A School Trip to England

Wow, I've totally forgotten to write about last year's trip to England. See, it was one of those memorable events in which I wasn't to have fun and fool around. Because I was responsible for a bunch of teenagers.
Yeah, being a teacher gives you a totally different perspective on travelling. You no longer see the center of Oxford as charming and full of picturesque small streets where you can get lost because now you have kids who CAN GET LOST for goodness' sake! And you no longer feel OK when a handsome dude is hitting on you because you have to tell him you have 20 children waiting for you (jaw drops, wishes you a nice day and tries not to look suspicious when he hurries as far away from you as possible). Yeah, being language teacher would be fun they said. You will travel a lot they said.

Anyway, to somehow take it as it was, I must mention our terrible journey to England. See, if you have so many kids with you, it's impossible or terribly expensive to fly. Instead, you gotta go by coach which is cheaper and about 14 hours longer than the flight.

I found a glitch in the matrix ;-)=

Unfortunately, when you have ONLY twenty kids with you, it means the bus will be filled with another group. Aaaaaand you start thinking of the age of your students (the most dangerous, of course) and of the age group of the potential bus mates of yours. You are prepared to watch over the kids like a vulture over a carcass because the prospect of someone falling in love and sneaking somewhere to be in privacy is on the list of potential dangers. Fortunately the kids who hopped on our bus were much younger.
But what are the young kids good at? Not sleeping! Just as soon as they embarked they started to gorge on sweets and cola. Apart from the fact that I had to get up numerous times to shout at the little bastards because their teachers seemed too numb to care they also had to go to the toilet almost every five minutes (yeah, cola, you little freaks) which used up all our space in the toilet-only-for-emergencies. Not that we cared since we kept stopping at gas stations in predictable intervals. But it was annoying hearing them ask all the time if they could go.

Waiting in a line to see that frickin' Harry Potter inspiration for a cafeteria.

So after not getting a wink of sleep we arrived in London and had to walk in there for an entire day. We were all so ready to throttle the little kids because they kept dragging behind, stuffing their mouths with sweets (which resulted in many a belly ache during the week - good for you, suckers!), bumping into strangers (yeah, because when the whole group enters a narrow passage and everyone creates a line on the right, they feel they must go left) and so on.
Honestly, you don't want me to tell you what they did in the Natural History Museum. I love it in there. There is so much educational and amazing stuff around, to say nothing of the building itself. How will I ever erase the memory of a boy who wanted to take a selfie with the T-Rex from the "enclosure" I don't know. But I will try.

I decided this would be in my "top buildings" list.

I had some satisfaction in the evening when the kids were distributed among families from Oxford to stay with them. Nothing compares to the view of the fear in their eyes when they saw somebody in a white plush bear overall thinking they would have to stay with this person.
Unfortunately all the families were approved by an agency and no crazy people were around. Our adoptive mother from Seychelles was the best. She was a great cook (fortunately for me she let us pick as much food from the pots as possible so I didn't have to pick up meat), talked with us and was really nice. She had a son who was scared of me and my colleague and unfortunately for the poor boy she forced him to tell us "hello" everyday when we arrived and "bye" every time we went away in the mornings. :-)=

Greenwich - I had to do it.

We saw Oxford, Windsor, Eton, Stratford upon Avon (oh yeah, Shakespeare rocks even couple of centuries after his death - how badass is that?!) and London again upon our departure.
It pained me when I saw those smaller kids just running around looking for the nearest fast food chain instead of enjoying the sights and the prepared programme but heck, their loss not mine. By the way, the little bastards thought it OK to throw their rubbish into any water body we came across. I was really furious when I saw this. And their teachers? Oblivious. I mean what kind of bastards must have they been to turn the teachers into this?
To regain energy the kids had language lessons in the mornings so that we were kinda free to wander around (we lived in suburbs and the school was put into a community center where it reeked of cigarettes and booze - because the bar is there, duh! it's not a building made for teaching but for having fun) so we found a supermarket, one little shop and a lot of houses which looked way too similar to one another. But we didn't get lost which was surprising.

This creature scares the visitors of Shakespeare's home.

Anyway, as our stay was getting shorter and shorter we were getting more and more bitchy when it came to that other group. Our students were an example of well-behaved children who were always on time, who were attentive, and who knew what the heck was going on.
It all culminated on our last day when we went to the London Eye. We had to persuade a couple of acrophobics to try it but otherwise it was fun. Until the moment when we finished our lunches and went to the meeting point to count everybody. Two boys from the other group were missing. No joke, they were late all week long so we waited. And waited. And called their turned-off phones. And started to get a little hysterical since those dumbasses couldn't speak English much and we doubted they'd ask someone to get them to the police station.

Windsor was a feast for my gargoyle addiction :-)=

So their teacher decided to stay at the meeting point and call their parents. It was the sign of resignation - you never call the parents until it's serious. As we went ahead with our programme, we were passing a fast-food chain with slot machines in it. Our guide said she would take a look and who did she see?! So we called the teacher that we had the suckers and waited for her. She was so happy that she didn't lose them that she didn't even shout. I would. I would probably kill them on sight but some people are better than me. That's why I will probably refrain from having children of my own.

"A dead philosopher is a good philosopher"

After this we were quite wary of them and continued with our tour but everyone was already thinking of going home and never seeing those little suckers again. The journey home was surprisingly silent and we got to our schools with the same number of kids as when we set off. Great. Just great.
This ruined me for future school trips and I hope I will always gather as many kids from our school as possible so that we don't have to share the bus. 
But on the other hand now I'm prepared for a lot of things and I'll never think that my job might be fun. No, I'm always on the road to hell with these unpredictable small people.