A Week til the end of term!!! Hanging on in there. Tired, and just waiting til the bell goes on Friday!!!

Tired and wet just about covers it!!!

Hailstorms in May, & when I'm camping aren't funny!!!

Well, it's been a while since I last blogged.

Things've been going pretty well, even if busy! It's Year 9 SATs week this week, and the first RE GCSE exam is a week tomorrow! Bit worried about that, as I'm still not sure the Year 11s know anything!

The bank holiday weekend was good - especially as it meant an extra day off school, and a well-needed rest! Spent some of it at o/h's cousin's wedding, and then went & spent the rest of it running around a field banging a drum. It was fun! Then back to school yesterday. Less than 3 weeks til half term now though.

On the whole, life is good, and better than it's really ever been; and to those people who have obviously decided that I am not one of the people in their life that they want to remember, despite pledges that our friendship would never end - I don't actually really care. If jealousy really means that you cannot include me in your life any more, so be it!

People do change - I know that both I, and my ambitions in life have, and now, I do have something that you would like to have, and that just presents too big a barrier to you. If you can't overcome that, then you're just not welcome in my life any more, and will only serve to bring me down. Even though what I perceive as my "vocation" in life has changed, it doesn't mean that God is any less important to me. It just means that what I think God is calling me to do is different.

The Easter holidays have been & gone, and back at school again now.

It's been an eventful few weeks since I last blogged...

Have spent a considerable amount of time shouting "the referee's a w......" at the TV screen as Tottenham were knocked out of the UEFA cup by the dirty cheating Sevilla...

It's only 4 weeks til the first Year 11 RE exams, and I must admit, I am nervous... Especially where Short Course are concerned, because they just don't care, & I don't see how I can help them if they don't work...

Other than that, things are fine, and for the first time in a while, I can say that I really am truly happy.

Two and a half weeks til Easter! Can't believe this term's gone so fast - it seems to have flown by. It doesn't seem to have been any where near as long, or as tiring as my first term, which has to be a good thing.

Thankfully, I seem to manage my classes better this term and everything. I'm also just starting to write schemes of work, as the KS4 scheme of work was only written up to October... All I need to know now is what GCSE papers the Year 10s will be doing; unfortunately this kind of vital information appears to be hidden from me!

At the minute, things are going pretty well generally, and I'm fairly happy. Things at school are good, and I have some good friends there who look after me - which is always a good thing...

Got the coolest present in the world today - maybe just to remind me of how young I am (I do make lots of mean comments about those people in the staffroom who are a significant number of years older - and probably wiser - than me), but maybe just to see if I'd go red; this appears to be a "game" in the staffroom at the minute! I got space dust - the stuff that pops in your mouth! It's great. And yes, I did go red, especially when people were trying to make me stick my tongue out while I was eating it, so they could hear it pop. So far, the spacedust is winning...

Year 9 parents' evening tomorrow, and then options evening on Monday... I've decided that it'll be easy compared to Year 11 parents' evening - I hate Year 11s!

Going away this weekend - to see my parents and grandparents - everybody's going to my grandparents. My little sister will be 7 on Friday, and I know we'll never be forgiven if we don't see her for her birthday, and it's also Mother's Day, so we decided the best thing to do is to try and keep my sister, my mother, and my grandmother all happy at the same time. The added bonus is that we're going to a Turkish & Greek restaurant for dinner on Sunday - I love Turkish food, and haven't had any for ages, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Other than that, I'm just waiting for the end of term really... Enjoying school at the minute, but time off is always welcome. The 12 weeks holiday a year has to be the main perk of teaching!

We're still struggling to find a church in Reading - have tried all of the Catholic ones, but none of them really feel right... I guess after going to Sacred Heart in Exeter for so long, my expectations are probably a bit high, and I'm going about finding a church in the wrong way... I think I've been looking for something a bit too much like Sacred Heart - the churches here just aren't like that! Not one of them has a music group every Sunday - they use an organ and choir. I guess I could try to learn to sing & join a choir... I miss being in a music group!

Have spent the last two days tiling a floor (yes, really), and now have sore knees (despite knee pads) and have discovered some leg muscles I didn't know existed. I'm not exactly jubilant about my discovery, as I have only found said muscles because they hurt! Today, we just have grouting to do, and then we have the rest of half term to ourselves.

Tiling has made my hands really hard and flaky - very distressing! guess at least now they match my dry face and legs!

It's half term! School's closed today, so just did some sorting out of stuff, but no children! I'm now half way through my NQT year, and the past half term just seems to have flown by, and I'm far less stressed and much more confident than before, so it looks like I might actually have a more enjoyable half term than before because I've actually got some energy left. I think it's partly because I have some lovely people who look after me well at school, and my tutor group are regularly visited by our year head just to remind them that they are being watched - it helps me too, and I know that I have support there when I need it.

Apparently, I have changed quite a lot this half term, and I'm better with the way I speak to the kids, & I'm not afraid to tell them off when they do bad things like stick their heads around the staffroom door - how dare they interrupt my lunch?!!! I've also started to be more "witty" (well, that's how I like to think of it, even if others wouldn't agree), and say things that are 'quite good by girl standards' like hysterical and historical, which I'm still quite proud of... & pointing out that I know who David Essex is because that's the kind of thing my grandparents play in the car - well maybe that was a bit harsh, but it was funny; I thought so any way.

I will miss verbally beating people up over half term - I'm hoping that I don't get too out of practise over the next week, that would be very upsetting.