Keisha & Adam

Yesterday I spent the afternoon photographing my two friends Keisha & Adam. They're getting married in April (I'm going to be a bridesmaid!) and wanted me to take some pre-wedding shots.

You can see my favourites on my photography blog.


Click here Babushka Babe Photography

Happenings

Wow, a lot has happened in the 9 days since I last posted.

(Yes, I totally just looked up on my blog when I last posted, and counted backwards.)


Sorry to leave you in the lurch- I've been pretty busy!

(The only reason you're getting a blog post out of me now is because instead of being at dancing, I'm babysitting my dance teacher's kids, and all 3 of them are currently asleep. Or very good at faking it. I have my eye on the middle one, their 5 year old daughter, because out of all of them I reckon she's the one who could pull it off.)


Anyway. I've had some good news and some bad news in the past few weeks.

In the very bad news department, on Sunday I found out that one of my good friend's Dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly last Friday. For as long as I've known him (and that would be about 12 years) he's battled cancer and needed kidney dialysis regularly, but apparently he was the healthiest he'd been in a long time when he had what is thought to be either a stroke or a heart attack. His death is a blow to the entire family of my friend, and to everyone who knew him.

He always called me "Pinky" because of my love for all things pink, and I now feel a little bittersweet when I am reminded of that.


In other news, I found out that I wouldn't be able to work with the St Vincent de Paul Society anymore for my agency placement. The training days they have requested unfortunately fall on a Thursday, a day I have classes; and a Saturday, which is the day of my graduation ceremony!

Instead, I'll be working with Fast Forward, which is a program run by my university in low socioeconomic status schools. Since I joined the program pretty late, I didn't think I'd get to sign up in a school near my area, but I actually did!

I will be mentoring students who are enrolled at Bidwill High School. This particular school is in a pretty rough area. Bidwill is dominated by public housing and is associated with social and economic problems. There is a significant crime problem and riots have been common in the past.

The main reason Bidwill has been chosen as part of the Fast Forward program is that the program's aim is to encourage high school students to go on to complete tertiary education. We mentor kids with the aim of motivating them to go to uni. This is particularly important in Bidwill, where out of 2500 residents, less than 180 go beyond secondary education to university.

Fast Forward's ambition is to "raise participant's aspirations for the future". Since these days jobs that don't require a university degree are few and far between, I'm excited to work with these students and encourage them to enrol in university after they finish high school.


I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also a little terrified.

Upon telling a few friends from church that have been to the area that I'm "going to Bidwill", the first things they said were

"Do you have a bulletproof vest?"

"Your car will probably get robbed"

and

"The guys will probably be rough on you".


Yikes. And they're sending 3 of us girls to this school.

By ourselves.


I'm trying not to be too judgmental or have too many preconceived ideas about the school before I've even walked through the gates. But it's hard.

I'll keep you posted.

:)

Southern

You may wonder why you're hearing more from me lately... especially on Tuesday afternoons.

It's because I have a three hour break between my classes!

And there's only so much reading and quizzing that a student's mind can take!

Being at my new campus has it's pros and cons- and this is one of the latter. It's not like my old campus where I was only 15 minutes away from home and would drive back and forth easily on my lunch break.

Nope, it takes me anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour to get here (and that's if I'm leaving in the middle of the day! If it's like today, and I have a 9 o'clock lecture, it can take me 2+ hours!)

There is a shopping centre about 20 minutes' drive away, but today I just feel like hanging around campus. My friends all have classes at the moment, so here I am, checking in with you all.

(On another note, my friend Keisha and I are always saying that we were born in the wrong place- we should've been born in the southern states of the US so we could say "y'all"!)


So, what have I been up to?

I had a great weekend, filled with activity as usual. (You may have seen my post on making a bulletin board below.)

I worked on Sunday, and even got called in to work yesterday afternoon as well. We absolutely smashed our sales targets on the weekend, but Monday was s-l-o-w and pretty tragic dollar-wise.


I've been dying to see Dear John at the movies, and was meant to go with Mum on the weekend, but I got home Sunday afternoon and crashed on the couch. I managed to sleep for an hour, which is very unlike me! By the time I woke up it was time to go to church, so there was no opportunity to go to the movies.

There are so many movies out at the moment that I want to see! Dear John is one of them, but I've also been meaning to see Valentine's Day (I know, it's a bit late since it's now the middle of March!) and I also want to see Remember Me.

I mentioned a while ago that last weekend Keisha and I saw The Blind Side, which was a fabulous movie about a Southern woman and her family who take in a homeless high school student and help him go on to become a famous NFL player.


We LOVED it.


Our favourite quote:

Leigh Anne Touhy: If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing.

Gang member: Whatchu packin? A .22? A little Saturday night special?

