All About England

A big "'ELLO!" out to all my peeps from here in jolly ole England!

So I finally made it! I'm here in England, I'm working, and I'm legal. It's amazing! :-)

I had a busy last weekend, packing up all my belongings (god I have too many clothes - yet still feel the need to shop) and spending time with as many friends as possible. We hit up Lucerna one last time, had both drinks and a brunch at Radost, went out to Banditos for Carolyn's b-day, and I said all my goodbyes to Prague.

I was feeling pretty down about leaving. Prague certainly hasn't been an easy experience overall and has thrown me in a lot of stressful situations, but I've survived them all and the city does have quite the magic spell. It's beautiful beyond words, and there's been many a moment where I've tried to stop and just 'soak it in' for a few seconds, to try and appreciate what a gorgeous place I live in. Living in Prague was a lifelong dream accomplished, and I feel so very lucky to have been there the last nine and a half months. My how time flies, eh? But, all good things must come to an end, and it's time to move on. So I do feel sad to leave, but it feels right. I feel confident in my decision to move on, even if I don't exactly know where I'm gonna be after the summer...

I've been having serious doubts about Barcelona lately. I have absolutely no doubt that I'd love the city and have a blast, but I'm just not so sure if it's the wisest decision financially. The city is quite expensive to live in, and it's near-impossible for non-EUers to get a work visa. You can work under the table, but you're not guaranteed anything then. If the main reason why I'm leaving Prague is because of financial struggles, then I gotta be sure that the next place I land isn't going to put me in a similarly tight situation. I haven't ruled the city out yet, but I gotta do some more research before I lock that city in as my target.

But hey, that's on the other side of summer, and these days I'm All About England. My new plan is actually to not plan at all. The last month or so I've been such a stresspuppy trying to map out my life, and plan my next 365 days in great detail. It's stupid as it's constantly changing and evolving and there's no need to stress myself out so much. Things always have a way of working out, and it's okay to not have all the answers right now. I'm just gonna enjoy my summer, and see where I'm at at the end of the program. I'll take stock of my options and feelings then (well maybe I'll suss out a few options over the summer, but nothing too serious) and just go from there. A few weeks ago I felt freaked out not knowing exactly where I was gonna be post-TASIS. Now it feels very free and liberating. So yeah I'm turning off that silly part of my brain and for the summer I'm just gonna enjoy "the now" and worry about tomorrow, well...tomorrow!

I'm writing this post from my cute little apartment here at TASIS in Thorpe, and I absolutely love it here. Laurie and I flew in Monday afternoon and were greeted at Heathrow by a member of staff. The school is only 20 minutes or so from the airport, but feels a world away from the hustle and bustle of London - and the world's busiest airport.

The TASIS campus is a clean, green beautiful place. It's a boarding school set among a lush campus comprised of old brick buildings, meandering pebble paths, enormous trees, huge green lawns, and ponds and flower gardens. There must be at least 2 dozen buildings that make up the campus, and it's located right in Thorpe Village - a tiny little place here in Surrey.

I was brought to my apartment and I love it. I've got my own little fully-equipped kitchen, private bathroom, (with a proper shower box with a showerhead high enough even I can stand under it,) a living room, and a tiny little bedroom. It's not a huge space, but I haven't had my *own* living quarters since I lived in Korea and I'm pretty excited about it. I live in Tudor Wing which is not far from the main building with the Dining Hall (it's good to be close to the food!) The apartment is attached to the dorm that I'll be supervising but I have my own entrance. This summer I'll have 7 boys that I'll be looking after, and they'll have their own rooms in the dorm just down the hall from me.

