April's Fools, Pinch Punch and Relay for Life!!

Pinch Punch for the first of the month!

Lise decided to put a team in for ‘Relay for Life’ – I wasn’t going to participate but a week before the relay I changed my mind and decided to join. I’m happy I did. Basically the relay involved at least one person from your team to be walking around a 400m track from 7pm until 7am. It seems easy enough…

We ended up having about 11 people on our team and we joined teams with another because a lot of their participants ending up dropping out or not staying for the whole night. So we were the ‘Cancer Crushers’ and ‘Fight Like a Girl’. So 7pm roles around and everyone gets started the Cancer survivors start off the night with doing a lap around the track and then we all follow – at this point in time everyone is pumped and ready to walk! This was the first time the University of the Sunshine Coast decided to put the relay on and the first University in the Country to do the relay. So it was cool to be a part of, so there were a decent amount of teams with ok kind of unorganized games. The next stop was 12am – at this point people are getting a little bit sore but everyone seems to still be truckin… At 12am everyone had a break from walking and took part in the candle lighting ceremony – where everyone got a bag wrote a little note on it, and as a group we lit a candle for those people we wanted to think of or remember.   Always a touching ceremony. So after the ceremony everyone got back to walking….. or running in some people’s cases. At this point in time a few of us have noticed that there are two guys in particular, that haven’t stopped running yet – we are in hour 5 and these guys have not stopped running yet… ummm are ya crazy??

Anyway we keep doing our thing – walking walking walking, hours are going by 12, 1, 2, 3 and so on… By this time in the morning we are getting tired and sore but we keep on going! By 3 O’clock I’d say we are all wiped and at this point some of the team have fallen asleep and I guess have given up on walking – great - more walking for the rest of us… don’t you just love team work… and we still have 4 hours to go! Anyway finally 6 rolled around and we knew there was an end in sight – at this point in time most of us were just walking because if we stopped our legs wouldn’t allow us to continue because we were all sooo soreeee – so we just kept walking, just kept walking, just kept walking…. And by the way our favourite runners still have NOT stopped! Finally 6:30 comes around and we are doing our last couple of laps.. at this point in time we’ve learnt that buddy # 1 who hasn’t stopped running is a prof at the University and he is doing an experiment on what that kind of exercise does to your body – so he literally ran for 12 hours and then after the relay he was heading to get blood drawn and do 30 minutes on a bike – again NUTS! The second guy we have learnt that his goal is to run 100km.. So the track is 400m, therefore 2.5 laps would equal a km, therefore he ran probably about 250 laps – why?? Why would you want to do that to yourself!! NUTS!! But it was pretty cool having everyone in the relay line up around the track and cheer him on for his last lap. I think his company was donating $2 for every km he ran – but I could be wrong about that one! Anyway I still think they were nuts – but ‘good on them mate!’

Overall, it was a very successful night – My goal was $100 – I ended up with $125 (thank you very much to everyone that donating to me – I greatly appreciate it!!), Our team’s goal was $1000 – we ended up with over $1700, and the school’s goal was $20,000-$25,000 and we ended up raising over $28,000 as a massive group which was amazing!! Good work group!

So at 7am we somehow made the massive walk back to our residences and came out alive went to bed at 7:30 and I slept until about 12, and pretty much had a lazy day napping here and there and updating my blog, and that is pretty much it – and now it’s time to indulge in movies for the rest of the night – woop woop!

Hope everyone is well and talk soon!!

Underwater World!!

So we had been given coupons to this place called ‘Underwater World’ during orientation week – For students only buy one get one free but only until March 31^st. So Lise and I decided to go check this place out before the coupons expired.

Just look at the world around you, Right here on the Ocean floor, Such wonderful things surround you, What more is you lookin' for? Under the sea, Under the Sea, Darling it's better, Down where it's wetter, Take it from me

There was also a massive well known triathlon taking place at the beach that day so we had to get off at a different bus stop and walk up to the place – which was actually pretty cool because we had to walk right through the triathlon – it was just the kids tri that was taking place – but there were tons of people there, it was kind of neat to see. Shannen (my roommate) her boss’ from home and their kids were down for the weekend because the oldest daughter and her boss were competing in the tri’s so she was able to catch up with them and watch them race, so we waited around until she found them in the mass of people and then we headed to ‘Underwater World’.

