University Registration

I had my first introductory class this morning at Birmingham University and everything seemingly went well.

I sat for about 2 hours listening to about 10 people talk to us about a various range of things to do with university life and I would say that 8 of the 10 people talked to us at one point or another about the many different avenues that exist for helping students having problems or in crisis.

It really makes me wonder how hard this is going to be. I mean, they were pushing it THAT hard.

After all that I went and had my picture taken for my student ID card aka my discount card and signed some paperwork so I can have the privilege to park in a pay as u stay parking lot about a 5 minute walk from my building.

Although, I noticed a nice huge house on the corner-- right across from my building. I am contemplating going and knocking on their door to see if I can pay them to utilize their drive way for 3 days a week or so.

I mean, the pay as you park parking lot is only a £1 for the entire day but I never have coins on me and parking is semi-scarce. If the home-owners agree then I will pay them a fee up front per term and that way I can keep my policy of avoiding coins.

Oh and I think I am going to play American football for the university... If they take me that is.

Important Mail

Today I received an important letter that I have been awaiting for a few weeks now through my door. It was my intro pack from the University of Birmingham with my online login and password so that I can officially register online to begin classes on Monday the 28th of this month.

I was awaiting this packet because one must register online prior to the zero week for freshman that starts the week before class so that you can receive your student ID and all the other stuff.

Now if I can just get the VA to get on the ball with funding my program. I was recently told by a VA rep on the phone that it could take up to 6 months before a decision is made. I will be close to half-way done with the first year by then.

Maybe I can get some UK funding in the mean-time.

The Froggin Alps

Last Friday I flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport on ol' RyanAir (who did me another solid by the way!!) from Birmingham to go and visit some family and friends. As I believe I have said before Hahn airport is an old American airbase that they gave back to the Germans after downsizing sometime in the 1990's and it is very remote as most American military bases in Europe tend to be.

I landed and raced to be first through customs of course to call my ride and find out that they were still 20 minutes out. As it was coming up to 8PM when we arrived in the Kaiserslautern area and we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow my friend and I grabbed a quick bite to eat from the absolute best Turkish restaurant in Germany and took the food back to his place.

Early the next morning we woke-up and threw our bags into the car and headed out down the autobahn in the direction of Basel Switzerland. For my money Switzerland is the most beautiful country in all of Europe but it actually was not our destination on this occasion. From Basel we turned southwest in the direction of Geneva only to cross the border into France and continue on our way to our Saturday afternoon destination of Grenoble.

I first visited Grenoble back in 2000 or 2001 with my friend Angel and discovered it to be a very cool city indeed. It is said that it is the Silicon Valley of France and has a world-class university all set in some of the most dramatic scenery in France. To understand the grandness of it you need to imagine a capital letter 'Y'. The letter 'Y' is the plain or basin that the city is set across while along the perimeter of the letter 'Y' is all very large mountains.

My friend Tory and I checked into my usual hotel when I visit Grenoble and after picking up my son we were off racing around the hairpin turns heading up into the mountains in the silver Audi A4 that Tory had rented. The elevation on this particular mountain gets up to about 6000 feet (1900 meters) and the views of the city and the river that runs through it are really quite amazing.

We stopped off on the winding road a few more times that we had planned because my 6 year old son didn't really take to the ride too much and felt a little car-sick. After some fresh air and photographs in the much cooler weather (than below in the city) we were on our way through the mountain before reaching the little village of Saint-Nizer-du-Mouncherotte and turning around to head back down towards the city.

After that short trip up the mountain and because of the lack of sleep from the night before we had to crash at the hotel for a couple hours and grab a siesta while my son watched some weird French cartoons. Upon awaking we drove towards the areas largest shopping centre 'The Grande Place' and walked around before dropping my son of back to his mother at sunset and heading with Tory into the city centre so give him a little tour.

The gem in the crown of Grenoble is what they call 'The Bastille'. It is a fortified structure (that some might call a castle in the nontraditional way) on the side of a mountain just outside the city centre and has bubble like cable-cars taking you up to it unless you choose to take the long walk on the marked pathways. The signs say that this is where the French 'resistance' attacked from but I can't help but imagine it is where they hid form the Germans.

