Chapter 2: Melbourne Memories

 1/21/12 – Melbourne, Australia

We made our official descent into Melbourne (pronounced Mel Bun) on a perfect summer evening with the sun still blaring high in the sky.  What a perfect way to start off the next chapter in our adventure.  Although the original plan was for me to sleep in my new house at Carey, I was not willing to sleep with my unwelcomed visitors, an army of ants.  So instead I threw my bags in the room and headed back down the hill to the King’s house to sleep in a nice big comfy bed in an air-conditioned room.

1/22/12 – Melbourne, Australia

I moved into my house (yes, ant free) with my new roommate, Alex, from the UK.  She seems nice but she is younger than Molly!

1/23/12 – Melbourne, Australia

GIANTS won!!!  Thank gosh!

Tommy and I spent the day touring around the area and trying a few of the different restaurants on Glenferrie (the main street of shops and cafes in Hawthorn).  We went to a burrito place for lunch, which just happened to be owned by an American guy.  He was so extremely friendly, giving us loads of advice.

1/24/12 – Melbourne, Australia

The good part of the day was spent running around getting the proper documents in order to teach at Carey and I stepped into the “big sister” role helping Alex get settled and organized with her paperwork and banking. Once this appeared to be all in order I headed off with Tommy over on the train to Rod Laver Arena to watch the Australian Open.  We did not get to sit in the Rod Laver Arena, but instead sat on the grass in front of the big screen watching the action that was going on inside.  We caught a few games, our favorite being Federer winning to move on to the semi-finals, and even got to watch Djokovic practicing on one of the side courts.  It was a fun scene to be a part of even without seats in the main arena!

1/25/12 – Melbourne, Australia à Geelong, Australia

Today I officially start working for Carey and headed out with the swim team to Geelong to help out at the swim camp prior to the start of school next week! I did not do much but I did get to another part of Australia. 

1/26/12 – Geelong, Australia

Happy Australia Day!

Today in honor of Australia Day, the entire swim camp went down to Torquay (a beach right before the start of the Great Ocean Road) for the Havaiana Thong (Flip-Flop) Challenge.  This is a huge challenge that occurs every year in which everyone is given a huge blow up Havaiana raft to float on in the water, trying to break the world record of how many people were out on the water the previous year.  It was a lot of fun and really neat to see the ocean hidden beneath thousands of big yellow flip-flops!  When we got back to the dorms, the kids were given $10 to go spend at the market and create the most Australian dish possible that tasted delicious and had the best presentation.  It was a really cute idea for an Australia Day activity. 

The swim camp is for Year 7-12, so I interacted with some of the seniors and chatted about Australia.  After talking about different accents and phrases, I brought up two that I thought were hilarious that the Australians often use.  Rather than saying, “How are you?” Australians say, “How are you going?”  I find this to be so weird and whenever they say to me “How are you going?”, I reply, “I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”  The other one often heard is, “Good on you!”, rather than, “Good job/way to go/good for you.”  So, when someone says to me, “Good on you!”, in my head I always think, “Don’t you dare get on me! No one is on me.”  The kids thought this was an absolutely hilarious take on some of their lingo and it gave us all a good laugh.

How you going? : I'm not going anywhere!

Good on you! : Don’t you dare get on me!

  

1/30/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Today was Commencement Day for all the staff and teachers at Carey.  This is basically the kick-off for the start of the new school year in which the headmaster addresses everyone in a big welcome back speech.  It was not quite what I expected as I found myself seated in something more similar to a church service. Carey does have a religious affiliation so the religious ceremony makes perfect sense.  I was definitely not expecting to be on my feet singing gospel songs but what a great experience!  It was quite funny to have my first interaction with some of the teachers standing next to them singing and dancing to the beat.  Once the singing and dancing came to a conclusion the headmaster spoke and the school year was officially opened.  When I asked him what we should wear he said that we should dress fancy, but not too fancy, so a bit casual, so basically fancy-casual.  What the HECK does that mean?!?  This reminded me a bit of when we showed up dressed wrong at the “festive fancy” party in Manly!  Got to love the language barrier.

  

2/1/12 – Melbourne, Australia

As February 1 arrived, we really realized how fast the months are flying by! 

Today I had a full day of meetings to arrange my Carey schedule.  I am scheduled to work with each grade at the junior school (Pre-school through Year 6 – we would say 6^th grade), and even in some fun activities such as gardening/cooking with the Year 3s and helping the Year 1 and 2 chorus group called Piccalo Canto!

Tonight we headed out to the Queen Victoria Market with Gina and Nick.  The Queen Vic Market is a huge outdoor market in the city that has many food kiosks and live music every Wednesday night of summer.  We had a delicious taster of many different Aussie foods on the nice warm evening, and enjoyed the company of our good friend Gina!

