday I went to a traditional British Christmas feast at Barbara's house.  Barbara is the ICT (computer teacher) at Lidget Green and is apparently a brilliant cook! Because I had been sick for so long, I was very thankful to get an excuse to finally get out of our house and back into the real world. The meal was really amazing. Nowadays in England, it is traditional to have turkey for Christmas dinner instead of the ultra traditional goose. I suspect they have turkey because obviously they didn't just have it for Thanksgiving and every country needs a turkey holiday. Besides the turkey we had three different stuffings, veg (a.k.a. vegetables) -2 different kinds of potatoes, carrots, peas, brussel sprouts, and I even had my first taste of parsnips. Apparently once they have been soaked in duck fat they are pretty good! Who knew? There also were pigs in a blanket, which in England is a sausage wrapped in bacon.


 It all was really good until we came to the traditional Christmas pudding. Here pudding does not mean the same as in the States. Pudding is another word for desert. A "Christmas Pudding" is what most people would be scared to eat in the states because it is a fruit cake with dates, figs and the whole gang. Now, no offense to Barbara or any other British person who actually likes this awfulness, but this pudding was not my thing! It didn't help when I found out that "proper" Christmas puddings were actually mixed up and made in September and then fermented for 3 months before finishing the baking. I found the presentation to be neat though. Barbara lit it on fire (easy to do with all the alcohol present in it)!
June and I were struggling for a while before we were let off the hook...and didn't have to finish it.
Lots of thanks to Barbara and Brendan for hosting June and I in our first English Christmas! It really was a splendid of a time!

June and I waiting for Barbara to pick us up. We were dancing to Christmas carols with our antlers.
I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were crazy!

Barbara's cats all seemed to take a liking to June. At one point, all three were within touching distance.

The last two weeks...

I know it has been a long time since I have posted, but this is mainly because it's been a very challenging two weeks for me. I have been struggling with some sickness that just will not go away. For the first 5 or 6 days I was completely useless, and that is a hard feeling for me to get over. I really did not like having to sit around not able to do ANYTHING! The last few days I have been gaining energy, but my symptoms have changed and now I have a lingering cough and snotty nose. ahhhh! I'm ready for it to all go away! Good news though- my energy level is up and my blogging should continue! :)

Der Schnee ist hier

Apparently, "It does NOT snow before Christmas...not usually that is..." or so I was told! The snow is here. It has been for a few days now. And with the snow, came the loss of heat in our house. We are told that it must be the pilot light or something, but unfortunately we are on the third day with no heaters and no hot water. Last night I resorted to taking a boil-water bath. I was in desperate need of bathing and washing my hair and so I boiled 4 pots of water and 3 kettles. Add that with the ice cold water from the tap, it made a semi-comfortable mixture. It got the job done at least.
Again, our new friends are coming to our rescue. We have gotten multiple space heaters from people, many wonderful offers to stay at houses, and tonight my friend Abby brought over hot water bottles and extra blankets. I'm finding it really amazing how wonderful people are.
For instance, this past Sunday we were invited to go to a Thanksgiving meal made by someone we had never met. Hospitality was shown to us just because it was known that holidays are hard away from families and Americans love Thanksgiving and need a lot of excuses to keep eating! I don't know if people realize the impact that they have on us, whether it is a simple ride or teaching us to knit, it's people showing God's love.

I'm so very thankful for...

This Thanksgiving was one of my favorites. Obviously it was not because I wasn't with my family, but because my new make-shift "family" was here. Leigh, Bethany and I decided that we wanted to have a HUGE Thanksgiving not only to celebrate the American holiday, but also to show how thankful we are to all of our new friends here in Bradford. After preparing for several days we had a feast to feed 20 people. Our turkey itself was over 13 kgs! We also served: mashed potatoes, cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, creamed corn, cooked broccoli, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetable platter, and bread.
My favorite part of the evening was before the meal when we went around the table and had everyone say what they are thankful for. It was really special to see people there from many different parts of out lives here. We had people from the Great Horton Methodist congregation, the St. Wilfrid's congregation, some teachers from Leigh and my school and some teachers from Bethany's school. It really was a great mix and everyone that came has a special place in all of our hearts.
After our "gorgeous" meal we had everyone come back to our little place and eat "pudding" (desserts).
We had 4 pies and a couple of cakes. After a long problematic search for pumpkin with no luck, one of the teachers at my school was able to find us some orange coloured squash and we made squash pie with the hope that it would be very similar. We still called it pumpkin pie though! HA! Later we found out that the American teacher at school had cans of pumpkin shipped in and she was willing to share. Oh well!
It really was a special day and afterwards we all were so excited that we pulled it off and it was a success! All the hard work paid off!

