janosrumpels Blog

Two weeks ago we went on a trip to Sandringham – a holiday residence of her Majesty where she usually stays during Christmas time and in the hot summer days. The house itself was not too big in comparison with the Hawkham Hall building we visited some weeks ago, but full of silvery and golden plates, paintings, carpets, armours, juwellery and weapons. Everything looked ways to cheesy and uncomfortable. It’s not a place where you can just hang around, hehe! But the park that surrounds the building is just breathtaking. You can walk for hours and hours, sitting under huge, ancient trees or next to one of the lakes. We spent the whole day there, lieing in the sun, playing football, having a picknick... – an other great social programm day.

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Schooltime – week 2

Then the second week in school started and with it we came into a new class. The teacher and the kids of Year 2 welcomed us warmly but we did not have much to do which made the days longer and longer. One afternoon they were building bathing machines – small cabines on wheels people used in the past to get changed and go swimming without being seen. The task had been prepared for two days – so the pupils already knew how to build an axis of a vehicle. Till the final task the way of teaching was pretty similar to what we learned in our “Werkdidaktik” moduls. But then came the final task which took place during 4 unbelievable long hours: The bathing machine was built with an empty cerealbox on two axes. That was tricky enough for kids in the age of 7. But then the teacher wanted them to build a roof like a pyramid. First of all noone knew how to make a pyramid shape that could be folded together as a roof. None of the groups could handle with the task so that the teacher, the assistant teacher and the two of us had to build roofs for all the kids – most of the kids were just not doing anything, hanging around and being overstrained. It was horrible and I felt so sorry for the kids... They couldn’t do anything eventhough they really tried their hardest and the teacher didn’t see that it’s not working. The classroom was one big mess with 28 pupils cutting cardboard and waisting thousands of metres of sellotape. One of the most annoying things in the classrooms we visited was the lack of material which avoids concentrated working of the pupils. There is just one rubber per table, sometimes even one per class. But it’s absolutelly normal that the kids do make mistakes and have to rub things out... then they are just running around in the classroom to find out where the rubber is. The more, the materials the kids could use for their bathing machines were not good enough. The sellotape was to small for the kids hands and there were not enough sticks to build axes... When school finished at 3pm I felt aggressive and could have screamed out loud. What made me so angry was that the teacher didn’t get that her task was not working and that there was no need to build a bathing machine with a pyramid shaped roof....

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The rest of the week in school was not to exciting either but also not that horrible like the one afternoon with the bathing machines. We made our presentation about Switzerland again and the pupils were happy singing parts of “äs Buurebüebli” in Swiss German. The kids were really lovely and always came to ask questions or tell us things about their hobbies and activities they did which was really nice.

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Leisure time

On Thursday there was a big karaoke night organised by the Language Academy in one of the University campus bars. There were some new groups from Spain and France including around 150 people... whereas our group had just 18 people. As you can imagine there were mostly spanish songs performed!

On Friday evening the Norwich Festival of Carnival started with a small parade. Schoolkids were performing their dances, drummers hit their huge asian drumms and the music turned the paradeplace into Rio de Janeiro. It was a very small thing for families. The big parade took place on Saturday in the evening with huge carnival cars and a big firework. Unfortunately I missed that – but had another great weekend – in London!

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On Saturday in the morning I took the train to London to visit Edward Law, a friend I met in Costa Rica! It was really nice to meet him again because we had a great time travelling and learning together in Costa Rica. First we took a speedboat on the Themps. It’s nice to see quiet different places and houses next to the big river. We get off next to an amazing park which contained a small hill from where you had a great view over the city and the business Centre of London. Still the weather was wonderful and temperatures around 30 degrees so we made a small picknick in the shade of a tree enjoying the place and the view. When we arrived back at the city centre we went for a drink and sat down in the shade of a second world war memorial because of the incredible heat. Then we drove to Southgate, a area in the North of London, where Edward and his family live in a nice, tipical English red brick house with a small garden. Eds mother works as a nurse, his father in an office. In their leisure time they’re running their own business and live their passion for old things. The two of them do collect medals, writings, books and other stuff from the second world war, make a brochure and do deal with the ancient things. Eds mum will get an early retirement to fully dedicate herself to this business. Eds parents were great and happy to meet me, how I was. They invited me to come back whenever I want and no matter if Eduard’s at home or not. Then we spent a relaxed evening eating a great, tipical Sheppard Pie: mincemeat overbaken with mashed potatoes – yammi, playing football on the x-box, watching the catching small world cup final between Germany and Uruguay and a movie about the masacre during the olympic games in Munich. On Sunday in the morning Ed had organised a tour around White Hart Lane (Gasse zum Weissen Hirschen), the footballstadium of his favourite club Tottenham Hotspur. It was quiet impressive to see all the cabines, the media centres and boxes in a Premier League stadium which will be rebuilt in the next years. After an other yammi meal (Roasted meat) it was already time to leave.