2/2/12 – Melbourne, Australia

I took Alex to the city to show her around and then took the train up to Camberwell, which is the next station out past Carey with a great street of shops and a movie theatre!  $10 Tuesdays will be back in action very soon!

2/3/12/ - Melbourne, Australia

Today I attended the Junior School assembly.  I introduced myself to the Year 1 through Year 6 students and was asked to chat about myself on the mike so that the kids could all admire my American accent.  It was adorable how transfixed the kids were on my voice, I think it was the first time I heard total silence from the audience during the entire assembly.  Who knew my voice could hold so much power!  I ducked out of the assembly early to meet with Robbo who works in admissions at Carey.  He sets up this great Darwin trip for the Year 12 students, and asked me to meet with him to help out with planning the trip for this year!  This will be such a fun task to keep me busy afterschool. 

With Gina still in town, I decided to set up a fun activity for Tommy and me to do with her tonight.  We all met up at the Moonlight Cinema in the Botanical Gardens to watch War Horse on a huge screen set up at the base of a hill in a part of the gardens.  We spread out our picnic blanket at the back with a spread of deli meats, cheeses and a few bottles of wine to enjoy while watching the movie.  This was such a fun summer activity! 

2/4/12 – Melbourne, Australia

After a relaxing day in the sun, and a lovely evening down at St. Kilda beach having dinner with the visiting Gina and her friend and sister visiting from New Jersey, our day took a hectic turn as our early evening out turned into a late night getting home. You would think we were out late partying, but really we should have been home at 11:30. After sprinting to catch a passing by tram to lug our tired bodies home, we realized we were making a few too many turns, which was because we were on the wrong tram! Instead of the quick trip back to Hawthorn we settled in for a long journey of backtracking, waiting and maybe a bit of cursing. After catching the wrong tram we ended up 30 min out in a different direction, forcing us to take the tram back to a midway stop, get off and wait 15min for the right tramline to come and finally make it home. Of course before being able to backtrack, the first tram we were on stopped at the end of the line where we proceeded to sit and wait for 20min until it was back in service for the run back in the opposite direction, to St. Kilda where we had previously left.  It was a bit of hell. After being so exhausted, we had decided on going back for an early night to read our books and call it an early night, but instead it took us almost 2 hours to get home instead of 20-30min! Luckily we both kept our cool and decided that it would be a funny story to tell the next morning! Okay, so we do not have the tram system down just yet!

2/5/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Today was a lazy Sunday enjoying our 1 year and 9 months together!

2/6/12 – Melbourne, Australia

I was able to watch the Super Bowl Monday with Tommy!  Super Bowl Monday is not a typo because it was a Monday here!  Thank gosh his Giants won so the rest of the day was a good day rather than a bad day!

Alex joined us to experience her first Super Bowl viewing and was thrilled it was in the company of two Americans.  I have finally figured out my impression of my roommate.  She is a really nice girl and I enjoy her company, but she is totally kooky.  I guess everyone has a silly side though, and it means I can let mine out at full force!

2/7/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Tommy and I went on our weekly $10 Tuesday movie night date, and became official members of the movie theatre because of how often we will be going.  The big glass of wine following the movie was well needed after a long stressful day!

2/8/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Today was my first real teaching day and coaching.  I spend every Wednesday and Friday afternoon doing APS, which is Year 5 and 6 sports practice and competitions.  I was assigned to coach tennis. It was rather comical but I am gaining new experiences every day!  Two kids knew how to get the ball over the net, and the rest was up to me. 

I had a fun evening out with Tommy.  We visited the Queen Victoria Market and brought Alex along to see the festivities.  As the live band played we chowed down on delicious Australian food and sweets.  Following the market we ventured over to Brunswick Street, a trendy street filled with cool boutiques and bars.  We stopped in at the Little Creatures Brewery for a few beers to end the night. 

2/9/12 – Melbourne, Australia

This morning I worked in the Early Learning Center with the 3 year olds playing with blocks, drinking pretend tea, finger painting, and everything else 3 year olds like to do for 2 hours.  This was actually so much fun to relive to my early childhood for two hours with the most adorable kids!  During recess I went to the staff room and met some teachers and had FREE coffee (woohoo).  I have found the free coffee machine and cookies…

My midday was spent gardening with two different Year 3 classes in which I helped teach them how to plant veggie seedlings. The first 3 weeks we do gardening then the rest of the term we do the cooking of what they grew and get to taste everything.  Following my gardening sessions, I grabbed a quick lunch before heading over to work with the prep school for the afternoon, which is what we would call kindergarten in America.

Today was a really good day, my favorite day of the week for teaching!

