the tourists

We took the day off a while ago to go do some of the "touristy" things around London. Tamara has of course done all of it before, but we had to do it again. We took one of the open bus tours, which included a bus trip and a river cruise from the London Eye to Tower Bridge. It was all quite interesting and now I've seen all that I needed to see. We gave the London Eye a skip, for financial reasons and the fact that there was about a million people in the que.
The photo is us at Princess Di's memorial fountain.

photos around town

This is Putney Bridge on the Thames. I took this photo on the way back from a local pub. I used the long shutter and the photo came out ok, complete with four swans.

This little Smart Car is covered in astro turf. It belongs to a company called Easigrass...guess what they specialize in? We see this little car driving around every once in a while, but came across it parked in Putney. We took the photo with Tami's mobile.

These Mini's are from the London Mini Centre.
They restore old Mini's to look like these, just like the ones from Italian Job. They look pretty cool, but carry a price tag from £6500 - £8500. Crazy!

bodiam castle

I left Tamara alone at home for the weekend, so she decided to do some sightseeing of her own. Good friends Duncan and Ret took Tami into the English countryside. They visited this medieval moated castle known as Bodiam Castle.

Bodiam castle is a moated, curtain-walled castle which was built in 1385 to either reiterate the status & wealth of this ambitious knight of the realm or, as protection against French raids. It was dismantled in 1643. There is a ton of history attached to this castle, but I'm not going to go into it.

The photos Tami took here were, amazingly enough, taken with her cellphone, a Nokia 6300. We were both astonished at the quality of these photos.

If you feel like finding out more about this castle...www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-bodiamcastle.htm

3 peaks challenge with bmf and tenovus

This past weekend I worked for a fitness and events company called British Military Fitness. Go check out there website: www.britmilfit.com and see what they're all about. BMF was managing the safety for a charity event organised by Tenovus, www.tenovus.com, for cancer patients and research. This event is called the 3 Peaks challenge and comprises doing 3 of the highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours.
It was the highest peaks in Wales, Snowdon mountain, in England, Scafell Pike, and in Scotland, Ben Nevis. The object was to climb all three peaks, including transport between the peaks, in 24 hours. It's quite a mean challenge, but I'm thinking about trying to take part myself.
My role in all of this was merely as a driver. The best thing about this was that in one weekend I got to see the Wales, England and Scottish countrysides. First we went to Llanberis in Wales, a small town situated in the Snowdonia mountains. Here competitors climbed Snowdon, the easiest walk of the three on Saturday morning. Then the competitors where off to Scafell Pike in the Lake Districts of England. Unfortunately I did not get to go here because I had to take the long drive up to the Scottish Highlands and a small town called Fort William to go to Ben Nevis. The drive itself was fun, mainly because I got to drive the latest Range Rover with all the extras like DVD, Satellite Guidance, TV, etc. This vehicle is an absolute pleasure to drive and made the 10 hours back to London feel a little shorter.
Unfortunately we always seemed to be in a rush, so stopping to take photos was out of the question. All the photos I took was literally taken in the drive out of the window.
I posted some photos here of Wales and Scotland, not great I know, but it's all I could do!

scotland

wales

teaching in the uk

When your agent phones and says, "Look, this school isn't one of our best, so it's going to be a hard day at the office," you must know......
Today I had my first UK teaching experience, and let me tell you, all those horror stories you here people tell, well, they're probably all true! It was an unbelievable day and the blatant disrespect for authority was almost scary - 14 year olds telling you to F#$%-off.
Classroom handouts are nothing more than paper planes, balls to aim towards the bin or someones head, or, if you lucky, to turn over and draw pictures on the back.
All in all a good day. At the end of the day I must just the British Pound to SA Rand conversion, and it might just seem worth it!