Hoopin' for children in need...

Shaunna hoopin' with ease...

This past Friday was a day of hula-hoopin' fun at school. The kids could wear their "spots" instead of their uniforms. The goal of course was to raise money for the non-profit British organization, "Children in Need". The kids even brought money to help. Each grade level had time in the hall to first practice their hula-hooping and then to compete. The select kids made it to the end where they then competed in front of the whole school in an assembly. No one from my class was the overall winner, but many of them were REALLY good. As the classes changed, some of us teacher had a go...and I must tell you....I am terrible. I always have been. As a child I really excelled at most sports, but I'll tell you what...hula hooping was NOT one of them.

Afshan and Ateeqa showing their spots

I'm sorry!....so sorry!

So, if any of you actually read my blog a lot, you may have noticed that I haven't written anything for a long time. This is because our internet wasn't working for a while and now I am not able to sign into my blog at my computer at home. Sad faces. I'll try really hard to keep it up to date by getting on at school...

A little extra...for remembrance day

My flatmate Leigh summed it up quite well. Please read for a wonderful peace perspective! :)

http://leighsradjourney.blogspot.com/2010/11/remember-peace.html

Miss? Miss? Fancy dress day...

Shammas, Ayub, Aeysha, Ammar, Nieco, Uzair, Omar, Nafisah, Shaunna, Hafsah, Fayzah, Aquib, Liam, Zakee, Fahaad, Aisha, Nezreen, Haseeb, Amaan, Mohamed, Kamran, Tazneem, Afshan, Ateeqa, Usaid, Shumrez, Maryam, Anees, Samia, Zishaan, Miss Shultz, Miss Mitchell, Miss Wilkensen

Sue Wilkenson, Linda Mitchell, Me

One of my projects this past week was organizing a "fancy" dress day for 4M. Over the past week the whole school was suppose to be using the film/book "Alice in Wonderland" to incorporate with their maths. Our students did things like counting and measuring their heights in comparison to Alice in the movie. On Friday they had a "fancy dress" day and because most dress up days a lot of the kids don't participate, Miss Mitchell decided to do a class costume. That ended up in me setting it up for the kids to complete and me making the ones for the teachers. All I had to do was make some stencils and draw the back design for the card. I also drew the jokers for the teachers and made me the Ace of Spades.

We are Paramore!

Leigh and I bought ticket to go to the Paramore concert. For those of you who don't know who the band Paramore is, they are a rock back that has a female lead singer. When I was in New Zealand they were huge there and apparently England really loves them too! On our way to the concert we found out from a fellow concert goer that B.O.B. was also going to be there. We found this hilarious because while in Chicago for orientation, Isaac Shue sang this song about a million times. Enough to get it into our heads for every minute of everyday. This is why I would claim it as our theme song of the year... and we heard it live... in England!

GOOD MORNING! GOOD MORNING!

1/2 of Miss Bennett's year 6 class.

This past Wednesday, Leigh and I went on a field trip with a different year 6 class.  We went to Saltaire a town that was founded by Sir Titus Salt in the 1850's. You could argue whether Sir Titus Salt was a good honorable man, or if he had very selfish motives. He moved his whole wool  mill operation outside of Bradford and created a village for his workers to live. These homes were much nicer than the slums they had been living in, but by doing this and creating a village for his workers it also controlled their every move. Even whether they were able to hang their laundry out to dry. He had between 3000 and 4000 workers living in Saltaire. The positive thing he did though was build extra things for his workers, like a school, hospital, library, and concert hall. Overall it provided a better living situation as long as the people were willing to forfeit some of their freedoms.

