ken dra22

Arriving in Melbourne, we were welcomed by my lovely parents! What a treat to see them half way across the world! Over several prior phone conversations, I convinced them to travel ‘our way’ so they rented a camper van and off we went. We spent 6 days on the Great Ocean Road before we parted ways. To our surprise, the week started out with an extreme heat wave of 40 degree weather, and ended with some nights getting to about 8 degrees! They have some seriously crazy weather over here! During the time with my parents, I discovered a truly amazing fact about my dad: he is the energizer bunny on high speed!! Always wanting to walk, drive, sight see, and never sit down! 7am to 9am… or longer if we would allow him! It was ... read more

35 degree weather, shorts, tanks, and bather’s worn to the mall for Christmas shopping does not exactly make it feel like Christmas on this side of the world! None the less, we had a great Christmas over here! We spent Christmas day on the beach surfing and enjoying our new ‘sun shelter’ as well as many other ‘goodies’ sent from home (thanks!). Christmas dinner was held at my new house! With the help of some friends, it was a very successful dinner! Delicious food and great company! Neat to experience a Christmas over here, but I missed everyone back home too… Now that the Christmas rush is over, I will be starting a road trip down to Melbourne to meet my parents when they arrive! I am very excited to see them, as well as to ... read more

These last few weeks of mine have been spent living the life of a real teacher. I am at school everyday from 8am to 4pm, teaching and writing lesson plans… which doesn’t leave much time for anything else!! I am enjoying my time with the kids, as they are very adorable! In my prep class (kindergarten) we have been studying passports and each week we study a different country. The first week we ‘went’ to Canada and got to make some pumpkin pie in class! Very cute and delicious! Some interesting things I have noticed that are different from the school’s at home are - Their accents make it really difficult to correctly spell words (eg Mother is Motha, Saw is Sar) - They all have to wear hats outside to play- and the no hat, ... read more

I am officially a true Australian tourist- we took surf lessons this last weekend on the local beach! It was a ton of fun! Luckily, one of our dear old Canadian friends is an avid surfer, and taught us all for free! The surf shop across from the beach rented us boards for $30 for 24 hours…cheap entertainment I’d say! We split two boards between about 6 people, which was more then enough because surfing is exhausting! The actual getting up on the board was not so bad, it’s just getting back out against the killer waves. Needless to say, the weekend we picked to learn had the biggest waves I have seen since being in Australia! (The pictures do not do the waves justice). We braved them any way, and I actually managed to successfully ... read more

I have officially completed my first week of school in Australia!! I won’t go on too much about the school part, because basically it’s all the same- go to class, do some readings and assignments and try to stay awake! Since I don’t have any classes on Friday’s, Jocelyn and I decided to take a long weekend trip to Brisbane for the weekend before the assignments start piling in! Some highlights from my Brisbane trip include South Bank- a beach in the middle of the city, a small shopping spree with many sales, a trip to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and a night out in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane’s most ‘happening’ place! Due to the cooler weather, we didn’t get to actually sunbathe on the beach, but we did enjoy a nice stroll through the markets and ... read more