Our journey home - day 3

Today we have done nothing but laze around our apartment and go for a short walk in the village we are staying in, Nocelle.

We woke up late this morning about 9:30 I think, and both browsed the internet in bed for a while.  I had heard the church bells about 7:00 I think and then again about 9:00, but had dutifully ignored them!  Last night we went out to the little trattoria called the 'Santa Croche' just 100m or so up from our place for dinner.  We had pizza and it was delicious with buffalo mozzarella, the sweetest and most delicious cherry tomatoes, prosciutto and sweet tender young rocket leaves.  I couldn't eat all of mine so we sat up in bed and ate cold left over pizza for breakfast this morning!  After a very leisurely start I decided to sit out in the shade in the courtyard and catch up on some journalling.

The courtyard 

My shady spot to sit and while away some time

The fig tree I sat under was planted too close to this fence I think!

The first of the pages I created.  

I drew the one on the left yesterday in pencil, but painted the anchor with watercolours this morning and went over the writing in pen.  The page on the right was a little lizard who spent his time staring at me!  He is about 8 inches long and very cute!  The background is a very clumsy attempt at the coast line in water colour - the first time I have ever tried to do this without doing a drawing first! 

The background of this journal page was painted before leaving London.  I have glued on labels from beer and wine Richard and I have had over the past couple of days and written about some of the events of the first two days. (Sorry for some reason the computer is insisting on turning the photo as it downloads into blogger!)

After I finished my journalling I sat and just soaked up the sounds of the village, a few men having a very heated discussion in Italian, a child playing with a dog, a man praying in the shrine opposite our gate:

This shrine is such a cool and peaceful place to sit!

There are shrines everywhere in Italy.  Some of them seem to be in the most bizarre places, but are obviously visited regularly as there are generally fresh flowers in them.  I also noticed the bees visiting this plant in our garden.  There were about five different types of bees I think and the moth.  I only managed to photograph two of the bees!

This one is huge, about an inch long and has the most beautiful iridescent blue wings one of his mates had a great big yellow patch on his back (I presume pollen), but he flew away before I got a photo!

This one is big and fluffy! 

One of the moths. 

In the afternoon we went for a walk and saw this view of the coast:

We also decided to wander down to look at the church (no photos of the whole church because it is behind a big tree!)  But the plaque was beautiful!

The lower part of the building:

The whole village is built into the side of the cliff.  If you want to walk to Positano this is how you go:

We decided to return home and rest some more because it was meant to be a very relaxing day!

We went back to the 'Santa Croche' for dinner last night and took a few photos of the view from there:

The view down to Positano 

The lights coming on in Positano

It is all so incredibly beautiful!

Our journey home - day 2

Today we travelled down to the Amalfi Coast and are now in our accommodation in a little village called Nocelle.  It is absolutely stunning!  We are high up on the hillside over looking Positano and the coast line up to Capri.  The water is the most magnificent blue and very calm - just perfect for paddling!

Richard was saying that we have not done very very much today but I do not believe that for one minute!  We have dealt with the traffic here in Italy ....and yes I mean we!  He has driven and I have sucked lemons all the way!  Aunty Rhoda eat your heart out! I am learning to understand the Italian drivers around Brunswick and Coburg (they must have wondered what the hell we 'skips' were doing!)  Maybe writing this after a G&T, half a bottle of wine and a limoncello is not such a great idea!  You will get lots of exclamation marks I am thinking and maybe not my clearest writing.  I guess you will deal with it!  Richard has just decided I am amusing myself and whether or not I am amusing anyone else is another question....yes I am giggling as I write!

OK serious hat on!  (He thinks I am more likely to find that hat in the morning.)  We left that astounding hotel late this morning and drove down to the coast.  The trip was not without its moments as Portia was determined to take us via the most circuitous route possible!  Her 'shortest routes' are positively adventurous and sometimes would be suicidal if we followed her every whim.  'Turn left now'....what you mean over this one hundred foot cliff and into the ocean?  Anyway... we eventually made it down to the coast and after finding a car park walked a few hundred metres down the road to have risotto for lunch follow by the most wonderful Italian expresso....aaahhhh bliss!

Some of the coast line we drove along!  It is breathtakingly beautiful.

There are lots of little tunnels to go through.  Windy, windy, windy roads.  Scooters going every which way, horns beeping and buses going both ways where only one car can fit, but somehow the traffic eventually moves!  It is crazy and Richard has decided that if he comes home to Australia with white hair rather than his current 'salt and pepper' he will not be surprised.  Can you tell that I am loving this!  

