Blogging fear

Having not written a blog for over a month, I've got cold feet... too much to tell all in one post. I've had visits from all my favourites and moved house and been enjoying the unseasonal sunshine... basically having too much of good time to write anything!
Here is a photo to make this a proper post and not just idiocy:
Oooh Bergen!

Hammerfest in photos

The Northern Lights

This weekend I took a trip up to Northern Norway, to Hammerfest, which has the claim of being the world's most northerly town. It was truly awe-inspiring to see that see that people live, and live well, up there where it's dark for half the year and well within the arctic circle. I was staying with a friend of mine, Elin, who moved up there from Oslo last month. We had a great time, with bottomless pots of tea (with milk, of course, she learnt to drink tea in Wales) and bracing walks around Hammerfest, admiring the striking natural landscape of fjords and mountains. We were lucky enough to also have gorgeous sunny weather, which meant that the night was clear and chilly - the perfect conditions to see the Northern Lights. We went up to the top of a hill above the town and gazed up to the starry sky, where we saw a great band of ethereal green light, almost like a wispy cloud striking out across the sky. It seemed at once to be right above our heads and yet higher than the atmosphere. While we watched, it changed and evolved, creating fleeting patterns and swooping arcs. It was magical. I was unable to take a photo as my camera lens isn't good enough, but I don't think any photo I have ever seen has done it justice. You just have to go for yourself!

London calling!

Ok, I know, I'm a bit behind on my posts, but only because of my current nomadic state... I thought I'd begin with a few thoughts on my recent much-anticipated trip to England with my friend and assistant-comrade Marie-Hélène (pictured with Rory and Rob, touristing it up, above).
Our first port of call was my mum's house in deepest rural Suffolk. It was lovely to be back again, as always. The next day we chuntered on down (across) to Bury St. Loveliness and then on to Cambridge, which did itself proud, giving us blue skies and that weird mix of hobos and toffs which only Cambridge seems capable of. It turns out this is a ridiculously beautiful city. As a teenager I mainly regarded it as being similar to my hometown, but with more shops. I realised as we walked around, however, that if I went to this place in Germany or somewhere, I would probably faint upon sight of the stunning architecture, luscious parks and the fact that they have invented their own river-propulsion method, which almost validates the invention of both the picnic blanket and the boat shoe (I mean punting, of course). It is, in a word, delightful.
It was in Cambridge that I began my mission of giving M-H a full tour of the culinary delights of our fair British isles. My first assault was the recommendation of the cheese and pickle sandwich as an appropriate lunch choice. I'm not sure how well it went down, but our penchant for putting sweet sauce with savoury produce was presented, as the cultural oddity that it rightfully is.

