Back Home

I've been back home in Canada since Monday morning. The trip was pretty uneventful, though there was some turbulence, especially for awhile at the beginning of the Sydney to Los Angeles leg of the trip. My back held up fine, and I took the meds the doctor had given me prior to leaving the Gold Coast. I only took one of the Valium, and I felt sleepy. As soon as I felt like I wanted to sleep, we were given our supper. It was actually pretty good for airline food, but unfortunately, I no longer felt tired. After trying for awhile to get to sleep I took a Gravol and that knocked me out pretty good. I slept a good portion of that flight.

The longest we had to wait was in Toronto. We arrived around 11:00 PM and our flight left at 6:30 the next morning. Sarah and I were the only ones to wait at the airport; the others went to a hotel for a few hours to shower and try to get a bit of sleep. From what they said, they didn't get much sleep. They had to wait for the shuttle to take them to their hotel, and by the time they got there and everyone got showered, there wasn't much time to sleep. Sarah and I only slept a bit at the airport and spent the rest of the time watching a couple of movies on her laptop.

It's nice to be home (but I do miss Australia and the wonderful people I met there). Unfortunately, jet lag has set in. I don't have that dizzy sort of feeling, but my sleep pattern is way off - probably still on Australian time! I slept fine the first night, but since then I've been getting up quite early (as early at 5:00 AM), sometimes sleeping in the afternoon, and going to bed late. Last night (Wednesday) was the worst so far. Tuesday I had taken some of my pain pills for my back and they made me sleepy; I laid down around 8:30 in the morning and woke up around 3:30 in the afternoon (I slept pretty good the night before but was up at 6:30). I went to bed around 1:30 or so and dozed for about an hour, maybe a little more than that. I was wide awake between 2:30 and 3:00 and tried to go back to sleep around 5:00. Sadly, I couldn't sleep and I've been awake since.

I'm supposed to help my brother at his bike shop this afternoon, doing a little computer work for him, but I don't know if I'll be able to. I might end up sleeping then instead. I might check with him to see if it would be OK if I come in next Monday instead, and hopefully my sleeping pattern will return more to normal by then.

I haven't done much since I've been home. I've gone with my mom on a few errands she had to run, and I've spent the past two evenings with a male friend, but other than that I've been sleeping and trying to rest my back (which seems to slowly be getting better, though at times it's still sore and stiff).

I need to finish off my journal for my teaching internship, update my portfolio and contact the registrar's department of the university to see what all I need to do (as in paperwork, etc.) to graduate. There are about four or five of us who are finished now and can graduate in November. I talked to my prof about it and he is the one who told me to check with the registrar, and if they don't get things done soon, maybe all four or five of us would have to get together and go to the school to try and get things taken care of all at once.

Well, not much to say right now. I just wanted to update the blog to say that I arrived home safe and sound from Australia.

Cheers!

One More Sleep

It's hard to believe, but my time in Melbourne, Australia is finished. Tomorrow morning we begin our long journey back home to Canada. We've been here nearly two months, and the time has flown by so quickly.

Last week was my last week at the school, with Friday being my last day. Actually, we were there only half a day since we left for Sydney after lunch. Two of the teacher's from Sarah's school took us, and we stayed at the apartment of one of the teacher's brother. That last day of school was sad - I'll definitely miss those kids, as well as my host teacher and the other teacher in the room.

On Wednesday of that week, they had a little Australian party for me. They had the kids bring in some different foods that Aussies eat (and they were allowed to bring in food from other cultures if that is what they eat as well). There were lots of different things to eat, and the kids enjoyed it (I did too). There were several different types of cookies (or biscuits as they call them), some sandwiches, sweets/desserts, and one of the teachers brought in a little BBQ and cooked sausages on it. One of the "sandwiches" that were brought in tasted great - I loved it! It's called Fairy Bread and all you do is butter a piece of bread and put cake sprinkles on it. Sounds gross, but it's not.

I also had my first taste of Vegemite. That was totally disgusting! My host teacher, C, captured the moment on video. I thought she was only going to take a picture, but she taped the experience. She then showed it to some of the teachers, and then on my last day she showed the kids. Everyone thought it was quite funny (so did I). I really don't know how they can eat that stuff! I suppose, though, that if it's something you are brought up on you get used to it and grow a fondness for it.

