What Are They Doing?

School is back!

Carmen — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:45:57 +0000

Christmas holidays go way too fast. We are back at work again and it looks like it is going to be a busy year. I have my same music teaching circuit this year which is great as I really enjoyed it last year. I am hoping to take my schools to eisteddfods this year and on a music tour so this will make it a more challenging year.

We are on the countdown to settlement. For those who don’t know Tone and I bought a house over the holidays. Settlement is on Friday and we move in next week. I am really looking forward to it as it is much closer to my work so it will mean much less travel time. Tone is looking forward to it as it has a shed which he is calling “Tone’s Zone”. Hopefully everything runs smoothly with the move and we will be in our new place utilising the pool before we know it!

Piano Arrives

Tone — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:35:35 +0000

Our piano has been delivered. Hooray! We love it! It is a second hand, upright Yamaha and it is in really good condition. We think it looks great in our lounge room. We would like to say thank you to everyone that helped us purchase our piano.
We went and bought some new piano books today. An adult learner one for Tony and Carmen got a variety of new music to play.
We are looking forward to many hours of fun.

Feeling it.

Carmen — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 07:12:37 +0000

I am really feeling tired today, I hope it is not my age catching up with me! I am hoping it is just the busy lifestyle. On Monday night I played basketball at 9:20 so did not get home till after 10:30. We played a great game though, I even scored 2 points, my top score so far is 6 points - all flukes! It has taken me a few weeks to adjust to playing basketball and not netball and remembering things such as I can run with the ball. I felt Monday night was probably my best game so far, am hoping next week is just as good. Then yesterday was T’s b’day so we went out for Thai, it was really tasty. We are now the same age for a month anyway! I was that tired when I left for work today that I forgot half of the stuff that I needed for work. I left without my computer, all the cd’s I had for the kids, my music, I think I was lucky to remember my head! I am finding now that it is interesting the students who are making progress and those that aren’t. It all comes down to practice. I have a flute student who is flying ahead of the rest as she has given up her computer time for flute. She can already play lots of songs, and makes a good sound and is leaving the rest of the group behind. I am thinking I may have to swap some groups around after easter so they are in ability levels and not instrument groups now that everyone has the basics (well nearly everyone has the basics). At first lunch on a Wednesday we have band so we eat together then play for the rest of lunch. I have never understood why kids put their rubbish back in their lunch boxes rather than walking like a metre and putting it in the bin. I would hate to be the one cleaning it out of their bags in the afternoon!

Hottest day of the year!

Carmen — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 03:59:28 +0000

I am sure today is the hottest day of the year. I woke up sweating and have not stopped! Our house has no fans or airconditioners and it has no insulation so the coolest room in the house at the moment is the garage. I am thinking about setting myself up in the garage to finish of my work this afternoon. Last night we had B and J and L and B over for dinner. It was great. We were all having such a good time and did not realise the time, they left at 11:45 p.m. We were discussing my 30th. I have decided that we will have a mexican themed party (this way we get to eat yummy mexican food and drink tequila!). We were just concerned about having the party here as we are not supposed to make excessive noise after 10:30 pm. So we are now thinking of going to stay at the coast, this way we can wake up the next day and go for a swim too! Still working out all plans but I think this is a good idea. I hope it storms this afternoon to get rid of this heat!

Neighbours from hell!

Carmen — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:09:05 +0000

Since moving in to our house I have decided that when we own our own home it needs to be one that is on a large amount of land away from any neighbours. Our new house has the neighbours from hell. They have domestic arguments nearly every day that last for hours. To top it off last night they had a party that started at about 10:30 pm and continued till about 2:30 am. I couldn’t sleep and so today have been a wreck. I felt sorry for my students as I was really on another planet. I just hope that they move out soon otherwise this could be a really long 6 months!

The days keep tumbling by..

