One Week Down...

Friday I arose victorious - No more sickness- hurrah! Minus this nagging post-sick cough that flares up every once in awhile and makes anyone standing nearby just the tiniest bit nervous. I did end up making it onto campus - once in the morning to find the bank closed- and once again in the afternoon to receive my package of clothes delivered. I managed to maneuver it into a taxi, and then, with the help of flatmate Dean, from the parking lot to my room. Sadly, took me the rest of the day to get it put away. By 8 or 9 the Canadians here had decided to call it a night and all got to an early bed.

Saturday:
My first chance to do some real exploring in the city centre. You'll see I posted some pictures up on the Flickr account, and they should be showing up on the blog. At 11, Dean and I headed out to just wander about and take some photos - we saw a castle, and a lot of famous Harry Potter sights (or so I'm told), and a place where witches were burned at the stakes here years ago. Although, sadly, their pictures of any witches in memoriam still have them in black pointy hats with warted skin...sigh, look how far we've come. Anyhoo, by the time we'd made it back to the house again, I was well in need of nap. Having accomplished that, we headed back out again to a British house party with some of the two primary trainees (Dean and Charlene's) compatriates and spent some time just being...British. That was excellent.
The hours there were followed by a sojourn to a rainy line outside of a club downtown that we didn't quite make it in to, and then a cab ride home to bed.

Sunday:
This was the supposed big 'Squash' of what they call 'freshers week' here which involved all the major clubs trying to recruit you. They were very good at their job- but they'd have to be - there's a fee involved in joining any club. I was briefly interested in squash (65 pounds per year..plus court bookings) and the riding club (so much I'm not going to even bother telling you) , and then quickly nixed those of my list. We were there with some of the British people from the night prior however, so we ended up going to what they call Sunday roast - a very popular restaurant feature on Sundays where you get a roast and a drink, and all the fixings for 6 pounds. So, we spent the next few hours dining (and i say a few hours, because that's how long they took to get the food to our table...I should have complained more, but I didn't want to become known as the angry Canadian). Then, I finally got hangers- which meant that my clothes now have a home in my closet instead of the floor.

Monday:
Today was first day of classes. There's 22 people in my program...maybe 15 percent who are mature students and 40 percent who are male. Apparently there's such a dire need for Religion teachers here that they'll pay you to be a teaching assistant for 3 months prior to entering university just to see if you'd like it enough to commit to the program. All the British students also get a $2000 (canadian) bursary every month...just in case things get a little pricey for them.
Anyhoo, we all really gelled as a group - the morning was spent on trying to get a handle on each other's names...followed by a lecture for all the secondary students to pump us up, and then a coffee break (which we have each morning for 45 minutes) Then we started disecting the handbooks.
We were given 3 - a blank large green portofilo binder with quite a few forms in it, an RE handbook, and a copy of the curriculum guidelines. While a lot of information to digest, it's fairly organized. We were given a timetable of the time to come and the month I thought I had off in April quickly got shortened to two weeks. We're also visiting a place of worship for the major religions each week - 4 of which are around the area I'm in, one in some other city, and another in London. This, to me, is thrilling!
It looks like the course load starts off light for the first 3 weeks before you're plunged into deep water...so I've got a lot of prep work to do. We're expected to fill the binder with evidence of our personal development - and we are not allowed to claim any skills as teachers unless they're verifiable by evidence in the book.
I've got a reading list a mile long, but at least tings are available in the on-campus library.
We broke for lunch, en masse, and then returned for the second half of our day which included disecting four statements about religious education (i.e. Should Religious Education be prophetic?) and then discussed those. I was very impressed with my classmates - all of whom are very bright, very eager, and very professional. They went out to the pub after class, though I rushed home as I had lost me keys early that morning and wanted to franticly hunt for them (the situation has since been remedied, and I'm taking measures to ensure it doesn't happen again).
And now, here I sit, catching up on the blog and emails...and then making attempts to organize the next year of my life.
It's doable...
....I'm hoping ;)