Back safe and sound

I'm feeling really tired today, but I have for the past week during the German Exchange. We got back yesterday evening and the kids had clearly had a great time. There were lots of tears when they left their German partners early yesterday morning and the kids were pretty subdued on the journey back. Two came back with injuries, a broken finger and a broken arm, but apart from that they were fine. One parent had a bouquet of roses waiting for me when we arrived back, which was lovely, and the kids all thanked us when they got off the bus this year. The behaviour was really good and they were great fun to be with.

It has also been a great time for the teachers. We have had some lovely meals in restaurants and at people's homes. One evening we were invited to a vineyard and did some lovely wine tasting of organic wine. We had a tour of the vineyards and learned a lot. Ezzie and I have a couple of vines on the allotment so Ezzie was keen to find out as much as possible. I had to do some technical translation that evening, which is something I am not good at, but I think I managed to get the main points across. The final wine we tasted was the best wine I have tasted in my life. We bought a couple of bottles, one for our host and one for us for a special occasion. It was really expensive and normally I wouldn't spend so much on a bottle of wine, but it was something extra special so we thought we'd bite the bullet. In the end, however, the wine grower said we could have them as a gift because he had never had English people at his vineyard before and we had been great guests. I felt really bad about that and wished we'd chosen something a lot less expensive because we hadn't expected that to happen.

During the trip I managed to complete a couple of pairs of socks. I deliberately wore Rowan Tulip at the town hall so I would have a picture of me wearing it in the local newspaper. In fact, an elderly lady approached me later that same day to ask me if it was handknitted; apparently she had seen it from a far and suspected it might be. Wow!

Anyway, it's not quite back to the grindstone for me. It's the school holidays now. Poor Ezzie is back at work, but at least he will be coming home to a nice tidy house and some great dinners whilst I have these (few) weeks off. I am going to go to work sometime this week to make sure I have a classroom left, but I am definitely going to enjoy the rest.