Back to my last day...the two classes I helped in got me an Aussie kids book and they all signed it and put a picture of the classes in it, as well as a picture of me tasting the Vegemite. It was quite sweet (the book, not the Vegemite). C also got me an Australian kids book as well. The principal gave me a school mug and several different chocolate bars (one or two we have back home, but the others we don't have). When it was time for me to go, the kids all came over and hugged me, and one little boy says to me, "Ms. S, Tom's crying." One of the little boys had tears in his eyes, but just walked away after hugging me. I don't know if he was sad I was leaving, or if it was for some other reason, but I like to think he was sad that I was leaving.

That afternoon we flew to Sydney. We were there until Sunday night, and had a great time seeing the sights. The main reason we wanted to head to Sydney was to see the Opera House. We got to see that, the Sydney Harbour bridge, and several other places.

Early Monday morning we headed for the last leg of our vacation (the internship part wasn't vacation) and flew up to the Gold Coast. We stayed in a cute little town called Coolengata. Our hotel was a two minute walk from the beach. It was a beautiful place, and there was gorgeous weather. Unfortunately, Tuesday morning I wrenched my back and couldn't do much of anything the rest of the day and most of the next day. The girls went to a chemist (the Australian version of a drug store) and got me some meds after talking to the chemist/pharmacist. Those seemed to help as they had codeine in them. Thursday I walked around and took some pictures. I didn't go swimming because I didn't have a bathing suite, and my back was still sore. I was actually trying on a bathing suite when I wrenched my back...go figure.

Thursday evening I went to an after hours clinic to see a doctor for my back. He agreed with me that it was a muscle problem and wrote down two different types of pills to get (over the counter kind) as well as a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and Valium. He said the Valium was for the plane trip (it's a long flight) and that both the prescribed meds would make me drowsy. I have been taking all but the Valium and it's helping. I plan on only using the Valium on the plane ride.

All in all, I had a great time here in Australia. If you ever get the chance to visit this country, you should go - lots to see and do! I don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to come back here, but if I do, I'll head this way again; I'd like to see the teachers/friends I've made on this trip again.

But for now, I need to get some rest (the pain pills I took a little while ago are kicking in and I'm feeling tired), and then do my packing. I'd like to take my host family out for supper tonight to show them my appreciation for all they have done for me while I was here. They are great people, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet and stay with them.

The next time I write, I'll be back home in Canada. See you soon!

Oi!

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!

Melbourne This 'n That

I have now finished up three weeks of my internship at Baden Powell College, Derrimut Heath campus. I am in one of the "prep" classes, which is equivalent to kindergarten back home. I am really enjoying my time at this school - the teachers and staff are all really friendly. The teacher I'm working with, C, is awesome. She's in her fifth or sixth year of teaching and she has some great ideas. I've been writing things down so that I can use them when I get my own classroom. I am also going to see if I can take some pictures of the classroom so that I can have a visual of some things, rather than writing them down.

In the schools here (or most of them it seems), they do team teaching. There is one big classroom and in it there are two classes and two teacher. Basically, the teachers take turns teaching things. Sometimes the teacher would teach both classes together, and sometimes they break off into groups (like for reading) and both teachers are required to teach their own group. I can see a benefit to team teaching, but at the same time there aspects I don't like - such has having to teach such a large class. When these two prep classes are together, there are 40 children to teach; that can be a little difficult, especially with the noise factor.

My professor was in this past Monday to do my first evaluation. I had only received his email saying he'd be in Monday morning (at 10:00am), on Friday evening. Not much time to prepare. I felt very unprepared for that class, but I managed to do well and get things printed out and photocopied on time. Apparently he had sent me an email earlier in the week but I hadn't received it. He'd sent one to Sarah as well and she never got it either. She only found out Sunday afternoon he'd be coming to observe her the next day as well, though I told her when mine was and that he wanted to visit both people at the school (though Sarah is at the other campus) on the same day. Poor Sarah though, she hadn't done any teaching to that point and Monday was her first day for that. I think she did well, though. My evaluation went well also, so that's good!

The last three weekends we've had some excursions. One Saturday the group of us from ABU were taken into the city for a little walking around, a visit to the Victoria Market (got several souvenirs there), and an Australian rules football game that evening. It was a great day, and even though we didn't understand (or know) most of the rules, we still enjoyed the football game (or footy as they call it).

