Earlier this week, Steve and I recieved a letter from Compassion with some sad news. They were shutting down the branch in Thailand where Lek, our sponsor child was. When this happens, they usually try to transfer the kids to another area, so they can still be sponsored. Sadly, this was not possible with Lek and so our sponsorship of her was ending.

I have sponsored Lek since she was 6. Firstly with Sarah, then by myself, and lastly with Steve. Only recently did she start writing letters to us herself - in the past it had always been from her mum, dad, aunt, etc. It was really exciting to be seeing her grow up.

Today I had to write what would probabaly be my last letter to Lek. What was I going to write? I thought, knowing that this would be the last chance I had to say anything to this little girl. What did I want her to know?

This was one of the hardest things i've ever had to do, because at the end of the day, 1000 words on the page would still fail to tell Lek that I love her and that I hope she knows that. That even though I'll never get to see her or even write to her again, I will be praying for her and I want the best for her life. I'm praying that God continues to reveal himself to her, and that she realises that all he had planned for her is good.

Ultimatly, I think this experince has really taught me that when it comes to the last things you have to say to a person, alot of crap that you thought was important, doens't really matter at all. At the end of the day, you just want them to know that they are loved, more than they could ever imagine.

Dress finished!

The Quilt!

Yay! I spent an hour and a half at my parents this morning finishing it off and now i'm pleased to say that it is finished! I ended up pinning and sewing a border around the quilt which isn't exactly even (2cm on the width and 1.5 on the length) but overall it looks great. :)


As you can see, it's pretty small, but it does give the quilt that finished look. :) And here it is on our bed - ready to keep us warm all winter!




Btw, something i left out of the last post was a picture of my shoes after Easterfest - needless to say, i'm throwing them out.


I feel like the photo doesn't really do them justice either....

Easterfest 2009 (AGMF)

I can't believe I have done that, but I hope you people are all happy now :P

Easterfest this year was amazing. :) Hooray! Even though it rained and was cold for the majority of the time; the ground we sat on was always some level of damp; our shoes were permanatly wet and ended up being covered in a few layers of red mud it still rocked.

This year was the latest I have ever been to Easterfest - we didn't get there untill 3:30 or so on Friday afternoon, but I didn't miss any of the acts that I really wanted to see, so it was ok. :) Friday morning started with me shaving Steve's hair into a mowhawk - that's right - mowhawk. I've never done it before, so i'll be happy to admit that it wasn't 100% straight, but i can practice on that. :) We then borrowed gel from Steve's brother and sprayed it orange. It looked STELLAR.

Friday highlights include Audio A - ROCKING the HOUSE - I was so so so happy when they played Underdog. The mosh was going off and I got to jump up and down with it all. Yay! Bec St James, not so awesome... I like her as an artist, but I'm always slightly dissapointed with her live shows. This year her brothers came along, but she did alot of slow soft songs and promoted her own movie and stuff... not so cool.

Friday night also saw newworldson play - AMAZING - They had some new songs (but we couldn't find the new CD to go with that :( ) which were so fun and they played some old favs like Salvation Station and Workin Man! YAY!

Saturday we saw a few smaller bands and roved around a bit - this was the day that the rain poured a bit, but we were chillin in the Big Top, so we were fairly safe. We ate almost consistently all day to stay warm :P Good thing I had stocked up on gingernuts and apples to keep us going. :) Saturday highlights had to be Halfway Out's last show - RIP to an awesome ska band. They were fantastic and their final mosh was legendary. I stood with the bags while everyone else got in and sweaty. Daniel lost his glasses at one point and Steve rescued some other girl's glasses from being trampled too. Crazy times.


Saturday night Paul Colman Trio had a HUGE turnout - possibly even bigger than Audio A, despite the rain and the mud. Crazy! They were super fun to watch though - i've never seen a group of guys just have fun on the stage the way they do. We hung around through Chris Pulson Trio - AMAZING - as we waited for newworldson. Chris Pulson had the keyboard player of newworldson and Complements of Gus come on and they had this massive Jam on stage - it was legendary!

At one point Chris Pulson had his keyboard on the ground to play it. :) We then watched Complements of Gus - deciding to get a CD too - Then we hung around waiting and waiting for the final newworldson set - not dissapointed with it but it was so late when we left.

