Tuesday, Feb. 10th

Today was a relatively easy day at school. Brett still taught math, and I taught just about everything else. We are working on many different things with one being a peer biography. The students are actually surprisingly low in their skills. For some reason, in about every subject, they are behind. It’s really quite a concern, because we have to get them ready for high school by this time next year. About a third of the class are over a year ahead of where they should be, about one third on track, and about another third well below a year behind. It makes teaching quite difficult. There are so many individualized assignments because of this, which all have to be graded according to each student’s ability level.
I hadn’t realized how much my failed science lesson had gotten to me, but it really bugged me. I was able to talk it through with Brett today, and we worked out a new way to attempt it. The students just aren’t quite ready to work in cooperative groups yet; they’ve got some maturing to do. The frustrations of being a teacher are alive and well now that I’m into my second week. Students don’t do what they are specifically directed to do, they don’t turn in quality work, some simply don’t care, and others are never going to get it as much as I explain it. One little boy has an IQ of about 70, and just missed the level of receiving assistance. Keeping him on track, while trying to keep another student, who is more advanced than me in math, challenged at the same time; it’s just really difficult and draining. Thank goodness Brett is there to help some of the lower students while I’m handling the rest of the class.
Tonight, I went to dinner at Carine with Heather, Len and Kit and John, Hazel and Renee for Hazel’s birthday. Dinner was delightful! After dinner, I did some prep work for school and headed to bed.
Oh yeah, THE AIR CONDITIONING WAS FIXED AT SCHOOL TODAY!!!!

Wednesday

It was awfully hard to get up this morning. I felt like I weighed about 1000 lbs and was just exhausted. I got up anyway and went for a run. When I got to school, my day was already looking up, because the air con was working. It would have been torture teaching with no AC today. It was over 100 degrees again.
The day went well. The big event of the day though was this afternoon. One of the little boys wasn’t getting any work done. I kept checking on him, but I looked over, and he had just run out of the room. Our rooms go directly to the outside, and when I saw him, he was bent over puking in the bushes. Brett got him settled and the mess cleaned up, but that was quite the disruption for a seventh grade class. The poor little guy came back to class too and finished the day!
When I got home from school, Fatty was here. Fatty is a friend of Kit’s who will be staying with us for about a month. We chatted some and then I did some planning. After my evening dip in the pool, we had dinner. It was wonderful as always. It was a relatively uneventful day.
However, today has been monumental in my social life. Katy, the other COST student teacher, and I made some very large plans tonight. We have decided that we are going to go to swim with the dolphins this week at Rockingham, but then we are going to say and see Penguin Island and spend the night camping on the beach. We will get up the next morning and drive home through Fremantle, which is a bit of a hippie town, and go through the Fremantle Markets. We also made plans for the last weekend in Feb. We are going to BALI!! It’s going to cost us about $500 each to go to Bali for 3 nights and 3 days, so we’re just going to do it.

Thursday

Today was a good day. We were in the air conditioning, so it was relatively pleasant. I taught the whole day today, with Brett just jumping in where he needed to in order to fill in things that I forgot. It’s really nice to have an experienced teacher to help when I don’t know how to say something quite simply enough. We had lunch duty today. It was really easy, because the kids just go wherever they want. It’s really not too hard to look after them because they all go outside to run and play, so they are pretty well behaved.
I didn’t do much this evening. I went for a run down by the beach, but that was about it. Tomorrow will be the test for the students’ behavior in science. They know that if they blow it, we’ll not be doing anything fun. I’m not about to pull out wires, light bulbs, batteries, voltmeters, etc, when they are acting as if they haven’t got a brain in their head. So we’ll see…

Friday

The little buggers were naughty today. This morning was lovely, the students did a chance and data lesson with dice to find probability, which went wonderfully. HOWEVER, after lunch they were like a totally different group of kids. I had to yell a few times (which I really hate), and they just wouldn’t listen. I told people to turn in their homework, and 6 out of 31 turned it in. Therefore, on Monday, we are going to have a nice long chat about this. Brett and I are spending more time chasing kids around trying to get their work turned in than actually teaching. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know what kind of structure they have had in the past, but it certainly wasn’t how we are running things. The kids are fantastic and lovely to be around, but their work is just pathetic. There are about five kids who are on top of their work, and the rest of the class simply acts like they don’t care.
This afternoon, Brett and I had a quick beer with the rest of the staff after school and headed home. I had a bowl of ice cream! Everyone is pretty healthy here, but Heather just bought ice cream that she doesn’t like, so I told her that I would get rid of it for her. ☺ When Heather got home, she and I went for a little test drive. We were able to get insurance for me on her car, so I can take it this weekend. I needed to go to the store and get some food for the weekend. The drive went relatively well, I only hit the curb once, and managed not to hit any other cars. It was a bit weird; I constantly felt like I was going the wrong way.
I packed the gear into the car for our camping trip, because I’m going to have to leave at 5:30AM tomorrow to pick Katy up and be at the departure jetty at 7:30AM. We were able to get a camping spot, so we are going to take a tent and sleeping bags. After a long dinner, I went to bed.

