London Calling
Pascale History More

Howdy!

I am Pascale and will be living in London for a while. You can read all about my brain-dead tourist situations, embarrassing cultural mistakes and see all the pictures and videos I make. I will also post some proper blogs about the work I do to please my parents and teachers. I'd appreciate it if you left a comment. Use the links underneath the top picture to navigate.













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Bank of England

Friday 16 March 2012 23:05

Holy crap. At the moment I am managing some blogs, and I found this blog entry saved as a draft... turns out I never published this. Why, I will never know, but now the time has come to actually share it with the world! This was written on... I think it was a Wednesday, of my last week in London. Enjoy!

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I went on a schooltrip- yaaaaaay! At 9am this morning Year One was picked up by a coach to go to The Bank of England Museum. I was assigned one special needs pupil who I work with one-to-one every Tuesday afternoon. We had the most fun; running around, touching real gold and what not. I also learned that the Bank of England has loads of gold in their basements- they can only stack them up to knee-hight because otherwise the floor collapses. That doesn't sound like a major problem, but it really is when you realise that the tube (central line aka the tube line I use every day) is underneath their basements. This worries me a little bit...

Other than that we had a fun day. We had lunch outside on the steps, posed for tourists who wanted pictures of all these adorable little children in school uniforms and scared away pigeons. Another amazing thing is that I packed a lunch for myself, and then at lunch time, I was handed a bag with my name on it. Surprise! The chef had made separate lunch bags for all the adults and instead of just a sandwich and some juice, we got huge baguettes and crisps and fruit and a variety of juices to choose from. I ended up being the person who had to hand out cookies to the children as Gabby was reading them a story to sort of calm them down after lunch... which initially also meant that I got to eat a lot of cookies. I had to be secretive about it though, but the other help-out mums were in on the cookie-eating mission with me, as we were hiding behind pillars and basically just shoving chocolate chipped chunks of broken biscuits down our throats without the children noticing.

It was also a nice opportunity to get out in a bus and see London on ground level, instead of the underground level... I do travel by bus a lot of the time, especially the weekends, but that's usually just around my area of London. Not the big-houses, tall-buildings, private-driveways kind of London that I'm not used to, so I was sat gawking out the windows at the sights, not paying attention to the little girl next to me who was slowly eating her museum folder... oops. Admittedly, I do work in St John's Wood and my walk from the tube station to school is definitely a nice one, but the bus randomly drove around neighbourhoods where anyone would wish they'd own a house there. Also, the weirdest thing is seeing tube stations from the outside - the ones that I pass every day, the ones that I have to change trains on every day, and the ones that I sometimes wander around at when I've gotten off at the wrong platform or missed my stop because I was too busy trying to read the back of the newspaper from the guy sat in front of me. So, passing tube station entrances felt weird, because they're places that I know, and recognise, but at the same time have never ever seen before.

All in all a good day, and in the end I was given far too much credit and compliments for my "hard work"... doesn't get old though, all these people gushing all these wonderful things about me. I'm at the point where I just accept whatever they're saying, even if it's completely false and not true, fighting them is pointless. If I do end up going "Oh, it's nothing! I barely did anything!" they always find a million other things to say, so I'm just going with whatever people are saying.
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The Cube

Saturday 11 June 2011 21:25

Remember all the way back in January, when I was in London 1 day and I went to the TV filming of McFly at The Cube? I posted a mega long blog about all the events of that day because it was all very exciting. Well, tonight, finally, they are airing that episode of The Cube on ITV1. Of course, later someone will post it on youtube and I'll post the videos up here as well... but have a look at this first;


Phillip Schofield, the host of The Cube, talked to me in Dutch that day and I reminded him of that tonight and -would you believe it- replied to me on twitter!! Oop!
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Speed Flatmating photos!

Tuesday 7 June 2011 17:53

Remember when I went speedflatmating in London? It's AGES ago, but only now have the pictures of that evening been posted up on their website. They also state that they will use these pictures of flyers and stuff - this is hilarious!




It looks like Arun and I are on a serious date- we were just early! The picture of us outside is pretty cool because good looking Tom is on it (only a little bit though). Minutes after that picture we all left the "party" and went for a Burger King deal down the road.