Leigh Anne Touhy: Yep. And it shoots just fine every other day of the week too.


We were laughing and laughing in this scene.

Love that she notes she's in a prayer group first, before she even mentions that she carries a gun!

How to... Make a Bulletin Board

If you read my Twitter last night, you will know that my friend Laura & I spent the latter part of the day 'getting our D.I.Y on' and making our own bulletin boards.
We've had this project in mind for weeks, but never found time to get together and actually do it.

But yesterday was the day.

What we needed:
a canvas board
a sheet of thin polystyrene board (or foam)
1 metre of the fabric of your choice
2 metres of matching ribbon
5 buttons (but we bought 6 just in case)
scissors
needle and thread
a hot glue gun (or craft glue)
a staple gun


To start off with, we bought a big blank canvas each from a craft store, along with 2 metres of ribbon and 6 buttons. Laura also bought her fabric at the craft store, but I already had a metre's worth of lovely pink damask fabric from an awesome craft store I found when I was in New Zealand last year.

Then we went to Clark Rubber and bought a thin sheet of polystyrene board each, so that when we pin stuff on the board, it doesn't just go straight through the canvas.


First things first: We used a hot glue gun to glue the polystyrene board to the canvas. (You might want to think about using craft glue though, because hot glue tends to erode the polystyrene if you leave it too long.)

A few blobs around the corners is all you need. Then, just attach it to the canvas board and use your hands to stick it down.

Then, cut your fabric to size, making sure you allow extra around the edges so that you can staple it at the back.

Grab the staple gun, and making sure the fabric is kept taut across the front of the canvas, pull the fabric around the edge of the canvas frame and staple at the back, working one side at a time.

When the fabric is securely attached, grab the ribbon and play around with different methods of attaching it. (We went for the diamond shaped pattern, but we had to play around with it a lot before we got it perfect)

Use pins to fasten the ribbon on the edges of the board if you're like me and don't have good enough spatial awareness to understand what your friend is trying to demonstrate to you.

Then, staple the ribbon at the back.

Once your design is done, pick the main points where you want to secure the ribbon, and use a needle and thread to sew a button onto the canvas.

If you're like me, and can't sew to save your life, get your friend to do it for you.

Like so...



Find out new things about your friend you've had for 5 years, such as she used to go to a patchwork and sewing class. Huh.

When you're done, take a minute and admire your D.I.Y handiwork. Then, find a place to hang it, and stuff photos, pictures, ticket stubs etc into it.

And there you have it! Your very own, custom made bulletin board!

A week in the life of a university student

On Tuesday I had uni. Starting at 9.00am, I have my Educational Psych lecture which goes for an hour and a half, followed straight on by my Primary PD/H/PE lecture (luckily it's in the same lecture theatre, so we don't have to move. But it is annoying to have to sit in the same chair for 3 straight hours.)

I have an hour break for lunch from 12.00 - 1.00, then it's my Classrooms Without Borders tutorial for two hours, straight into a lecture for Education, Knowledge, Society & Change, and then a mad dash down to the sports hall for an hour each of PD/H/PE prac and theory, finishing at 6.00pm.

Then I hop into my little red car, usually wait 10 minutes to be able to actually get out of the uni car park, only to get stuck in traffic as soon as I pull out onto the main road. Then sit in more traffic at the lights. Then sit in more traffic on the freeway. Rinse and repeat.

On Thursday I also had uni. My first class was a tutorial for E,K,S&C that started at 10.30am. I left home at 9.20, stopped to get petrol (it seems I have to do this every 2 days now I'm travelling so much!) and then got to uni 10 minutes early, which was good because I had no idea where the classroom was. I got to the building, and started looking for signs or directions to classroom 23.G.20 (Building 23, on the Ground floor, classroom 20).

I couldn't find it anywhere. I walked from one end of the building to the other. Three times.

There were signs to direct you to classrooms 1 - 18, and then for classrooms 25 - 35. But nothing in between.

By now it was 10.30 on the dot. I end up walking to the enquiries desk and asking the lady there where the classroom is, and she is very nice and gives me directions.

Turns out to get to this particular classroom, you have to walk out of the building and the entrance to this one room is around the side.

Logical.

So I keep walking, following the path until I find a classroom full of people. The sign on the door says "EC 1" (many of the buildings used to be labelled this way, so now there are two ways of naming the rooms, just to make it more confusing).

I walk in, trying to be quiet and find a seat. The tutor comes over to me and welcomes me to the class. She was really nice.



And then she starts explaining the experiments we'll be working on.

Huh? I didn't know the School of Education ran scientific experiments in their classes. I didn't even think it was in the curriculum.

So I ask her what class this is.


Brain and Behaviour.


Neuroscience.


