Communicating can be a real issue wherever one is.

So having carefully planned my two hours of teaching with year twos, the year zero teacher came in to ask why I wasn't teaching. Well I wasn't teaching because the head took it off the system whilst the kids got used to me, which seemed a good idea provided I did team teaching on Wednesday with the year zero teacher instead. So now here she was asking me to teach an unprepared lesson on a Monday, the head and I looked at each other, and I said okay if you will stay and so we finally got to do last weeks lesson and it went perfectly (except for the absence of Sooty of course who did not know he was required). I then did my year two lesson, which was interesting, as whilst they knew their numbers, recognising them in English was more of an issue (which is fair enough) so needs work. And then having double checked my new timetable I prepared to have lunch, but was instead  asked by a nice young person to come and teach Angleski.  So I did.  And again it was fine, but boy did I need lunch and a sit down afterwards and was happy just to spend the rest of the day laminating and cutting out numbers for bingo and pondering what timetable changes would happen next. So when the head came in and started to chat, I was totally unprepared for her next suggestion -that I move out of the Guest House and over to the village nearer the school when winter comes.   I love my little en-suite and wifi, but in truth how will I walk to the school when the snow comes.  There is the school bus but I have now been informed that goes at 7.20 rather than 8 which is what I was originally told.  I know that living in the other village may mean staying with a family which in some ways would be more authentic. But it would also make other things much much more difficult. Hmm.   I will try not to think about it and just see what happens.  Though I wonder how the staff who live in the village get there. Hmm.

 I have found trying to go with the flow is the best strategy when living abroad especially when I do not understand the language., Though I realised by the end of last week that I was much more tense than I had noticed up till then. .  However, my son, manages to send me through the roof on a regular basis, even at this distance or maybe especially at this distance and I really do not know how to manage the situation or improve the quality of communication between us to enable this year to go ahead with little inconvenience or stress to either of us. It is true that I am a major control freak so that is a contributing factor, but I was only able to go away because of his promise to deal with everything back home from letting in the new tenant, paying the bills etc.  It is very kind of him to do it, provided it works.  But my hope that I would see him on Skype several times last week came to naught. so we arranged to meet online yesterday which should have been fine as he was due to be home to greet his new flatmate.  So I popped online on a regular basis, but nothing I texted to ask when we would going to discuss the now several urgent things I wanted dealing..Nothing. By 10pm I was beginning to wonder what was going on but phone calls home did not help.  I even realised I could try ringing on Skype. Nothing. In the end I rang the tenant only to be told by him that my son had rescheduled his tenancy.  I am sure from my son's point of view all my stressing over this is both annoying and unnecessary.  But I really do not know how to be abroad and feel so out of control.   He finally texted me at 5 am this morning. So all suggestions as to how to make us work more effectively together much appreciated.

This house reminds me of a Russian fairy story. 

One nice thing happened today I was actually offered my old teaching post back in the UK.    Just two hours, but nice to have the offer, but I have been juggling teaching, examining, TESCO, teaching online, nursery work etc etc for the last two years and have only been able to go away for a couple of days at at a time so the chance to be abroad and have a contract makes much more sense for the moment.