Week 8/Margaret River

Tuesday

I woke up this morning and had a run. It’s very dark out, but it won’t be for long. They change their clocks for daylight savings time this coming weekend. My day at school was remarkably better than yesterday. The students were well behaved and got right to work when I asked them. They are so confusing, because they have really awful days like yesterday, and then they have great days like today. Tonight, I came home, had a snack and watched some TV. It’s probably the first night that I haven’t had something to do for school or college. It was very relaxing. We’ll have dinner tonight, and I think that I’ll try to do some job searching for when I get back into the States.

Wednesday
Went for a run this morning, which was really nice. The stars were still out in full force. I headed off to school as usual. Today was especially nice, because Brett finally told me that I could do whatever science that I wanted and take as much time as I want to devote to it. I can’t wait! I’ve been doing things that he strongly suggests, so now I actually get to plan from scratch. The kids had a ‘bike to school’ day, which threw everything off. They were in and out of the room all day. We continued watching Remember the Titans today, which we will try to finish by the end of the week with ten minutes here or there. It’s a great movie for the kids to watch at this age. They love it. The kids are finishing their designs on their theme parks and brochures, and some are really, really nice.
Tonight, Heather and I took a drive. She picked me up from school, and we met the husband of one of her colleagues. They live in the Perth Hills. I hadn’t seen the hills yet, so Heather said that she’d take me. We drove out (about an hour), and he met us at a park. We went to the Mundaring Weir (which is a big dam and reservoir). It is the start of a pipeline that is 650 km long and stretches all the way to Kalgoorlie. It was the first and longest pipeline of it’s kind for over 100 years. It’s really the only way that people can live inland in the mining communities, because there is almost no water that far inland.
We climbed up the weir and walked across the top. It was gorgeous! It was like being in the middle of a huge lake and on top of the world at the same time. We then went for a hike in the bush to get to the lookout. We hiked for about three hours round trip. We found the lookout, which overlooked the weir and reservoir, and then made our way back to the car. The scenery was fantastic. We ended up going to her friend’s home for dinner. After a glass of wine and a leisurely spaghetti dinner, Heather and I headed home at about 11PM. Therefore, it was a pretty late evening.

Thursday

After my run, it was off to school again. We had a great day today. The kids were happy and on track all day long. They worked on their advertisements, theme park brochures, and we started looking at writing expositions. Since Brett gave me the ok about teaching science, I decided to do some major planning today.
I came home and did a little planning for my upcoming science lessons and put together a few experiments. Tonight was the opening game of the footy (Australian Football League-AFL) season. Katy and I went to Johno’s house to watch the game with his friends and have pizza and beer. He picked me up at 7:30PM, and we had food on the back patio with his family and friends. The game started at 9, and lasted until almost midnight. It’s crazy! It’s like our football and rugby mixed, and the players don’t wear padding! I don’t know how they survive more than one game. It was really nice though to sit and watch the game. Footy is HUGE over here, so I felt like a real local.

Friday

Heather took me to work extra early, because she had to get ready for something that she had to do today. I was able to get most of my planning done for the rest of the term, so that I won’t have to spend time after school and on weekends doing it. The kids were great this morning up until lunch. Straightaway after lunch, they had their year 7 vaccinations. Talk about drama! They had tetanus and hepatitis shots. The girls, and some boys, all came back crying and complaining that their arms were hurting. Well, I was smart enough to realize that I wasn’t going to get any work out of them. We played a strategic game called Assassin, where the kids have to use their heads to narrow-down who the assassin in the group is. They loved it. We played that until sport, where I had to do basketball again. I am so sick of basketball. Anyway, we had a beer after work, and then Brett took me home.
We left for the Margaret River area down south tonight. Len and Heather are taking us for the weekend. We picked Katy up on the way and headed south. It was about a four-hour drive to get to the winery we were staying at. We stayed in a Japanese Tea Room Chalet on the Wise Wines Winery. It was rustic-no TV, radio, phone, or Internet (tragic, I know), but we had an incredibly nice time. The place was really big and in the middle of the bush. We just got to the cabin and went to sleep after a glass of complimentary wine.

Saturday

We woke up around 7:30AM, and Katy and I took off on a run. The brochure said that the beach was only a 20-minute walk from the chalet. Well, we obviously took the wrong path, because after a hard 15-minute run, we saw signs of the beach. We stopped and walked along the beach for about twenty minutes and then ran home. We saw some kangaroos on the way! After our run and a delicious brekky, cooked by Len, we headed out. We had to first stop at the Wise Wines Winery to pay our bill, but we ended up tasting all of their wines as well. They weren’t the best wines of the day though. We then headed off to Dunsborough, where we stopped and got a cup of coffee. The next stop were too Ugg boots stores (Uggs are made in Australia)-but I’m going to wait until next weekend to buy my Uggs at the outlet stores ☺ (Grandma, you should be proud).
Our next stop was the Bootleg Brewery, where we tasted seven types of beer including the Raging Bull. And at 7.15 alcohol, it was pretty raging. We stopped off for lunch at the Providore Café, which surprisingly enough, had a wine tasting spot. So, we, of course, had to taste their wines. We stopped at two more wineries, Cape Mentelle and Rockfield Estate. These are two of Len’s favorite wineries, and I can see why. They were small wineries and had really delicious wines. It’s a good thing that I can’t bring much wine back with me, or I would probably be broke. After the last two wineries, we headed to the grocery story to get supplies to cook dinner. We went back to the chalet, and Len made a fantastic pumpkin risotto. We drank some of the wine that we bought, and headed to bed or extremely full stomachs.

Sunday

Last night was daylight savings night here. We woke up an hour early, and Katy and I went for another run. We found the shorter way to the beach today though. We ran down the coastal walkway and back through the bush again. We packed up the car and headed out for the day. We went to the Yallingup Beach. It is one of the best surfing beaches in the world. In fact, there is a world surfing competition there tomorrow. Our second and third stops today were unplanned. We had intended to go down the coast, but decided to stop at two wineries first. We stopped at the two oldest wineries in Western Australia, Cullen Wines and Vasse Felix. There we tasted about twenty different wines, all before lunch!
For lunch, we stopped in Prevelly Park and ate at a fish and chips restaurant. We also walked along the beach at Prevelly Park. It’s where the Margaret River ends into the ocean. However, the river is so dry right now that it actually stopped about fifty meters before it reached the ocean. We ended our trip by going all the way south to Cape Leeuwin, which is the most southwesterly point in Australia. We could actually see where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean come together. The waves actually went in opposite directions. It was extremely windy though. Well, that was the end of our trip, so we just drove straight home on the freeway. We got back in at about 8:30, thanks to daylight savings time, so now we’ve just got to put everything back in it’s place and get ready for another week.