Work, Home, and Family

Last Friday, I finally received two critical pieces of information concerning my upcoming months in London: the location of my internship placement and the identity of my host family.

I will be interning at the Hornsey School for Girls, a secondary school. Here is the description of the school that was on my placement notice:

"Hornsey School for Girls is an oversubscribed leading edge partnership school in Haringey. The school has specialist Performing Arts Status, a very high value added rating and offers an all-round education, including a huge number of extra-curricula activities and opportunities. It is one of London's highest achieving comprehensive girls' schools as well as being truly inclusive and multi-cultural."

I don't have any information yet about what exactly my internship will entail; I imagine tutoring or something. I suppose they'll tell me when I interview--before they officially accept me as an intern I have to do a formal interview with them.

My host family are the Martins, who live in the borough of Ealing. On Sunday morning--well, morning for me, late afternoon for them--I called them. It was thoroughly nerve-wracking, as it was my first international call and the situation seemed a bit awkward. But I had a lovely chat with Mrs. Martin, who seemed genuinely delighted that I had called. They have three sons, two of whom are all grown up and living on their own. Their youngest, Adam, is 18 and is finishing up school this year. Apparently he has some variety of important formal exams at the end of this school year. They also have two dogs (Irish setters). The Martins have hosted American students in the past, and although Mrs. Martin assured me that she found most of them "quite lovely," she made it clear that one of them had caused her great distress by having strange boys in the house at all hours of the night. I assured her that I would do no such thing. They are also hosting a Spanish girl this year, so that will be interesting, particularly because her English is apparently not that great. Maybe I'll pick up some Spanish. From our conversation, I think that I will be pretty comfortable staying with them. I'm really looking forward to meeting them.

My mom is currently in Michigan, visiting from Kentucky. I told her that I was planning on spending most of my spring break in Ireland, and she was very excited because her family has a strong Irish heritage. She did not have a lot of information for me, though, because the Irish side is her mother's side and my mom has not had any contact with my grandmother for probably a decade (my biological grandmother had no presence at all in my mom's childhood). But she made a few phone calls, to her sisters and finally to an uncle, and I got a lot of family history. The uncle that she spoke with apparently has a relative who traveled to Ireland a few years ago and visited the town that my family emigrated from; he promised to look up the information and call us back tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to find my roots in Ireland. Most of the family that I am close to is Polish, and I never gave much thought to my Irish heritage. Suddenly, though, this feels very important. If I won't ever know that part of my family here, at least I can try to connect to it in Ireland.

And this weekend, my last weekend in the States until April, I'll be visiting my dad in Ohio and another important part of my family--my friends in Pittsburgh.

8 days until my flight leaves for the UK.