As you can see from the weather it was not so nice on Sunday in the Frog Alps. The mountain range you see here is where we had drove the previous day and taken the previous photo of the city from.

We didn't spend long up on The Bastille as we were hungry for breakfast/lunch and the restaurant up on The Bastille didn't have anything I wanted to try so we came back down the bubble like cable-car and found a nice Lebanese restaurant in the city centre.

We had lunch and then dropped my son back off to his mom before hitting the road again. A seven hour one-way ride to stay 24 hours in Grenoble would have been worth it but the most beautiful and charming town in all of Europe is on the way back towards Geneva so we had to stop.

Annecy is about 40 km southwest of Geneva and boasts the largest Bastille day celebration in all of France, or so I have heard from a frog. Nevertheless, I absolutely adore this town although I must admit on this trip it was the most crowded I had ever seen it. And that was with the weather smelling worse than the formage aisle at Carrefour.

We walked around periodically stopping for coffee when the rain would start to come down especially hard and made our way through the throngs of people for about an hour before stopping off to have simply the best pizza I have had on the entire time I have lived on this continent.

We departed Annecy around 6PM and began our journey back towards Kaiserlsautern. It seemed like there was one gigantic storm cloud over the entire country you and I call Switzerland and that cloud even was generous enough to share itself with southern Germany. We arrived at Tory's house at midnight and went straight to sleep as he had work in the AM and I had a bus to catch back to Hahn.

And here is my (Top Gear) top tip. It took me 6 and a half hours from the time I left my friend's house to when I stepped through my door. It only takes 8 hours to drive from my house in Birmingham to Tory's house in Germany... Airports suck...

CELTA-- Mission: Accomplished!

This past Saturday the 27Th of June was my final CELTA class at Solihull College and apparently I have passed. While I was told nothing explicitly that I had passed it is apparent from the Cambridge University class manifesto that if I was going to fail I would have been told before the three quarter point of the class and given a one-to-one tutorial or something.

Apparently I will receive some certificate from Solihull College in the mail in the coming couple weeks and then the entire classes files get sent to Cambridge University where they are reviewed and then held for 1 entire year. But after they are initially reviewed and the assessors agree with our instructors marks then an official Cambridge University CELTA certificate is sent to us.

So... Do I think the class was worth it?

Yes, absolutely. I have some teaching experience behind me already but a few techniques and methods that are drilled into you are actually quite useful. They are things that you look at and say, 'Why didn't I think of that before?' type things. I imagine that for people who have no classroom experience it would be even more beneficial.

I found the class at Solihull College to be well run and the instructors very approachable and knowledgable. The building was amazing and the classrooms have top of the line equipment that made a trainee-teacher's life all the much easier.

One of the things I personally found the hardest to deal with was the difference in the instructors. They each had their own quirks; likes and dislikes. What one instructor would love another would hate and while it probably had little impact overall whether you passed or failed a training teaching lesson it was hard to take sometimes hearing somebody shoot down what the other praised. But of course out in the real world of teaching you are bound to have directors or educational coordinators who like and dislike different methods and approaches in teaching.

I never found the work for the class to be to difficult just very time consuming and cumbersome. Unless you are an absolute grammar wizz you will find yourself knee deep in a pile of teaching and grammar reference books. Searching through them to refresh yourself with what a defining and non-defining clause is the night before you are due to teach and writing out your lesson plan is a burden on your time.

Out of our class of 12 we had 2 drop out and only ended with 10 people. I am pretty sure all of them graduated minus one who may or may not have passed the course.

The one thing I found very difficult about the course was the 2 lengthy breaks we had. We had our first class at the end of March 09 and then had almost 3 weeks off because of the Easter break before coming back again for the 2nd class. We also had the half-term break in May 09 and I really found these to be inhibitive to my completing the course. I really didn't want to go back after the breaks but I am glad that I did.

If I was to make a suggestion for the course it would be to show either a blank certificate or perhaps the instructors certificate of CELTA to the class at some point between the halfway and three quarter mark of the class. I think it would be a great motivator and a reminder to the students for what they are there for.

