Attended a memorial service for my best friend’s dad who passed away earlier this month. Never fun seeing your best mate upset.
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It’s always so weird to me how the school summer holidays begin so late in southern parts of Europe. Here in Finland, children’s summer holidays last for 10 weeks from the beginning of June until the beginning of August.
My vacation is about to end on Sunday, and my wife and I are spending this last free weekend away from our home, in our childhood town where we met, fell in love and shared our first home. It’s the southernmost town in Finland and fortunately, we are blessed with 26°C and sun (but also constant wind, as we are surrounded by the sea from three directions). I love this little town because it is so lively in the summer and you can feel the sea breeze wherever you go. It’s a place for your soul to get some rest before returning to the stressful life of the big city.
(I’m also a bit bummed that my wife’s four-week vacation is only starting on Monday, while mime is at an end, but that’s how it is).
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That sounds like a lovely place to unwind a bit 
6-7 weeks in the summer, one week in the Autumn, one at Christmas, one in the spring + a lot of single days of for a variety of reasons. That’s what the children get here in DK 
How many weeks of vacation do people normally have in Finland? I could imagine it could be difficult to schedule a family vacation if the children are home for 10 weeks. Or is it an “after school” care situation? (That’s what it’s called here, don’t know the English word for it)
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We also have 10 weeks off school. I think that the first and last couple of weeks is “after school” care (or what is called). And then people often combine vacation with saved parental leave to be home as much as possible. But I don’t know exactly my kids are still in kindergarten.
We have 5 weeks’ vacation as a legal minimum but 6 weeks is not that uncommon (at least not in IT).
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That sounds very similar to the Danish system
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We also have Christmas holidays, which are usually around 10 days as well as an autumn break (ranging from a week to 3 days, depending on the school) and winter break (officially called “sportlov” - “sports holiday” - because the kids are meant to go skiing and ice skating and stuff), which is always on week 8 in February.
Every employee in Finland earns a minimum of 2,5 vacation days per month (as long as you’ve worked for your current employer for at least a year), which makes for a total of 30 days of paid vacation, which can be used throughout the year. Most people use up most of the days during the summer (I took 20 days for my summer vacation this year, which is four weeks in June; this leaves 10 days to use later in the year, during our 5th wedding anniversary in September as well as Christmas. I also have four vacation days left from last year that I have to use up). We have a fairly simple situation since we have no children, but families with children usually have to think a little about how to organise everything 
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Today was a good day.
Just done my first shift where I was in charge. On my way home, my manager called me and asked how it went. Apparently I got very good feedback from some of the people there. Got some metaphorical head pats.
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Traveling to Nuremberg later today for a work-related thing next week. Expecting 34°C or more—me being someone who starts to melt at 25°C, not happy.
But if all goes well (traveling with Deutsche Bahn’s increasingly unreliable trains), I’ll be able to go dancing. Not many possibilities for a goth like me around the place where I live. Maybe able to meet some old friends. 
I just hope my ever-older bones can still carry me through a night of dance and sweat. 
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Finally had the motivation again to go and work out. It definitely has been a while.
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SCANDI ALERT SCANDI ALERT!
For some UK context we have 6 weeks in the summer, 2 at Easter and Christmas and the three 1 week ‘half term’ holidays in October, February and May.
Everyone thinks teachers have too many holidays and people keep trying to change the system to make it more ‘modern’. (The 6 weeks stems from when children used to help with the harvest on farms apparently) but no one has successfully changed it yet. Some boroughs do a 2 week half term at one point and the children then break up later at other times but the actual number of teaching days is legally defined so schools can only manipulate it so far. We’ve got about 3 and a 1/2 weeks left before we break up but my eldest finishes the week before us and my youngest finishes next week (but she’s at private school and they always have longer holidays).
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I will never understand people who want others to have less time off. Just seems like a really terrible thing to want. Personally, I think everyone should have more.
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Especially teachers… teaching seems like such an exhausting and all-consuming profession during the time you are working, it’s not a surprise if they want time where they aren’t working!
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So one of my cousins is a teacher and I am studying to be one and I often hear people complaining how much time off teachers get and stuff, and it’s not even like teachers don’t have to do any work in the school holidays from what I heard from her at the moment and from what I have come to expect from what we are told at uni, it’s just that the timing of when to do the work is far more free to be chosen. I mean there is still always prep work for lessons, and in the holidays that aren’t in between school years or terms there might even be tests etc that are still to be corrected and stuff, so teachers actually don’t have as much holiday as it seems like when people just look at what school holidays there are in a year.
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I used to work in the evenings, weekend and the holidays a lot more than I do since having children. Now I make sure I do as much as I can during my actual work hours and only do urgent stuff in the evenings. Obviously 25 years of experience mean I can do most of the normal stuff in my sleep but it was a conscious decision to make sure home was for family as much as possible.
But as a new teacher it will be tough because you will have to learn what works for you in terms of planning, assessment, marking etc and there are non-negotiables like formal assessment which take time but if you can find your way through that it’s a great job. But it is bloody hard work and you’ll know pretty soon if it is actually for you.
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Massive respect to teachers. My sister-in-law was a teacher but decided on a career change. It’s tough.
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In Australia, we get six weeks for Christmas/new year at the end of term four (the last two weeks of Dec and then the whole of jan) other than that we just get two weeks of holidays in between each term
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I’m on nights for the rest of this week, so I’ve been trying to go to bed later and not waking up until 5/6pm. I got woken at 10am by workers repainting our car park. They’re noisy, and it’s too warm to close the window. Guess I better wait until they bugger off later and try to get some more sleep before I go to work.
Although as a bonus I do get to do my washing while I’m up. Save me disturbing other people at night while I’m at work.
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I’m over 3 month on T (I’m ftm, btw) and my period came a week after my last shot. And it just happens I have a 30hrs train ride on the second day of my period. Glad I survived this without dying of back pain on the train. 
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I went to the locations where they filmed ‘The Time of Angels’ & ‘Flesh and Stone’ (the forest and caves)
(there were also parts of ‘The Satan Pit’ and ‘The Christmas Invasion’ that were filmed there)
I think this could be where the Sycorax ship sections were filmed (it’s super hard to tell as it is just a bunch of rocks)
Similar problem with the forest as every way just looked like more trees but it still looks cool tbh
Also was today years old when I found out ‘Crinoids’ were real
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Niel Gaiman is accused of sexual assault. This did not make my day…
I have not heard about this media before. Let’s hope that it is not true.
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