It's the holidays!!!

Tomorrow I'm off to York with my fellow year 5 teachers to do some scouting out in preparation for our residential trip next month... should be fun.

Went for a drink with some of my work-mates after work today... we headed over to the bar in the senior school and picked up some free 'end of term' champagne! Was nice to have a bit of a chill with everyone. We're starting a sweepstake to predict what year groups everyone will be in in September. I only have 11 more weeks with my current class. 55 days... not long at all really.

In some way this year has shot by, but it also feels like I've been at my school for ages... in a good way. :)

This week brought parents' evenings. Overall they were fine, although a couple of parents were the very stereotypical pushy-private-school kind who I was just glad to get rid of. Well, at least it's over. On Monday and Tuesday I was at school for 12.5 hours each day.... by Wednesday I had already worked a 'normal' person's 36 hour working week.... so the total this week came to just under 60 hours. Ouch. No wonder I have a head ache.

Only 3 days next week and then a glorious 3 weeks off. I'm going up to York with my 2 Year 5 colleagues the day after we break up for a recce on the place we're visiting on the way to our residential trip in April. We sorted room allocations today... crickey, I can't believe it's so close.

I'm looking forward to spending time over Easter finalising things for our summer travelling around Canada. The flights are booked, Toby's bunny-hotel is booked (and gorgeous) as is our travel insurance. Next on the list are coach tickets to and from Heathrow (and now we live a lot further from the airport than we used to!), accommodation in Vancouver, Banff area and Jasper (as they're the busiest so most likely to book up) then Calgary, Ottawa, Victoria and the other 2 or 3 places in BC Interior. I am incredibly excited.... in exactly 17 weeks we will just have landed in Ottawa for the first leg of the trip....

Back at school now... as busy as ever! I'm feeling a bit 'fragile' at the moment, so struggling to stay focussed and positive on things at work. I'm spending around 12 hours a day here at the moment... and 60 hour working weeks aren't much fun, especially when the majority is spent either alone or with 18 ten year olds! :(

We went for a couple of lovely walks at the weekend... one down the canal in our town and another round a beautiful village about 10 minutes away by car. It was nice to get out... although the original plan had been to go and fly my kite... until we realised we'd left it in our other house 200 miles south of here!

We're hoping to head down south at some point to pick up my keyboard/synth and stand, which is currently the only piece of furniture (bar a toy box) in the spare room in our old house. I miss my keyboard... I'm accompanying my violin group at the Spring Strings concert on Thursday and I wish I had it up here so I could practise! I must find some time tomorrow to play it through a few more times.

I'm also playing my violin in the concert, in the 'teachers' ensemble' with the 2 violin and cello teachers... should be interesting! Hopefully I haven't lost the ability to play... I haven't played regularly (bar in my Thursday violin group) for a three years now, since I started my PGCE.

This week marks 22 years since I started playing the violin - how time flies!