2/10/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Today was my second day of APS, which is the sports program for the Year 5 and 6 students at the Junior School.  Basically, instead of doing a sport after school, every Wednesday and Friday afternoon they head out to do their sport for the term and make it back to school before the final bell rings.  I was assigned to the Year 5 tennis team, which turned out to be a group of un-athletic kids with absolutely no tennis skills (with the exception of 4 of my boys, improvement from Wednesday).  Yes, I love playing tennis and am quite good at it, but I have no idea how to teach the proper fundamentals and form!  Instead I just let them have a bit of fun for two hours while trying to throw in some technique to get us ready for our competition next week.  Yes, you heard that right!  After two practices with them I have to take them to their first competition against another school!  This shall be interesting. 

Tonight I went out on the town with Tommy and Alex to the Mountain Goat Brewery.  This ended up being a really neat rustic looking brewery, it almost looked like a bar thrown together in an old open barn.  It had great beer and a good vibe that we really enjoyed before we headed to a chic bar in Richmond for a night of dancing.  Richmond is the most popular spot for people our age to go out on the weekend with lots of great bars, pubs and clubs lining Church and Chapel Street.  Kind of ironic to have the hot spot on these two street names, right?

2/11/12 – Melbourne, Australia

We went out with Pete and Fleur to a great hole in the wall Italian restaurant with home made pasta and delicious gelato.  Tommy met Pete on Australia Day when he went with the eldest of the King’s son, David, to a barbeque.  After a great dinner, we headed to Chapel Street to a new hip bar that was absolutely packed to the brim with people. 

2/12/12 – Melbourne, Australia

Our destination on this fine Sunday was the South Melbourne Market.  Gina’s friend Nick had told us about the fresh and incredible oysters here and Tommy could not resist giving it a try.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the South Melbourne Market was such a neat, fun, exciting place!  Every different type of food you could imagine was being sold in the market in different little shops and food stands as well as clothing, wine and beer, shoes, jewelry, a place to even get your hair cut.  It just had everything!  We went to the suggested oyster spot and got 12 oysters for $10!  Quite the deal and so delicious!  Next we headed to a dumpling bar and gelato shop, before going to do some wine tasting at the bottle shop.  Because we were there for the closing hour, the mini grocery stores selling fruits and veggies started lowering all the prices significantly, so Tommy and I ended up going home with a bag full of fruits, veggies and a bottle of wine to make a delicious dinner!  We definitely will be frequenting this great spot!

2/13/12 – 2/17/12

I had a great first full week of work!  It was a lot of fun meeting all the different kids.  My schedule is really great, allowing me to change up what I do everyday and work with all the different age levels.  It makes it so that it never gets tedious!  I think my favorite days are when I get to work at the Early Learning Center and at the Prep Center with the cute Pre-School, Pre-K, and Kindergarten kids! 

On Wednesday of this week I had my first APS tennis matches!  I ended up having to spend half the time still teaching my kids the rules of tennis…what have I gotten myself into! 

So I discovered something quite useful this week…FREE coffee, milk and cookies!  I had stumbled upon it once the week before but did not realize it was an everyday deal!  In the Junior School staff room there is a coffee machine with sugar, milk etc. as well as a tub full of cookies and biscuits!  Of course, now that I know, I make a trip every recess for my mid-morning snack, and head back again after school while the cleaning crew is vacuuming and cleaning all the hallways and classrooms and have a big afternoon snack to fill me up and sometimes even use it as my dinner!  I always seem to find the free stuff and have no problem snitching some back to my house at the back of the campus to snack on during the weekend!  If they knew that this is what I did every day after school, they probably would think I was some homeless lady scrounging around for food!  I also tend to make frequent visits to the tomato patch growing in the garden at the school.  If a tomato looks really ripe and I think it may fall off soon, I figure I may as well just take it before it drops off and an animal gets to it…

The other thing I have made good use of is the laminating machine.  Now this probably seems SO strange to you all, but this is how I pass time when a class gets canceled or I have some spare time after school to kill.  The walls in my room have now been filled with pictures I have printed and laminated.  If it is something that can be laminated and I like it, it gets laminated!  Anything I can think of!

2/18 – 19/12 – Melbourne, Australia

I spent my weekend getting myself prepared for camp!  I am going on the Year 7 Toonallook Camp next week instead of being in the classroom.  Tommy kind of got the boot from the house he has been staying in so he temporarily moved in with me on the nice mattress I set up on the floor for him before he moves into his new apartment!  YAY HE GOT AN APARTMENT, and the best part is it is only a few blocks away from my house!

Our move to Melbourne has had its ups and downs.  I am really enjoying my job, but there have been some obstacles and challenges I have encountered along the way, none too big or small for me to conquer. Tommy found an apartment, but is still working on his job, which has proved to be a bit harder than expected with the job market not picking up until March and the parameters of his visa.  Luckily it looks like it will take a good turn very soon!  We have had a great time exploring different parts of Melbourne and stumbling on new great places all the time!