Saturday

This could quite possibly be one of the most incredible days of my entire life (… and I know people say that all the time, but this really was one of those days). I was able to pick Katy up on time, and head toward the town of Rockingham. It’s about an hour and a half south of where we live. We got there relatively easy, because it was a Saturday morning, and not many people were on the road. We picked up a coffee before getting on the boat. On the boat, we had to go through the spiel about safety and liability information. After that, they passed out the snorkels and wetsuits. The wet suits were the kind that floats. Therefore, all we had to do in the water was lay out on our belly, so the dolphins could swim around us.
I can’t explain how cool the experience was. The dolphins literally swam three feet in front of my face. We were not allowed to touch them, because the oils in our hands are actually toxic to them. It was just fascinating to see them playing with each other and playing with our guides. We linked together to make a long chain of people, and our guides pulled us around with motorized swimming machines. We were able to go out about five different times. One time we didn’t actually see any, but we just got back to the boat and then went right back out as soon as the skipper found the dolphins again. We were able to see a couple moms and calves. One calf was only about 2 weeks old; it still had the folds in its skin from being inside of his mom. On the way back to the jetty, we kicked up a big wave because the boat was moving pretty fast. The dolphins love to play in the waves, and they were jumping out of the water and doing some little flips just like in the movies or at SeaWorld. They are really playful animals and quite entertaining.
After we got back, we went walking around the town, and then we drove to Penguin Island. There are real penguins here, and it’s a natural colony. We took the ferry over to the island and walked the whole island. We didn’t see any penguins, because they are nocturnal and were either hiding or all out in the ocean gathering food. There was a tank though in the middle of the island with a few penguins in it for demonstrations. The little island makes one feel as if he is miles away from anything else in the world.
We headed for the campsite after we left the island. We got there, set up our tent, (on about at 10x10 piece of ground) and headed out walking towards the beach. We walked along the beach for about an hour. It was not the softest beach in the world, but it was beautiful. We walked along in the water and soon realized that it was full of starfish!! They were everywhere. We had to be careful where we stepped, because they were being tossed around by the waves. We walked back to the campsite and put some chicken on the barbie. They had really nice, electric barbies at this particular caravan park. After dinner, we walked back to the beach to enjoy a beer and watch the sunset. We weren’t disappointed. It was a good way to enjoy Valentine’s Day… even if we were flying solo.
It was back to the campsite after sunset for S’MORES!! Do you know that Australia DOES NOT HAVE graham crackers, Hershey bars or regular marshmallows!?! We had to improvise. We used shortbread cookies, Cadbury chocolate, and raspberry flavored marshmallows. Since we only had an electric barbie, we also had to just melt everything rather than use a fire. Nonetheless, they were still a perfect way to end the day.

Sunday

We woke up today, took showers in the incredibly clean shower house, and then packed up our gear. We went to Fremantle, shortened to Freo, for the day. There are fabulous stores and markets in Freo. We went to a coffee shop, Ginos, for breaky, and then we went to the Fremantle Prison. The prison was the first one on the west coast, built for an by convicts from Europe. It was great, but quite eerie as well. The prison has only been closed for 15 years, and it was very run-down. By the looks of the pictures, it didn’t look much better when it was an actual prison. We went back towards the markets, and they were finally opened by 10AM. I ended up getting a few things, one being a sarong, which is basically a piece of rayon that people use as a bather cover-up.
After the markets, we went to the Shipwreck Galleries and some other historical spots around town. The Shipwreck Galleries were great, but we were starting to get tired. We decided to find lunch. We ended up eating at Cicero’s. It’s the best fish and chips shop in Freo, and it was definitely delicious! We also walked through a brewery. It was an unbelievable coincidence, because the brewery that we went through, was the maker of the beer that I happened to pick up for Friday night. It’s the only major brewery in the area, and all of the beer is made in that one location.
After lunch, we headed home so Katy could get to her little host-brother’s bowling, birthday party. I laid by the pool all afternoon and got my life back in order from the weekend. This week should be a good one. It’s got to be, because Brett leaves for Tasmania for two weeks starting this Friday, and I’m going to be the main teacher! Ahh!

You're a champ if you made it all the way to here! Whew, a lot happened this week.