ye goode olde tourist sites

i always thought it was really cool how the gappies got to go on the trips and see a whole load of good stuff and now i'm realising just how good it is! I got to go and see 'I Robot' for FREE, yes that's right i had to spend ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on that ticket! then on monday afternoon i got on a minibus with a group of year 12s (U6th) and went off to sydney. it was on this momentous occasion that i saw my first kangaroos! AND not only that, but i've seen roadkill roo as well! now i fell like i'm truly in australia.

anyway off the point...i stayed in a hotel just outside sydney (another first - never stayed in a hotel before), and we went into town the next morning. so of course i had to do all the touristy stuff that comes with being a foreigner in this country. all well and good you might think, but how in hell's name are you supposed to find these places if they're not signposted?! i mean really, is it that hard to put up an itsy bitsy sign saying 'gullible money spending tourists this way please'? still i overcame this hideous barrier to my chances of blowing lots of money on cheap-tacky-never-to-be-looked-at-again-souveniers, and i made my way to the harbor. and true to form, there it was, the harbour bridge in full glory...of the rain. i have to say though, the opera house did look spectacular...by the time it had stopped raining. still, it had cleared up pretty much by the time i got to the quay so i decided that a bit of extravagance was needed, so off i toddled on a harbour cruise. it was fab! i met a really nice welsh girl called liz and we chatted away for the whole time, while trying to dry our bums (as i said, it had been raining, and the seats were a little on the damp side) and not get blown overboard. for the grand total of $22, i got an hour long cruise and a free beer so i thought that was a pretty good bargain personally. so after that i pretty much pottered around the quay and down pitt street (one of the main shopping streets) and then had to make a hasty return to where i was meeting the others. if any of you have ever been on a monorail, you'll know how smooth it is. in fact i think we did something along those lines in physics, so i sat there feeling quietly smug at knowing how it worked, or at least what i could remember of the workings...so i made it back in perfect timing, hadn't had any lunch, though i was brought back from the brink of starvation by the handy snack that is cadbury's chocolate.

[an aside about the choccy here: as you may or may not know (and if you don't i'm not sure how...) chocolate is a very important substance to me. i wouldn't go so far as saying that i'm a chocaholic, but i do appreciate a good slab of the stuff from time to time (maybe every five minutes or so). anyhoo, the chocolate bars in this country are a little on the thin side. now when i say thin, i don't mean that they're smaller, merely flatter than the stuff we get at home. so you don't have the whole mouth-too-full-of-chocolate-that-you-can't-speak scenario, which i happen to enjoy. in most cases the stuff tastes just as good, but you can't quite have the same experience with such anorexic pieces.]

and i'm home. i can now add to the list of things i've seen/done:

continued from the last list...
6. seen not just one, but a whole mob of kangaroos
7. seen (and i have photos to prove it) the harbour bridge, i have in fact now gone across it in a train as well, the next step is to climb it
8. appreciated the structure of the opera house and been inside to test it out
9. travelled on a famous sydney ferry (several times in fact and it was most interesting when i was every so slightly affected by alcamahol)
(on a completely different note...)
10. know and work with a guy called bruce (no shelias yet, but i'm working on it)

that'll do for now

toodles

A-hem (cough cough)

i thought i might mention what kind of work i do...seeing as how i seem to forget every time - oops!

at the moment i'm working mainly with a girl with downs syndrome. she's a nice enough girl, but she can be a real pain in the arse sometimes. if she doesn't want to do something, she won't. as stubborn as hell.her condition isn't that bad, but she has trouble thinking more than a few steps ahead of herself and what she's going to do next. what we (the other gappies and i) do is sit with her in class and make sure she's written down everything, help her to spell things and generally make sure she's working. in some subjects that's fine, but in others, ie those she doesn't like, it's VERY hard work.

