Just a quick update

So I've been in Wales for just under a month now. I've had such a great time so far and the best is still to come. It's been a few weeks since I updated my blog and a lot's gone on but I'll try to keep it short....ish. So here goes:

Sam, Andy and I went down (?) to Bristol a couple of weeks ago for a conference with about 60 gaps from around this part of the UK. Everyone we met was easy to get along with and we'll be catching up throughout the year. Basically, the conference was a total bore but we were there to meet people. We headed off to the pub after it finished around 3 PM. The bunch of gaps who are at a school about 30 minutes away had to leave straight after but about 20 of us had a few drinks before we had to go home. It was awesome to meet all these people, and fortunately there are a few kiwis nearby so I'm not TOTALLY surrounded by Australians!

One of the duties I have at the school is helping out on the day trips for the boarders on Sundays. Some of the trips are kinda lame, others are pretty cool. They do things like paintball and go-karting, they visit an aquarium (one of the lame ones) and the one I went on last Sunday was to a safari park about an hour and a half away. It's a thing where you drive your own car through the park and they have basically all the African animals you can think of (some of the photos are on Facebook).

I head off to the first regatta of the year on Saturday. I'm not racing in this one, but hopefully I will be racing soon! I've been out in the boats training with the seniors a couple of times and it's been a great experience. The trainings are a bit harder than back at home but then again, these guys want to win Nationals; not just make it there like back at Coll! This regatta has all the big schools at it so it's going to be great seeing how these guys compare to the Maadi Cup back home! I'm not quite sure if I want these guys to do better than that or not...

I'm not really sure what else to write about. I think most of you get the general idea of what I'm doing by now. It's pretty much the same throughout the week and occasionally I'll do something on the weekend which is a bit different and worth writing about. I'll try a bit harder to update you a bit more but really, I make no promises. Have fun with you last month off you guys before heading to uni, and good luck to you lot who have all just started school again - make the most of this year because it is actually an awesome one and you don't want to miss out.

Week one over..

Hey everyone. So it's not actually the end of the first week yet, but it's close enough and it will be when you get around to reading it I guess.

I've had an amazing time here already. As I said last time, all the people are really friendly and will have a chat to you at meal times or in the staff room. They definitely make you feel welcome here!

It's been pretty hectic so far but I'll get used to it, I'm sure. I had my first of what will be MANY trips to Heathrow this year on Sunday night. I had to pick up some boarders from the boys' and girls' school at 6 30. Everything was all good except for one of the 6th formers on my list who hadn't turned up. When I finally got hold of him he told me he was already back at the boarding house and had found his own way there. No worries. I was only there for an extra hour -______- Thanks buddy!

I'm working at the secondary school this term. There are two parts of the school; the prep school called The Grange and the high school which is actually Monmouth School. Andy is full time at The Grange this term and Sam splits his time between the two. We'll swap over next term and I'll be doing half and half.

Basically, I'm helping out with PE lessons in the mornings. It's either regular PE lessons or a swimming lesson. I haven't had to jump in the pool with them yet, but I don't think it'll be long since they're doing their best to drown when they tread water. I was so surprised at how many can't do it, but I guess I do come from a nation of swimming pools and beaches!

In the afternoons everyone has games, so that's when they do their school sport. I'm coaching rowing to 3rd formers twice a week, the seniors twice a week, and coaching a rugby team the other day. It's not too bad but the days are 7am to 6pm every day and it's pretty tiring. That's including after school rowing training. I think twice a week from next week it's about 7am to 9 30 pm with boarding duties. YAY!

I've got some photos from the walk Sam and I went on before the airport trips so I'll chuck them on Facebook soon. It's a lot easier than me describing the place!

Welcome to Monmouth

The first couple of days in Monmouth have been and gone. I arrived at the train station at 2pm on Wednesday and it turns out Andy was actually on the same train as me. Sam however had been waiting at New Port for about three hours, jet lagged and freezing cold since he’d come straight from Sydney and 35 degrees to single digits here.

Sam and Andy are legit guys. They’re both from Sydney but two different schools. They both played for their 1^st XI cricket teams; Andy as an opener and Sam as an all-rounder. They’ve both been involved in heaps of stuff at their schools and both got 95% in their final exams… Pressure on for one week’s time!

There hasn’t been much to tell so far, but what we do know is that there are far too many names and faces to put together right now. We’ll get there eventually but right now it’s pretty difficult.

Sam, Andy and I all learnt a vital lesson last night at the pub. Andy’s was that warm beer is horrendous and he should never buy it again; Sam found out Guinness is pretty disgusting and Sam and I both made the mistake of ordering the ‘Welsh Dragon curry.’ I think the five peppers next to the name on the menu SHOULD have given it away that it was smoking hot and uneatable…

Things That Go Bang in the Night

Just a quick update for the start of the year. Max and I went to a little town in Italy called Ventimiglia on Friday. It's basically like San Remo. It has a market on Fridays and we wandered through in the morning after our cups of coffee and croissant. Unlike San Remo though it was absolutely freezing! I had a scarf with me but it was doing absolutely nothing for me so I actually ended up buying a new one in anticipation of getting some heat back into my neck! Fortunately it was 15 euro well spent!