Sunday was another late day - didn't make it to the festival untill about 1:30ish - just in time to see Jess and Ted perform in the Epicenter. Legendary stuff! We got up and danced like crazy to some of their songs and they had a great all-round performance. :) Steve and I danced like mad to their encore song too. YAY! dancing!


Sunday night would usually see a huge church service at the main stage, but due to the rain, the schedual was changed and they put it in the Big Top. This is something that I love to be apart of at Easterfest which I'd have to admit I was a little dissapointed with this year. Because they put it in the Big Top, they screened it in the SU Cafe, which is where we ended up watching it, but we missed out on all that awesome togetherness atmostphere which comes when people who want to worship God just do it, rather than try to have devisions and lines and "i'm Catholic" and "Prodestant" blah divisions. Instead, we had alot of people who were there to praise, but also alot of people who were using the time to shop and wander around. Oh well.

The final act on Sunday night was Thousand Foot Krutch. I was a bit hesitant because they are heavy rock and I didn't think I knew much of their stuff, but when they started playing - man ROCK OUT!! It was super cool. The mosh (which I was saftely away from) was mad and apart from the first song they played - i knew all of them which was excellent (probably thanks to yrock.org :D) When we finally left it had been an excellent festival with awesome music and lots of Jesus. :) Hooray!

Quilt update: nearly there!

Last week, I managed to finish the handsewing of the patched side to the wadding and then sew the two sides together. After turning it inside out my quilt looked like this:


Very nearly done! The only problem that I have is that because one side is slightly larger, the edges fold over to the other side. This isn’t so much of a problem because it creates the border that I want to have around my quilt so that it has a nice finished look, but it does become complicated when I try to work out how big this border will be (so it is even the whole way around, not thin on one side and thick on the other) and I don’t have any big flat space to actually lay out my quilt and work it out.


I'll be going over to my parents sometime this week for this exact purpose. :D Once there, I should have the space to lay out the quilt, measure, pin and then sew the border and finish off the corners. Then the quilt will be complete! Hurrah!

In the meantime, it's already on the bed keeping us warm. :D

Our friendly neighbour, Joe, just popped his head around the corner and asked if I was making beach towels. Close... but no. :)

Sewing Project Update!

Today, I lay out all the finished squares of rectangles and swaped and rotated untill I was happy (and sick of rotating). It took up all of the spare room floor and the spare bed as well and looked something like this:


The bottom part that was on the floor, looked like this up close:


After I took that photo I realised there were still a few pieces that were not where they should be so I did some more fidling (I think you can see one or two of the mistakes in that photo even). Then I sat down at the sewing machine and a few hours later, I had this:


As you can see - it still covers most of the spare room and the bed, but now all the pieces are stuck together! YAY! This means that both sides of my quilt are completely sewn. :)

The next part of the journey is to hand sew the inside-fluffy-quilty-stuff to one side of the quilt so it stays where it should inside the quilt once I sew both sides together. For this, I've decided to go against tradition, which dictates that you would normaly hand sew with small invisable stitches along the seams, and instead make a feature of it! I'm going to use a green tapestry thread and sew around the squares that were previously visable but are now not so visable becuase i've sewn them all together. Make sense?

In any case, this will take me a while (all hand sewing) so it could be a bit before the next update. It's fun none the less.

Sewing Project update.

I've now finished sewing the 280 rectangles into their squares. :D Hooray! It took a long time - a process which was not helped by the fact that each material needed a different thread tension (I learnt alot about thread tension making these patches) and the fact that I nearly ran out of thread. I literally used 98% of all the thread that i had - which considering i've been hording from mum, Yia-yia and Grandma for most of my life, is quite a bit. Even i'm surprised at how much I went through.

Now I need to lay them all out and put them in an order that I like (ensuring there are no double ups of colours and what not) and sew all of that togehter and then it will be ready for some warm fleecy stuff that quilts are made of! Yay! Laying all of my pieces out may prove to be an obstical in itself though, as I have no where with enough room. If it's sunny on Saturday, I may even bring them to the park and we could do it on the grass there. I'd appreciate the artistic input and extra eyes for noticing things I haven't when it all comes together.

