Scottish Deep Thoughts

The depression I suffered from due to a 15-1 thrashing against Inverness on Saturday night was effectively drowned by copious amounts of alcohol. I played like a giant heap of smelly detritus; i guess that is what I get for missing the past couple of weeks. We went out to the pub after I got back and then continued the party at our flatafter the pub shut. The neighbours probably did not appreciate the impromptu karaoke. Oh well. I have been quite slow all day but I still made it to hockey practice tonight. We have another game against Inverness next weekend. It will be a special night because the 80 year old legend fittingly known as "Rip" is playing in his last game before hanging up the skates.

I'm not looking forward to work this week. Only 3 more to go before Spring break though!!!

What a crappy week. Working ALL 5 days after having 3 days off last week (due to too much snow) killed me. This is the busiest time of year for me right now so that didn't help much with dealing with this shock to the system.

The one thing that made my week better was finding a big parcel from Royal Mail left in front of my door...Cranium! I was was feeling like a board game fix so I bought it from EBay on the weekend. It is the UK version so not sure how difficult it will be. I think I'll be crap at the trivia questions.

The past 7 days have been a blur and I am just catching my breath now. I was busy collecting money and permission slips and organising last minute details for 2 school trips on the weekend. The first was Friday to Glasgow to watch a production of Romeo & Juliet. 24 students, 3 other staff members and I left right after school (1:30 on Fridays) and made it to Glasgow by 5. We booked Pizza Hut for dinner before the show at 7:30. I was expecting a very traditional performance. Everyone was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a modernised version (think the Leonardo di Caprio version but set in a Glasgow tenement). It was great. We had just finished studying it in class so my students were really into it...some tears were even shed from some of them! A succesful trip ended back at home at 2am.



The next day I was off again to Murrayfield in Edinburgh with 40 students to watch the 6 Nations rugby match Scotland v. England. A packed stadium of 50,000 fans turned out to watch Scotland beat the "Auld Enemy". This is one of the best memories since I've been here! (the boys with the painted faces were part of our group).

Sunday I was able to catch my breath...until Monday. After a particularly stressful day of teaching I took my rugby team up to Inverness to play Dingwall. We hadn't played this team before but knew we had a good chance of winning as they were a newly formed team. We played well and chalked up our first victory! The guys were really excited and I was happy that they finally won!

So now I am enjoying the second consecutive day off due to "bad weather" (bad weather in Scotland refers to 6 inches of snow). It was a pretty weak reason for school closure compared to Canadian standards but I'm not gonna complain.