A view of part of the mill and the canal.

Year 6 has also been spending a lot of time this year studying canals and narrow boats. On this trip they had the opportunity to walk alongside the canal and even see a lock and a swing bridge. They even got a good peek into a narrow boat as we walked by one. I felt sorry for the people inside the boat because all the kids were peering at. We told them not to stare, but it's hard for kids to NOT stare sometimes. 

Goooood Moorrning!!!!

 My favorite memory of this trip was while we were walking in our twos, someone walked by us and Miss Bennett said "Good Morning". The kids asked her if she knew that person and she said no. She then explained that unlike the city, when you are out in the country people are friendly to each other and greet each other because there are less people. The next 20 people that passed us, whether they were runner, bikers or people walking their dogs, they were greeted by 20 kids screaming "Good Morning". They weren't even doing it sarcastically, they were actually excited to get the opportunity to greet people. The best part was as we were walking on a ridge we looked down and saw old men playing lawn bowling or something like that. Miss Bennett stopped them to explain what they were doing and afterward the kids seriously started screaming, "GOOD MORNING" because they were a ways away.

This was our tour guide who was the minister in the 1850's.

Another activity that the kids participated in was they all got a bookmark with a persons name on it that lived in Saltaire in the 1800's. It said their job and house number and who they were married to and how many kids they had. The kids got to see where they would have lived and how they would have lived. Our tour guides were really good and had a lot of fun playing their character with the kids. It was fun to see them squirm about who they were married to. I didn't see my husband all day because he was hiding from me. I also had 3 of my 8 kids with me that day. Overall it was a really fun and interesting day. The only downside was that it was freezing cold and we were out in it for most of the day.

Karen Bennett

Leigh

Me being a big kid!

Black is Back...

Black is Back, or maybe it never left England...

Black is my new favorite color. Excuse, me… favoUrite coloUr.  Ask any of my friends in the States. I am a brown girl through and through. I normally seek out brown things, and I would have never thought of buying black boots, or even wearing as much black as I do. Almost everything that I have accumulated here is one colour… black. And I am learning to love it.

Admittedly, I am not the most fashion involved person, and most of the time I haven’t the care in the world what others think of my clothes, but as this year goes on I am trying to step it up a bit.  I actually love the fashion here in England because it reminds me of my years in art school, anything goes! Leggings, tights, flats, and of course boots are huge here. Leggings are worn as pants, and layers are a must. They are very talented here layering their clothes. Most things here are black or shades of gray. After a ridiculously brass, wet winter day like today, it makes me wonder if this is the norm because of the weather.  I would have to take a guess and say, yes.

Now, it could be because their washing machines seem to turn bright colours and whites, gray; a greenish gray to be fair. I think it is easier to start at a gray colour that way you don’t have the frustration that we are finding ourselves in.  Either way, black is the in thing and I am finding myself enjoying it.

My closet = The back of my door...

I have been getting creative because my room is so small that I have converted the back of my door into a “closet”. Be prepare to be impressed…

The contents of my “closet” are:

3 sweatshirts,
2 pair dress pants,
2 dress shirts,
6 scarves,
my trash bag,
my laundry bag,
2 purses,
2 pair of boots,
my art bag,
and….1 hat

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! & Happy Diwali!

Remember, Remember the 5th of November. 

Over the past few weeks I have been learning about a couple of holidays that are celebrated in this great country. The first one is called Guy Fawkes day. On the 5th of November in 1605, a catholic man was unhappy with the failure of the King James to grant more religious tolerance to the Catholics, because his mother was Catholic. Guy Fawkes plotted with four other men to blow up parliament. The plot went wrong when one of the men wrote to a cousin not to go to parliament and Guy Fawkes was caught by soldiers with the barrels of gun powder in a cellar under parliament. He had his head chopped off and put on Tower Bridge for all to see.
The following year, King James made the 5th of November a day of public thanksgiving, and it has been recognized since then.