Next on the agenda was a bracing seaside walk and flying visit to East Anglia's other noteworthy city, Norwich (sorry Ipswich didn't get a look in - it is just too awful). We took our walk in Walberswick, which combines the merits of a cutesy village green place and classic Suffolk shingle beach. The walk was made more exciting by the fact that a job lot of timber had washed up on the beach, which had apparently fallen off a Russian ship somewhere in the North Sea.
As you can see, we were also lucky enough to have blue skies, though the sea was pretty rough. My second culinary assault came at this point, with a visit to an eerily empty tearoom in the village.
We avoided the ciabattas at £8 a pop and went instead for the classic English breakfast tea and accompanying scone. Heaven! A lovely English time had by both of us.
On the Saturday we were London-bound with Rory - I had my first experience of driving in the capital, which was a nightmare, to say the least. This was the point at which my love affair with satnavs ended, abruptly. But we managed to make it to Rob, Jim and Simon's before I chucked it out of the window across the four lanes of on-coming traffic it was trying to make me cross. These three cheeky chappies live in Shepherd's Bush, or 'The Bush' as they affectionately term it. They were to be our hosts for the weekend, or as it turned out, long weekend, as I will get to later. And fabulous hosts they were, plying us with tea and comfy beds. We spent the afternoon on a worldwind tour of the city - Soho, Picadilly Circus, Westminster and Buckingham Palace - basically the tourist staples, which left us feeling tired out and a little bit queasy. Abortive attempts were made to meet up with our gaggle of Norwegians who had been let loose in the city for the day, but they seemed quite happy on their own, which wasn't too disappointing. We did our bit by meeting up with a teacher from our partner school in Ramsgate, Clarendon House, who also happened to have been working at our school in Norway last year. He is a jovial spaniard by the name of José, who will feature later in the Ramsgate leg of this tale.
Sunday morning arrived with a distinct lack of motivation on our part to leave our aforementioned comfy beds. We were treated to another British culinary classic, this time instigated by Simon - the great Full English Breakfast. It was time for Rory to leave for Brighton - sniff - where he had a meeting, but M-H, Rob and I ventured once more into the metropolis for a visit to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern. It was as we stepped out from the gallery that it started to snow. We were excited, and amused. Snow in London! It doesn't happen all that often. As we watched the blizzard from the pub window later that night, we started to get just a little bit worried. The buses had stopped running, so we had to bribe a taxi driver to take us home, crawling along the road as cars were slipping and sliding all over the place and we saw at least two broken down buses.
We awoke the next morning to see London at a standstill. No trains running out of London, half the tube paralysed and no buses whatsoever. Our planned trip to Ramsgate was, of course, impossible - there was nothing we could do but stay put until the next day. But we made the most of it! We put on our best woolly jumpers and headed for the park at the end of their road. We made ourselves a 7-foot snowman and had a more than satisfactory snowball fight.
Turns out living in Norway hasn't dulled my love of the powdery white stuff! NB: I mean snow. In the afternoon we got bored so went down to the Shepherd's Bush Vue (note to francophones: why the feminine ending?!) to catch Slumdog Millionaire, to see what all the fuss was about. It turned out to be a good film, making me feel all warm and fuzzy on that chilly winter's evening.
Unfortunately the fun had to end sometime - we were off to Ramsgate the next day to justify the school giving us time off to go on what may appear to some to be a holiday. Of course Ramsgate had had not one flake of snow, making our story somewhat suspicious. We spent the afternoon shaking hands, getting a tour of the school and generally feeling like a pair of dignatories. We went off to explore the delights of Ramsgate, which, I have to say, I hope to not to sample again any time soon. It has the classic symptoms of being a small coastal town, too far from anywhere, with inhabitants who have a penchant for binge drinking (didn't remind me of anywhere...). It was a bit of a shock after London. This was made up for by José and his girlfriend taking us for a lovely dinner at a place called The Belgium Café which did lovely seafood served by a swede called Kevin.
Our last day in England was spent at the school. We had hoped to be able to take a look at some lessons while we were there, but this didn't really work out, so we were instead sent to watch the school play, an interpretation of The Sound of Music. Now... The Sound of Music has its place. I can't say I don't know all the words to all the songs, but this was TOO MUCH. I kept trying to think back to my own school days... I'm sure the acting wasn't quite as wooden or the singing quite as ear-splitting. As you may recall, it is a musical that calls for yodelling. Yes, yodelling. Need I say more? I think the problem may have been compounded by the fact that it is a girls' school, with a few boys only admitted to the sixth form, so candidates for the male roles may have been a little thin on the ground. Needless to say, we were glad to escape in our minibus to Stansted. Inevitably we had a slight passport-losing drama on the part of one of the kids, and a big cringe on my part at the rudeness of the very same kid to the teacher organising things at that end, but eventually we were back on Norwegian soil, with just a slight tinge of regret...

Out of my depth...

This week is turning out to be uncharacteristically busy, mainly due to my having to cover for the teacher who is away in England with some students (who M-H and I will be escorting back to Oslo in a couple of weeks). This involves me acting as jumped-up babysitter to a gaggle of 16 year-olds, persuading them to take an interest in the frankly dry material I have been left with by said teacher. In his considerate way, he set the students the task of translating the poem L'automne into Norwegian. These are students who have had French for ONE TERM. And I am girl who has been learning Norwegian for TWO MONTHS. And it's most definitely not AUTUMN. The problem was confounded by the fact that I was given the material I had to cover on the morning of the lesson. So, as you can imagine, I felt somewhat out of my depth. *Inappropriate lesson alert!*

Somehow I got through it, though it wasn't the most calm I have ever been, let's put it that way. But those two months of chaos at Grimsby Institute have really stood me in good stead! At least here I have a textbook...
This evening I went to see this year's Cannes sensation Entre les murs (The Class). The action takes place in a French inner-city middle school and focuses on one teacher's (mis)adventures as he takes on a new class and attempts to drag them through their school year. It really crystalised for me the stark differences in the teacher-pupil relationship between here in Norway and back in England. I certainly remember that when I was at school, I didn't even consider that teachers were in fact real people, with their own lives and their own problems. For me, to be a good teacher, you really have to be a good actor. Once you're stood up in front of the blackboard and the spotlight is on you, the pupils really have to believe that you are actually outraged that they are chewing gum in class, or that you are scandalised that they spoke without putting up their hand. Because your job as a teacher is to prepare them for real life, basically to make them into someone who can function and succeed in society. For this they need not just subject knowledge, but also the notion of respecting other peoples' ideas and being able to communicate with those around them. As a teacher I feel like I should be a model for them to follow, i.e. fair, consistent and tolerant. I don't think the intimate details about your teacher's personal life are really relevant. The most poignant scene in the film for me was when one of the boys asked the (male) teacher, "So... people are saying that you like men. Is that true?". The way he diffused the situation was just amazing, turning the question back to this boy and making him question why he really had an issue with the fact that he may or may not be gay. The film ended with this boy being expelled, much to the horror of his teacher, who, when he saw the boy's home situation, could understand why he behaved the way he did. He also knew that if he were expelled, there really was no hope for him. It questioned whether these sort of sanctions really work, because ultimately they lead him to the point of no return and he dropped off the face of the earth, as far as the teachers were concerned. The point I'm really trying to make here is that as a teacher you walk the tightrope between your role as representative of society's factory of good citizens, and appreciating that your pupils are as fatally flawed as you are. The comparison with Norway comes when I observe teachers here really acting as mates with their pupils, which undermines them when it comes to setting down guidelines for good behaviour or attempting to motivate students to work independently. An example of this is that some teachers give their class their mobile number so they can text them if they are ill and not coming to school. If ever that were a license to take advantage! A lot of the students at my school are really there for an easy ride; the expectations aren't there so they simply aren't motivated to work. The film was also made in the style of a documentary, and was actually largely unscripted. This meant that it was uncomfortably close to reality! The fact that all the action took place within the school walls (hence the French title I guess...) helped to intensify the feeling that what you see of the pupils is really only half the story, and the same of the teachers.

