I wonder if I should change the title of my blog to 'Adventures Around Australia'. :-) Anyway, I thought that I should start up my blog again since it's been ages since I last wrote and I rarely seem to have time to tell you what we're doing here when we are Skyping (which is fine with me since I love hearing about what you girls are doing and also what my lovely grandchildren have to tell me :-)
We are currently in Brisbane - have been here for a week and have two and a half more weeks to go here. Dad is teaching for three weeks and then he will be on a course himself for four days. Dad has been getting so much work and he is happy about this. He really likes teaching and the guys he's teaching like him as a teacher since he has so much experience. He's finding the preparation time a bit much right now - he spends many hours prepping when he gets home from teaching and doesn't have much time for anything else at this point. He is hoping that things will get better as he gets more experience. I told him that things will get a little easier, but he will continue to spend time prepping as he will find things to make his teaching better. It's interesting now that the tables are turned watching how much time he spends planning and prepping - it's good that he sees why I have spent so much time planning and prepping in the past.
I am loving the relaxing time I have been having - in Melbourne, it was cold and so I spent most of my time relaxing inside. I did get out almost every day for a walk, but we weren't close to anything interesting so it was a bit boring. I did walk to the mall a few times, but since I am not a shopper, it was just a destination which was the right distance away from where we were staying. Dad's company has a unit down there (the word 'unit' is Aussie for townhouse or attached house in a group of six or eight) and it's quite a nice one - it's a three bedroom unit and quite roomy. It's a three minute drive for Dad to get to the hotel where he teaches, a five minute drive to the airport when he has to teach on an actual airplane and a thirty minute walk for me to get to the mall. For me to get downtown, I walked to the mall and caught the tram (streetcar) from there to the city - it would take about 45 minutes or so to get to the city and I would spend that time reading on my e-reader. I did go to the state library a couple of times to do some family history research - the library has access to a number of records so it was really helpful. The ward we went to for church was really lovely - they made us feel really welcome and even told us that they were going to give us callings since we were there for so long (eight weeks in all).
We got home from Melbourne a week ago Saturday. We had time to mow the lawn, return my library books, have dinner with our friends, Robyn and Geoff, and repack before we headed down to Brisbane on the Sunday. We are staying in a rented apartment in Brisbane - a three bedroom, two bathroom, two balcony one on the fourth floor. The living room has a floor to ceiling glass door to the balcony which provides a great view and gets a wonderful breeze coming through when we open the door which is also the whole 'wall'. Dad and I prefer to stay in a place like this as opposed to a hotel. For one thing, there's way more room in an apartment and also we can cook our own food - we like to go out once a week to a restaurant, but not more than that.
Dad's work is a fifteen minute drive from here which isn't too bad especially when he has to start teaching at 7:30am. I am absolutely loving the location of this apartment here. I can walk to downtown in ten minutes and have been doing that almost every day. The Brisbane river is downtown and so I have walked along the boardwalk by the river a couple of times - I was walking along there last Friday and looked up at the blue sky feeling the sun on my face and looked as well at the river and the boats on it and thought to myself 'can life get better than this!' :-) I have been walking for an hour to two hours when I go out and it's really great - the weather has been fabulous (around 27C). In the downtown area, there's a place call the Queen Street Mall - it's free of traffic and a great place to wander around looking at the shop windows or just to people watch. There's also a pool which is a fifteen minute walk from the apartment as well which I am going to go to to swim lengths - hopefully during the day there won't be a crowd of people at the pool.