I met a few people that I will definitely keep in contact with in my class and I am extremely glad that I did to when I did. Apparently the July/August intensive CELTA course at Solihull College has been cancelled because of one of the instructor's children coming down with swine flu!!

A Trip to the Cadbury Factory

I had one of my old friends from my Air Force days fly in from Frankfurt for the weekend and as the Bullring was closed for most of it I booked us and my kids on a little excursion over to the Cadbury Factory on the outskirts of the city.

I booked the tickets online and made my way over there but for some strange reason the listing in my GPS of 'Cadbury World' was a residential area of terraced houses. So as the time for our appointed time was approaching I had to call 118-118, which is the UK's version of 411 to have them text me the phone number and address of the place.

We were actually only about a mile away and made it there with 10 minutes to spare.

And in fact it didn't seem to me that you really needed to book ahead. When we arrived we checked in with a woman at the cash registers and she told us to go around back to the Cadbury Essence and then come back here after that. So we walked around back and went through the Cadbury Essence 'show' telling us some things about how Cadbury was started by some holligrams. Then we were 'treated' to a cup of liquid chocolate which was kind of like having a drink of a choclate bar that was left inside the car during your last family holiday to Florida.

The kids played on a playground setup outside the exit of the essence tour for a few minutes and we then walked back around the building to where we walked into what was supposed to be an Amazon jungle scene and then an 1800's old Birmingham square. In my opinion it was kind of lame and could definitely use some other interactive features.


Then there were 2 sit down 'shows' where we were explained more in detail the history of Cadbury and how they were ahead of their time in employee rights and the such. And then the second was about the process of chocolate going from the cocoa plant to the candy bar.

Then we walked through the actual factory where chocolate bars were being heated and cooled and then wrapped. For some reason they don't allow any photography or video in there.

Then it was on to this ride that had a huge line (queue) when we first walked by it going into the factory but wasn't so bad when we actually came to stand in it after walking the factory. It basically was a train track type of car ride. Imagine the old "It's a Small World After All' tour at Disney World crossed with little chocolate beans that looked more like turds.

Some how my friends and I managed to get a car all on our own while the kids were in another car... We looked pretty gay getting out of the car at the end with no kids... I would post the photo but my friend would kill me....

Ohhh, I forgot we walked out of there with more chocolate bars than I could count between the lot of us. I imagine 50 at least. They hand them out like... Well... Candy...

Celta in Solihull... Halfway done.... +pics

Last Saturday was our last day before breaking for the half-term break and I and a classmate went out with a bang...

We went to the main building to get some snacks on a 10 minute break and apparently the school was locked down for the half-term and we found a way in and set off the building's alarms. The caretaker was not too happy when we crossed paths.

Upon returning back from the half-term break I will be switching from the upper-intermediate level students to intermediate. There are clear advantages and disadvantages with this. Most importantly, the student's are not really able to stump you with grammar questions. But the big positive with the upper-intermediate is that you do not have to grade your own language when speaking with them. They understand most things well enough that you can speak normally and when they do not know what a word means they will ask you.

Anyway, I have no assessed teaching lessons to prepare this week and that is a needed break. I have a lot of other paperwork I need to catch up on and file away and doing lesson plans has made that quite a large pile.

So here are some pics I took in one empty room that was not in use at the time of the Tudor Grange House located on the Solihull College campus.

Celta in Solihull... Halfway done....

I have been taking this CELTA course now for almost 2 months now and we are just about halfway done. We have a short break for the half-term next week and it is definitely a well placed rest.

Normally I teach on Thursdays but as chance would have it a classmate rang me on Sunday as I was preparing my lesson for Thursday and asked if I could switch with them for this week. I was very happy to do so as that means that now I do not have to really to do any lesson preparation for about 2 weeks.

There are some assignments I need to work on though. I am finding those more difficult than the rest of the class for some strange reason.

But overall I am positive the class has made me a better teacher. Particularly because of the Saturday theory classes we have that involve some great teaching concepts and methodologies to utilize inside the classroom.

I have found out that I am excellent at teaching vocabulary but need to vastly improve my ability to present grammar and form.