Winter's back... and so is the nudity

January is white again! We had a snow storm last night, which meant that this morning I stepped out into a veritable obstacle course on my way to work. Of course the bus was late, so I missed most of the Norwegian lesson Marie-Hélène and I had planned with Sigve (one of the teachers kind enough to endure our faltering pronunciation). The journey back was a little less eventful, most of the paths having been cleared by then by the ever-present snow ploughs.
The inhabitants of Marseille aren't quite so used to this kind of event, as evidenced by this video, which M-H showed our French class. They were fascinated to find out that people didn't go to work for two days, just because of a bit of snow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDnYL059PW4
As an English person it's quite hard for me not to feel a little bit excited at the sight of some real snow! Must keep childlike glee contained...

You might be glad to hear that I have been keeping my New Year's Resolution - I have been swimming a total of twice (!) since the last post. We go to a lovely new pool, which is absolutely huge! It exposes my country bumpkinness that I have never swum in an olympic-size pool... it is ace! Though very disappointing when you count the number of lengths you have covered in an hour. So far I'm not finding it too boring, the only downside is having other people there. Some of them think it's 'chat time' when they are swimming along. Grrr. Is it rude to swim under people to get past them if you can't overtake? I think so. But I'm definitely gonna do it now I have goggles.

I've got to say, the most interesting part of the pool is the changing rooms. After years of 'the knicker trick' (where you put your swimming costume on over your knickers and then cunningly remove them, ensuring no unsightly bits are revealed... just me?!) and tiny changing cubicles, it is refreshing to do things à la norvègienne i.e. just BE NAKED. Yes, in front of OTHER WOMEN! I don't know what it is about being British that stops us from admitting we have anything under our clothes. Many of us are perfectly happy to go out on a Friday night wearing next to nothing (as our European counterparts are constantly reminding me) and we are fascinated by everything bums and boobs (I'm thinking here of the popularity of programmes like Eurotrash and pseudo-documentaries entitled The Secret Life of Ladies of the Night or similar). But when it comes to our own nudity we are infected with a sort of 'action man' syndrome - as far as we can go is down to the blue plastic pants. I think this might just be true of women... I can't say I have ever ventured into a male changing room.
So I have been embracing the Scandinavian way, and I feel better for it! I think if we were freer this way in Britain, girls might have more of a healthy idea of what real women look like, instead of this 'make me younger/thinner/trendier and therefore happier' rubbish.

Godt nytt år!

Midnight sparklers

After an uncharacteristically great New Year's Eve and a lovely time in rural Suffolk, I was quite sad that the holiday was over and that it was time to come back to the cold north. But after a few days, it feels like I've never been away. And I remembered that being here is quite a lot like a holiday! Well, if your idea of a holiday is spending your days in the company of Norwegian teenagers, your evenings watching re-runs of Blackadder (and studying the subtitles, of course!) and as much of the intervening hours as possible on public transport and/or discovering bigger and better supermarkets, then I am in paradise! But, in all seriousness, it's good to be back. The teachers have entrusted me to plan some lessons for next week, on such diverse subjects as Gandhi, Geordie and gooseberries (the last one is a lie, but it begins with G!). Marie-Hélène and I are also very excited about our week in England coming up at the end of January. We are tagging along with a school trip in the interests of 'widening our experience of the Comenius project' i.e. having a jolly. And many more travels should be had this year. I would make it a New Year's resolution, but I think the idea is that they should be hard to achieve...
My actual resolution is a pretty damn massive cliché: to do some bloody exercise! I'm headed for Tøyenbadet tomorrow for a bit of a dip, and I'm hoping my laziness will permit me to get myself down to the pool once a week... we'll see! My housemate Asbjørn has been encouraging me by reminding me of all the 'humanity' in public pools - but I will have to ignore that and embrace the wee wee!
Other plans for my precious day off include... opening a bank account. My cup overrunneth! Red tape is my friend.

**Norwegian word of the day**
munnsår!
Which I learnt off the telly. It means 'coldsore' and, I am reliably informed, can be used as an insult (to call someone a pain in the arse)!

Now, get out of here, you bunch of coldsores, and let my frozen befuddled brain recover!