This place is yet another tourist attraction, kind of like the zoo for the sea, so there were all sorts of fish, big ones, small ones, there were sting rays, star fish, seals, and of course sharks. So the first exhibit you kind of just walk around and look at all of the different fishies and stuff, there was even a little Nemo – he was my favourite! There were cute little sea horses that swam up to this big bubble window and would look right back at you, a whole pile of stuff – you know how touristy things go… It’s kind of funny walking around these places with ‘heaps’ of little children and their parents, and then there’s us – who are obviously just as excited as the three year olds. We checked out the seal exhibit and managed to catch a seal show – which I thought they did a pretty good job on. This time we didn’t have any lizards trying to jump in our bags, like we did at the zoo – which I was ok with! The coolest part was the moving sidewalk that took you around in a circle where the fish, manta rays, and sharks swim over top of you – it’s like Sea World in Florida – or whatever it’s called. I had no problem with the sea creatures that were swimming overtop of me – it was a little awkward when two people were swimming over top of me in their scuba gear – I guess someone’s gotta clean the tank so we can see through it…. If you ask me it’s a real ‘fishy’ job… yeahhh I know lame joke – but I just had to…

We then kept walking into a creepy crawly section – yeah good name for that – I definitely got the creepy crawlies. Some of these so called creatures were nasty…. I picked out a special fish just for Uncle Baldy. You see – he oh so kindly picked out two of the Fugliest chickens I think I have ever seen in my life for my father’s house so I just had to take a picture of this in honour of him. He named the chickens Rickie and Jamie, so I named this little guy Baldy. (Oh on a side note – completely irrelevant – but I keep forgetting to mention it – on the way to the mall there is a car garage called Baldy’s repairs… I laughed…) anyway moving on…. The fish is actually referred to as a ‘Frankenstein Freak’ so I thought it was actually perfect! And right now Uncle Baldy is saying ‘Alyssa Rae Toast…… after all the nice things I’ve said about you…’

After we decided we had enough fish adventures for one day, we moved on and decided to go out for lunch at a place called ‘Hogs Breath Café’ – which apparently is very popular here. Anyway it was right next to this massive marina with tons of beautiful boats, mostly sail boats, but there were also some other boats as well. It reminded me of Uncle Percy and Aunt Debbie – they would have loved it! So we sat down at our table with the view of the marina and this gorgeous breeze coming in through the non- existent window and enjoyed our lunch.

 It was a nice day and I think I even found my soul mate - but I have to get the 'Seal of Approval' first....

What do you guys think?? Haha….

Learning Difficulties conference

Ok so Friday March 25^th, all of us “Grad Dip Educationers” had to go to a conference, the conference went towards our Wider Field Experience hours (those wonderful volunteer hours) so I guess you didn’t really have to go but it was for your own benefit. Well at least so we thought – the conference was regarding learning difficulties and disabilities and autism and the like. We thought we would get a lot out of it – unfortunately we were mistaken. The conference wasn’t great, some of the speakers were, well let’s just say less than what we were expecting, and I feel like I just didn’t get much out of it.. But hey at least I’m 5 hours closer to those mandatory 65 hours. We had to choose workshops that we wanted to go to; the first workshop was regarding ‘Sensory Dysfunction’ which I thought would have been very informative and helpful. Instead the speaker was too worried about time, decided not to do a workshop on Sensory Dysfunction because the chances of getting a child with a sensory dysfunction was slim, in her opinion. So instead she crammed a whole broad pile of stuff into one hour, stuff we have already been through in our lectures. It was disappointing. The next workshop was on Autism, she didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but compared to the last workshop this one was really well done. You could tell she was passionate about what she was speaking about, and really wanted to make us aware. I think the best saying she said was “Breathe in the flowers, and blow out the candles” which I really liked – and it can work for everybody really. On top of that we spent the rest of the conference talking about ‘Indigenous Peoples’ and how important they are in the Australian Culture, and how important it is to adjust lessons to suit them, fair enough – but I’d say 5 hours was too long to cover all that stuff… All in all I just feel like I wasted $60 – oh yeahhh I forgot I had to pay for this conference… We have another one coming up in August – hopefully it isn’t as brutal.