This past Friday, Sarah Gothe-Dias and I met up here in Brisbane. She is here for her work - Scentsy- trying to introduce the product to Australia. She and a friend (who lives near Calgary) are travelling around different cities in Australia for two weeks to do this. Sarah and I met up for lunch and had a delicious meal in a cafe - we sat on the patio and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, weather and food. After having a nice long chat, we took a walk around the area - I took Sarah to the Queen Street Mall and she loved it. We even saw some missionaries there who were talking with people in the mall (small world, eh?). Sarah also came to church with us yesterday - the chapel is right beside the temple here and the ward is huge. After church, we invited Sarah to come back to our apartment for lunch and afterwards (for her) a nice long nap - she is still suffering from jetlag - and then we drove her to the motel where she is staying with her friend from Calgary. It was amazing that Sarah happened to be in Brisbane at the same time as we were - love these 'coincidences'. :-)
Dad's teaching is keeping us very busy - well, him very busy and me very relaxed. :-) Although, I do have to say that I do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. so that Dad only has to concentrate on planning and prepping and teaching. After this 3 1/2 weeks in Brisbane, we will be home for three days before Dad heads out again, but this time he will be going on his own. He is going to teach a one day course in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - but, due to flight times, he will leave on Sunday and not be back until Wednesday. Then, a week later, we head off to Perth (on the other side of the country) for two weeks. When we get back from there, we turn around and drive to Brisbane again for a three day course. Phew! So far, that's it for the year, but Dad will find out within a week for sure. The company doesn't accept any courses during December and January usually - as much as Dad is loving his job, I think he will be glad for the break.
We are both looking forward to coming back to Canada and seeing everyone and especially excited about being able to go to Colin's baptism. :-) It will be a shorter trip than usual since Dad needs to be trying to stay in Australia as much as possible so that he can take out his Australian citizenship. He can do that once he has been in Australia for four years - with all our comings and goings, however, that date keeps being pushed back. We are going to be coming over as soon as Dad finishes up work and will only be staying for about three weeks or so this time. We will definitely have to have a few family dinners while we are there so that we can get all the sisters and cousins together with Ma and Pa.
Dad and I are still looking at camping trailers - we went to a sale yesterday and were told by one of the salesman (an honest one, if you can believe it) that the sale price is one that he could give us all year round. He told us the extras which he thought were good to have and told us about one item which we hadn't thought of which would be good to have (a fly cover on the outside which goes over where the beds are). It's a lot of money to buy a brand new camping trailer here (about three times the cost of one in Canada), so we need to make doubly sure that we get the best one for us. We have checked the cost of buying a second-hand trailer, but the prices just don't decrease much here and it seems to us it's better to buy brand new. The one we really like, the Jayco Swan, is quite roomy and has a separate couch from the table which I really like. Since we plan on doing a lot of camping and also plan on camping around Australia in the future, I would really like a bigger camper (the Swan) compared to the smaller one (the Penguin) which Dad first liked the best. We likely will not buy one now until the new year since we are so busy travelling with Dad's teaching and then coming back to Canada.
As you can tell from our schedule, there's been no time for me to do any teaching. I did turn down that 3 1/2 week contract at Kawungan for that grade one classroom and felt so much happier when I did that. I really am not into spending my time disciplining children - I just want to teach - that's my passion. I am finding that it's getting more difficult to find classrooms in which I can just teach (like I did at R.J. Lee) and it's quite frustrating. As you know, all I have ever wanted to be is a teacher and I absolutely love it when I can spend my time planning and prepping and then share this information with my students - I love seeing the look on their faces when they 'get' something which I have helped them learn. Unfortunately, I don't know how much I am going to be able to do that as even Kawungan (which I think is the best state (public) school in Hervey Bay) is beginning to get more and more students who are behaviour problems. So, I am not sure what will happen in the future with regards to my teaching career. It makes me sad to think that I will not be able to do it much since I love to do it so much, but I know that I don't want to deal with behaviours. I was quite distressed thinking about it at first - then, I remembered that things have always worked out in the past. Heavenly Father has always taken care of us - and when I remembered that, I decided that I would just leave things in His hands and we'll see where things take me. It really is much less stressful when I do that.:-)
So, that's about it for now - a brief catch-up of what's been happening with us in the past two months or so since we got back from our last trip to Canada. I plan on writing every Sunday again so you can keep up with what we are doing. Love you all. :-)
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