As for the class in general then I would recommend it and if you have the ability to take it at Solihull College then I would recommend that as well. The CELTA instructors have a lot of experience and definitely know what they are talking about. They are quite helpful and very available and approachable for guidance outside and inside the class. Feedback seems to be on par with what I would expect but the ideas they give you as to what you could have done to improve a lesson is insightful.


The Tudor Grange house where we teach at Solihull College is amazing. It is like some sort of mansion you would see in a Jane Austin film adaptation or an old haunted mansion form the Scooby Doo cartoons. There are old fireplaces and beautiful carvings of different objects in the wooden frames. I will try to take some photos of the inside on Thursday to post.

My Apprentices

I dropped off my younger brother and sister to the Birmingham airport this morning so they could catch their flight to Boston via Amsterdam. They arrived about 12 days ago and boy, if ever there were 'house cats' these 2 are them. They are not the type to travel outside of their element for too long. It is funny how siblings can be raised in the same environment but be so different than each other.

I am not hating on them for not liking the food in the UK as the pickings are definitely slim when it comes to locating great food but these 2 had issues almost everywhere we went even while on the continent. If it wasn't McDonald's or pizza they were looking at it as if it was meant to eat them and not the other way around.


We were able to acquire cheap flights to Frankfurt Hahn and then make our way across to Paris before flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport on this past Wednesday night. As well I took them to Stonehenge and briefly stopped through Salisbury and Bath since we drove all that way to see rocks in the middle of an English field.

I have previously written about my experiences with Ryanair and this one-way flight to Frankfurt Hahn was probably the worst flight experience I have had with Ryanair. It seems we were fortunate to be in the midst of a stag party en route to somewhere and they were just plain out of control on board and the flight crew did nothing but facilitate them in getting even drunker on an 11AM flight.

We landed at Hahn and caught a bus to Luxembourg city where my firstborn son lives with his mother and stayed there in a hostel for 3 nights. I had never stayed in a hostel before as I believe they would disagree with me. In fact unlike my sister and brother I have never even been inclined to see a scary movie that involved a hostel so my expectations were pretty low.

They should have been lower. Really. Much lower.

I do not ask for much from a hotel when I stay in one. I mean clean linen/towels, an electrical outlet to charge my phone and laptop and decent shower. I can deal without TV/cable, a refrigerator or a nice view. This hostel had none of these things except clean sheets. And we had to go fetch those from reception. I had to borrow some towels from my son's mother because the hostel charged for them. They also charged for soap and I am really surprised they didn't charge for toilet paper although I am sure they tried but realized it was to the benefit of their cleaning staff to not do so.


The 'shower' was especially noteworthy for its terribleness. I have been in rain storms that got me wetter than this little spout coming out of the wall in the bathroom. And even better was the squeegee you had to use afterwards to steer the water on the floor towards the drain. Or maybe the the best part was that the bathroom lights worked on a motion detector and when you closed the cloth curtain to enclose you in the corner the lights would magically go off making you wave your hand outside the curtain trying to get the lights to switch on. You decide.


Anyway Luxembourg is a really cool city to explore and in my view maybe the most underrated capital city in all of western Europe. I wore them out with a lot of walking up gorges and down valleys and my brother got really cool blisters because he thought it would be gangsta to wear some heavy Timberland boots.


We took a short train ride to the nearby German city of Trier as my brother felt like he was missing something from the last time he was there and I stopped by there. Apparently he was. The crowd of people was especially strong for some reason on this particular Saturday and all the Germans seemed to be competing in an event to see who could irritate us the most by stopping in front of us or creating a wall of humans walking at a snail's pace.


They succeeded fairly quickly as my brother takes to people about as well as British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith takes to answering questions about her husband's taste in pornos.

We left Luxembourg train station on a TGV train heading to Paris on Monday afternoon and made it to Gare de l'Est in slightly more than 2 hours. I had booked a hotel in the area near Jardin Luxembourg on the south side of the river Seine and after staying in a hostel it seemed like a chateau.


My brother seems to have this notable ability to act as a magnet for weirdos. He was approached by one particular nutter who seemed to admire his aggression and made some gorilla motions while using both his hands to indicate on himself that my brother had huge nuts. And the guy who was in the middle of the subway train with a bag full of the type of stuffed dolls you win at carnivals. He had characters ranging from Superman to Homer Simpson and was performing a play with them. Unfortunately my French is too poor to understand the storyline between Homer and Pokemon.