If you look closely you can see the "Guy".

This holiday almost makes me laugh nowadays, because so many people participate in it, but when you think about what you are celebrating, it becomes a little morbid. I've learn the traditions that the teachers that I work with did as children and it make me chuckle. As children, the would make a "guy" out of newspaper, paper mache, and old clothes, and wheels him door to door saying "penny for the guy?" collecting money to then use on fireworks. Later, they would burn their effigies on the giant bonfire they made.

At biggest, it was 6 or more stories or so.

Nowadays, there are less effigies being burned on bonfires, but lots of random raging fires on the side of the road and firework literally EVERYWHERE! As we walked around Bradford last night, I realized that the fire department has got to HATE this holiday. When we walked to the grocery store we passed 3 huge, what I would call raging, out of control fires. At a closer look it was obvious that "Guy Fawkes Day" was actually a good excuse to burn your trash on the side of the street legally. For example we saw mattresses, old dressers, and pretty much random things that might just burn a bit. It suddenly made sense why we had been seeing piles of rubbish start accumulating over the past few weeks.

I went with June, (pronounced YOU-NA)

.

This celebration and fireworks go on apparently all weekend, so last night we walked around Bradford and enjoyed the craziness going on there, and tonight we went to Bingley to enjoy a bonfire and lots of fireworks.  We really wanted to celebrate "right" so we had to find a bonfire that still burned an effigy because I just think that is messed up. I think that England was just in the need to have a holiday where people we allowed and expected to shoot off fireworks. We have the 4th of July, but if we didn't, I'm sure we would have made some other random event into a national holiday with fireworks.

fireworks followed, but still not as good as Peabody's 4th of July!

The fire only took about an hour to burn and die down to coals.

When I got home, fireworks were still going off in the neighborhood. This is taken from my front "lawn", which consists of rocks and a peace sign on weeds at the moment.

Sometimes service is...

The minister of St. Wildfrid's, Paul, called me up the other day and asked if I would be able to take pictures at a wedding the next day for a Russian couple. He was worried that they didn't have the finances to pay a photographer. I thought that sounded like a fun idea since I wasn't in school that day...Now, if only my camera decides to focus!
It was a neat experience for me. I have never been the actual wedding photographer and even though this was a low-key event, I still felt the pressure! The entire wedding party and attendees are in the picture above so it was a very small wedding. Most of the people there did not speak very good English at all, so communicating was a challenge. What's new? It was a luv-lay service, and I'm glad that I got to witness it.
I found the Anglican wedding service different than any wedding that I have gone to in the States. I don't know whether it was different because it was in England, or if it was because of it being an Anglican wedding. For instance, the bride and groom did not have a wedding party at all. They both sat at times or stood up in the front by themselves. I don't recall a "kiss" at the end to seal the deal. Because of this, I wasn't aware the wedding was over so fast. Also, there is not an organist or pianist or sound system at the church and so no music was played. Her brother walked her down the isle to the groom. It turned out to be super cute. I'll just say though, they were not a smiley bunch. I had to force a smile out of them most of the time! I'm excited to say that the first wedding I shot was for a Russian couple who didn't speak English in a beautiful Anglican Church. Yay!
Oh- and I almost got paid.accidentally! The groom asked me if he could pay me tomorrow when I gave him the pictures and I had to explain to him that I was just taking pictures for them for free because I wanted to help them. Great times...

Halloween

I'm hugging Jesus...kind of...

Halloween. I was really looking forward to this day. Derek and Lesley were going to take us out to the Dales. We have not been able to see the dales because every time we have a plan to see them, the weather doesn't cooperate. It's not even that is is raining, every time there is an intense fog that covers the land and we are not even able to see 100 feet in front of us. Bummer! Anyways, instead we went to Skipton and saw a castle. Our first one! It was really nice, but unfortunately it was really hard to enjoy it because both of my cameras broke literally 3 minutes apart from each other. I'm not even lying. I wish I could! Luckily I could use my big camera on manual focus and if it was zoomed all the way out it would be focused enough to take a picture. I have no pictures of the castle sadly.