Wow, four days gone by again before entering another blog - well, three days I guess since it's just 8:20am right now. Dad and I were going to go to the beach today, but when we woke up, we heard the familiar sound of rain outside. With the metal roof on our house, the rain sounds like an airconditioner is on. So, with the rain pouring down and showing no signs of stopping, we will be staying inside today and, at least in my case, doing absolutely nothing - it will be lovely to just relax and 'piddle' around. :-)
On Monday, I was supply teaching for most of the day for Jane, a grade two teacher at Kawungan. She had warned me ahead of time about three 'challenge' children in her class and so I was geared up for a bit of a stressful day. Fortunately for me, two out of three of those children were absent on Monday, and the one who was there sat right in front of me - I praised him like crazy, made him my 'carpet example' (told others that if they were sitting like him, they were doing great) and asked him to hand out the work to the other students. He responded really well to all of this and I had a great day in Jane's class - I told them that I hoped their teacher would be away again so that I could come in again to teach them. It was so nice to have a great supply day. I am going to supply in another grade two class tomorrow - I am hoping it will be another positive experience.
On Tuesday, the 'termite' guy came to inspect the outside and inside of the house for any evidence of termite activity. Dad said that he (the guy) was totally worth the money this time as Dad learned a lot. For instance, the importance of making sure that there is no dripping water going onto the ground which would keep the ground consistently moist - termites are attracted to a water source when it's dry out. The guy also told Dad about an insect powder which he can 'shoot' in the holes on the outside of the house (they are called cavity vents: they are used to keep the cavity between the inside wall and the outside wall from building up any moisture) to prevent any insects from deciding to build a home in between the outside and inside walls. He also gave Dad some hints about insect control in the yard. The guy showed Dad what signs to look for inside the house to determine if termites are present there. He also went up into the attic to inspect that area and again told Dad what to keep an eye out for there. This guy will come once a year as part of the termite protection warranty we have. It is strongly recommended that every house in Australia have some type of termite protection - if you don't do this and the termites find their way into your house, they can cause a lot of damage to any wooden structure of your house.
Yesterday, Dad and I did our 'Meals on Wheels' run, but we did Route #4 this time. Dad had been on that route with someone else when I wasn't able to go, but I had never been on the route before. It took us a longer to do it than the other route we are familiar with and we ended up having to go back to one person's place twice since they weren't home (although their house was wide open) and we had to return the meal of another person as their house was locked up and, although we knocked and knocked and yelled out that we were there, there was no response. We had some nice short conversations with these new people and one guy even guessed correctly that we were from Canada. :-)
Later on in the day, Dad and I went down to the beach - we decided that we wanted to do our exercise walking along the edge of the water. It is actually harder walking in the water or on the wet sand beside the water than it is on the street/footpath. We chose two piers to walk between and figured out later that we had walked 3 1/2 km - it took us an hour to do that as we weren't walking at a fast pace. It was lovely to walk in the water and enjoy the sounds of the beach. The water was actually quite warm - I guess the sun had warmed it up during the day (it was about 4:30pm when we started our walk). There were a number of people swimming in the water and we even saw some people rowing these long boats and a couple of kayakers.
Dad and I have decided that we want to buy a couple of kayaks when we get back from Canada. We even talked with a friend about the kind of roof rack we could get to hold two kayaks on our small car - the kayaks would go back to back so they would be sitting on their sides on the rack. This is going to be a costly adventure with kayaks costing around $500. each and the rack costing about $500. or so. But, it is something that we can use year round and it's great exercise and something which we both enjoy doing.
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