I'm on HOLIDAY!

Term Two ended half an hour ago. The kids have gone home, the staff are thinking urgent thoughts about wine and chocolate, and I don't have to teach at all for two whole weeks!

Of course, I'll spend most of the second week of the holidays planning and preparing for Term 3, and 12yo sister is staying with me for the first week of the holidays for a treat, so I can't just veg out and do nothing. But still, they're holidays, and YAY.

Term 2 was a success, I think - the kids did great work and their reports were very satisfactory to me as well as to their parents, so far as I can tell! I've survived half of my first year of teaching and I think I'm on my way to really getting my head around running a classroom. It's always going to be a challenge, of course, but I do enjoy it.

The staff are going out together for dinner tonight - we're going to a health retreat / restaurant place about 10km out of town, and we're taking a bus so that everyone can relax - pickup and dropoff to my door, yay! The dinner is a split theme - half "Christmas in July" and half "Fourth of July", so there's a mixture of Christmassy dishes and American dishes, which should be interesting! Have any of the Americans who read this ever heard of marshmallow-topped sweet potato? This is a trimming available on the menu and I'm both fascinated and weirded out by the concept. I can't wait to try it, I'll let you know what it's like! We also get mulled wine on arrival, which I've never tried before, and which we'll want because a cracker of a thunderstorm went over about an hour ago and another one is coming, so it's chilly and damp.

Yay for winter, and yay for holidays :-)