After we ate, we, well he, drove further down the road to Amalfi.  As we came into Amalfi I looked through a little archway where heaps of pedestrians were coming out and decided we needed to stop and have a look!  Here's some of what we saw:

The archway!

 A shop doorway!

The local church! 

The fish and chip shop sign! 

Bottles of limoncello! 

More limoncello and lemon soaps! 

The beach Italian style...you pay to go onto the beach, are packed in like sardines and have all these uniform umbrellas.....oh by the way it is pebbles you are on and not sand! 

Just liked the way the pigeons topped off this statue which was covered in moss! 

In Amalfi we ate gelati (not the greatest, but still gelati) and then jumped back in the car to head towards home for the next week.  We made our way back to Positano to meet with the people to bring us to the villa apartment here in Nocelle.  After a hair-raising fifteen minute trip up the hill we made it!  Here is the ceramic sign on the gate:

Here is our front door:

...and next time I will show you some more......let's just say my breath has been taken away a thousand times today.  Just wait till I show you the views!

Our journey home - day 1!

Finally, finally, finally we are in Italy.  The past few days have been crazy to say the least.  We packed the luggage for our travels (so we could weigh it) and all our homeward bound belongings on Sunday and Monday. The stuff going to Australia filled eight boxes and we have sent them with a shipping company.  The stuff in the boxes will take a two month journey aboard a ship and will be delivered to our door in Hervey Bay.  On Tuesday we went up to visit Richard’s mum, Pat and said our farewells for now.  We took her our TV and set her up on Skype so that we can talk to her now from the other side of the world.

 

Wednesday we didn’t do much.  I am meant to be taking it easy and Richard has hurt his shoulder and so needs to rest it.  Thursday (yesterday) was a really jam packed day.  Richard’s second eldest son came to our house with a couple of friends and we packed up all the furniture, kitchen gear and household goods and he took them to his new two bedroom flat.  I have to say his timing in renting a place with a mate was impeccable.  We had to get rid of a two bedroom apartment’s worth of stuff and they needed to completely fit out a two bedroom flat – couldn’t have been better.  Once they drove off the big clean then started and at 6:00pm our landlady came and we handed back the keys for our Highgate home.

We are travelling light as this photo shows:

So we caught a taxi to St Pancras Station so that we could limit the need to lug luggage up and down stairs or escalators on the London tube system.  The train from there took us directly to Gatwick Airport and we stayed the night in the Sofitel North Terminal Hotel.  We were too exhausted to do anything other than have a shower and collapse on the bed watching TV!

Our plane left Gatwick just after midday today.  It was a two and a half hour flight and by the time we got out into the airport to collect our rental car it was close to 4:00 local time.  Here’s Richard and Harvey waiting to collect our hire car at the desk:

Unfortunately shortly after I took this photo Richard turned to me and said ‘Ali, we have a problem!’  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.  

‘The car is actually booked from tomorrow!’  

‘Well what can we do? Can we get one at all today?’ I asked.  The guy behind the counter said he could get us a car around 8:00pm tonight.  So here we are now sitting in the bar outside the airport having a drink and I am writing this to pass the time. 

So far I have spoken French, Italian, English and Spanish to the poor guy who served us!  It takes me a few days to get that sense of place and sort my smattering of other languages out!  I am sure you can tell that Harvey is quite relaxed about all of this!

Quite a few hours later and we have arrived at the hotel we are staying for the night.  Let's just say Italian drivers haven't changed in the past few years and the roads are still absolute shockers!  At least this time we have Portia , our Sat-nav and she was a blessing getting us here tonight.  Richard is doing all the driving and he was a tad stressed by the time we got here.  I think if I were driving, it would have been more than a tad! The hotel we are staying in is absolutely over the top! (click on the word hotel to have a look!).  We are just here for the night and will move into our apartment in the villa tomorrow.  I may not be able to post very much while we are here in Italy as we will not have full on internet access, but we will see how we go.

As we prepare to leave London

The last couple of weeks have been both interesting and challenging.  We have had to make a few last minute changes to our plans and will now leave here on August 12th, when we will fly to to Naples.  We were originally driving to Italy, but it seems the universe had other plans for us and we have gone with that flow.  Bruce, our ever reliable Volvo, will go to the scrap yard here in London and we will hire a car in Italy for our time there instead.  We will spend a week on the Amalfi Coast staying in an apartment in a Villa and then will move to Spoleto in Umbria for a further week.  Situations have made it necessary that we approach our time in Italy in rather a laid back manner.....not a bad thing at all I am thinking.  After Spoleto we will have four days in Rome and then will fly to Bangkok for about eight days before flying back home to Australia arriving on September 10th.

