Celebrations, celebrations, celebrations!

Wow, it’s been nearly a week.  Life in Darwin is so quick to suck you in.  After the excursion Monday the week was just filled with business.  

Wednesday I finally got to meet Mr. G! Mr. G is a teacher at Amy’s school he is this Italian teacher who is so energetic and fun! What a riot!!  So Amy, Rose and I headed down to this Jazz Pub that his band was playing at.  What fun! It was just like a place you’d see in the U.S.  They had this live band up on stage, people were inside and outside just enjoying the music and then at their break a group of people got up and started teaching and doing swing dancing.  The band was great, the company was entertaining and the adventure making it there was all so fitting.  

Thursday started out as I walked into school and the secretary informed me that the relief teacher that had been scheduled to cover in my classroom that day was being moved into a different classroom because that teacher had called in sick, so would I mind being the relief teacher on my own.  So day 9 and I was the classroom teacher at Wanguri Primary School, in Darwin, Australia to a group of 24 year 3/4 students.  It was so much fun! The day went smoothly, the students were excited that I got to be the teacher all day, and we had some fun activities to do.  Nothing like jumping in :)

Then our uni professor, Lorraine, had also invited us over for dinner and drinks.  It was her son Tim’s birthday.  We had this fantastic lamb (it’s a very popular dish around here) roast with potatoes, veggies, wine and homemade cheesecake for dessert.  It was fun comparing stories and hearing about their lives as well as sharing  a bit about ours.  After that Amy and I headed out to the pub up the road with Tim to celebrate St. Patty’s Day / his birthday.  We hung out there for the evening and met up with some of his mates to celebrate... St. Patty’s Day is a huge deal around here, another excuse to head to the pub :)

Friday I had another excursion planned to take our RCS (Student Leadership) student to this “Anti-Bullying Conference”.  It was really interesting because they really made a big emphasis on helping their classmates not participate in bullying, because even being just a bystander who does nothing is not helping the situation.  Our group of 6 were the youngest ones there, but they held there own.  Volunteering answers, participating in skits and suggesting solutions to problems... I was quite proud.  They provided us with a fantastic morning tea of muffins and oranges as well as a whole spread for lunch of mini sandwiches and fruit trays, along with some “sausage rolls” and “meat-pies” that are some typical lunch foods here.  We ended the day with a nice night in, dinner and a movie.  

Saturday morning Belinda and I hopped on our bikes and rode out to Parap for our fruit shopping at the local market.  It ended up raining on us 90% of the time, which was actually a nice way to combat the heat.  It was such a nice ride and we enjoyed a nice iced coffee before we headed home.  So 3 hours later we had gotten a nice ride in and were already home ready for lunch.  After lunch Amy and I headed down to the TiO Stadium to watch the Footy Grand Finals.  What an interesting sport! The guys who had invited us to go played at 2:30 and so we got to sit there learning the game, and actually being able to cheer individuals on because we knew them! Mr. G helped to explain some of the rules when we had questions, but overall I would have to say that it is a game I could really get into! It’d be interesting to try playing sometime!  Also there were some students games going on so we went and watched some of the little kiddos getting really into the game before we went and finished watching the final quarter of our friends, the Banks Bulldogs, game.  They ended up winning in a close 65 - 60 final scoring game.  We hung around and watched the rest of the next game as well (it was another division) but then wanted to head downtown for dinner before dark.  So Amy and I attempted to catch a bus into town to grab dinner, but lo-and behold the busses weren’t running on the weekends at the bus stop we made it to.  We ended up, after about 30 minutes of headache, just hailing a cab as quick as we could since some shadier individuals were making their way steadily closer to our bus stop.  We grabbed the cab to the pub up the road from our places where we met up with Belinda and Ross who drove us into town and gave us a few suggestions of where to eat.  We ended up at this nice little Italian restaurant where the waiter and cook were so pleasant, and so interested in our visit from America that they gave us our breadsticks on the house since we were so famished we were ready to devour anything!  We then hopped around to a few of the pubs around there area.  My favorite was this place called “The Tap”.  It was real nice little pub with all this outdoor seating, water lagoons, and these drinks called Fish Bowls.  They were these fruit concoctions that had pineapples and melons in it, not to mention they were really sweet lemon-lime lemonade flavorish beverages that came in fun bright colors.  It was definitely a nice night out.  

Sunday is a day of relaxation and work (oxymoron?)  I slept in quite well and then made it out for a quick run (Mr. G thinks I’m a good runner, so now I’ve got to get into running shape before our jog next week! yikes!) and have been getting my Unit completed to start teaching this week.  While here I’ve decided to do a Unit of Study on How to Write a Narrative.  My students have this large competition that they enter pieces of writing into and so Mara and I decided that might be a fun unit for me to work on with the students.  In a little bit here Lorraine and I are going out on another ride around town which should be nice and then it’s back to Monday!

G’day! :)