This past week saw me doing real work instead of just training. Ok, yeah, cleaning toilets is real work but it's not the reason I payed Lattitude $3000 to come here. On Wednesday Blum and I instructed two archery sessions with a school group of nine nine year olds. I was slightly nervous at first, but of all of the things I've been trained in so far, I feel most confident about archery. I enjoyed running the session more than I thought I would. Volunteers here moan about sessions because they get so repetitive, but I loved teaching each kid how to shoot properly and see their excitement and pride when a few of them hit bull's eyes. There's something really special about teaching somebody to do something well and then seeing them succeed. Archery is very easy when there are two instructors, one for each kid who is shooting, so we can walk them through each step and get them shooting really well. It's going to be harder when I'm running sessions alone. Luckily I'm qualified to do that ;)
My second day of real work was on Sunday (sure, schedule the Canadian to work on Canadian Thanksgiving). I worked at the reception from 2-10pm. The good thing about that shift was that I could sleep in as late as I want and have a leisurely breakfast in the Den while everyone else cleaned the disaster that was the vacated Aussies' room and take down a tent. Although I've had one afternoon of training on reception, the first shift was a little nerve wracking. Thankfully Morris, one of the old volunteers, was with me until 7 and one of our bosses Dave was around until 5. Really there was not much to do at that time of night. I gave and received keys a few times, answered a couple phone calls and tried to familiarize myself with the computer system. It got really boring and I spent the evening talking on Facebook, waiting for 10 o'clock to come. One of the advantages to working the late shift in reception is that the kitchen will give you leftover food from any of the events that have been catered for that day in the White House. So I had grilled salmon for my Thanksgiving dinner, but I greatly missed the traditional family dinner, turkey and pumpkin pie.
I have had three days off this past week, which is great, except it means that I don't get another day off until next Monday or Tuesday. This Tuesday I drove on the left side of the road, something I had really not expected to be doing this year. I didn't think I would even be allowed to drive in the UK because I still only have my 'N'. Apparently it is legal for me to drive here, for up to a year. Then I need to apply for an international driver's license, for which I would need a full Canadian license. British driving rules make no sense. I had a very nice Hungarian driving instructor who took me out and said I did very well. It felt so strange at first, but even turning and intersections got easier with practice. The things I'm not very confident are round-abouts (frankly I'm not that confident on round-abouts at home either, seeing as I rarely came across them) and remembering where my blindspots are. My driving instructor was very relaxed and chatted about how he is planning to move to Canada, and how crazy drivers can be in Britain. Now I can say I've driven on the opposite side of the road, something to cross off the bucket list.
On Wednesday it was back to ropes training because we have our Level 1 assessment early next week. We got a chance to try out the outdoor climbing wall, which is much more challenging than the indoor wall.
After that we learned what a Level One needs to do when running a zip wire session, and we got to try it out. The zip wire goes along the bottom edge of the grass sledging field and as you zip along you get a wonderful view of King George's Reservoir and outer east London.
Me lowering Benjamin off the wire.
Both Johnny and I had a great time.
Something else I should mention, if only to stop some people worrying about me. The Den is nowhere near as dirty as it used to be. It's impossible to keep the floors clean since most of us wear our shoes inside, and we'll never get everyone to wash their dishes all the time, but things are improving. We have managed to agree that Wednesdays after work are General Cleaning Days. We don't have a schedule of who cleans what when, everyone is just expected to clean something in the house on Wednesday. We are slowly attacking the dirt, greasy stains and months old stickiness while maintaining a level of cleanliness on the stove, floors and common room.
The other night everyone was really wound up for some reason (maybe it was the fact that we only worked a half day) and the boys attempted to evict the wasps from the nest in the outer wall of the kitchen. They accomplished nothing while running in and out of the house screaming. Although they did create this excellent Captain America costume in an attempt to shield themselves from wasp stings.
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