The only other significant purchase of the day were sky rockets from a hunting and fishing store. We were just looking around the town and happened to see a few fire works in the window. We looked inside and in the cabinet with all the ammunition for guns were these little packets of sky rockets! Better yet, it was one euro a packet and each one had 12! So we set off back to St Jeannet with 60 sky rockets!

New Years eve was pretty cool really. We set off about half of the fireworks when it was dark at 6pm. Yes... It gets dark in Winter early - don't forget how lucky you are for sun and warmth at this time of year! We took about an hour to set off the first half and when people turned up we had an amazing dinner! Basically it was like a second Christmas lunch. Beautiful!

When midnight came around and time for the rest of the fireworks, Jens, who is one of the people who came around slipped a little package out of his jacket and what should it be? Yes... more mighty cannons to make craters in the ground! Pretty lucky really since, you know, we were totally starting to run out... The fireworks here are amazing. I really dislike New Zealand for banning them!

the new year started off amazingly. We fired up the wood oven and all made our own wood fired pizzas with buffalo mozzarella, prosciutto and all sorts of other goodies. It went down rather nicely with a good beer.

That's all for me. Keeping it nice and short. Next time you hear from me I'll be in Wales having just met my two new flatmates and learning the ropes to my job. I'd love to hear about what you've been up to for new years eve too!

Until then, happy new year everyone. Have a rocker for 2012!

Back to San Remo

Hey everyone

So the last few days have been pretty wicked really. Yesterday Max and I went up into the Alpes Maritimes. They're the mountains behind the house in Nice. If you looked at the photos from on top off the cliff, basically we went miles back into the mountains behind that.

We went up the opposite side of the mountain this time and we ended up on top of the hill outside the ruins of this really cool old castle. I don't know any of the history behind it sorry. Here are a few photos to check out. The rest are all on Facebook if you're interested.

We left the castle to trek up tot he top of the valley. We hadn't really looked at the maps that carefully since I assumed Max knew where he was going. We eventually got to where we had intended; it just took an hour and a half longer. We basically went about 10km further in to the mountains than we planned, but in doing this we actually found the remains of a Cessna that had crash landed into the mountain in 1970. I thought it looked like the ruins of an old barn from a distance so we went to check it out and when we got closer we realised that holy shit... it's a freakin' plane! We only found out we went so far into the mountains when one of Max's parents' friends came over last night and he said how far in it was and was totally surprised that we'd actually managed to find it!

We looked around it for a bit and as is a Pocock family tradition (apparently), we took of a piece as a souvenir. Trusty Leatherman... glad I decided to take it with me. What we have is the controls for the landing gear and flaps, although we really aren't sure. 

Today Max, Zane, Bryan and I went into San Remo again. All around Italy there are old train lines which have been sealed over and turned into bike tracks. We were looking at this last Saturday when we were there for the market and decided to come back today to ride it. So we left St Jeannet at 8am for the usual €3 breakfast in San Remo - Two cups of espresso and a Cornetto Vuoto (Italian croissant). Yes. That costs €3.

So. The bike track. As you'd expect from an old train line it's almost entirely flat which is pretty easy going. None of these hills you get back in Wellington! We raced down the 20km track in just over an hour but we took our time going back to San Remo. We stopped at all the little towns along the way to have a look and to grab lunch, etc. 

The town at the end of the line is called San Lorenzo. Max and I headed into a little trinket shop for the start of our quest for things that go BANG! We spent a grand total of €4 on 10 Mighty Cannons and 60 Tom Thumbs - both illegal in NZ. There wasn't too much else going on here so we headed back to the next town along the route. This was Santo Stefano al Mare. We had a little break here and wandered through the town. I love all these little Riviera towns with the tight alleyways and cobbled roads. It's pretty cool really. We sat on the waterfront here with a beer and some chips. When we bought the beer we though it was €1.80 per can.. Turns out it was actually for two cans. It's just ridiculous that a can of Heineken costs less than a Euro.

The next town we arrived at was Riva Ligure. We got pizzas for lunch here - as you do when you're in Italy - and sat down by the beach to eat them. We discussed how hard it would be to start up a decent pizza shop like this back in New Zealand and we seriously just can't figure out why we don't have food like this! Same goes for the cafe we were in this morning for breakfast. So if anyone's willing to bankroll a small business we've got a great idea...

Oh yeah... So the little side quest for fireworks... Stop two was made here. We headed into a shop equivalent of a $2 shop and bought ourselves some more Tom Thumbs and some giant 10-shot like things.