I'm really excited about this new job. I've met almost all of my new colleagues now, and everyone's super friendly. Most of the crew is from the States, but there's at least a half dozen or so of us from Canada. It seems that like 90% of the staff is new, so it's good to know that we're all in the same boat together. The trainers and directors have all been super nice and helpful. It's a very relaxed place, yet very professional. Besides providing me with my own living quarters for free, I'm also fed all my meals, and they even have laundry service for the staff. I've never felt so welcome at a new job. They really treat their teachers and counsellors well, and it's nice to feel really valued at a place of work. We had our first full day of training today, and even though there's been a lot of information thrown our way it doesn't seem all that overwhelming. Here's how my summer's gonna look:

I'll be teaching three blocks of classes each morning - 2 before lunch and 1 after. I don't know who my kids are yet, but I'll be teaching the Advanced Level Middleschoolers, so my kids will be near fluent and between the ages of 11 and 14. In the afternoons the kids all have sports and outdoor activities, and us teachers will help out with that too. Evenings are spent relaxing or playing games, and the weekends are for field trips. It's going to be a full week, every week, with pretty much the whole day filled up, but we do have Sundays free (for the most part) and the job actually seems fun (especially the travelling bits!) so I really don't mind that the school pretty much owns my ass for the next 8 weeks, haha! We have training all this week, and the kids start to arrive on Saturday. Monday's our first day of classes and I already get the feeling that this summer is gonna just fly on by! I don't think I'll have that much time to write in here, but I'll try to stay relatively updated (even though I'm still behind on my spring adventures in Prague!) I'll post up some pics soon too of the campus.

We had the full day free yesterday so 5 of us went into London for the day to hang out. Just up the road from TASIS is a train station where from there we can get into Central London (Waterloo) in just 40 minutes. I'm not so far from the city after all!

Yesterday was a gloriously sunny afternoon and we spent the whole day just wandering around. And, once again, I fell head over heels in love with the city. There's a magic to London that I've never felt elsewhere. There's a real pulse, an energy, and electric current that flows through that city from top to bottom. Whenever I'm in London I feel that I'm truly at the centre of civilization, like the whole world revolves around this one megacity. It's an urban centre of gravity that the whole planet is captivated by. You just have to stand and feel the spinning around you. It's thrilling and mesmerizing and intoxicating and liberating. Even as a teenager I felt a freedom in London that I never had before. London to me is never overwhelming. It may be ginormous and sometimes a bit confusing to navigate, but I never feel lost, never feel nervous. I always feel at home in London even though I've never actually lived here. I felt this enamouration when I first touched down in the British capital 11 years ago, and it's still there today. London will always have a very special place in my heart, no matter where I go, and I'm so excited to get to know this city even better over the next two months.

Yesterday's afternoon spent wandering around the busy streets of London, and today's relatively relaxed schedule, very much is the calm before the storm. From here on out my life gets crazy. Training goes into full force, the kids will be arriving from every corner of the globe in just 3 days, and soon enough we'll all be neck-deep in schedules that will fill our whole days. I'm going to enjoy this momentary calmness as I know it's very fleeting. I'm really happy to be here at TASIS, and England feels really, really good right now. This is the happiest I've been in quite a long time, and I'm looking forward to this whole new adventure. Chip chip cheerio, indeed!

Embassies and Eateries

The ordeal is over!!! At long last!!! And I have good news to report. No, edit that, I have fanfuckingtastic news to report!

I GOT MY VISA!!!

Yes, finally, Scotty has been given the green light to go and work in England. GOD it's been a long time coming, eh? I had a feeling it was going to work out, but even so it's been one helluva emotional rollercoaster the last few weeks. It was making it impossible to plan anything for my future beyond June 18th, and we all know what an obsessive planner Scotty is...

On Monday I had my appointment with the British Embassy and I gladly unloaded my monster stack of documents upon arrival. The visa-obtaining process didn't go quite as I had imagined it would... I had thought that I'd be meeting an actual person who'd look over my docs with me and ask me questions, sorta semi-interview style. Nope, that's far too personal for the Brits! Instead they just wanted my papers and told me to come back at 3pm. I was a bit surprised by this. It was like "Thanks, I'd love to wait a bit longer, draw out the process a few more hours, why don't you!!!???" Nothing like permanent suspense to keep a boy in wonder about his own future. Or drive him over the edge of mental sanity.

So I went back home for a bit and then had lunch with my students who wanted to take me out since this is my last week of teaching. On a side note from all the above stuff, this lunch turned out to be quite a lot of fun. My students were a trio of guys who work for CSOB bank. I teach them every Wednesday and Friday at the oh-so lovely hour of 7:30am and they're a really nice group of fellas. Well it was their idea to "go somewhere American" for lunch as they often ask me about North American culture (the "North" often just gets dropped and I can look beyond my Canadian over-sensitivity with this, as it happens all the time.) Fearing that they'd choose something fastfoody like McDonald's or KFC or Subway I was pleased when they picked out another American eatery - TGI Friday's.