We walked around and hit the normal tourist areas for a couple days and I even (for some reason) took them to the one tourist area I have always avoided. The area between Sacre Coeur and Montmarte is particularly seedy. I never get used to seeing sex shops next to the post office.

On a positive note I did have the best pizza I have ever had outside of America. I highly recommend Cafe di Roma on the Champs-Elysees although to eat on that road one must apparently be prepared to part with €14.20 for a 1 liter bottle of Pepsi. On a plus note they did give us some ice for free.


We eventually got tired of the bad weather and headed to the airport early for the 2100 flight to Birmingham on FlyBe.

And then I had to deal with the fish incident... Seems there are as many nutters in Birmingham as there is in Paris.

Something's Fishy!!

I have been away from Birmingham for a few days because my little brother and sister are visiting from America and I took them to Germany, Luxembourg and France.

I was planning to write about that tonight until one of the weirdest things to ever happen to me occurred today.

First off I must tell you that I have been borrowing a friends car for a month or so while I have been trying to get finance for a new car. It is a decent beater that gets us from A to B and helps me to stay true my American heritage and remain free from utilizing public transport.

So last night my wife picked the 3 of us up from Birmingham airport and when I kicked her out of the driver's seat I smelled a faint odor. Or at least I think I did. I didn't pay much attention to it as it was that faint. Maybe my wife had a tuna fish sandwich before she picked us up.

So today I had an appointment at Barclays in Small Heath and when my brother, sister and I got in the car I smelled a stronger smell of fish but thought that maybe it was the surrounding area. We drove over to Barclays and they stayed in the car while I was jerked around in Barclays. When I came back outside and opened the driver's side door the smell overpowered me. It smelled worse than 8 cans of shark shit.

I quickly came to the conclusion that there was some dead animal inside the car or in the engine bay. It smelled like fish but it had to be a rat because there are some serious sized rats around here and I am no where near any water.

So we pop the hood and find this...




Yes, indeed that is a 10" gutted silver fish sitting on the manifold of a Vauxhall.

I have no idea how it got there. I called up the guy I am borrowing the car from and he confirmed that I have the only key to the car. There is no spare key. So just how this now half cooked fish got there will be a mystery that is probably never solved.

Mind the Gap?

I went to a new dentist's office this morning looking to get a tooth fixed that a filling fell out of a few years (yes, I did say years) back. I mind was already made up before going inside that I was probably going to have the tooth pulled but I was interested in perhaps having the tooth saved if possible.

I had gone to a dentist to have it repaired not long after I arrived in Birmingham but was told by the dentist that it would first needed a root canal. I have had one root canal before in my life and like most people, enjoyed it about as much as one would enjoy a person sticking toothpicks down into a hole they made in your tooth.

I do not have a bad history with dentists just the methods they utilize to numb pain. I typically require the highest level of local anesthesia allowed legally to a human being and yet I still feel the drill. Once while under general anesthesia having my wisdom teeth removed while in the military (I wanted a few days off) I woke and sat up in my chair scaring the dentist out of his seat.

So the first dentist I went to a while ago couldn't get very far because the pain was too intense. He gave me a prescription for some horrible tasting antibiotics and I never returned but he did put a temporary filling in.

So last Friday I woke up with a bubble on my gums underneath where the said tooth is located and decided that as I will be traveling this week maybe I should have it looked at... And probably pulled.

So I looked on Yell.com for a dentist in the area that could offer general anesthesia or nitrous oxide because I am a scared little girl when it involves drills inside my mouth and found one not to far away in Edgbaston. I called asked if they accept NHS patients and was told much to my surprise by reception that they did. An appointment was made for Monday morning.

I left the house early with my wife because I knew that there would be forms to fill out and what not and because I had a feeling I would be behind a truck that would slam into a white van and so it was. We arrived at the dentist's surgery about 20 minutes before my appointment and I filled out my forms.