another thing we have to do is pre-prep. now this isn't what we would call pre-prep. it's pretty much pre-school, so the kids are 4/5 years old. most of them are really sweet. one of the boys, morgan, is going to be absolutely GORGEOUS when he grows up. phil (one of the boy gappies) keeps calling me a paedophile for saying it, but he is!! i mean morgan is going to be cute, NOT phil's a paedophile, although we have our doubts...nah just joking! - just to clear it up...so yer, a typical day for us is to set up the outside toys for them, bikes, sandpit toys, hoops and that sort of thing, help them in the morning with their craft stuff, sticking bits of paper together and whatnot. then i take some of them of them up to the library to get new books, after that i go and get the fruit for morning tea and hand in lunch orders to the canteen if the parents can't be bothered to make their little darlings lunch. then i have to help during morning tea if people need things opened. after that it's washing up all the way and when that's finished i get to go outside and play! of course i have to do any jobs that need doing for the next week, like drawing shapes and cutting things out. after that it's 'group time' and lunch. i get a bit of time off then to go and my lunch which is always good. then more washing up! after that they get a story read to them and either go outside or to the gym if it's raining. at 3 i get to go!!! of course we don't do all day, i have done a whole day (the day after i got my results so i could have been a little hungover but i managed to make it all day!) we do either the morning till about 12 or the arvo till 3ish. i really enjoy this part of the work, but it's very similar to what i do with mum, so...

i also, requested to, do grounds work. this is the bit i like the most i must admit...the guys down there are all really friendly and easy to talk to. those of you who know my slightly dodgy sense of humour will know that i fitted right in really quickly. it's great coz i'm the most popular person down there! for obvious reasons, but they do appreciate me and have said that i'm the best out of the three of us (gappies) who work down there...and i don't think they were just flattering me, i hope! the best thing about it is that i get to spend time outside as well, last time for example i spent a sunny afternoon mowing a few of the small lawns. i've got some (friendly) abuse for it and danny, but mostly phil, have been bagging me out about it. they're just jealous coz they're not favourite! i am in fact the first girl to go through with it. several previous girl gappies have expressed interest but never actually gone through with it, so i've made kinross history! i've been taught how to ride the quad bike...easy as hell, but SOOO much fun. lame it may be, but it's good fun tearing around on the oval and round the school. :D so, um...yeah, i asked to be treated no differently to the guys in the stuff that we do and that kind of thing, and so far it's been really good and i've been able (and possibly more capable) of doing all the things they do...not that i'm blowing my own horn here or anything.

what else? err...yes, i remember - dt. i have managed to secure myself an itty bitty job in the dt department. it's not much at the moment, but there is a possibility that i could be doing more, i'll update you as we go. anyway at the moment i go down there for few of the year 7 (year 8) lessons and a couple of year 11 (L6) and a few year 12 (U6) lessons. at the moment year 12 are doing end of yeary type things, so their lessons are pretty dull, but the year 7 ones are good fun, coz to them i know LOTS! Year 11 are quite amusing in that there is only one girl and an entire class of guys...so much fun. they always seem to be really interested and sincere about what they're doing for their projects when i talk to them and then when i move on, they go back to being rowdy and showing off...i wonder why?!?

the other thing that i do is help in hospitality (ie working towards restaurant standard cooking, basically becomming a chef) with a girl who's fine motor skills are not too good. it's a year 11 class and it's LOTS of fun. the lot of them are really funny and we spend ages chatting about random stuff. it also means that i get free food, and it's usually REALLY good. it gives me a chance to get to know more of the older students and get a dfferent look of the school.

apart from that i live in the boarding house so i do one duty a week and every 4th weekend. a typical duty day is me getting up at about 6:45, going upstairs and waking the girls, making sure they do their duties, THEN i get to shower and go to brekkie. i have to take a roll in brekkie to make sure everyone's there. after that i make sure the house is tidy and that people are getting ready to go to school. at 8:15 i send them all off to catch the bus and get ready to go myself. at the end of school i go back to the house and sort out anything that needs it. dinner is at 6 and after that i send them off to prep at 7 and get them all to bed when they come back. it has it's ups and downs. last night one of the girls hurled everywhere and we had to clean it up which was nice. then one of them got all upset so i had to calm her down as well. EVENTUALLY i got to bed then had to get up at 6:30 to get ready to go to sydney this arvo. I AM TIRED!

but moving on...that's pretty much the kind of thing i have to do so i'll stop there and leave you people to get on with your lives.

see y'all later

bring ooon the holidays

WAHOOO

in just over 3 weeks i'll be off to cairns! that's right folks, phi and i are off to the sunshine coast and the surfers! we're flying up there on the first monday of the holidays, after a girly weekend in sydney with some of the staff, and spending a few days in cairns then working our way back to orange for 2 weeks. we're gonna stop off at all the places we want to see and spending a few days in the bigger places. so if anyone has any ideas as to where we should go, or any recommendations please tell us...

cheers ma dears!

lunch calls...