I have a strange relationship with Friday's. Prior to my stint in Korea, I had only ever eaten at one once (in Metropolis at Metrotown in Burnaby) and it was a terrible meal. I believe I ate there with Barb and Amy before we went to see Alanis Morissetter perform in her "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" Tour sometime around 1999... Anyway I digress... When I lived in Korea Friday's was a regular hangout - a bit of a haven of Western Culture, some salvation from normal life there which is All Korean Food - All The Time!!! Addie and I especially used to have dinner there after work and bitch out our stressful Preschoolers (god bless those little Parrots, the darlings, though...) The food was never *great* at Friday's at LaFesta but it was familiar and wasn't covered in kimchi or spicy red pepper sauce so it was therefore an ideal choice for us expats who were occasionally homesick for recognizable edibles.

Well there's two TGI Friday's in Prague and every now and then I go there with Carolyn and Laurie for greasy food and too-many Long Island Iced Teas. Again, not the best food, but sometimes, goddammit, a boy just wants a plate of fried mozzarella and a tower of fajitas and you can't blame him for that, now can you?

Lunch at Friday's with the CSOB boys turned out to be a highly entertaining experience for me. None of them had ever been to one before, and despite the fact that they've all travelled a fair bit (including George who was just in Orlando a month ago) they have very little experience with "American food." You should've seen their curious and delighted faces over the paper placemats alone (which had a few pics of about a dozen of their more famous dishes.) I was flooded with questions about what the food was and how it was prepared and cooked. Given that I've never worked in a Friday's kitchen, or in any kitchen for that matter, a lot of it I just had to guesstimate.

When the actual menu came it was like kids at Christmas. Pages and pages of food that you'd NEVER see in a Czech restaurant. So many inquiries ensued. "How do you say.... (pointing to "quesadilla.") .... "What's a strip?" (pointing to the steak) ... "What does "glazed" mean? "Do I need to order french fries with this?" ... "If I order soup will it come first like in Czech restaurants?" ... "Is that a potato?" (pointing to fried mozzarella sticks) ... "Is that made from real potatoes?" (pointing to the potato skins) ... "Is that real meat or like McDonald's meat? Will it be big?" (pointing to the burgers) ... "What's a...taco...?" .... "In Canada do you eat ketchup too?" ... "What's typical for Canadian food?"

That question was sadly a bit difficult for me to answer at first, but after a few seconds of pondering I came up with the only truly Canadian dish that I know of - poutine. I told them what it was, which was quite a hard concept for them to grasp as I first had to explain what gravy was and I don't think my description sounded very appetizing... "When you cook a large piece of meat, for example pork or turkey, you use the juices, the liquids from the meat to make a sauce...it's thick...and brown...and very fatty..." LOL I tried to convince them that poutine is actually crazy delicious but again I think I fell short on this mark. Sorry fellow Canucks, I tried!

When the food came they were all quite surprised at what was on their plate. Ludek had the fajita tower and it really is indeed quite the tower of food. Petr had a burger with fries and was rather unsure of what condiments he should add. And despite the fact that 99% of Czechs strongly dislike anything even remotely spicy, he ate *all* the jalapenos on his burger. "Ohhh...those green peppers were a little spicy!" was his response.

And then George had this huge mega burger, complete with a mound of ginormous onion rings on top of the patty. The burger was so big that he really didn't know what to do with it. I told him to 'just pick it up and put it in your mouth' but I guess it really was too intimidating, so out came the fork and knife. I don't think I've seen someone above the age of 9 eat a burger that way. LOL For whatever reason, George and Petr, despite both ordering burgers and fries ("Typical American food!! Right Scott!!!" they commented excitedly,) they had different kinds of fries and hamburger buns and this prompted a lot of comparing.

Heinz Ketchup and French's Mustard was on the table and I told them that Heinz was owned by Al Gore's wife's family. This came as a huge surprise to them, and then sparked a debate as to whether or not these particular bottles of ketchup and mustard were made in America and then shipped over, or processed somewhere in Europe using European tomatoes and...mustard seed or whatever. I don't know if a conclusion was reached. One thing's for sure - a meal at TGI Friday's has never felt like such a...cultural experience...as it did this time! Haha!

