First week at Harrow House

Ok, so again I've failed at updating my blog recently, so here's a few facts about what's happened in my life:

• I moved from Paris for good.
• But shortly after I went on holiday to Corsica, which was amazing, and where I nearly drowned. For a good lowdown of the holiday, head to my brother's blog.
• I got a first for my degree, so I now have a BA in French Studies. I also passed my online Tefl course.
• And finally, I got a job teaching English at Harrow House in Swanage, which I shall describe below...

So, I got a telephone call last Tuesday and was asked to start the job on Monday. I accepted despite the short notice, and moved to Swanage on Saturday. The journey was nice, the weather lovely, and the housemates all seemed very nice. On Saturday I did quite a bit of window shopping with housemates, went up to the pub and met several other colleagues and then went up to the lighthouse with two housemates, Pete and Adam, in the middle of the night. On Sunday morning, a group of us went to have brunch at a cafe, and then a group of us went and did more shopping and then went and played games at the arcade on the beach/went for a walk, etc. So everything was lovely. Except...

On Saturday night, one of the housemates got rather drunk and his behaviour was slightly weird. But on Sunday, he started drinking very early on and carried on. By the afternoon, his behaviour was completely erratic. He went up to the school, following some of us who wanted to play tennis, and began swearing loudly across the tennis and basketball courts in front of students and other staff. So we were told to take this housemate home, where on the way back he made lewd and offensive comments to students. Skip some more erratic behaviour to the evening. At this point, his behaviour was incredibly weird, where he said that we should taste our blood and he said that he would cut us in the night and drink our blood. And then he cut his arm and asked an Argentinian guest to drink his blood. So we phoned the police and left. We ended up spending Sunday night at the school and then in the morning collected our stuff. The aforementioned housemate's behaviour became more normal and he seemed shocked and ashamed at his behaviour. He resigned.

Because of that, my first few days were chaotic, but by the end normality resumed. Although the days are long, I'm really enjoying it and the other staff and remaining housemates are all very cool and very helpful, which means the lesson planning isn't so arduous.

Today I went on an excursion to Portsmouth. The weather was rubbish and some of the students miserable, but the HMS Victory was amazing, and the children who the staff had to look after in the afternoon were lovely and so easy to look after.

Donc, voila, that's my first week.