Yeah. I walked into the smart brainiacs (literally) classroom and then looked like an idiot when I had to walk straight out again.


Back to the lady at the enquiries desk.

I tell her I couldn't find it. By now I'm so late for my class that I'm stressed. She gives me pretty much the same directions, but I thank her anyway because she was nice.

Even if she laughed at my inability to find said classroom.


I walk back around the building, trying to find a different route because I don't want the Brain and Behaviour class to see me wander past again.

Because nothing says "I'm a student new to this campus and I have no idea where I'm going" like a person wandering aimlessly around looking for signs on classroom doors.

I stealthily avoid being seen by the B&B class, and figure I may as well just keep walking until I come face to face with a gate or a fence or some sort of boundary.

Eventually, I'm walking across a lawn and then I see it.

EC 2

a.k.a 23.G.20.


I walk in, again trying to be quiet and I'm successful until I sink gratefully in to the nearest chair.

And wouldn't you know it, it's a kiddie chair and I sort of fall into it and make a noise because the drop was longer than I expected.


Nevermind. I'm practically sitting at shoulder height to the table, but all that matters is I made it.

All is good until about halfway through the class when I look at the girl next to me who is eagerly filling out a peer evaluation sheet for the group presentation we have just heard.

At the very top there is a space where you fill out your name, group and the tutorial time.


She has written, very prominently I might add, "10:00 - 12:30".

Umm... really?

I swear it started at 10.30.

But then I remember one of my friends saying this class did go for two and a half hours.

So 10.00 would make sense.

I spend the rest of the class trying to figure out if the class really does go for two and a half hours, and if that means instead of being 10 or 15 minutes late, I was actually 40 or 45 minutes late.


The peer presentation evaluation sheet didn't lie.


The class totally started at 10am.


I was 45 minutes late.


*smacks hand into forehead*


The funny (or not so funny, depending on which way you look at it) thing is, this isn't the first time this is happened to me.

The week of orientation, I arrived 5 minutes late to a session and found my friend sitting in the stairwell of the lecture theatre. We both commented on how early people must have gotten there, since there were no seats left ans she had gotten there 5 minutes early, and I only 5 minutes late.

Towards the end of the session, one of our lecturers goes on a big rant about how rude it is to arrive so late, etc etc.

My friend and I are walking out, going "What was she talking about? No one arrived half an hour late! Most people were early!"

And then a guy from our class starts laughing and tells us the session started at 9.00am, not 9.30. Because he is laughing so hard, we assume he's joking and we're all "As if! It did not!"

And then he says "Well, check your piece of paper if you don't believe me."


We do.


It started at 9.00.

I was 35 minutes late.


Oops.

My friend and I are still laughing at that one.


Wait until I tell her about my solo effort.

Paint, peanuts and a poor diet

As part of my plan to blog more frequently (it was on my "22 Things to do before I'm 22" list), I'm going to tell you all about my weekend.

On Saturday, I had a relatively free day, but I don't do well with free time on my hands. I need a project.

So, armed with nothing other than my imagination, I hunted around a few dollar stores and craft shops until I came up with an idea.

My first (smaller) idea was that I wanted to make some wall letters for my study. The bigger idea was that I wanted to make over my study. Another time, another post.

The idea for wall letters came up when I was helping my dance teacher Sally paint her daughters' rooms (blue for Emi, 9; purple for Jordan, 7 & pink for baby Eliza, who is yet to be born).

Eliza's room is yet to be decorated, and we were tossing around ideas when I mentioned wall letters. A few hunts on eBay helped convince me that I could totally make my own. So, I bought some pre-cut wooden letters (if you must know, I bought E, N, J, O and Y, because I'm going to hang "ENJOY" on the wall), and then using some paint we had left over from my feature wall, I painted them.

Easy enough.

The hard part is deciding whether or not to keep them simply painted (the colour is a dark pink/ raspberry called 'Scarlet Ribbons' that I absolutely love) or cover them each with a different scrapbook paper. I've seen the latter done before, and it can look awesome, but I have a feeling it's going to be difficult...


Anyway, that's as far as that project got, because on Saturday afternoon I met up with my friend Keisha. Her wedding is April 24th, and so her entire dining table is covered in all kinds of wedding paraphenalia. As part of my bridesmaid-ly duty, I've been helping her with the wedding invitations.

(110 people doesn't sound like a lot, but it is when you have to hand make each individual one, and then address every envelope.)


After the addressing was completed and the invitations were finally DONE (it's been a long time coming), we decided to go to a movie.


I wanted to see Dear John, but Keisha had already seen it, so we settled on The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock's new movie about a family that takes on a homeless teenager and sees him become a football phenomenon.