Carmen — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 08:17:57 +0000

I can not believe that the end of February is almost here. The time just keeps going by. This means I have been back at work for a month already! I am still really enjoying my work and the kids seem to also be really keen. I am wondering if this is just the novelty of a new teacher and if it will wear off soon, I hope not. Some of the students have a lot of talent and it would be good to see this grow. Today I had a lesson with a student who got her saxophone for the first time. I love that look on kids faces when they make their first sound. In the afternoon I saw the funniest thing (at the time I didn’t think it was funny and nearly had a heart attack for the instrument’s safety), the student was taking her sax home. She had it strapped to the front of her push scooter and she was rolling off down the road! The things we do to get our instruments to and from school!

The joys of travelling by car to school

Carmen — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:53:06 +0000

Well yesterday I had a fantastic day at work. I was at LSHS yesterday which is about a 50 minute drive from home. To get there I have to drive on the Ipswich motorway and then the Warrego highway. In the morning my drive went smoothly, it was lightly raining so it was a nice drive. All my lessons went really well and most of the students seem really keen. The music teacher I work with out there is great and a huge support so this I think will work out really well. Anyway after finishing everything I had to do for the day I went out to my car at about 3:45pm. My car wouldn’t start as this silly fool left her lights on all day! I then had to call RACQ to come and jump start me. I waited half and hour but was able to do some work in the car. After the nice RACQ man got me started I headed off on my way home. I was cruising along having a good drive when bam - all the traffic had stopped. As far as I could see the traffic was at a standstill, I hadn’t even reached the Ipswich motorway yet! I flicked on the radio just in time to hear the traffic report that a truck had rolled on the Ipswich motorway and all lanes were closed. Just what I needed. So I crawled in traffic for hours. I pulled into my driveway last night at 7 pm, a 50 minute trip took 2 hours 45 minutes! I love having to drive to work!

Nearly the end of Week 2.

Carmen — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:19:56 +0000

The second week of school has nearly passed, boy the time is going quickly. I have forgotten how organised you have to be as an IM teacher. The work can be really rewarding but it can also do your head in! It is really difficult to get everything done at a school especially when you are only there for a day and don’t return till the following week. Today my frustration came when I was chasing a principal to sign a letter that I had to get out to the kids and I was waiting all day until finally at 3:30 I tracked him down and physically got him to sign it. I then had another hour of work to do photocopying, sorting, and marking into class groups, putting them in teacher’s pigeon holes!

On a different note, most things about moving into our house are great. However, we do have interesting neighbours. They have very loud arguments probably every second day. It started the day after we moved in! Today they had a doozy (I was not home but T informed me) and 6 police turned up. They have been pretty quiet tonight so I hope it gets better. A positive to come out of it all is that it has made us appreciate having a good relationship!

Work has begun!

Carmen — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:18:26 +0000

Well reality has hit this week as I had to begin work again. This year I have gone back to Instrumental Music teaching which I am really looking forward to but it took its toll this week. My itinerary covers 4 schools so this week I went around to all schools to meet new principals and students and boy do I have a lot of stuff floating around in my head (names, photocopier codes, phone codes etc). I am also not used to driving a minimum of 30 mins to work everyday (when I was in Blackwater before Christmas I just had to walk up the road to get to work!). I think as I get used to it I will really start to enjoy work. Another reason I think I was so tired this week is that we moved house last weekend. I hate moving as it is such an exhausting job. We had some great family and friends who helped and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. We are now almost settled in to our new place (we still have a few boxes in the garage to sort through) and it is nice to have our own space again. We had some friends over for lunch today and it was lovely to be able to entertain! I hope to sort through the remaining boxes sometime this week but we will see how week 2 at work goes.

Flying Home

Tone — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:35:42 +0000

JAL have nicely decided to give passengers free WiFi Internet access on this flight, so I am taking advantage of it. We boarded our flight bound for Tokyo earlier this evening (London time). 12 hours of fun followed by 6 hours sitting in Tokyo then another 11 hours of fun. We are going to be some tired little cookies when we arrive back in Brisbane on Sunday.