Update

It's been a busy few days. It was my birthday - I got lots of great presents, including the new This is the Sea 4 DVD. That'll be my evening watching for the next few nights. I went up to Andy & Clair's for the night on Friday - had a lovely birthday tea including some dairy free sticky toffee pudding which was great. I had a brilliant time, as always, playing with Steven - who said "Fona here to visit me" when I tried to sit on a comfy seat and chat to Andy & Clair when I first arrived. So I'm supposed to play with him the whole time - right, now I know.

Steven kindly helped me open some presents, although he decided the one from Callum made a good seat for watching Fireman Sam on. Then he helped me open it and he liked the look of the two boxes of dairy free chocolates (luckily the alcohol & DVDs didn't hold much appeal for him). He was into the first box of chocolates in about 5 seconds. It was mint chocolates and we split one in half and he had half and I had half. Then I packed everything away into the big box again for putting back in the car. 2 mins later Steven's back into the box and got the box of mints, ripped it open and took out 2 - then handed one of them to me!!! Cute.

We got the marks back from our active learning assessment on Friday - that was the powerpoint presentation we had to do. I was quite pleased with my marks and thought they were fair, so I'm happy. We get the marks for the group assessment back on 28th November which is our day back on campus during our placements. Other than that day we're now out on placement until Christmas. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and meeting my class again, although the sheer amount of paperwork in this placement is a little daunting.

Met up with Ann and her wee daughter Catriona (who is great) today and we went to Prestwick to visit the Moffats. Worked out that we last saw them 17 years ago in Arran! It doesn't feel as long ago as that that we were climbing the Witches Step and going swimming in the Blue Pool in Glen Rosa!

Bonfire Night

I meant to post this last night as it would have been appropriate then, but didn't manage to get it done. For some reason, however, Ayr's fireworks display was actually held on Monday night. It was at the racecourse - I didn't go but could hear the fireworks from the flat so went out to the river and watched from there. It must have been very a very impressive display from close up.

Royal Mail's poor service

The Royal Mail's service here (and everywhere!) seems to be so hit and miss, but generally is really poor. I ordered some things to use in our sparkling introduction. They were posted 1st class on Friday morning in Wales which should easily have got them to me in time for using them on Tuesday morning. But this is the Royal Mail, so they didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon - too late to be of any use.

And to add insult to injury in the same post on Tuesday afternoon I received a birthday card, also posted in Wales - but 2nd class - and guess when it was posted?????? 6.34pm on Monday evening. So the 2nd class item got to me in less than 24 hours while the 1st class one took almost 100 hours! How can the Royal Mail justify this?

Lots of assessments

Well we did our 'sparkling introductions' assessment this morning - it seemed to go ok though it's always hard to tell. Our group were doing a lesson about map making and had turned it into treasure maps for pirates, so we were all dressed as pirates. Our pirate song seemed to go down quite well :-)

This photo will give you all a laugh at least - this is about the most flattering one of me - by quite a long way. Oh dear!

I've also now submitted my Social Subjects assessment (due tomorrow) and my Science assessment (due Thursday) - it's been a busy week for assessments! We also have a formative assessment of a group task in Language tomorrow, but it's not been nearly as onerous as the others and is formatively assessed rather than contributing to our overall course mark, so it's not nearly as stressful - thank goodness!

Now I can finally start looking forward to my next placement which starts on Monday for 5 weeks - in a composite P1/P2 class - and read up on all the things I need to know for that and remind myself which lessons I'm going to have to teach and do full lesson plans for, etc.

River contrasts

I haven't got any photos of the river at the weir at its highest or lowest I've seen it, but these should give some idea. The water is normally lower and the concrete walls can be clearly seen, but the river's been pretty high lately.

It's high here but you can still - just - see the concrete walls.

Then the water got higher.



I didn't see it at its highest but I can guess what it must have been like from the tree it left behind!

More contrasts

Another gorgeous day here, met Mum & Dad and got taken out for a nice lunch. The views across to Arran from Ayr today were stunning - it's the clearest it's been since I moved down here, just gorgeous. Some photos of it will hopefully follow in a few days, but meantime here's some more contrasts. Again all taken in the last week, all from roughly the same point - looking out across the beach towards Ailsa Craig.


Yes I know this one has a squinty horizon - I was trying to hold the camera still while being buffeted by the wind!

That's a big log in the foreground which has been swept in with the power of the tide.

Contrasts

These 2 photos were both taken last week from almost exactly the same spot! They're looking along the beach at Ayr from the pier.

Snow on Arran

It's been very cold for the past few days but lovely - those lovely crisp, autumn days that you don't get much in Orkney. A very pleasant change from all the rain for the previous week! And it means you can scuff through the leaves again - a great novelty for me. The previous week when Kye was here the leaves were all soggy because it rained so much.

There's quite a bit of snow on the Arran hills now.