Coming together and looking up

Its another long weekend (not by choice) for me, but not to fret - things are coming together and life is looking good!

My big bit of news is that I've gone to an interview for a 2-term (January - July) Reception position (Kindergarten for all of the non-British out there) at a relatively nearby school.  Even better, I was given some very positive feedback by my agency - they said I was one of the top candidates!  There was still one or two others they were going to interview and I should hear something by Tuesday.  This is great for me as it shows I'm learning from my mistakes and improving.  Fingers crossed for good news!

Teacher interviews over here are about 2 - 3h long and usually include two parts: a trial lesson and a formal interview.  The practical lesson is where you go in and teach a lesson to the class.  This can be difficult as you aren't familiar with the class' level or exact spot in the curriculum.  Some schools will give you a specific subject to teach while others will allow you to choose.  Regardless, a member of the senior management team will be there grading you (similarly to your B.Ed practicum evaluation :).  Its usually expected for you to bring a formal (typed) lesson plan and offer a copy to your evaluator (forgot this last time). 

The second part of the interview is where you sit down with your evaluator and "have a chat".  You'll talk about the lesson (good and bad parts), your experience, qualifications, plans, etc.  Its a good idea to have researched the school (esp recent OFSTED reports) so that you have some constructive things to say.  OFSTED is the organization that is responsible for inspecting and grading schools on a range of criteria to ensure that the schools are delivering quality educational experience for the students... needless to say, most schools do not have a high opinion of OFSTED :).  I think I performed fairly well on this - the only area where I am lacking is experience in long-term planning.  Then again, most new teachers are.

Otherwise, life is going well.  I only had 3 days of work (plus my interview day) so I decided to explore a different part of London.  I hopped on the train and went up to Victoria Park.  Its a nice area - the "Hyde Park" of the East.  Being a Friday afternoon, there were very few people out and I enjoyed a rare bit of peaceful solitude in the city.  A nice time to think and reflect... but as this post is already quite long, I'll save those ruminations for another day.

Back from the icy north

As many of you know, last week was the Autumn half-term break over here in London which means another "outrageous" travel adventure for Bryan "Globe Trotter" Kearney.  At least, that's what my teaching agency, Protocol, called it and if they're willing to give me 50 GBP just for going, who am I to argue?  This time I decided to buck the trend of going somewhere warm and opted for chilly Iceland - the land of lava fields, hot springs, geysers and glaciers.  See below for a map of where I went:

In these travel blogs, I usually take this opportunity to moan about how early I had to get up in order to make my departure... well not this time!  Learning from my past trips and how much I hate early starts, I booked a later flight out this time (hmm... would this be a good example of Pavlov's Classical Conditioning?) and had a much nicer flight.  Unfortunately this foresight did not extend to my return and I ended up flying back on 3 1/2h of sleep ... I'll get it right one of these times.

Fortunately I received a window seat and was able to get a good look at Iceland as the plane descended.  My first impression was of a brown, cold, sparsely populated land and, upon closer inspection, it was still a brown, cold, sparsely populated land.   One of the major contributing factor (to the "brownness" at least) is the lack of trees due to the volcanic and seismic activity as well as the wide-spread demand for firewood the early settlers had.  There is a reforestation program that has been ongoing for several decades but it takes a long time for the trees to grow.  Despite this, there is a really stark beauty that the landscape has.  You can really see how nature has shaped it - first the glaciers scraping over, then the high frequency of volcanic eruptions, lava flows and earthquakes...

I have posted the pictures from my trip with details so I'll just do a general overview here of what I saw:

•  Blue Lagoon:  If there is one thing Iceland doesn't lack, its hot water.  Its well known both for the number and quality of its geothermal spas and the Blue Lagoon is the most famous of these.  Its fed from the output of a nearby geothermal power plant (Iceland uses 99% renewable energy) and the waters are rich is sulfur and extremely good for your skin.  Its located on a lava field with an indoor and outdoor bathing area with a temperature of 36 - 39C.  It was really neat swimming around - the lagoon was carved right out of the rock and looked completely natural, the water varied in depth from a wadding pool to neck height and you could feel the temperature changing.  There were also steam rooms, mud plasters and a massaging waterfall.  The only thing I didn't have time to try was the in-water massages.  I'd highly recommend trying this out!
  
  
  
• Northern Lights: I was fortunate enough to see the sky light up with the Aurora Borealis because, being a natural phenomenon, you can never know when it will appear.  We traveled out of the city to a dark, windy field and waited.  The first night we saw nothing, but the second night we were treated to two ribbons of light lazily waving across the sky.  Unlike on TV or photos, the lights were pale, greeny-white in colour - this is due to the wave-length our eyes can normally see as well as the particular activity of the electrons in the atmosphere.  The reason that the pictures are usually very colour is simply because a camera can capture a wider spectrum of colour.  It was very inspiring though... amazing what nature can do.  We also drove past  Yoko Ono's tribute to John Lennon (a great beam of light shinning to the heavens. 
  
  
  
• Geyser Park:  A steamy, sulfurous park full of pools of frothing water bubbling close to 100C and occasionally shooting upwards.  None of them were as large as "Old Faithful" in America, but it was still neat to see... An interesting thing  is that the Icelandic people give each geyser (regardless of size) its own name.  Funnily enough, one town we drove through used to use one of their dormant geysers as a convenient garbage dump - unfortunately, one day it erupted and sprayed the village with decades of garbage.  Needless to say, they don't do that any more :)
  
  
  
• Gullfoss:  A beautiful waterfall... not much more to say about it.
  
  
  
• Þingvellir (or Thingvellir) National Park:  One of the highlights of my trip.  This park straddles two tectonic plates, Eurasia and North America, which are moving apart at an average speed of 2 cm / year.  Between the two plates is a valley which is slowly sinking due to the plates' movement.  This is the location of Iceland's first democratic parliament (possibly the oldest in Europe) and the largest natural lake in Iceland, Þingvallavatn.  It was awe-inspiring... check out the pictures of this place!
  
  
  
• Leioarendi Lava Caves:  Since my glacier walk was canceled due to weather, I decided I would explore underground (let's see Mother Nature cancel THIS one :).  They were created as the lava flows slowly hardened and formed tubes.  The government has kept them as natural as possible, meaning no artificial lights or pathways - you have to walk over broken rocky ground, sometimes crawling on your belly in total darkness.  The tour provides you with the appropriate caving gear (that helmet was sooo useful) although I really have to wonder at the common sense of some people.  There was a girl on our tour who insisted on bringing her large backpack down to the caves and was surprised how much she struggled (we were told many times how little room there was).  She then asked if it would "get dark" - ummm... you're in a CAVE... there's no light!   Again, amazing rock formations... so glad I did this.