8 hours till my flight to Kalymnos leaves and I am happily ensconced in a comfy seat with a power point to charge my laptop and gratis wireless internets. In short, the Greek model is the way forward.
A great deal of not very much has been happening recently (except Christmas, I guess that counts as being important). Since my last diatribe, besides a beautiful day scrambling around the An Teallach ridge in full winter conditions, my only notable achievement has been to haunt the climbing centre often enough to rouse paranoia in even the most stable staff members.
Oops, actually that is a lie. I have spent an entire month working my cotton socks off teaching children in a secondary school. Didn't realise how long ago the last post was for a moment there, how terrible.
Secondary teaching, it turns out, is just as hard as teachers like to claim. Assuming I get enough sleep, concentrating for every moment of every lesson seems to be doable but the paperwork.... GOD, what a pain in the arse! Prepare 2 pages of A4 for every lesson, prepare plans for personal development, prepare targets for professional development, evaluate every lesson in writing, keep a diary, noting down things to reflect on every day. And from the top of my head, all I can think of, that is.
On the plus side, teaching children as civil and well behaved as those at my current school is actually quite good fun and every lesson feels like a new challenge. Throwing the lesson plan straight out the window 30 seconds into every lesson does make one wonder about the wisdom of creating one in the first place however!
Enough about children, it's nearly climbing time! If 10 hours or so counts as "nearly".
I think I already mentioned how awesome Athens airport is (and you can add a further congratulations to KLM for their superb service and a violent kick to the bollocks of luggage handlers for their vandalism of my bag). I have often been told how amazing Kalymnos is and, dear reader, I shall be sure to let you know exactly how good I think it is, or not, for if there is one thing I consider worth blogging about, it is climbing.
Apparently I will be learning to ride a moped with a rucksack and passenger too, so I'll probably furnish the next blog entry with visceral pictures of my flesh after tarmac assault.
Last thing that leaves me to do is stick a grade out there that I will aim to climb. In memory of how effective this was last time and after several people telling me how nice and Andrex (kill, Kill, KILL!) soft grades on the island are, I shall, wholly unrealistically, aspire to on sight 7b or redpoint 8a.
If you want to check how awesome climbing is in Kalymnos, look no further than:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50892_petzl-roctrip-kalymnos-english-vers_sport#rel-page-4
With an apartment and laptop, there might even be a half time update during this holiday. (No, I am not getting soft, I was told there isn't any camping, besides, the apartment was booked already, sort of.... no, I didn't really look very hard for camping.... no, I don't care, sod off)
No comments:
Post a Comment