Life On The Island

A big shout out to all my peeps around the world, from here on The Island Of TASIS! Well it seems that all of my predictions about being crazy busy have all come true. Three and a half weeks have flown by and indeed I'm a very, very busy boy. Lots to update you on. This post will likely be epic in length, so better grab a coffee and get comfy. Happy reading!

So yes it's true, TASIS does indeed own my ass! My days are so full and so busy from morning til night. There's some days when in the whole of the day I'll have maybe one hour to myself for free time. The rest of the time I'm working my butt off. But I'm in no way complaining as the job is fun and active and always changing.

Here's how a typical day looks for me: I wake up at 7:30am, wake up the boys in my dorm (more on them later), shower and have breakfast, and then spend an hour doing prep for my lessons. I teach 3 50-minute blocks of English each day, to a class of 12 teenagers (also more on them later). I have 2 blocks before lunch and 1 after, and then afternoons are for sport. I "coach" ultimate frisbee with a way-cool French guy named Pierre (he's also my TA in my class) every other afternoon. (I say "coach" as those who know me know that I'm not exactly the sportiest guy around. But it's fun and I'm actually pretty good and I've come to love ultimate frisbee.)

After dinner in the evenings I have to do my lesson-planning for the next day, but I also get to take part in the fun events organized by all the school counsellors. These change every day, but range from board games nights to scavenger hunts to capture the flag to fashion shows and dance-offs and tonight in fact is Haunted TASIS where the campus is being transformed into one giant haunted house! Check-in for the kids is usually around 10:30pm and I gotta make sure my boys are ready for bed, and then by this point it's quite late and I'm exhausted, and I normally fall asleep in about 2 minutes! Phew!

So you can see how each day is almost completely full, but the kids are great (we have 250 kids from 38 different countries - wow, talk about international!) and my coworkers are awesome! We have a lot of fun together and have a really good bond. That's a good thing, as we're all stuck here living on this little island together. I keep saying "island", cause it really is like living on one. All the teachers and students live and work on one campus, so you teach together, play together, live together, eat together, all in one location. It's a bit odd to have your whole universe exist on one 35-acre campus, but luckily we get escape now and then on the weekends.

The weekends are actually the best part of the job, as that's when we do all our field trips. Each week the kids get to choose from like 7-10 different field trips, and us teachers get to choose which trips we'd like to chaperone. My first weekend I chaperoned a trip to the British Museum in London, and that was really cool. We had about 2.5 hours in the museum, which is a truly magnificent place, and then the kids got free time in the afternoon for shopping.

Every Friday night the kids get to pick from 2 theatre trips in the city, and I've been very lucky to have gone on both. The first week actually was a bit strange, as we had the bomb threat in London so our director decided to pull all the kids off that weekend's theatre trips. This worked out in favour of the teachers, as they had already paid for all the tickets, and so half the staff got to go into London and see a show for free. And it was such a fun night! It all came together very last minute, but we raced to get dressed and ready, and then hopped onto a train to Waterloo. We made it into the city and into the Theatre District just in time to catch our performance of The Lion King. And what a spectacular show it was! It was truly beautiful and magical, and even if you're not a Disney fan, I highly recommend it. After the show all of us kinda just meandered back to the station, soaking up the night time festival air of London. London is busy at all hours, and it was so freeing to be out in the city on such a warm night. We walked across this big bridge over the Thames and took a moment to look at all the city lights and skyline all aglow - the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, the egg-shaped Swiss Re Building, and of course Parliament with Big Ben. I had to pinch myself to remember that I'm here and *getting paid* for doing this! Wow!

Last weekend's events were a blast too! I got to go again into London to see a show, and this time it was to see We Will Rock You - the Queen musical. And oh man what a blast that was! Such a fun story, and the music and vocals were incredible. Freddy would be proud! And then on Saturday I got to head-chaperone a trip to Brighton. Brighton is a seaside city on the south coast about an hour and a half from TASIS, and we lucked out with beautiful weather. It was a warm sunny day and it was so wonderful to see the ocean again. I hadn't smelled the salty freshness of the ocean since being in Vancouver in August 2006, and oh how I missed it! Brighton's biggest attraction is Brighton Pier, which is a giant pier extending way way out into the sea, and is full of cheesy arcade games, a small amusement park, and more fish-and-chips restaurants than you can count! Brighton itself is an interesting place - a real mix of touristy tackiness with some real proper history, especially in the maritime form. They also have a big palace there that was done up all 'faux-Asian'. Interesting indeed. Brighton, to me, felt like a combination of Santa Monica, the Poppies Lanes area in Bali, and Stanley (the little seaside village on the backside of Hong Kong Island.) It was a relaxing day, and you can check out the pics from it on my facebook page.

I have had a little bit of free time for myself. Well, at least I did on the first weekend. It was Canada Day weekend, and my good friend Jenn Potts, who lives just up the tracks in Bracknell, was kind enough to host me, and I so I got to escape from the island for a full 24 hours! She picked me up the from the station (literally just 18 minutes west of mine) and we went back to her place where we had pizza dinner with her friends Lisa and Imran. The four of us then got dressed up and took a taxi to Reading, a good-sized city not far from Bracknell. REFLEX was our destination, and oh what a good one it was! REFLEX is a bar that plays ONLY 80's hits, every day! And it was heaven!!! I got to have plenty of drinks (a special pleasure these days as while on campus all alcohol is forbidden for teachers) and we did a lot of dancing. We danced our arses off to all sorts of great cheesy 80's hits, and it was such delicious fromage. The club even has some stages and stripper poles that you can use if you want! We headed home around 1:30am and I got to have a proper lie-in the next morning which felt like paradise.