Sidenote: It was about 7 o'clock at night when we were deciding which movie to go see, and so the only session time we could go see was the 9:30 one. At 21 years of age respectively, we both looked at each other and went "Is 9:30 too late?"

And then went: "For goodness' sake, it's a Saturday night and we're 21 years old! We should be able to cope with going out after 9 o'clock at night!"


I love that my friends are just like me- we'd rather stay in than go out, any day.

We ended up going to the cinemas at Blacktown, because they are nicer than the one here in Penrith, and we agreed that if we were going to do this, we may as well go all out.


So we got popcorn AND peanut M&M's.


We are such rebels.


Out past our bed time AND eating junk food.

(Looked like starving students when we had to combine all our silver and gold coins to make the $17, but oh well...)


The point is, we were having a great night.


A girls night even.


Oooooooo.



The movie was awesome. At the end, when I was trying not to cry (because it was so amazing, not because it was sad), Keisha said "Oh, was that 2 hours? I never wanted it to end."


A sure sign you've picked a good movie to go see and spend $15 worth on.



We got home at about 12.30am (yes, that's past midnight, kids!) and the next morning, I was wrecked.


Such a party animal, I am.


Keisha and I had both planned to go to morning church on Sunday, so waking up at 8.30am that day just seemed like torture.

Cruel and unnecessary, because there is a perfectly good night service that starts at the much more respectable time of 6pm, instead of 9.30am.

Anyway. I went, and she was supposed to meet me there, but that never happened because she was late. So I sat with Sally and her family. And yawned a lot, but it was good.

And then I had to choof off to work. And somehow in between I forgot to have lunch, but I didn't realise until the end of my shift that all I'd had to eat that day was toast for breakfast, a cupcake and three pieces of Sara Lee banana cake (because it's just that good) from church, and half a packet of peanut M&M's that were leftover from the movies.


Yeah. Because that's good and totally going to help me with the whole "I've got to fit into a bridesmaid's dress in less than two months" thing.

Life at Uni

This week was my first week back at uni. We've had orientation stuff for the past few weeks, but yesterday was the first day of classes.

And what a full day it was!

I had classes from 9am to 6pm, with only an hour lunch break in between. I got to 3 o'clock and thought "I'm ready to go home now!" and yet I still had three classes left to go!

I have a few classes tomorrow, but the majority are on Tuesdays. Obviously Tuesday is a really big day for me, but it's exciting getting to finally learn about primary teaching and so that excitement overrides any tiredness!


This semester, I am doing 4 subjects as usual:
Educational Psychology for Primary Teachers
Classrooms Without Borders
Education, Knowledge, Society & Change
Primary PD/H/PE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education)


PD/H/PE is the only curriculum subject (ie like English, Maths, Science, Creative Arts etc) that I am doing in my first semester. I guess they figure that they want to "ease" us into the Primary curriculum- if you could call it that!

However it's anything but easy- unlike most subjects that only have a lecture and a tutorial each week, in PD/H/PE we have both of those, plus a class where we actually go to the gym and participate in PE lessons as if we were the kids. We had our first class yesterday, and it was actually really fun! (And I'm not even a sport person!)

Our lecturers and teachers are really great- most of them have been or are still primary teachers, so they tell a lot of stories and relate the unit content to the classroom. They are really good at giving us tips throughout the classes.

- eg. "Most important thing- save your voice! Invest in a good whistle."

"See how I never let you stand behind me? You always want to keep the children in front of you where you can see them all."

"Always make sure you're the one facing the sun- can you imagine kids staring into the sun? They'd use it as an excuse for not doing any work."

"Make everything into a game. Keep it fun, and they won't even notice that they're learning."

"You want your kids to go home raving about what they've done at school today. Nobody wants to hear their child answer "Nothin'" when they ask what they did in class that day."


Those are just some of the quotes that stood out to me. Like I said, our teachers are really good at injecting pieces of advice and wisdom into what they are telling us.


One of the biggest things they told us is that teaching is more than just English and Maths (although given that Australia has just received a new National curriculum, you wouldn't know it because all the focus is on these two subject areas at the moment).

As primary teachers, we get to teach across 6 KLAs (Key Learning Areas) in a class that we have for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. Teaching English, Maths, Science & Technology, PD/H/PE, Human Society & its Environment, and Creative Arts means that at uni, we have to learn a lot and we have to learn it fast.There are only 10 weeks in the university semester (to keep in line with the school term) and so the pressure is on, so to speak!


And to up the ante, for my Classrooms Without Borders unit, we have to complete 20-30 hours of placement in a community agency. (Think voluntary community service). Starting in April, I will be working with the St Vincent de Paul Society teaching and mentoring newly arrived refugee kids. It will be a challenge, as I've never met, much less worked with, refugees before but I'm very much looking forward to it. I know I'll learn a lot.