I was seen by the dentist only a few minutes late and had my tooth looked at. The options where then laid out to me and I was told that it would cost £300 to perform the root canal and cap it with a porcelain filling. I was quite taken aback by these words as I was told that they accepted NHS patients and after a long conversation that I couldn't be bothered to repeat found out that they do 'accept' NHS patients but that they only accept NHS payment for certain treatments.

And root canals nor porcelain fillings are included. But the anesthesia and the tooth extraction are.

Is £300 worth not having a gap in the back of my mouth?

UK vs USA universities

As promised.

So there are a few world-class universities here in the UK and a great deal of very good ones. Virtually all of them are in England as is to be expected as the majority of the population is in England.

Here in the UK education is only compulsory up to the age of 16 at the moment all though there is talk of bumping that up to 18. In America when you apply for universities fresh from high school your grade point average (GPA) and your Standard aptitude test (SAT) scores are basically what universities look at. In the UK the students take what is known as A levels in certain subjects which the universities here look for.

So in America you apply in your senior year (12Th grade when typically students are 17 or 18) of high school for the universities you would like to go to and they send acceptance letters in the spring I believe.

Here in the UK the students take their A levels and apply but through a computer system named UCAS. Apparently it is the only way to do it. You pay £17 and get to apply for up to 5 programs.

And then the differences are much greater.

In the UK bachelors degrees are typically 3 years and not 4 as they are in America and that is because the whole approach and methodology to attaining the degree is polar opposite.

In American universities you have to achieve 120 credits in order to attain your bachelors degree in any given subject with each course being worth 3 credits. Simple math tells you that 120 credits divided by four years of school is 30 credits per year with each class being worth 3 credits equals 10 courses per academic school year.

Those courses you take are structured into subjects and you are entirely free to choose what courses you want to take BUT you do need to attain a certain amount of your 120 needed to graduate from a variety of subjects. For example you may need 12 of those credits to be English and 9 to be in Math even though you are pursuing a History degree.

In England if you are taking a degree program in History then ALL of your courses are generally to do with history.

In my eyes this is better. Your knowledge level and understanding in that specific subject will be far superior in practically all instances than someone who takes a 4 years degree in the same subject at an American university as they do not focus solely on the degree that will named on your shiny piece of paper.

3 years of history based classes to attain a history degree or.... 4 years of history, math, science, English, PE, and a foreign language to attain a History degree????

Seems like an easy choice to me.

Dad's 1st Visit

It is said that most Americans do not have a passport and an even greater amount never leave America's borders. With recent legislation in America making the old past-time of traveling to Canada, Mexico and certain Caribbean Island nations with a driving license or birth certificate now extinct more passports are being issued than ever before to American citizens. Yet it is unknown how many actually utilize them to travel outside of North America.


Whether most Americans not leaving their continent is an admirable or detestable situation is indeed debatable on many levels. It is understandable to believe that North America has so many different cultural treasures and great vacation spots that a person could spend a week vacation every year for 20 years easily exploring the continent and not going to the same place twice.

At the same time there are so many other cultures and environments on 6 other continents that have so much to offer and explore that it seems a shame to limit oneself to one continent.

In late February 2006 my father made his first trip outside of North America to come and visit my family and I in Birmingham for about 9 days. My dad is a typical American man in his 50's with a slight resemblance to Liverpool Football Club manager Rafa Benítez and getting him to actually apply for a passport was a huge step. At this point I had actually been living in Europe for almost 7 years and it amazes me that it took this long for my dad to get a passport and get on a plane. In fact, that more of my family has not taken advantage of me living in Europe to come and visit me leaves me incredulous. If I was in their shoes I would have been over at every opportunity. But I digress.


My Dad flew on KLM from Boston to Amsterdam and then after a small layover a short leg of Amsterdam to Birmingham. He didn't much take to Birmingham in those first few days. He wasn't too thrilled with the food nor the trash that people around here seem to religiously throw wherever they please in Birmingham. The only food he actually liked while he was here was Nando's.


I had booked us a flight from London Luton airport to to Grenoble airport in the French Alps on Easyjet while he was here in Europe so that we could go visit my son in France. The flight wasn't until late morning but we were catching a coach from Birmingham to London Luton at 6.45AM leaving us plenty of time to get stuck in traffic on the M1. As I only lived about maximum 10 minutes from the coach station we went outside to the car at around 6.15-6.20ish to have my wife drive us to the station.