Last stop before San Remo was Arma di Taggia. This was purely for more fireworks and another beer. We stopped off at the supermarket and bought some more illegal-in-New Zealand fireworks... Buzzy bees. Yeah. This is going to be a good NYE. We sat on one of the benches off the side of the cycle path and basically just looked out to the Mediterranean. A pretty sweet day overall and definitely the best since I've been here. The weather was treating us pretty nicely too for winter - tipping the scale at 16 degrees today.

That's me done for today. We're down into Nice tomorrow for some shopping I think. I'll be back in a few days with an update for you all. Have an awesome New Year's everyone! If you feel like a chat at any time flick me a text on my 027 number since it doesn't cost me anything to receive them and I'll do my best to get onto Skype or Facebook.

How the heck did I end up here?

So one of the very first things that struck me as I came into Nice yesterday was that I'm in a totally different part of the world. To kick things off, when the plane landed in Nice the airport wasn't actually ready for us... People weren't there to move the gate out to the plane so we could actually get off! That was the first of the delays. The second was that the luggage took over half an hour to come out, including turning on and off the carousels on multiple occasions despite being the only flight in to the airport at the time.

I got thrown into the deep end a bit. On the way up to the house, Max's dad told me I was getting lunch. So fighting jetlag and having not spoken the language for two years I had to somehow acquire three baguettes. I got there in the end... "Je voudrais trois baguettes".

Max, Zane and I went up the mountain behind the house top help me ward off the jet lag. I had to make it until 10pm which proved to be a total bitch from about 6pm onwards. The Baou de St Jeannet is this breathtaking rock formation. Basically it's a 250m high rock formation that drops straight down. It's about a 40 minute walk up to the top. There are even anchors at the top for rock climbers. It's pretty intense.

There are so many towns all about an hour's drive from Nice and we went out to San Remo on Saturday. It's an awesome town! The market is so cool. You know the market down by Waitangi park on Sundays? Yeah. That has nothing on this place. The food market is huge and the best in Italy. It sells all those typical things you expect from Italy. Everything is dirt cheap and amazing quality. All around the food market are the stalls with people hassling you to buy their fake designer labels. Some of the clothes are really cool and really cheap as well. We spent a couple of hours at the market before we headed off into the town for some clothes shopping.

For lunch we went to a pizzeria. The pizza is amazing. Stereotypical Italian pizza comment, I know. But seriously. It's good. Zane and I were talking about how New Zealand really has no idea what it's doing with pizza. After lunch we walked along the waterfront. The beaches here are way different to back home. There are public and private beaches. These ones are all closed off during winter because they're owned by the resorts. Walking past the marina was pretty cool. All these little fishing boats were moored up and there was even a guy sitting in his fixing his nets.

On the way to San Remo we took the motorway. It's a toll road and cuts through the base of the mountains. This took about an hour and cost €4, but on the way back we took the road around the coast. This was really cool. We went through all these other little towns and through Monaco and Menton. I can't remember the names of the towns but they all close up between 1 and 4 in the afternoon because everyone goes home for lunch as their main family meal.

Driving through Monaco we went around parts of the Formula One race track. It's literally just the city streets and you can see all the tire marks on the road. It's really cool knowing where I'm going having watched it on TV. In Monaco the main swimming pool gets frozen in winter and turned into an ice skating rink.

The last town we went through was Menton. It's the last town before the border to Italy. It was pretty much like San Remo in terms off the scenery. The only difference is in the architecture but I can't really explain that. One just looks Italian and the other looks French. 

San Remo market

Pedestrian zone in San Remo

Waterfront in San Remo

Looking back at San Remo in the distance from Menton

Menton

Christmas decorations in Nice. These go all the way along the waterfront and hang from every tree

Next post will be in about a week. Otherwise I'll have been spending all my time writing this instead of actually going out and doing stuff! Until then, Merry Christmas everyone!

The Quest for Bigger and Better Things

For those of you who don't know, I'm off to Wales for 2012 to help out at a Boys' School as a Gap; helping out with rowing and in the junior school. There isn't really that much more I know about what I'm doing next year so it's pretty much going to be a huge surprise when I get there at the start of Jan. You'll find out pretty much the same time I do! Cool aye! -___-

Right now I'm sitting in Sinapore airport with a five hour transit to Frankfurt. I'm off to France to chill with Max for xmas and NYE which is going to be pretty much the most legit thing ever.

I'm pretty much bored out of my mind right now. I have way too much stuff to lug around the airport so before you guys all start telling me to go to the Butterfly park or find the massive slide (still don't believe that part) 12 kg of bag is pretty damn heavy. So instead I was just sitting around and quickly checking facebook to make sure I'm still being picked up from Nice (yes Max, I was worried you'd forget to tell me what the plan was), I saw Kate and Max both started their own blogs so thought I'd do the same.

I'm pretty much out of stuff to say right now so sorry for the waste of like two minutes it's taken to read this. It's 3am for me and I can't really be stuffed thinking any more. Next post (might) be a bit more interesting but I guess I have to get this stuff out of the way first. Also sorry for the cheesy title. I blame the time of day for that too.

Later