Anyways after lunch I went back to the Embassy and was awarded with my visa after a short wait. They only asked me a few questions about my first visa application and then went in the back to print it up. My passport now has a very lovely UK working holidaymaker visa inside (a full-page! and with my photo melted in!) and I'm THRILLED to know that next week when I fly to London it'll be for a job that's waiting for me, and not just to wander around as a sad, lost puppy! Yah!! I knew my determination would work out!

I owe extra special credit to Jenn Potts for pointing me in the direction of this visa. Without her this wouldn't have been possible. I owe her big. Like *really big.* Like she can totally claim my first three children kinda deal. Or the water bottle that Robbie Williams drank out of that I stole from his Vancouver concert in 1999. Okay I haven't actually seen that bottle in years and years and fear it's been lost in all my moves. But if I still knew where it was she could have it. Or maybe just look at it. Yeah, looking at it should be enough. That's worth about the same as my first three kids I father, right? Right???

The Golden Carrot

So I'm sure you're all wondering what the hell's going on with my life and all of this visa crap. Well, time for a brief update as D-Day (Decision Day) has come and gone already, hasn't it?

Our appeal has been denied.

Despite a lot of effort from the school to try and 'sell me' to Immigration, they just wouldn't bite at our bait. This did not come as a huge surprise, as apparently the Home Office almost never retracts their initial decisions.

My friend Jenn is a case in point example. She's a real teacher who's been living and working in the UK for a few years now and has had her own share of visa woes. She applied for a similar work permit as I did and despite already having been working for a school for a while she was also denied. She fought the decision with an appeal, waited 6 weeks, and was still denied, even though she had the bloody Ministry of Education fighting for her case! And to add insult to injury, the UK is currently experiencing a major teacher shortage! WTF!? For a country that's supposed so desperate for teachers that they're actively recruiting in Canada and the US, they sure don't make it easy to work there! Well, at least in hearing Jenn's experience I know not to take it personally.

On top of being able to commiserate our UK visa struggles together, Jenn has proven to be a wealth of information and has lined herself up to be the ultimate lifesaver. She's suggested that I apply for another kind of visa - a Working Holidaymaker - and this just may be the ticket needed. She's back in Canada applying for the same sort of visa herself and it's looking to be relatively easy to get. It's a visa that allows one to work/travel/stay in the UK at *any job* for up to two years. You can apply for it online and it can be processed fairly quickly. Sounds like just what I need!!

I went to the website and completed the monster online application, and now have an appointment with the British Embassy here in Prague for Monday, June 11th. I've been in contact with the Embassy, and provided that I can bring all the necessary documentation they ask for, I can get this visa on that same day! It's a good stack of paperwork that I'll need to bring in, but it's all manageable and I shouldn't have any major difficulties. So...it looks like I may finally be getting my visa after all!

*knock on wood*

But one thing's for sure, the last 2 weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster! It's been a very stressful experience, and I feel that I've been pulled back and forth so many times. England's off. Okay England's back on. Nope, it really is off. Oh, there's some hope, it's back on again. Argh!!! I feel like it's been this ever-elusive Golden Carrot dangling in front of my face, just barely out of grasp, and whenever I reach to grab it, it pulls away. I jump forward again but once more Mr. Carrot escapes again. Over and over again. FRUSTRATING!

But hey I'm a pretty determined fellow and have not given up on England. Despite the fact that she doesn't seem to want me in, I WILL work in that country this summer! LOL Things do seem to be looking up for this other visa. Should that fall out too, then I'll be on a plane heading back for Thunder Bay in 2 weeks. Hopefully I won't though. NOT that I don't want to see my friends and family back in T-dot B-dot, but I really do need this England job, financially. It's my ticket to Life Beyond Summer, whether that be Barcelona or...wherever I end up.

So there ya go. Feeling a bit confused? Me too. But like I said, it's looking good (for once) and I expect it all to go to plan. Two weeks today I should be in the UK already! God!! ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT IN PRAGUE!!! How sad is that?