Ooohhh memories.

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This is the end, but baby, don't you cry!

Saturday 21 May 2011 18:07

Yesterday was one of the weirdest days. Helen let me do whatever I wanted to do, go where ever I wanted to go and just basically enjoy my last day at Saint Christina's. At 10:30am I was working in Year One when suddenly Georgia came in and told me that they needed me up in the staffroom. I had to go immediately. A little confused I went up to the staffroom and found all staff, standing around the table which was set with cakes, drinks and the chocolates I had brought in the morning, all laid out. Nathalie gave a speech that all the deliciousness on show was in my honour and spoke about how amazing I had been and how they would've kept me on the school if they could, how they never expected someone 'of my quality' to come in and become a part of their staff etc etc (basically a whole load of crawling up into my ass, but I enjoyed it) and I got a present! I got a lovely designer bag from Selfridges (chosen by Alan and Helen who'd gone out shopping for me). Then I got to say a few words about how I was going to miss everyone etc. etc. and I got a round of applause before we all dug in.

At the end of the day the staff had a BBQ with lots of drinks and a karaoke machine outside on the playground. My parents came to pick me up and I got to show them around the school and introduce them to everyone. Without exception, everyone I introduced my parents to, told them how amazing I was and how they were going to miss me so much. My mum kept saying how 'good of a job' they had done -cough- but yea, anyway... we had a drink before I really said goodbye to everyone; hugs all round!

Throughout the day several staff members had been telling me to keep in touch and that whenever I'd get back to London to let them know. It's nice to hear, but at the same time I knew that people were just being nice to me. What else do you say when someone leaves, right? But then Conal, the Year 5 teacher, pulled me away from everyone and in all seriousness said that I really should keep in mind that after I finish uni, I should definitely come back for a job as a TA. He's from New Zealand and knows how British people are always so nice to your face, but how they can turn around and make nasty comments behind your back. Being polite is something that people learn to be in the UK, and not something they necessarily really mean. He explained that people haven't only been complimentary to my face, but also behind my back so that I should definitely keep Saint Christina's in mind for the future. That definitely made me think... so who knows what will happen in the future?!

After quickly packing up, leaving Bethnal Green, forgetting something, driving back and then leave again we were on our way home and didn't arrive until 1 at night. Now I'm back home in The Netherlands and I've got shit loads to unpack; seriously, how the hell have I collected so much crap over the past couple of months?! This is insane.

I guess that for now this is my last blog, but as I said before, who knows what will happen in the future.
18:07 share!

Hum yourself a lullaby...

Thursday 19 May 2011 18:41

This week has been pretty fun. I saw Charlie Simpson; we smiled and waved at each other which has thrown me right back into the crush I had on him when I was 13. Cue Busted songs. Also, I got serenaded at the tube, which was very awkward, but pretty awesome in a weird embarrassing way. I have been on a schooltrip to the Bank of England with both Year One classes which was a lot of fun! Helen has given me the evaluation today which is nothing but good words, all very professional on school paper and signed by Helen and Nathalie. Later I'm going to go over to Olly's place; the little poppet is ill and I haven't seen him since March, and since I'm going home tomorrow, a visit seems in order!

At school everyone keeps counting down my days which is funny but also annoying. In some way it feels like I'm really part of the team since everyone knows I'm leaving and is asking me lots of questions about what's going to happen next etc. but it's also annoying because I don't want to leave. I have decided I want to stay. Of course this isn't happening, but that doesn't mean that I don't want it. Beatrice said not to worry; she reckons I'll come back. About six years ago she came to the school as an abroad student from Colombia and now she's in her third year of working as a Nursery TA at Saint Christina's, so she kept saying "Who knows!"

Tomorrow mummy and daddy are coming over to pick me up from work, and even though that sounds really childish, I am stupidly excited! I have tried to pack up most my things; I've found lots of things I have brought all the way over to London but have never used here, only to now take it all back to The Netherlands again. Shows how much of a packing disaster I am. Any packing tips? Leave them in my chatbox at the top of this page! Signing off now!
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