So after the conference we were all feeling a little deflated – it was a long week followed by an especially long Friday – so a bunch of us went to the tavern down the road. It was an awesome night and the perfect way to wrap up the week. The next day Lise and I were heading to ‘Underwater World’ to learn about things that lived in the sea….

School Update!

Epic fail on the smaller more frequent blog updates…. So yeahh sorry again for the long updates!

I’m not really sure where to start on this one because I’ve left it for so long I guess I’ll do the boring stuff and start with a school update. So school is practically all I have been doing the past little while – the end of the semester is near (we only have 4 weeks left – before we start practicum) sooo all of the end of term assignments are beginning to creep up on all of us… We have reflections, presentations, essays, policies, lesson plans, unit plans, sounds fun eh… yeah not so much – but you gotta do whatcha gotta do! Good news is – I was talking to a Canadian who is a semester ahead of us, so she started in July, and she says semester 2 is way tougher! Yay – sooooo looking forward to it!! :D

I have also started my Wider Field Experience – which is my volunteer hours – we have to satisfy 65 hours before the end of the year – in order to graduate. I am at a primary school about 20 minutes away and I do guided reading with a grade 4/5 class and help out in a grade 3 literacy class. So far it’s alright – there are a lot of us from the University in one class so we don’t get a lot of hands on experience – but it’s interesting to see how the different teachers are teaching their lessons. Right now the class’ are practising for their NAPLAN testing which is the equivalent to our EQAO, it’s the main focus it seems right now. For now, it is all good I’m happy to be in the school, even if it for only 2 hours a week…

Japan's Earthquake / Tsunami

So I'm sure by now everyone at home has heard the news of Japan's earthquake... it's absolutely devasting!
Fortunately the Tsnuami's or bad weather hasn't hit Australia and all of the warnings have been lifted, but it has affected lots of places all over the world, and my thoughts go out to everyone that has been affected...

I've been told that I should write smaller and more frequent blog posts, so that's what I'm going to try and do from now on...

School's going well - really starting to feel the heat of assignments and stuff but it's all good...

I hope everyone at home is doing well - and I'm sure I'll be talking to everyone soon!

The Gold Coast / Surfers Paradise / Quicksilver Pro Surfing Competition

Ok so a couple of Tuesday’s ago we decided that we wanted to go to the Gold Coast for the weekend because there was a surf competition going on. So we all planned it – 16 of us decided to go we booked our hostels and we were ready for it. On Thursday we found out that the surf competition had been cancelled because the weather was bad and the waves weren’t good enough… Darn… Well we had already booked our hostels and everyone wanted to go anyway so 10 am we met at the bus stop and jumped on the bus to the train station. The Gold Coast is about 2 ½ hours away from us, so we took buses and trains to get there.. The train cost us $2.99 to get there – crazy eh! The one thing that is probably cheap in this country.. So we finally got to our destination – got our hostels sorted out and we were ready to go.

We toured around a little bit down to the beach and grabbed some lunch and stuff, and then headed back to the hostel. A few of us had decided that we were just going to hang out there for the night and then we were going to go out Saturday night – well that plan didn’t fall through.. During the day we had broken into groups and the one group who still hadn’t showed up yet said they had a surprise for us when they showed up… So in they walk and said that they had purchased all of us Pub Crawl tickets for Friday and Saturday night for $15 and a free drink (of chocolate milk of course) at every bar! Well that was pretty good because our hostel offered us the Pub Crawl for only Saturday night for $30.. so the group that decided to stay at the hostel got ready pretty quick.. so that’s what we ended up doing for the two nights we were at the Gold Coast – the bars were insane! ‘Vanity’ was the bar that we were told to check out the bathrooms.. I found that a tad strange – but the bathrooms had red toilets, there were shelves in the stalls so you could put your clutch, camera, whatever else you had in your hands, down and not worry about them…  there was a girl in there straightening people’s hair, doing their make-up it was nuts, and entire section that had stools and make up mirrors… the catch phrase of the bar was “Vanity – because it’s all about you” haha…