The only other thing to say is that I only sewed one of the squares together wrongly, which is a pretty good effort considering I usually spend alot more time unpicking sewing projects. :P

Well, to take a leaf out of Ron's book, I have decided to update you all on a little project i've ventured into during the idle hours of the days when i'm not teaching in classrooms. :)

2009 Sewing Project 1.

I'm in the process of making a large quilt out of bits and pieces of fabric that i've managed to store up over the last twenty or so years of my life. Mostly because I wanted an excuse to sew, but also because Steve and I don't have a large size quilt for the bed and we currently fight each other for blankets on occasion. I suppose as it gets colder we will drag out the queen (or double) douna that we have, but it's not cold enough for that at the moment, so we are using a single bed blanket and my frog blanket. It's not really enough.

Anyway, I decided that one side of the quilt will be patchworked squares while the other would be larger square blocks. If I were going to be more adventerous, I might have spent time mixing the large blocks with the patchworked squares and have both sides a mix, but I'm not. :)

First thing I did was decide how I was going to make my patchwork squares, and I decided on a simple pattern of rectangles. I need eight rectangles for each square. Each rectangle is 10cm by 20cm, but I cut them with a 2cm allowance around the edge for the seams. Deciding also to make my quilt for a queen bed, and large enough to hang off the sides as well, my quilt will need to be approximatly 3m by 2m. This means that I can fit about 35 squares to a side (7 by 5) and if i have eight rectangles to a square, I need 280 rectangles.

It took me a long time to cut out these rectangles, but i did. :) yay! When they are arrnaged into their squares, they will look something like this:



After I had cut them all, I lay them out and grouped them into groups of 8 that would eventually make up their square's. This is my 35 groups of 8 rectangles waiting to be sewn into squares.


You will notice that yes, i do have some shiny new frog material in there. :) It looks a bit like this up close:
Hooray! Anyway, this morning I managed to sew all of the big block squares that will make up one side of the quilt together and it's looking quite shiny if I do say so myself. :) I've gotten alot better at sewing since I made my last quilt and it's evident even in the fact that the squares are all the same size this time. :)



I also found a new function on my sewing machine which lets me do a straight sitch with a zig zag all in one, so I dont' have to go back over the work a second time to do a hem. Pretty handy. :) I'll have to have a trip to spotlight sometime in the future to get some quilt padding material stuff for it, but other wise, it's about a third done! Yay!

Time to get back to the small rectangle pieces... all 280 of them...

I was sitting at the dinner table with Steve tonight, slurping away at my curry and rice when Steve shook his head at me.

"It's not Ramen," he commented.

"I'm going to be a terrible role model for our kids," I replied happily.

"Yes," Steve agreed, "I'm going to have to shut you in a room and tell the kids: 'Sorry, you have no mother'"

Yes, those are little baby Daddy Long-Leg spiders currently living next to our shower. I'm wondering if I should relocate them to the great outdoors?


This is one of our numerous outdoor spiders. I like to call this fellow the Oreo Spider, because the markings on his back remind me of an Oreo Biscuit. He has gone now, I'm not sure where, but I'd like to think he's surviving somewhere.


This fellow is our local green frog. He was found on the steps outside our unit one night. We often see him around abouts when it is dark - sometimes he likes to suction onto the walls just for a change. He is very green.


This photo has nothing to do with spiders or animals of any kind. This is the chocolate cake I made last Saturday. Yum.

Again I spoke at Sunday Night Live - this time on a personal struggle with Pornography.

www.sundaynightlive.org

We need to talk about issues like this more and more.

Finally.

I had my first ever day of supply teaching today! YAY! It feels like it was a long time in coming, but at the same time - over so fast.

I got "the call" at 7:00am this morning, asking if I could do a day of teaching Music at Holland Park Primary. I said yes. Then called Macgregor to tell them I wouldn't be coming in. That done, I spent alot of the morning agonising over the fact that I was going to have to teach today. A class (possibly many classes) that I had no idea about. SCARY!!

