Do I have to?

Well ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to begin packing, say my goodbyes, and head back home. This summer has gone by so fast! I can't believe that I have already been here for 10 weeks and it is already time to go home. As much as I want to go home and enjoy some warm weather and of course see everyone, I love this country and I have had such an amazing time that I don't know if I am ready to leave.

Tonight we are going out for our last house dinner. We are going down to the pub on the corner, which is the same place that we all went out to on our first night in Sydney so we felt it only appropriate. Tomorrow is my last day of work and I am definitely going to miss my kids and everyone at Rozelle a lot. This has been such an amazing experience and they were such a big part of it. Tomorrow is going to feel very weird knowing that I won't be coming back on Monday.

As much as I know I am going home, I really don't think it has hit me much yet. I haven't started cleaning my room or packing any of my things. I figure that Friday night will be a good night to get all of that done. Hopefully this will make me very tired and let me sleep on the plane ride back. I am really excited to get to the beach and just relax for a bit.

I am sorry that I have been so lax about posting lately. I will try and post one more time before I leave, but at least once when I get home (just so everyone knows I am alive haha).

See you back in the states soon!

One Week!!

One week from right now I will be on a plane back home! I can't believe that 9 weeks have already flown by and I only have one week left to go. It is a total bittersweet feeling. I am extremely excited to go home and see everyone and sleep in my own bed and enjoy some warm weather, but at the same time I am really sad to be leaving Sydney and all of the amazing people that I have met here.

Thursday was Multicultural Day at school and it was very successful. The kids all wore their red, white, and blue and brought in lots of food to eat. Adam rented a Red, White, and Blue Mickey Mouse costume to wear. The kids loved seeing Mickey walking around during the day, especially the little ones in kindergarten. All of the parents came into the classroom and we sang the Fifty-Nifty United States song before telling the parents some information about what they learned. The kids brought in a ton of "American food" and we had so much sweets to eat. There were cupcakes, popcorn, cookies, oreos, hot dogs, ice cream, soda...everything. After the parents left we got to see some of the other stage 2 classrooms decorations and performances. One of the classes did a very cute play about the animals that live in Botswana.

Friday was pretty chill. Adam and I had RFF in the morning so he helped me work on my portfolio and answered a bunch of questions I had. We went to class for about an hour, in which his friend came in and taught the kids how to make paper cranes and after lunch we went out for Sport.

When I got home on Friday night I took a much needed nap for about two hours and then got ready for a fun night out with the girls. We started our scavenger hunt at 8 and it was a blast. We were running all over the city trying to check things off of our list. We actually did really well. Supposedly, we did not do as well as the other team, but we haven't seen the proof yet. It was a great way to spend part of the last weekend.

Who knows what is on the books for tonight, but i have no doubt it will be a fun evening.

Blame Park Lodge

I apologize for not posting anything in ages, but the internet has been awful lately. I can get into my e-mail and facebook, but rarely anything else and to be quite honest with you, after a couple days of not posting I kind of forgot I was even keeping this. So sorry to any of you who may actually read it.

Last week was a pretty chill week at school. We did not do too much and Adam did a lot of the teaching, which was kind of a nice break from all the teaching I did last week. I only worked 4 days last week because we left for Melbourne late on Thursday night. There was about 8 of us that went and it was a great little break from Sydney before our last weekend. We finally got to our hostel around midnight after a short delayed flight out of Sydney. After checking us all in we passed out, however, unfortunately the beds were extremely hard and squeaky whenever anyone moved the slightest bit so I didn't really sleep much.

Blair, Meg, and I had to wake up around 6am to get ready for our tour of the Great Ocean Road. We had a long drive to all of our points and we slept a bit on the way down. We saw some amazing beaches and drove on the cliffs right along the water. It was absolutely gorgeous and I have been totally spoiled with beaches over the past 8 weeks. I know it isn't summer, but the beaches here are gorgeous and nothing else can compare. We saw wild kangaroos and wild koalas. The Koalas were adorable, just snuggled up in their trees. One even ran in front of our bus and another along the side of the road. He was close enough that I just wanted to pick him up and take him home. There were also these really colorful birds that would come and sit on your hands and head. It was really cool. On our tour we went to see the 12 Apostles, they are amazing pieces of stone in the water and sometime in my lifetime they will all disintegrate into the ocean. There were some absolutely beautiful sights on the drive and it was absolutely worth it. We made it back to the hostel around 7:00pm and got some dinner and then got ready to go out with the girls. We met up with everyone over at the Casino for some drinks and gambling. I decided to play $5 and once I lost it I would be done. I played roulette and made about $15 before I ended up losing that $15 again. I only had my $5 left and thought about just cashing out so I didn't loose anything, but when I went to sit down at the table after someone had left I found a $2.50 chip on the floor. Of course I picked it up and decided to play it. We were on the lowest table so I could only play it on a number, I picked a random number and guess what?!?! I won....$80. As soon as I figured out how much each chip was worth and how much I had total, I was done and quite content with my winnings for the night. The rest of the girls wanted to go out, but I was exhausted so I decided to go back to the hostel. The girls were back within the hour so it didn't really matter anyway, they said it was a bust.