Last weekend we had the opportunity to go to Illfracombe in Devon, for a lovely weekend with friends Gill and Deva.  Richard went to Uni with Deva and it was through Richard's girlfriend at the time that Gill and Deva met!  We had a lovely time going for walks, visiting delightful seaside villages and going out for meals and drinks.  They have the cutest little Cocker Spaniel, Ren, who has made such an impact on me!  I really am thinking that I am not sure that life will continue for too much longer in our household without the sound of little paws!  Let's just say I have been doing a lot of browsing lately!  Here are some of the sights we enjoyed around Illfracombe

...and this is Gill, Deva and Richard enjoying a drink in a lovely little bar called 'Eclectic'

We also visited a gorgeous little town called Clovelly (pronounced 'Clo' -like toe and 'Valley').  It clings onto a cliff side and the only access is walking in via a cobbled roadway.  We were speculating that it was probably a smugglers den in years gone by! The cobbles are small and I guess you could very easily turn an ankle on them.  It is incredibly steep.  To get stuff in and out of town the locals have old plastic bread crates that they have attached wooden slides to (I wish I had taken a photo) and they drag these up and down the hill.  The sleds are either pulled by humans or donkeys.  There is a road to the bottom, but there is very limited access that way!

The back of Gill, Deva and Ren!

It was certainly a lovely weekend!

Check out this cool graffiti I found a few days ago just down the road from my house!

Finally for this post, on Tuesday I went out for dinner with some of my favourite Londoners.  I will miss these people enormously!

Now back to some more packing and organising!

One thing I have done well is........

Teaching at Kestrel House was the experience of a lifetime and one which I will never forget.   I will miss my students and the staff so much but I am sure as one door closes another opens. There were some things from my classroom that I do really want to share and the most of the following is something I have been trying to work out how to write about for some time.  On my last day at school I was really humbled by the words and actions of my class as a whole and in particular the words of one of my students and this prompted me to write it all down.

In my classroom we had a 'compliments tree'.  This was started after long discussions with the educational psychologist, occupational therapist and speech and language therapist at the school about what I saw as one of the major barriers to my student's learning.....their self esteem.  One particular day we had the supervising educational psychologist Ros, visiting us.  We were talking about how we planned to ask the children daily about something they had done well in the day and to write it down in a book for them so that at the end of the year they would have tangible evidence that they did do things they were proud of and that they had had success in their school year.  We discussed how a day is a long time for these children to focus on and maybe we should write down something for each session in the day.  That way if they had a 'blow out' at one point in the day they would see that it did not mean their whole day was a disaster,  and would hopefully start to see that they had just made a small step backwards for just a part of the day.  Ros then came up with the wonderful idea of making those thoughts into leaves of a tree and from that idea this grew in my classroom!

Our 'Compliments Tree' started as a brown trunk and branches and daily each boy's favourite self compliment was added as a leaf.  They were each given pages with the outline of the leaves and their names in the stem.  They learnt to do a wash with watered down acrylic paint and these were then stored.  At the end of each day their favourite compliment of the three they had given themselves was written on to one of their personalised leaves and added to the tree.  Some days if they did not mention something we as adults thought was note worthy we gave them extra leaves from us.  As you can see by the end of the year we had THE most beautiful piece of classroom art imaginable!  It had to be one of  my favourite parts of my classroom.

This wonderful tree never failed to draw comments from classroom visitors.  I heard all three of my boys proudly telling their parents about it at some point and that certainly brought a smile to my face, particularly as they were not to sure about it to begin with!

At the end of the year I decided that along with the books I would have the boys make individual trees.  We had them paint individual trunks and branches onto A1 paper and in the last week of school we removed all the leaves from our class tree and sorted them into the three separate piles for the boys.  They then glued their leaves onto their own trees.  It was a beautiful time as they pasted them on and reread some of the wonderful things they had done over the course of their school year.

On the last day of school we had an assembly and my class showed their individual trees to the rest of the school.  Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the individual trees, but believe me they were gorgeous!  I was about to take my class to sit down and the head teacher said my class had something special for me.  They, and a student I had taught in the previous school year, had made me a tree of my own.  I am sure you will agree that it is stunning!

