Ciao Ragazzi!!

Work has been good lately, a bit stressful at times, but overall good. My students are starting to speak about more, and they say the funniest things. They are the greatest form of entertainment! This week I took them to the post office so they could get the forms to get an Oyster card! Since they're kids they can ride the tube/buses for free, but they just need to get their own cards. I think it will be great for them to get experience riding on the buses and getting around. It'll also be a lot of fun to get out and around London with them! Every Friday afternoon I cook with them. For Chinese New Year we made Chinese noodles and I made them eat with chopsticks, they did really well, but was very funny! Tomorrow pancakes! :)

I've gotten back into swimming since returning after Christmas. It's perfect because the sports centre that I swim at is a 5 minute walk from work, and then an quick bus ride home. There's more people in the pool than I am used to, but it's great because they provide more motivation and fun. I pretend race everybody and it's really fun to see how much I can out swim them. Today there was a guy that was seriously slowing things down, he was half swimming, half drowning. It was a rather confusing situation!

On Saturday Nick and I are going to Venice!! It's going to be super fabulous! Italy has been on the top of my list for a long time and I'm excited to see a bit of Italy. What's great too is that my fabulous BFFL Elyse will be there too!!! We're planning to meet on Sunday, it's gonna be fab!

Snow Day!!

Ok so updating has been a rarity lately, I guess now that I have no more drama or crazy new experiences it's hard to get myself to blog...but that doesn't mean fun stuff is going on..

So on Sunday night I got a phone call from school (at 9pm, very strange!) and it was the school secretary informing me that there was going to be no school tomorrow because of the weather. I found this really peculiar as I did not think there was any concerns with the weather..then I looked out the window and it was snowing a bit. A rarity in London for sure, but generally when it snows it's just for an hour or two and then it melts away and it's no big deal. Then I woke up the next morning to a winter wonderland! The girls and I turned on the news to find out that London was covered in snow and could NOT cope!! All the tubes and buses were suspended (another thing that never happens) and hundreds of school were closed. Luckily I already knew that I didn't have to go to work, but for many people, including Jim and Nadia they were scrambling calling people trying to get out of work. All cabs were booked up and the government was encouraging people to not drive unless they really needed to! Nadia got out of work, but Jim's work hired her a cab and gave her a room at the hotel for her to sleep in for the night. So Nadia and I very excited about the snow, walked all the way to Notting Hill to meet up with her friend Marina. We walked about 2 hours in the snow and it was wonderful! I've never really seen proper snowfall, so I was having a great time! The snow was really thick and fell all day long! We walked to a cafe off Portobello Road. Then Nick picked me up and we went to an aquarium to check out their marine fish. Right now we're in the market for a fish tank full of exotic and beautiful marine fish. It's been a lot of fun to shop around for.

The snow has now melted and London has gone back to normal. A lot of people found this absurd that pretty much the whole country shut down due to a foot of snow. London never gets snow so they haven't invested on any kind of snow clearing equipment. I don't mind, everyone freaks out, but I love it!!! I hope we have another snow day soon! :)

I haven't really worked at all this week. Today and tomorrow I'm taking a course at the University of Westminster on Regent Street. I think it's fabulous that my job pays for me to take courses to further my education and get more certifications.