I am still going strong here in outskirts of Melbourne. This coming week will be my last in the classroom, the following week I'll be travelling to the Gold Coast, and the weekend after that I head back home.
School has been going well. I've done quite a bit of teaching, mostly maths (here they put an 's' on the end of math) and reading. I've also been doing the roll call and going over the daily time table with the kids. For maths, I had to teach both of the classes in the room, but for reading I only had the one class belonging to the teacher I have been assigned to.
At the end of my last post I had mentioned that we were going to the zoo. It was, in fact, the Melbourne Zoo and it was really great! The zoo is quite big and took us nearly four hours to go through it all (including a stop for something to eat for lunch on zoo grounds, which was terribly expensive). We didn't see many kangaroos, and only one koala bear but that might be because Australians wouldn't want to see them in the zoo when they could see them in the wild, etc. It was a great zoo to visit, though. They even have a butterfly exhibit where you can go in with the butterflies. I got some great close up shots of different butterflies.
The following week we went to the Werribee zoo with Sarah's host teacher. This zoo was an open range zoo. We got on a bus and the tour guide/driver drove us around and told us about all the animals we saw. It was great too, but not nearly as many animals.
We also travelled down the Great Ocean Road. That was amazing. I think we ended up driving something like 700 km (we left around 9:00 am and got back home a little after 10:30 pm). The road is twisty, turny and runs along the ocean (which could be how it got its name). There is such beautiful scenery here and we even saw a couple of whales in two different locations! There were some surfers early in the trip, but the further along we got, the stronger the waves were, and in some locations they had signs up to not go in the water.
The Great Ocean Road is where you'll find the Twelve Apostles. There are only about seven of them left now, with one falling down a couple of months ago I think. These are rock formations that, once upon a time, had been part of the cliffs; erosion from wind, rain, and the water/waves have separated them. These reminds me of the Hopewell Rocks back home. It's definitely worth taking this trip around the coast, even though it takes awhile.
Today was the first Saturday since the first weekend we got here, that I didn't have any excursion planned. It's OK though because it was nice to have some time to myself - especially since I felt a little down today. It's getting closer to the one year anniversary (Aug. 19) of my dad's death. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Sarah and I are going to a place called Science Works tomorrow, and I think we might be meeting a couple of the others there as well. Sarah's hostess (where she's staying) is supposed to take us and drop us off while she goes to visit her grandmother (who lives a few streets over), and then we'll call her when we are ready to go home.
Next weekend we'll be heading to Sydney from Friday until Sunday. The following morning we'll head to the Gold Coast (Monday to Friday). That Saturday we'll probably go to the Victoria Market one last time and then we fly out Sunday to head back home.
It's getting quite windy out now. They are calling for gale force winds tonight I guess, and warning people not to park under trees and to fasten down any outdoor furniture, etc. Hopefully it won't be too bad and there will be little to no damage.
Going to head off for now since this post has gotten quite long. God bless, and have a Christ-filled day!