Saturday morning we all slept in until about 11am, which was glorious. Meg, Denning, Blair, and I went out to walk around Melbourne and just see the city. It was fun, but decided we needed to come back for a bit of a rest. We relaxed for a while and then got ready for the rugby game. We got some drinks and dinner and played some card games before the game. We walked to the game with just about the entire city to cheer on the New Zealand All Blacks instead of the Qantas Wallabies. The game was really fun and we had a great time attempting to understand it. The people around us were so fun and they have a great friendly fan relationship with each other. Although they get really quiet when something big is not going on. It was a bit weird for the entire stadium to get quiet and not be cheering the entire time. We met up with the girls to head out for the night after the game. It was alright and we made it to a couple bars before coming back around 2.

We slept in Sunday again and then went to St. Kilda. We had lunch and then walked down by the beach, it was extremely windy and we didn't end up staying long because of how cold it was. We came back and took a nap before meeting up with Tori at the Casino for dinner. It was great to go out and get a really nice dinner (that wasn't too expensive either).

We had a early flight Monday morning and got back to Sydney around 8:30 and I was to work by 10. Adam and I have been doing a lot to work with the kids for the multicultural expo on Thursday. They have been making decorations, finishing their road trip, and practicing the Fifty Nifty United States song (which I know have stuck in my head constantly). I am a little nervous about Thursday with all of the parents being there, but it should be a great experience.

Only 11 days left in Sydney! We have a pretty big weekend planned and I can't believe it will be my last weekend before I fly back to the States. I love Sydney, but I am kind of excited to get home and enjoy some relaxing time at the beach in the warmth.

I haven't been eaten by a kangaroo

Sorry that it has been so long since I have made my last post, but the Internet has been so weird here and only lets me check my e-mail and occasionally facebook.

Friday was a pretty chill day at school because Adam got back. We did some of the basic Friday morning routine and then the kids worked more on their United States project. We ended up the day with Adam showing some of his pictures and videos from his vacation to America. The kids loved seeing pictures of DisneyWorld, although many of them have already been before. Adam got pencils for all of the kids and I even got one too. I picked a Disney Princess pencil! None of the kids wanted any of the other princess pencils. I was so disappointed in them! I got home from work and just relaxed for a bit after work. We all met up around 8:30 and had dinner out on the patio. Soon all of our visitors came over. It was so great to see all of the other AustraLearn girls from other cities. We were planning on going out, but it started raining pretty hard so we all decided that it wasn't worth it and ended up going to bed around 1am.

I spend most of Saturday morning sleeping and then met up with Blair, Tori, and Dorothy for lunch before doing some shopping at Glebe Markets and Paddys, where I picked up some last minute gifts for myself and friends. Blair and I made it back around 4 and I took a much needed nap before Saturday night. We all got dressed and headed out to the patio for dinner. After dinner we hung out at the apartment for a bit before meeting up with all the girls at a bar downtown. We were there until they closed at about 2. Some people kept going, but I was so tired that I had to head back and get some sleep.

Sunday was spent enjoying the nice warmth of my bed. I watched some movies and just spent the day relaxing. Blair and I finally wandered to the grocery store around 5 and then came home to cook some Tacos. We started watching the Debate when Carl and Travis showed up, the debate was a bit boring so we all ended up talking over top of it. Soon more people ended up joining us and the season finale of MasterChef was on! We all just hung out and watched Adam kick ass and win this season of MasterChef. Next season, MasterChef is doing a junior competition for kids ages 3-12 and from the preview, some of those kids can cook!

Monday wasn't a bad day at work. I didn't teach too much, and spent the whole morning in planning. The kids did some work with the United States and I kind of sat back and relaxed.

Only three more days then off to Melbourne! One weekend in Melbourne and then my final weekend in Sydney. It is so weird that I am almost going home. Sorry this is so short, but I have to go to work. I probably should be on the way to the bus stop, but I decided since the internet was working, I would do this instead. Off to work now, I will hopefully find some time to be back on later this week before I head off to Melbourne.

TGIF

Ok well it's not Friday today, but it is Friday tomorrow! The past two days have been busy busy busy. Wednesday went pretty well, lots of time working on my Great American Road Trip. The kids are doing a great job working through all of the state information. I also made sure to add an activity to the back of every sheet. This way they are still learning and still applying what they have learned, but it is a bit more fun.

