Long time no see.

Alright. Perhaps a short post to give you some updates. School is getting marginally better, or i might be getting more numb, or my expectations are lower, or my soul is dying...whatever it is things do feel better here. My fellow teachers continue to struggle as i do and i don't think theres any magic tricks to dealing with these kids you just have to show up. Although my flatmate did get called a #$%#@% retard by a student on Friday, that was a highlight. Sometimes though i wish the kids would just swear at me so i could kick them out straightaway rather than have to wait until they amount 4 warnings to get them out of there. Oh, i did have a student try to get physically aggressive on Friday, but the student was small so it really wasn't that big of a deal. Apparently he thought it was unfair that he got a warning for hitting another student in the chest (hard) and tried to get in my face. To be fair though, i'm pretty sure the kid that he socked did in fact have it coming in a big way, but alas i have to be fair and enforce a general no hitting policy. On more fun and positive notes Kelly and I went into London last weekend and had a great time. We went to the Portobello Market in Notting Hill which was pretty awesome and when you get past all of the touristy junk they have some pretty cool stuff. Totally reminds me of Portland Saturday Market.

After we browsed around for a while we met up with our Canadian teacher friends Chris and Carly. It trips me out to be friends with them because they are the same age as the first year of students i taught 5 years ago...but alas, i guess i just am not the youngest teacher on the block anymore. We went with them to Belgo which is a great little restaurant recommended to us by Stewart and Stephanie (our friends from Glendora), who spent some time here a year or so ago. It was great, good prices and not horrible service. After that it started to rain but we ventured to the London Museum of Natural History to try and check it out in the two hours before it closed.

The building is amazing and you would probably need about 2 full days to check everything out. We went straight to see all of the dinosaur fossils which in hindsight might of been a mistake. They were cool, but since the museum is free, and it was a rainy Saturday afternoon, it was slammed with people. Of course in the dinosaur wing it was crawling with kids and pretty backed up especially to see the life size animatronic T-Rex which was very underwhelming, who cares, im interested in real stuff, not this Disneyland stuff. All in all it was cool but once we made it to other halls it was far less crowded and way cooler. We did think we saw another one of the new Canadian teachers and even yelled out Peter.... Brozny....but he didnt turn around so we thought it must be a case of mistaken identity. I texted him a bit later and he said he was at the Natural History museum. He must have been in his own world.

By far the coolest stuff what just how much stuff they have on hand for research purposes. They have millions upon millions of pinned insects and had a few out on display. I was particularly interested in the Deaths Head moth which has a human skull on its back. Mostly i thought it was cool because it was the moth from Silence of the Lambs, which has of late become one of my all time favorite movies. Seriously, if you haven't watched that in a while, there is a reason it won all of those Oscars. Its a timeless thriller that still holds up today on the strength of an airtight plot, but i digress.

The other amazing thing, the most amazing in my opinion is all of the 'wet' species samples. Over 22 million creatures preserved in jars filled with alcohol. They probably only have a few hundred on display including the first every portion of a giant squid that was ever found and alerted the scientific community of the existence of a giant squid. This particular portion was found in the belly of a sperm whale and partially decomposed (pic below). Pretty amazing stuff. They also have a huge tank of alcohol that has the full body of an 8 meter long giant squid that was caught about 5 years ago but they are unable to display it properly to the public. We did however find out that you can go on a behind the scenes tour called the 'Spirit Tour' which is free but you have to get there early in the morning to get on the list because it fills up quick. Besides the squid you can see specimen samples that were collected and preserved by Darwin himself. Many of the specimens they have date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. As you can tell i am fascinated by wet preservation but for some reason it just fascinates me to see stuff in jars, i mean i checked out the head of an elephant fetus in a jar that was put there over a 100 years ago, how cool is that.

They also have this massive cocoon model that you can tour through and it's huge. Here you can see Kelly and i next to it.

The other cool stuff they have is in the hall of mammals and they just have tons of mounted creatures like this Grizzly Bear. I tried to make the picture below look like i was saying, "What do you mean theres a grizzly behind me? Are you crazy?". I think i succeeded in capturing that sentiment.

Also, Narwhal skull with 2 horns FTW. Yeah it doesn't get much better than that. If a zombie apocalypse ever happens and i survive i will break into the museum and steal this to turn it into some sort of undead killing machine. Sometimes i wonder why i think about this stuff, but thats what ran through my head when i saw it, and im not all that embarrassed to say so. Im delirious right now.

Alright, well thats pretty much all thats been happening with Kelly and i. We are anxiously awaiting for our cable, phone, and internet to be installed which has taken over 6 weeks now, but its supposed to happen on this Sunday. Here's hoping. Thank you all for reading and i promise not to miss another week of Blogging and once we get internet i can post even more. Later friends and family, i miss you all.