Each leaf has a note to me from one of the children or the teaching assistants I worked with and they are all very, very special.  On the back of this is a poem written for me by one of my students.  When I started at the school in January 2010 he could hardly read.  He did not write anything down without a major, major fuss and a massive amount of support but this is what he wrote for me on the last day....

To Ali

If there was a storm that was going to destroy the

world

Alison would stop the storm,

because her power comes from her hugs.

The power from her hugs gives us life!

I will miss you.

From T.

This was read out first by the child and then as he was crying as he read it, and it was difficult to understand, it was read again by the Head Teacher.  She cried as she read it and there was not a dry eye in the room.  I have never felt so overwhelmed and humbled by the actions and words of one of my students.  I was so proud of him and how far he has come in just over 18 months.  I guess this just brings home one of the main reasons I teach!   

.... and yes Ash, I will 'Smile because it happened!'

Creating books

Friday was my last day of teaching at Kestrel House and what a sad day it was.  I will miss my students and the staff so much. It was the experience of a lifetime and one which I will never forget.   For months I have been promising the wonderful Renee Richetts that I would post some photos and info on the metal books my boys made so I decided that I should get to and do it!

Renee was one of the the teachers I had the pleasure of learning from when I visited Paris in the days leading into the New Year.  She taught me to make a basic sewn journal and then to make some truly wonderful metal books.  During the course of the three day art retreat I got talking to this wonderful lady and told her how I taught children with Asperger's here in London.  Renee told me she also had Asperger's (no surprises there!!) and of course we continued until the end of the retreat to have lots and lots to talk about.  She is one of those people you meet and know she is one of life's gifts. A lovely, lovely woman!

Across the three days I learnt some wonderful things from Renee, but more than anything she reminded me how wonderful humanity can really be.  Our course ended and I came home with a suitcase full of goodies including the art I had created.  At the end of it all Renee gave me all the tools and some of the resources I would need to bring the learning to my class.  In my normal excitable form I had been saying how much my boys would love this as we worked through the different projects and this beautiful and generous lady made it very possible for me to bring my learning back to them.

I can't post photos of the boys actually doing the projects so that you can see the looks on their faces.  You just have to believe me that it brought them a great amount of joy! Here are the sewn books they made and then used to write the spelling words they needed to practice in order to learn them.  These books were an invaluable addition to my classroom and helped to bring end of year results that were absolutely outstanding.  The boys all made brilliant progress with their English marks and their confidence in spelling grew every week!

 

Eventually we started to make the metal books Renee had taught me to make.  The initial flattening of the cans was very well received.  In fact they regularly asked if they could do it again!  It is a great source of stress relief for anxious children to get out there with a hammer and a tin can to belt into! The cans they flattened were not actually usable as they had too many splits and sharp edges due to their over enthusiastic efforts, but they were happy to use cans that had been flattened by me and were still safe.  I was away the day they flattened them, but by all reports they took to hammering the cans flat with great enthusiasm!  

When it came to using the tool to punch the holes (and Renee they loved the concept that you can never have too many holes!) they thought the eye protection that made them 'look like mad scientists' was very cool!  We used the keys from an old computer keyboard, beads, laminated photos and pictures and rivets and brads as decoration.  Renee also gave me a cold laminator that they could wind the handle on and watch their favourite pictures of themselves or their favourite things come through the machine ready for use. They were deservedly so proud of the results and were so well behaved while we were working on the books.  No medals for working out engagement in the learning activity leads to great behaviour!

Making holes in the cans!

One finished book.  The pictures are from a series called 'Bakugan' one of the class favourites and something I had to learn about when I started working here.  The lad who made this has some issues with his fine motor skills and using the tools was excellent therapy.  Threading the beads took a great effort.

This is the second one.  Note the pictures of chocolate cake in the middle.  A major motivator for this guy!  He has a fabulous sense of humour and had to use the 'end' button from the computer keyboard on the back of his book and kept on saying 'do you get it Ali?'

...and last but not least this one was made for his mum and he just had to have the diet coke can with the kisses on it as a base. He wanted to write 'mum' on it but there is only one 'm' on a keyboard.....his solution the 'w' upside down! Again the bakugan characters star.  He spent ages lining the beads up in an order he liked.

The boys showed these books in assembly every week for about four or five weeks as they gradually made them.  They were rightfully so proud of their efforts and couldn't wait to take them home.  It was a very different classroom activity to anything I had ever done before and I loved it!

Believe it or not only having one set of tools with my small class of three became another aspect of their learning.  They had to be patient, take turns and plan ahead.  All great lifeskills.

There is more to come about my last day at the school.  I just have to work out how to write it!