Unfortunately the car decided that it didn't want to start. It was actually a very cold night out but I never had the problem with the car prior to that. We tried push-starting the car for about 5 minutes before we gave up and I called a friend to drive us to the station but of course we had missed our coach by then.

The next best option was a 7.30AM bus heading to central London. Luton airport is not actually in London. I would estimate it to be around 40 minutes drive north on the M1 from central London with decent traffic. I was actually hoping that the coach driver would drop us near the airport but I didn't have the nerve to ask.

By the time we got to London it was around 10.30AM and now we had to find a way to back track through the city and up the M1. It wasn't looking good. If we missed this flight my dad wouldn't have another chance to fly to France to see my son. I asked a black cab how much it would cost me to get to Luton and he quoted me "around £120". I found a private taxi and he told me he could get me there in time for £75 and we were off. He drove like a mad man through the city in his Ford Galaxy minivan and even stopped on the way for some gas before dropping us off at the airport with literally only a few minutes to spare.


We checked in and hurried to the gate to board the aircraft. After landing at St George airport we passed through immigration and boarded a bus for centre of Grenoble. I had booked a hotel nearby to where my son was staying and we had an excellent time having fun with my oldest son.

My dad loved France. He found the atmosphere and the environment of Grenoble to be extraordinary not to mention the great food. I think while he obviously wanted to spend time with his granddaughter in Birmingham he really hated to fly back to the UK.

The morning of his flight to Amsterdam continental Europe was having some terrible weather. His flight to Amsterdam was delayed a day and then when he did make it out to Amsterdam the next morning he got stuck there for another day before getting flown to Newark airport and then on to Boston.

I guess he didn't have that bad of time here in Birmingham though because he did end up returning about 2 years later. He still insisted on flying to France though.

Celta in Solihull...

Today I had an interview at Solihull College to hopefully convince them that I possess the right material to partake in an intense course run by the very prestigious Cambridge University.


The CELTA course stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching Adults and is the best credential a teacher can have other than a degree in a specific subject.

I had sent in my application packet consisting of an essay on why I wanted to take the course, a 5 problem sheet with grammar and spelling mistakes and a lesson plan to teach the mistakes about a month ago. I was contacted about 2 weeks ago by admissions to arrange an interview and when I arrived today I was given another worksheet with 5 problems to correct.

This time I had to explain to the interviewer what my corrections were and why I deemed it necessary as well as briefly indicate how I would do teach it in a classroom setting. I was given 30 minutes to complete that and then the interviewer came and sat with me in the room and asked me some questions such as why I desired to take the course and what I hoped to achieve by taking it.

We then went over the work I had done and she explained to me certain aspects of the course such as the amount of individuals that would be with me as well as the type of students we would be teaching during the classroom modules.


The interviewer's knowledge of the English language was quite extraordinary and we discussed the variations of British English and American English quite extensively. I was told that if I was accepted that I should teach American English in my classes and not try to teach British English as it would not come across right. This seems logical enough. Why try to fake knowing British grammar and what not?

But then I was thinking what kind of effect will that have on the student I would be teaching? I mean, they are real students paying to be taught English as a second language in Britain. Some are spouses coming form different countries looking to learn English for a test they need to obtain permanent residency and others are students form other European countries looking to improve their English. Me teaching American English to students in Britain seems problematic to their development but the interviewer didn't see to think so.

And the interviewer definitely has more experience and knowledge in the field than I do...

And then I was told that I would be offered the 12Th and final place in the program. So I accepted and ran across to the main reception with my acceptance slip to register before minds could be changed...

My First Trip to the UK

It was this month 9 years ago when I first set foot in the UK. I was amongst a small group who were issued orders for a temporary deployment to RAF Lakenheath, the largest American military base in the UK.

This was to be my 3rd deployment in less than a year since arriving in Germany and one that everyone looked forward to going on. The purpose of the deployment was to give air to air combat experience to both bases pilots although F-16s vs. F-15s is not much of a contest.