Being that it was Canada Day, Jenn was hosting a festive BBQ, so I got to enjoy the party as well. There were about 8 people there and we enjoyed a delicious meal out on the patio. Afterwards we went inside to play with Ian (Jenn's boyfriend) Nintendo Wii. It was my first time operating such machinery and it was great fun! It was a nice, relaxing day and it felt so good to be out with adults outside the school environment. In the evening Lisa and Imnran were kind enough to drop me off back at TASIS, and then it was back to island living.

Being that our campus is so international, it's a real interesting mix of students. They range in age from 11 up to 17, and most of them come from very rich families. It's fascinating (and also sad) to hear kids talk about their summer homes in St. Tropez, and their maid services at their palatial homes and such. The class I teach turned out to be different than I had thought it would be, but my kids are really cool.

I am now teaching Level 3 (of 6) and it's the older kids. I've got 12 teenagers, between 14 and 16 years old. There's Annachiara, Dario, and Lorenzo from Italy, Osama and Mosab from Saudi Arabia, Marie and Hadrien from France, Stanislav from Russia, Andres and Melido from Dominican Republic, Pilar from Spain, and Georgy from Georgia. It's taken a bit of getting used to, to teach teenagers as they can get a bit rowdy/restless/un-motivated at times, but my kids always have something interesting to say and definitely keep me on my toes.

And there's my dorm boys, and they rock my world. I only have 7 to look after, and share this responsibility with another teacher, Angel who comes from Greece. In our dorm, "Tudor Wing", we have Tomihiko and Hisatomo from Japan, Fayez and Suliman from Saudi Arabia, Vladimir from Russia, Inaki from Spain, and Marzio from Italy. They're all either 16 or 17 and get along very well. They're actually very well-behaved, and although some get a bit messy at times, are a fun, lively, friendly group who I enjoy chatting with.

A funny story for you about my boys. So they're the second-oldest group on the campus, and they're all kinda jocky/popular macho superstars. Not in a bad way, but they're pretty confident about themselves, and most of them are star players on the school's soccer team as well. Well, we had an interesting bonding moment together the first week in the dorms...

Fayez approached me one night just before check-in, and was really concerned about something in the bathroom, something that was bothering him greatly... He said that earlier that morning he was in the bathroom and saw a big spider on the ceiling, and apparently it was looking at him and he was so freaked about it that he couldn't pee and had to leave the bathroom. I told him that it was likely gone now, and not to worry. He said it was still in there, so together we went into their bathroom to check it out. Well we found the spider, and I have to say DAMN it was pretty big! Hell I wouldn't wanna pee next to that thing either!

At this point the 3 other boys he shares a room with (Tomo, Marzio, and Inaki) had joined us in the spider crusade, and we didn't know what to do about it. All 4 of them were freaked out by the thing, and I sure as hell didn't wanna touch it, so how were we gonna get rid of it? Suddenly Marzio suggested we use "the hoover", and that we could suck it up to get rid of it! Great idea! This turned out to be quite a project, and it took the coordinated efforts of all 4 of them to make it work. They got out the vaccuum, hooked up the longest hose possible (cause in their words, "we need protection!"), and then two of them held the hose as close to the spider as they were willing to get, one held up the vaccuum cause the spider was up high in the corner and the hose wasn't long enough, and the fourth took care of the cord and the turning-on of the vaccuum. On a count of 3 (dictated by me who was directing/guiding this from a safe distance) they turned on the hoover and sucked up the giant spider. They all practically screamed when the spider flew into the hose, and they then insisted that we "leave the hoover on for at least 2 minutes, so the spider doesn't come back out and seek revenge!" It was very hilarious to see 4 of my "macho boys" get all freaked out about the spider.

A week later we had a sequel to this spider-ridding event. I was in my room and could hear this fuss coming from the bathroom, and then I heard the vaccuum come on. I went in to check it out, and found the four of them at it again, this time with the hose and half the vaccuum outside the window! Wondering what was going on now, they explained that they had found more spiders, and not only that, had discovered their source. Apparently outside the bathroom window was "a lot of spider houses!" (they didn't know the word for 'web') and they were dead-set on destroying every last one of them on the walls and under the roof's eaves to prevent future arachnid intrusions. And once again, upon completion, they insisted on keeping the vaccuum turned on for a while to prevent escape. Actually this time I think they opted to vaccuum their entire bedroom floor, so as to "bury the spiders with dirt!" Too funny!!

So, as you can see, it's certainly been a fun-filled, action-packed full full schedule! And I haven't even told you the best news yet! I've been selected as one of only 3 teachers to chaperone a field trip to PARIS!!! Each summer they have 3 bigger field trips - one to Wales, one to Edinburgh, and one to Paris. All the teachers get to bid on a trip and submit an application, and I was absolutely determined to get the Paris trip! I knew I'd have stiff competition, as there's like 30 teachers and only 8 are chosen altogether for the trips. My colleague and buddy here Andrea and I decided to join forces and submit our applications together, and included a Top Ten Reasons why they should choose us. Well our tactic worked as we were both chosen! Andrea and I, and another cool teacher Tim, will lead 26 kids on a four-day, all-expenses paid trip to the City of Lights! And I couldn't be more stoked about it!!! We leave tomorrow morning, and are taking the Eurostar from London into Paris. We've put together an awesome itinerary, and will be taking in all the big sights, yet will still leave free time for the kids (and for us!) It's gonna be a blast, and I still can't believe that I'll be getting paid to travel to Paris!!! WOW! How lucky am I!!!

Phew! I feel exhausted just talking about my schedule/life here! So, I apologize for being so out of touch lately, but now you can see why. But know that things are good here, England and TASIS continue to treat me well, and stay tuned for a full report from Paris!