The last few days

Here's a little recap of the last few days and how I've been settling back into Oxford. My last day in Israel was incredibly relaxing- drove into Tel Aviv, had coffee ON the beach with Tami, my dad's cousin, while relaxing in a cabana thing and sitting on a big loungy couch. Super comfy :) We had lunch at her house, with my cousin Dan and Tami's son Amit joining us and I did a few errards to stock up on food before the flight home. Luckily, no problems during the flight- i-pod was fully charged and I managed to get a little bit of sleep. Made it through customs no problem- I think the guy just wanted his shift to be over because he just said "to hell with it" and stamped my passport. Only forty minutes to wait for the bus and I managed to sleep the nearly two hours on thew ay home to Oxford. Arrive at Gloucester Green at nearly 4 am and walked up through Jericho to get home. By that point, I was pretty much past the point of exhaustion so I didn't actually fall asleep until six am.

But then woke up at 10:30- really? Only four and a half hours of sleep? Peachy. The weather is Oxford was BEAUTIFUL so after a run to the library and grocery store, I pretty much sat in teh backyard on a blanket and read books. Pathfinders was that night and we took the kids out to the field to play Rounders. Kind of like baseball with no home plate and no foul balls. So much fun and lots of laughing. We leave for our weekend away in two weeks and I can't wait!

I worked on Saturday but because of the gorgeous weather, I pretty much just chated with Katie the whole time and then showed a few people how to lock up at closing. Sunday was not as pretty but church was great and Roni and I caught up on some of our taped Food Network shows. Nice adn relaxing.

Monday was my first day back at the HW Club and since it was a nice day, I walked the thre miles from the house to the EOCC. I was in charge of six little girls between Year 1 and Year 4 and they were a handful. First of all, they just peppered me with questions so finally I made a deal: for every word they spelled right or ever page they copied into their notebook, I would answer a question. I gave them spelling words, checked their grammer, gave them math problems (they say take-away instead of subtract so I kept confusing them... I better learn my English vocabulary!) and then at teh end, told them a story for them to illustrate. Eventually they wanted to tell the story so I ended up drawing castles and kids skipping rope and a knight in shining armor. My pictures leave much to be desired :)

Tuesday I was back at the museum- it was another gorgeous day so I was anticipating some boredom in teh galleries. However, we got a big shipment of new Alice merchandise (NICE merchandise- all porcelin mugs and tea pots and cake trays and such) but we had nowhere to put them. So I was put on interior decorating duties and moved all the items in the glass cabinet (which we're trying SO hard to get rid of) and helped design the look for the new merchandise in teh glass case. We also had 35 Dutch kids on a field trip at the museum so we needed to deal with them as well but luckily they were gone by 4pm.

Today I hung out with the older kids at HW Club- and it was the first time I feel that I actually taught them something. I was working on some math with one of them and she was working on patterns. She was doing great, if not working a little too fast and making some silly mistakes. Reminded me so much of me. But she did a great job, was showing her work and was so proud of her self. Two of the other girls were working on reading from a science book and taking notes so I could quiz them later. We ended up having an impromptu lesson on the solar system and the Milky Way and Galileo and what astronauts do and then I went to find an apple from their snack so I could demonstrate the earth spinning on its axis and then also moving around the sun (or waterbottle). They were so inquisitive and one even said "Miss, you're so smart, how do you know so much?" I can't wait to see them again next week. I think the good weather has made them more cheerful.

I'm in the process of putting in applications for jobs in some schools around Oxfordshire. The problem is that a lot of them are outside Oxford in the surronding county and I have no idea how to get there. Would be well worth it though if they were to give me a job so think good thoughts :) I would love to be back here next year- I think about being somewhere else and I miss it!

Other than that, things are as usual- work again tomorrow til closing, weekend trip to either Sussex or Nottingham, London in a few weeks to see the sequel to Phantom, Monday Bank Holiday, planned trips to Devon and Cornwall some free weekend. Life is good!