I got to work at about 7:15 this morning to get some work done because the internet was not working at all last night. I spent about an hour or more working on my planning for today and the United States unit. Today we practiced the high jump for sport. Some kids got it much better than others, but some were just funny to watch. There is one little boy, Owen, who is in another class, and maybe 3 feet tall. He is so tiny and about a head taller than how high the mat was. He tried to run up and jump and practically had to climb up onto the mat. It was so cute! We also did a lot more with the United States unit today too. The kids were really good today and even earned two top fifty points.

Tonight we are hopefully going to buy our tickets for the Wallabies Vs. All Blacks Rugby game in Melbourne. Hopefully they still have tickets left and we can all sit together. We are also going to dinner with some of the girls from Cairns that got in this afternoon. It seems like it is going to be a busy weekend, but it should be good because the internet has been a bit picky lately so it will give me something to do. I can't believe I only have three more weekends!

Is it bed time yet?

Well ladies and gentlemen I am officially fried. I spent all of this weekend attempting to be productive. I went grocery shopping, did some laundry (not that much because I still have a lot on my floor right now), and working on my portfolio and lesson plans. I attempted to get a lot of my portfolio done, but lets be honest I kept getting distracted and did not want to work on it for that long. I did get a fair amount done and I still have some more time to work on it. I spent most of Saturday working on that and then finally decided to start planning on Sunday. I had some basic things to work on, like figuring out the spelling lessons and the basic stuff, but I had no idea what to do for my unit on America. The kids are doing the United States for Multicultural Week so I am attempting to teach them about it. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but after having a conversation with my mom (I think) I got some kind of an idea. I spend some of Sunday night working on it and then I assumed that I would have time to work on it during Staff Development Day on Monday, but I was definitely wrong about that.

Monday was Staff Development Day at work. We had a quick staff meeting then Phonics training. It was really really long, but interesting I guess. Some of the stuff I feel like I have already gone over and some of it was just pointless information that really didn't need to be discussed. Some of the staff thought it was just as long and sometimes unnecessary as I did so it was ok. I got home a little later than usual on Monday and spent all of the evening working on my lesson. Lets just say I only got about 5 hours of sleep last night.

Today was a long day! I got to work really early because we had a staff meeting and I wanted to try and finish some things up before the kids got there. I got some of it done but with everyone trying to use the computers and printers I did not have enough time to finish. This morning we had Yoga first thing. Yoga is new for the term and of course we had to be the first class going. It was really difficult because we did not have time to got to the classroom after morning lines so I didn't really get a chance to talk to them. They were very loud and no matter what I did I could not get them to quiet down. It was just so difficult and I felt awful, but there was nothing I could do. These kids are very talkative in the first place, let alone the first thing, first day back from a two week break. We went back to the classroom and had a little talk about how they did not have a good start to the week and were very disrespectful to the yoga teachers. We spent time sharing what we did over the holiday and then had time to write about it in their journals. We were supposed to have maths groups, but those ended up being cancelled. We spent some time doing our spelling pretest and then got an opportunity for the casual to show some sites on the internet about some of the places in America we would be studying about. I of course spent more of my afternoon tea break working on my lesson and finishing some printing and copying. For the last hour of class we got started with our American road trip. The kids were broken into 5 groups and had some questions to answer, stories to read, and activities to do. I thought we could get done with one state in 15 minutes, but I was definitely wrong. It took us about 45 minutes and we were lucky if the kids actually finished two states.

I love teaching, but it wears me out. I am so exhausted and all I want to do is take a nap. Of course a nap or early bed time really won't happen. I have more planning to do, most of my portfolio to work on, and laundry to do.

Alone again

I just dropped Mackenzie off at the airport. We got her all packed successfully and were under the weight limit!! I even had room to put all of my souvenirs and some of the clothes I haven't worn much. Hopefully that will help when I pack and my suitcases will not be overweight by much. We got Mackenzie all ready last night and some last minute things this morning. Our taxi was right on time and we had plenty of time to check in. We had about an extra hour so we walked around the stores a bit, got some subway for lunch, and picked up some water for Mackenzie. One o'clock rolled around very quickly and it was time to hand Mackenzie over to the attendant. I tried really hard not to cry, but I did, which of course made Mackenzie cry a bit. It has been a while since I have been home and it was nice to have a piece of home here with me. Only 4 more weeks and I know that it will fly by just as quickly as the past 6 weeks have. I love Sydney, but I can't wait to be home with my family again. But, as I have said, I would have no objection to them moving out here with me :)