American Pie

I am sorry that I have not written in what seems like ages. For those of you not so dedicated readers you may have not even noticed but I have to admit a blog post is way overdue. So I have been incredibly busy. Since starting lacrosse this term I am basically coaching 5 teams so it gets a little crazy, but I’ll update you on my lie since my last post………

So two weekends ago I went down to Bedford, which is right outside Cambridge, to visit another ELA girl Rachel. I got down pretty late on Friday so we just hung out and drank some wine with her roommates. I am explaining where I came from when weirdly enough one of her roommates went to Barney. It was so weird, what are the odds. So it was a pretty low key night. Saturday we got up and went into Cambridge. Cambridge was really nice. We walked around and saw some sights. Everyone was riding bikes which was cool. We did a little shopping because the January sales which still in effect. After that we went back to Bedford to watch a Rugby match. It was my first proper match which was really fun. We then got some dinner. She had to babysit for a couple hours before we went out so I just went with her. We were there for about 4 hours and guess how much she got paid, no don’t, you never will 10 pounds. 10! Apparently they usually pay 5 pounds an hour here so she must have messed up and only gave her 10 instead of 20, so it was pretty much a joke. We then met up with a bunch of her friends out. It was a really interesting crowd. I wouldn’t even know how do describe it. I guess a high school dance or maybe a high school cafeteria? It was pretty much every social group you could think of all in their own little clusters.
The next day we went to see Slumdog Millionaire. I remember to ask for the salty popcorn instead of sweet this time, still it almost seemed healthy so it still wasn’t the same. After that I caught the train to go home. I had a lot of stuff, way to much for one weekend which is so typical. I got a coffee before I headed on, which made manoeuvring around much more difficult. As I got onto the train I tried to put my bag in the compartment they had on the end, but I didn’t have anywhere to put my coffee. I put it down for like a split second and woooosh the train starts to move and my coffee spills all over my brand new white coat. Nice. It was incredibly embarrassing. There was coffee all over me and the floor and had no idea what the heck to do with it. I just rubbed it in with my shoes and moved along as I didn’t notice.

Last week was pretty nuts. I had my first lacrosse match with the girls on Wednesday. We drew which was good because the team they were playing had already played a number of games. Friday night I was on duty as usual. No one comes to staff tea that night really because they all go down to the pub. Well there were three of us on that night so we were sitting eating our tea as some year 10s were doing work in the corner. The year tens were making these weird noises they always make so one of the teachers kept yelling at them to quiet down. We were secretly laughing though because it was actually really funny. I was eating my usual veggie meal as they had their meat feast. Well at one point one of the teachers asked me:
‘what would happen if I ate a steak.’
‘Uhh I would probably get sick’
‘Well what was the last piece of meat you ate.’
‘Uhh probably chicken or turkey, I dunno.’
‘Not like steak.’
‘Nah I haven’t had red meat in a really long time.’
‘Right, well what was the last piece of red meat you had.’
Well I had a really long thing about this. I am pretty sure I had a bite of someones cheeseburger this summer but I couldn’t remember whose, Karens? Then I thought hmm does that really count. I was pretty sure though the last time I really tried to eat it was with mom and dad at home and she had made meatballs.
‘Meatballs,’ I said.
Well the two guys started dying laughing.
‘I was not expecting that.’
I joined in as well, not being able to help myself. I really didn’t think it was that funny though.
Later one of the teachers got up to get some coffee and so I asked him to get me some pie for dessert. Well they both started laughing because apparently pie means a dirty word here, who new. I should be saying apple crumble or something of that sort. Right I said, trying to make a mental memory so I didn’t use it again in a more inappropriate situation. A little bit later the year 10’s starting acting up again so a teacher called one of them over and started yelling at him to sit down next to our table. I took pity on him because he wasn’t really doing anything bad so I decided to offer him some dessert. Well you could only guess what I said. Completely forgetting about my recent lesson I said, ‘Do you want some pie?’ The other two teachers looked horrified. I immediately realized my mistake and put my head down completely embarrassed. Thankfully the boy didn’t hear me so he just looked on really confused. The teachers were then telling the boy I had something to ask him, but I was too embarrassed to even look up so I just ignored it.

The next day was Saturday. So I had another fixture, we ended up losing 5-0. The school was very posh. They had horseback riding and racks for their willies. There was also really nice flapjacks and teas for us after the match. That night I went to another teacher’s house for some dinner and a film. Sunday I had a tournament about an hour and half away so my team had to leave by 7:30. It was really long day. First off it was freezing. It was actually snowing the entire day it was just not sticking. It was of course all outside. There were about 10 teams in the tournament and they planned it so if you were not playing you were umpiring a match so it was pretty much nonstop. The competition was ridiculous. The other teams had really nice matching kit (uniforms) They had really nice jackets, leggings, skirts, socks. The coaches were all dressed in matching tracksuits with their names on them as well and each team had at least two coaches, most had more. Our team on the other hand were all wearing different bottoms, skirts, shorts, tracksuit bottoms. They were all also using school sticks that aren’t really nice and have no butts on them. (Like the bottom rubber part of the stick) We had our first team’s hockey shirts on and really didn’t match at all. I was wearing my Catholic University sweatshirt and north face jacket. Our girls were complaining that they looked like chavs (ghetto) and to be honest they did. The games were like David and Goliath or Moorestown and anyone in the south jersey area. One of the freaking teams was sponsored by pizza hut. That is actually not an exaggeration they were really sponsored by pizza hut. We made the best of the situation at least. Eating Jaffa cakes (yeah I didn’t know what they were either. I kept expecting it to be like a giraffe or something.) Drinking hot chocolate, and relaxing in between our games. We ended up with three points which is last place weirdly enough, I really thought those jaffa cakes would give us the extra kick we needed.

Today is Monday and there is snow snow snow. It is supposed to be like this until Wednesday. I went to CNN this morning as I usually do, to check out the super bowl results, (it obviously was not showing on our dinky little TV. with three channels.) and what do I see. Heaviest snow in 18 years blankets UK. So the only kids in school are boarders and it was preeeeety boring. There is actually nothing to do, which is nice since I got to do this little update. Anyway miss you!!