Pit stop

I still have to write about Hammerfest, Lapland and Helsinki but I am taking a pit stop because lots has happened since then.

I have moved! No longer residing at Weevil Village in Chiswick. Karen has planned to move in with Richard once he started his MBA at Oxford University so I decided to jump ship as well. In the end Adriaan moved too so we had the arduous task of trying to deal with our estate agents, Townends, again. We still haven't sorted it out! They would have to be the most inept estate agents on the face of the planet. Or maybe it is all estate agents and I am just too trusting. Either way it is costing us a fortune to tie up loose ends. But enough about that.

I am now living in a one bedroom flat in Tooting which is fabulous fun. I love Tooting. It is a cosmopolitan mix of races, cultures, religions, foods and smells (mostly yicky ones that consist of rotting meat from the meat markets and fish). It is good to get away from the district tube line too. The Northern one is a lot ore reliable and can get me into the West End a lot quicker.

There is a bus I can catch right out the front of my house - the G1. It is the bus with no bus stops. You just stand on the side of the road and wave it down. It will take my all the way up to Battersea or down to Streatham Hill which is good because I can get pretty much anywhere from those two places.

3 things happened to me this week that kind of weirded me out in good and bad ways. The first was teaching at a school on Monday. The Teaching Assistant (TA) said to me that it was lovely to have an English supply teacher for a change instead of "all those Australians". WHAT THE???? Geez, that's scary. So I said I wasn't English. And she asked me where in America I was from. DOUBLE WHAT THE??????

The second was working at a different school on Thursday. I was teaching Year 3 and after lunch there was a knock at the door and a tea lady (yes, you read it correctly, a tea lady) came in and offered me a cup of tea in front of the whole class! How awesome is that?!? Now I can say I have truly experienced the English way! A tea lady! I'm still shaking my head in amazement.

And the third is not as fun. I was travelling home on the bus with no bus stops last night and a young white girl and a young black guy were sitting and standing just in front of me. There child was sitting on his mother's lap. A white man of perhaps eastern European nature started saying things under this breath and then when he got off he hurled abuse at the young family. Telling the black guy that he was a .... well you get the drift. Then he started yelling at him to get off the bus and he will teach the young guy a lesson he wont forget. The whole bus got really angry and started yelling abuse back at the European guy. I was so mortified that someone could say such nasty things about a stranger for no other reason than he was black and had a mixed race child. Guess the European guy didn't look at the people on the bus before he opened his big mouth because it was full of every race, colour, and culture you can think of. An the loudest people yelling back at the European guy? The white guys up the back. Defending the black guy at the front.

Humanity, huh?