From Manchester, with love

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We left our parents and family members and it was hard as expected. Nobody ever likes to say bye, myself especially. I felt lucky that I left work in July and was able to spend so much quality time with my family and those closest to me without any distractions. Unfortunately Alex left work on the Tuesday and we flew Thursday afternoon so as the people from Cape Town say his time was a bit more "hectic." We have said for a bit now, we don't know what we are doing but we know the reasons why and with that in the back of our minds we said very difficult byes to our family.



We left Manchester to head to the friendly city of Cape Town. I had been fortunate enough to experience a week in Cape Town the year before as part of a teacher exchange. Although many believe our trip to Cape Town was out of the way for our travel plans, I was hooked at how amazing this city is and all it has to offer that I wanted Alex to see it for himself and I also wanted to get my fix again. To make our trip feel less scary we wanted to visit a place that is familiar to myself, has many familiar faces as well as the fact my partner school is there.



For those who know, and for those who do not, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a sabbatical from teaching. I havent always loved languages, however back in 2011, as part of my degree, I spent a month in a village near Niort, France working in a tiny French school. I spoke hardly any French and left high school with a GCSE grade 'D' - there was a mix up and I was the only MMU student in my French placement school, nobody spoke English and I lived with a French family who spoke a small amount of English. Luckily for me, I stayed with the most amazing family, of whom to this day I am so grateful to know and thankful for all they have done for me. I learnt so much in such a short space of time. So from then I suppose languages fascinated me, I should have known more, I wasn't prepared enough language wise and I feel it is so important that we educate others to realise the true value of learning and knowing a foreign language. One of the aspects of my sabbatical is to visit, observe and work in different educations around the world. So with that in mind Cape Town was actually the perfect first stop for our adventure!

From Manchester, with love x

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