The MacJohnson's Grand Adventure: First week of school!

August 21, 2009
Greetings once again from Scotland! Sorry for the LONG stretch between posts, but this week has been a very busy one with the kids and I starting school. To make matters worse, the hard drive in our laptop crashed and needed to be replaced. That was very frustrating and we are not looking forward to our phone bill as we had to call Dell's Canada number about 10 times over the 2-3 days, sometimes for close to an hour at a time!

Anyways, I went to school all week. Monday and Tuesday were staff only days, so I got to know the school a little before meeting my classes on Wednesday. Things are quite different over here in the schools. They seem very exam oriented - EVEN in PE!!! Although not all of the PE classes have exams, the 3rd and 4th year students have a pretty serious curriculum to cover (lots of theory) before exams. I teach 6 classes a day, and the day starts at 8:30 am, and finishes at 3:30 pm. I'm actually teaching nearly 15 different groups, as most groups are together only once or maybe twice each week. Everyone has 2 classes in the morning, a 20 minute recess, 2 more classes, a 50 minute lunchtime, and 2 final classes. Very little choice in some of the units that I have to teach (8 week units). I'm so happy to be teaching modern dance (yeah, do the "shopping cart"), 2 classes of gymnastics (no field trips to Flip city unfortunately), about 5 classes of basketball, 2 classes of "football", along with rugby, and badminton. I was asked to teach a Canadian-flavoured unit, so I decided to teach an 8 week unit on Extreme Dodgeball. I immediately got about 36 gr. 10 boys (with about 4 girls mixed in) sign up. They only get PE once a week and when we had our only class they REALLY loved pounding each other. Considering that the average PE class is only 20 students, this class could be interesting for the next 2 months.

Now for my Adventure story of the Week!

I bought a bike last Saturday preparing to bike to school. Calum Thomas was nice enough to email me a pretty decent sounding route, so I tried it out on a calm Sunday afternoon. About 5 miles of mostly downhill on the way there, and 5 miles of the opposite to come home! Pretty tiring coming home obviously, but at least I'm not too sweaty on the way to school. Well, the only real glich is that this route takes me through the largest roundabout in Edinburgh, where the Glasgow highway intersects with the Edinburgh Bypass, and a couple of smaller roads. When I rode through the roundabout on the Sunday afternoon, it wasn't even very busy, but it was somewhat alarming and didn't feel particularly safe. Not aware of any other great route, I traversed it again on Tuesday, but in the afternoon it was so crazy that I turned down one of the roads, cut across the traffic lined up for the roundabout, and somehow made it through. The stress of this route actually ruined my sleep for a couple of nights, as I'd wake up thinking about this roundabout, wondering if I was going to die the next afternoon. Well, Wednesday arrived, and I decided that I needed to try something different, only I didn't know what. On the ride home I only went around the first corner of the roundabout and saw a chance to cut over, so I did. I thought that I was going down the right exit, but in the crazy traffic, I somehow turned onto the Edinburgh Bypass 720 - as I later found out, the only road in the city that cyclists are not allowed on! VERY BUSY! Pretty much like riding on the shoulder of the Trans Canada, only narrower shoulders, faster traffic, double merge lanes that I had to negotiate to the edge of, and NO EXITS. People were honking at me, as I had to keep going, on a mostly uphill ride as it climbed into the hills of Edinburgh. It was brutal, and actually reminded me of my adventure of being lost at night in the hills of the Cinque Terre a few years ago. I couldn't turn around, so I started even looking at the under and over passes, to see if there was anywhere I could scramble up or down through the bushes with a bike. No such luck! Finally, after about 5 miles (some frustration and a worry that it could be many more miles before I could exit), suddenly a police car pulled up beside me with its lights flashing, pulling me over. I decided to make a run for it... no, just kidding - it was pretty embarassing, but also a bit of a relief. The officers were actually pretty friendly once they knew that I was on the road by mistake and that I had wanted to get off, but hadn't been able to. They nevertheless informed me that it was illegal to cycle that motorway, but thankfully didn't give me a ticket. They did inform me that there was a gas station pull out another mile down the road, and then proceeded to give me a police escort (lights on!) following me all the way to the gas station. There they pulled out a map and gave me directions to get on the proper route home. I wish the story ended there, but there was 1 final cruel twist of fate. After following their directions perfectly for the next few kilometres, the final road that I was on forked. Not knowing which way led to the road in front of my house, I took the road on the left as it was the road less travelled. And it made all the difference! Instead of a boring little ride home, which I was hoping for, I instead saw a sign that said "to the Pentland hills". At this time I was actually happy as I know that these hills are behind our home, and I'd hiked in them a few days ago. Great! So I kept cycling and got onto another smaller paved path. At that time 3 cyclists came by so I asked them the way to Currie. "No problem - about 30 minutes in that direction" A little dismayed by the distance, but glad at the same time, I started out only to discover that these paths became pretty difficult and steep as they climbed the foothills! At first it was okay as I took off from the 3 guys who followed at a slower pace. Soon though I started to wear out, as I had been cycling for what felt like a LONG time by now. Finally, at a little loch in the hills, I stopped unsure of which path to take as it split in several directions. The other 3 guys caught up, so I fell in with them for the next 15 minutes or so. Soon we came to the steepest uphill of my very uphill day - I thought that I was going to die, but I wasn't going to stop in front of these other guys. Finally, at the top of this hill they were turning off on another trail, but kindly pointed out and carefully explained the rest of the route. After another couple of kilometres of rocky trail, I finally came out at the top of a beautiful paved lane that they had said led right down into Currie. What a sweet ride. At least 2 kilometres of steep paved road, all the way down to our home. I truly thank God that I made it back unscathed!

Anyways, enough typing for today! Here are some pics from this week!

It's not always raining in Scotland!