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Back in Norwich our group met in a pub to watch the world cup final... and finally there were some other football lovers! One group dressed in the tipical netherland colour orange, others in the spanish red dresses. Unfortunatelly the game wasn’t as exciting as the match the day before, but still it was great that Spain won the world cup!

Schooltime – week 3

In our last week at Heartsease Primary School we felt that we were not really welcome – some of the teachers tried to get rid of us and bring us into an other class. That’s why we experienced three different places during the last 3.5 days. On Monday we stayed two hours in the nursery with children in the age of 3 or 4 years which was not really usueful for our teaching. Then we went to a Year 3 class where we spent most of this weeks time. The male teacher was a nice guy, round and tall with cheackhair like Elvis Presley and a calm, sonorous voice. His style of teaching was totally different to what we had seen in other classrooms before. Instead of being ways to severe and focused on discipline he didn’t care about discipline at all. The pupils were always noisy and did just listen when he used his powerful voice. And he was always joking and chatting with the pupils in a very funny and friendly way. In some way it was nice to see, that not all the teachers in England are as severe as the majority and do have their own way of teaching. But I still have to say that his style of teaching was to extreme for me too. A nice experience was that the class had Ukulele lessons and the pupils gave their Ukulele teacher a goodbye-present: A hawaii-shirt with a Ukulele-pattern!

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On Wednesday we were told to spent the day with Year 6 which had a science day: With a university teacher they worked on the topic of DNA. With an experiment every pupil could make their DNA appear and they could carry it home in a small bottle around their neck which was a little bit strange. Then they were looking at their fingerprints and made a keyring with their fingerprint on. The idea of this science day was nice, but some parts of the lessons were just too difficult for 12 year old boys and girls. Although it was an interesting topic we could not really help something – just distribute things which can be very boring to do a whole day.... Then, on Thursday afternoon we finally finished our Assistant Teachership which was not very satisfaying. But the worse the schooldays the better the evening activities!

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Free time activities

On Monday we went to the famous “waffle house” in Norwich, a restaurant that sells a big variety of sweet and savoury waffles. I had a Mozarella-Feta waffle and for desert a Chocolate-Banana waffle – jammy! Then three of us decided to go bowling somewhere out of the city. It was great fun and we had a nice evening walk back home that took us 1 full hour.

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On Tuesday there was an other storytelling event. Again it was a nice evening, although the famous storyteller did not have as good stories as the last, unknown one. His stories were funnier but less deep and meaningfull.

On Wednesday we went to the pub “Birdscage” again – the one I wrote about in my first blogg. There were comedians, musicians, writeres and actors performing songs, poems, raps and stories. It was great. The atmosphere in this pub is amazing. The colourful walls turn the room in a comfortable, warm place and the old furnitures give it an alternative touch. Normally that’s what we would call cheesy, but somehow it was just magical and very adequate.

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On Thursday evening we organised a small meeting in an Italian restaurant to celebrate the end of our Assistant Teachership. It was a lovely evening with our 3 teachers and 2 people who had been responsible for the great social programms. After that we went to the cinema to watch Shrek in 3D and had a great time!

And today, I just came back, we had a traditional English Tea Time in the beautiful Assembly House of Norwich, a very old, elegant building. With the tea they normally serve small pieces of bread called scons with jam, butter and cream!

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Now it’s already time to say goodbye. This last evening I’ll spend at home with my hostfamily who really helped me having a great time here. We’re going to order some Indian Food and watch a video.

I’m a little bit sad to leave all this behind me. I made a lot of wonderful cultural, linguistic and personal experiences and met great people. I’m very thankful for having the possibility to be who I am and to have all the support from my family (ALL OF YOU) which allows me to do all these travells and I’m looking foreward to see you in the next weeks back in Switzerland.

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Sadly I’m gonna pack my things together, spend my last evening here and then get up at 6 in the morning to make sure that I don’t miss the airplane!

See you soon,

Love János