One Monday evening, a couple of the younger teachers from Sarah's school took us to the movies. One of these girls is the daughter to one of the librarians at my school. These two girls, Sarah (the librarian's daughter) and Julie are really great. We went for supper after the movie and had lots of laughs.

Sarah (from Canada) and I went back to the Victorian market last Saturday again because there were some other things we wanted to get there. We were there only for a couple of hours, then went and got some supper (or, as they say in Australia, tea) and headed home. We feel pretty comfortable with taking the train into the city and home; we know which stops we need to get on/off at and we did great taking the tram from Flinder's Street Station to the market. We asked someone to make sure it went to the market, and once we knew it did, there were no problems. We got one back to the station afterwards without having to ask anyone.

On Sunday, a couple of ladies from the schools took us to Lygon Street for lunch. This is Melbourne's Little Italy section. It was really nice. The prices were high, but the food was good.

Yesterday our professor let us have the day off school and took us to the Dandenongs. It's a rain forest and has really big trees, great nature, etc. It was beautiful! We stopped at a restaurant (he made reservations) called the Cuckoo, which is Bavarian. The food (buffet style) was delicious and we all ate lots. There was also a floor show with music, singing, and laughter, which was great.

Today, the girls who took us to the movies the other week are going to take us to the zoo. I think it's the Melbourne Zoo that we are going to. There are a couple of others around here, and one is like a safari. We want to go to those ones as well, but not sure if that is today or we'll do it another day.

Well, I had better go get ready for the day's excursion. Hopefully my next post won't take as long to write!

I Come From A Land Down Under

OK, I don't come from a land down under...but I am currently there! I made it safely to Australia, with uneventful flights. Well, most of the flights were uneventful. In Toronto, our bags were late getting to where they were supposed to be (we had an hour and twenty minutes until our flight to Los Angeles was supposed to leave), and as a result, we missed that flight. It wasn't our fault in the least. They told us we could have gone on and not receive our bags at our destination for three days, but we were told it would be better to get on the next flight. Thankfully it wouldn't involve us missing the flight in L.A. So, instead of a twelve hour wait time, we only had eight.

The five of us (Sarah, Caroline, Adam, Jonathan, and myself) met up with the rest of the crew later on. Our prof, Mr. T. (no, not that Mr. T.) was the first one we met up with. He had been there a couple of hours before we were, and the other three (Maria, Ashley, and Jock) came along an hour and a half (roughly) before our flight was to leave.

The flight to Melbourne was sixteen hours, and that included a stopover, to refuel and change the crew, in Sydney. When we got to Melbourne, our host families were waiting for us. The mom of the house where I'm staying (she has three kids in their twenties) and the principal of the two campuses of the school where Sarah and I teach, were there, and they also picked Sarah up and dropped her off where she is to stay.

The family I'm staying with all seem nice (though I've yet to meet one of their daughters because she's in America right now). Maree had errands and whatnot to do (something every day), and took me along with her. This allowed me to see some of the area where I'm staying. I've not been to Melbourne yet, but Caroline, Sarah, and I are supposed to head in to the aquarium tomorrow (Sunday).

The weather, for the most part, has been quite cool, and I've been cold at night. Thankfully the blankets are nice and warm. The main part of the house has the heat on, so that's nice and toasty, but my room is in the old part and doesn't get much heat. Right now, I feel like I should have some mittens on because my hands are freezing! I guess that's what you get for coming in winter, LOL.

School starts on Monday, and I'm quite looking forward to it - though to be honest, I am a little nervous. Maree went to the school on Friday to look for something and I tagged along. I got to see the library (she's a librarian/teacher) and meet some of the people who work at the school. After that, she took me to the teacher's lounge and I met a few more of the teachers and the vice principal (I think that's who she was...she's definitely someone in charge though). The teacher I'll be with wasn't there, so I couldn't meet her or see the classroom where I'll be teaching.

Well, this post is quite long. I'll try to update soon - maybe after tomorrow's excursion to Melbourne. Sarah and I've decided that even if Caroline changes her mind, we're still going there tomorrow. Please pray for Sarah as she's come down with a bad cold already.

Have a blessed Christ-filled day!