We left Spangdahlem in two coaches heading towards Calais, France to catch the ferry to Dover, England sometime in the morning. The ride was pretty uneventful other than the lack of comfort from being on a coach and getting stopped by the French Gendarmerie at the Belgian-French border. I do not remember if they stopped the bus I was on first or the other one but I remember them coming on board and wanting to see everyone's military I.D. and a copy of the deployment orders. I would say that we were held up for no more than half an hour before we were on our way to the port in Calais. It was all a little funny because none of the Americans spoke French nor did our German coach drivers and of course the Gendarmeries said they spoke no English. It seemed like the Gendarmeries didn't care after they realized no one spoke French and kind of gave up... Go figure.

I remember the bus driving onto the ferry and everyone going up to the cabin areas. It wasn't long before we took off for the port of Dover and everyone went in all directions exploring what the ship had to offer. The English Channel was especially choppy on this particular day. I remember leaning about 20 degrees to the side in order to walk without falling over. It was incredible. Unfortunately I and I assume everyone else had not had anything to eat since we set off from Germany about 5 or 6 hours earlier and we all set upon the small cafe on the ship before it set sail. Little did we know that upon hitting the extremely choppy waters we would all be losing our lunch.

When I felt the urge to vomit I headed to the bathroom and all the stalls were occupied with people vomiting themselves. I and another individual who was waiting could hold out and ended up puking in the sink... Good times.

We did finally land on the other side of the channel all be it a little late because of the choppy waters and continued on our coach ride up to Suffolk County. The base is about an hour and half to 2 hours drive north of London and it really did suck after being sick and having been stuck on the coach for the trip from Germany to Calais.

It was late afternoon or early evening when we arrived at the nearby base of RAF Mildenahall where the hotel (on base) was located where we would be sleeping. I was pleased to have my own room as we were told that we might have to bunk up 2 people to a room because of lack rooms. The rooms were very ordinary but had a very different smell to them. Not a bad smell, just different and I have since smelled it again at a couple hotels in other parts of the UK.

We were given a section of the flightline with 3 hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) to house our 6 jets and some other equipment that we had brought with us. My crew was given the responsibility of working the 'End of Runway' (EOR) which entailed performing a final inspection of the jet before it became airborne and then safing the aircraft up to go back to the flightline.
It was a cool job to have because you were out on your own and had more free time to do what you wanted when the jets were in flight.

I remember running back and forth from one end of the runway to the other as jets take-off and land on separate ends of the runway. Normally you have a crew on each end but as we limited in manpower we had to cover both ends and would end up speeding down the parallel runways in order to complete the tasks in a timely manner.

As we were there for 2 working weeks we has the weekend in between free to do what we pleased. A large amount of us were going to London but we all found our own separate ways to get there. The way my 2 crew members and I took was the cheapest by far though. I figured out by reading the base newspaper that they had a free bus service from the base to London Heathrow Airport on the western outskirts of London. From there we caught the Tube to central London to begin our fun filled weekend.

Only the supervising member of my crew was able to afford a hotel in central London so we ended up giving him £10 each to sleep on the floor of his extremely small room. I ended up with one of the livelier members of my work section looking for an even more lively place to dance the night away. We never found the London House music scene we desired but he did manage to find some ecstasy that he paid £10 for and preceded to drop. London proved to be a tad bit too expensive for me and I really just walked around for most of the night laughing at drunken people stumble over curbs and other objects that Brits are so famously known for.

We returned back to the base on Sunday afternoon via the same way we arrived to get ready for work the next day, We were quite shocked to hear that a guy from another work section got jumped in a large town nearby to the base name Newmarket while we were in London. Apparently he was waiting for a taxi back to Mildenhall and some guy came up to him and asked him some question and then proceeded to wallop on him with a few other friends. He was admitted to a local hospital and I don't remember seeing him until maybe a day or so before we were packing up to go back to Germany.

I do not recollect anything from the ride home other than the water in the channel being much more calmer than it was when on the way to the UK.

Overall I had a descent time in England. I tried some British 'food' and remember attempting to drink dark Guinness Ale but was not impressed with either of them. Never would I have thought I would one day return to the UK to live but that is what makes the whole journey fun I suppose.