So then on Sunday we decided to give the surf competition a try the website made it sound like it was looking good.. The competition was an hour away on a city bus so we got up early checked out of the hostel and headed to Coolangata… We arrived – and there it was tons and tons of people were on the beach, posters everywhere, Quicksilver and Roxy signs everywhere, surf competition was a go! We all decided to get some brekky cause we were hungry and then head down to the beach! We got to the beach – found a spot and camped there the rest of the day..  We had surfer’s run through our group, around us, everywhere – we managed to get some pretty close photos.. We even had ‘Kelly Slater’ run right past us – who apparently is a pretty famous surfer – in fact right now he’s rated # 1 in the world! It was pretty sweet! We hung out there for the day – took a dip in the water (where the surfers weren’t surfing – but were surfing past us). It was a pretty awesome weekend, and I’m really glad the surf competition was a go on Sunday – because that was wicked to see!  When we went to the catch the bus back to the train station we realized we were in a different state… we were right on the boarder… so far I’ve been in Queensland and New South Wales, haha… We had to cross the street to catch the bus so we caught the bus in NSW, and there is an hour time difference from one state to another! It was weird… So back home we head – we all have sun burns / tans – and big old racoon faces with sunglass tans! We were wiped… but it was an awesome weekend! Maybe one day I’ll take surf lessons…..

The Australia Zoo!

“I went to the zoo
Just the other week
Saw the kangaroo
Had a talk with the chimpanzee
He said, "Hey brother, if you want a thing that's hip. Do the bearcat."

Ok sooo I know I’m behind on the 8 ball again – but there is thing called “school” that is really ruining my social life, and my ability to update my blog whenever I want… However here’s the big update…

So like every other tourist attraction, in my opinion, the Australia Zoo is overrated. It cost $50 to get in! But I guess the animals need to be fed and the workers need to be paid so fair enough, I had to go at least once right… I’m not going to lie it was pretty cool to feed the kangaroo’s and the elephant – Sabu…. Oh and I SAW A KOALA…. Finally – actually I saw tons and tons of koalas! I even got to pet one – I opted not to hold one because of the extra fee of $20 – but I got to pet one! I actually learnt a lot about them too – did you know that they sleep on average 20 hours a day – and that’s because they eat Eucalyptus leaves which are really difficult to digest… so therefore they sleep a lot. But when they are little joeys their moms have to feed them a form of bacteria (some sort of poo) so that their stomachs can handle the Eucalyptus leaves –hmmm I think I’ll pass thanks…

There were tons of animals there – otters, alligators, crocodiles, red panda’s, dingoes, kangaroos, elephants, tigers, Koala Bears – oh my…. And the list goes on and on… We watched one show that involved a crocodile, a snake, and tons of birds! The birds were flying crazy all over the place there were parrots, pink things, white belly eagles… all kinds of birds… and really bright green ones that were sooo fast and sooo loud, they would swoop right in front of your face, you could hear them fly by they were so fast, but they were kind of annoying… Then the second show we sat through was the tiger show – it was “fun time” for the tigers… Basically if they wanted to play they would, if they didn’t they would just sit there and watch, which is what the male did – kind of typical eh… haha.. They were playing with homemade toys, and the trainers would get them to jump in the water right in front of the glass, then they’d play against the glass in the water, it was fun… The four of us decided to sit up in the last row – well much to our surprise we had a little friend… there was a pretty big lizard that was hanging out behind the seats and every now and again he’d pop out and walk towards us…. We shooed him away because there was a little girl beside us who wasn’t a big fan… so then a short while later he came back just down the row from us.. haha there was this guy that pretty much freaked out, he grabbed all of his stuff and practically ran to the other side… scaredy cat! One lady had her purse open behind her, I thought for a second the lizard was going to jump in… Can you imagine! Oh my I would have thrown my head back and head my belly in laughter… ha ha ha… now that would have been funny – I don’t care who you are..

Well that pretty much sums up the zoo – overall it was a good day! But I don’t plan on going back anytime soon!