I was at the school extreemly early (10 past 8) where I continued to agonise over my lack of primary school music knowledge. I had a timetable - 2 grade 2 classes, 1 year 1, 2 prep classes and 3 grade 3's (that is so weird...). All these were in half hour blocks. I knew I was going to recycle things for the grades that I had multipul of, but even so - Preps! what kind of music do you teach them!?

In the end I stuck to oral activities and rhythmic dictiation type activities. The music teacher at the school is very vocal, and so almost all the classes wanted to sing the songs they had been learning - the preps even knew like 5 songs. Needless to say i've learnt a whole lot more songs now. :P I managed to work in teaching my "ohaiyou" Japanese song in.

Interestingly, my primary school brass teacher is teaching the instrumental kids at this school. It was a flash back to see him, although he hasn't changed and didn't remember me. :P Other teachers in the staff room did though, one from St Matthews - yay for church! I also met the Chaplin and the Japanese teacher. They have an exchange teacher out from Nagoya Forigen studies University (talk about small world) at the moment. Good times.

At the end of the day I was asked to come back tomorrow and Friday as well. I'm feeling like yep - I can handel teaching - although tomorrow I have to teach year 6 and 7 - and I don't know how that will go. There are no desks in the room and none of the classes I had today had books or even pencil cases. I wonder if the older grades are doing recorder too... if only the music teacher had given me instructions. :P

Yay for supply days and being a teacher. Even though i'd rather have my own classes who I know and can plan for, this will do in the mean time. :)

Now that Steve and I are married, we branched out and got this:

www.leighfamily.net

There is not much there, but if you go to www.leighfamily.net/paula/efolio then you will see my lovley updated efolio... that I should be working on right now.... :D

So I spoke at Sunday Nite Live yesterday, and I was going to copy and paste roughly what I said onto here, but then I thought - why give people sub-standard, when they can listen to what I acutally said online!

So, if you go here: http://www.sundaynightlive.org.au/ you will be able to listen to what I said (click "Paula's Story").

That is all. Ijoudesu.

Arrrrggggg! Pirates!!!!

Some days i feel like i have the best job in the world. :D

So, Steve was at a job interview on Thursday when this question came up:

"So you still live with your parents, then?"

Steve replies to this question with;

"Ahh, no, I live with my wife actually."

"How old are you?"

________________

Man that made me laugh so much. I can just see the interviewer thinking "Are you really an IT geek prepared for this job? Who let you out of the basement anyway?"

I am so married. :D





I love being married. I love having my own house, getting to cook and clean when I want. It's wonderful. I love having a husband - it's still funny to wake up and find i'm having breakfast with the same person every day. I feel a bit like this is just like a holiday - but the exciting thing is that it will never end! Ok maybe the happyness and new-ness of it all will fade, (mostly because everything that is new becomes old...) but it really is fantastic. :)





Things that I remember from the wedding day:

1) No matter how much people say "this is the bride's day" it is only the bride's day untill she has to get driven to the church. Then the drivers and dad's get a power trip out of deciding exactly when they will be leaving - and it's sometimes not what is wanted.

2) Yes it is a serious day, but make the most of it! You only get one --> my most faviourte parts of the actual service are Steve and I High-Fiving and me fixing his bow tie. :) yay!

3) Get the formal part of the reception out of the way so you can chat to people --> this was the best thing that Steve and I decided to do. I loved being able to dance and mingle and just have a party at the reception. :)





Thanks to everyone who was and wasn't there. It is awesome to know that people wanted to see us get married. Good and happy times.

Recently, i've also managed to graduate!! (I seem to be doing so many crazy and grown up things recently! I'm not sure how that works!) I donned the gown (and the kimono) and walked/shuffled across the stage to get my shiny piece of paper and now i'm apparently qualified to teach - look out world here i come!





On that note, if anyone wants to spare some prayer for a job oppourtounity or just general guidance for me in the way of future work - please do! God is faithful and he will provide!

Friday 14/11/08 – Prac Block Day 30

Well I got my prac report from the music department. The biggest thing it tells me to watch out for is my spelling. Not really a surprise at all there. It’s fairly satisfactory though, nothing terribly outstanding about it at all. I feel like it sums up my prac fairly well.

I wonder if I could have done better at all, but I feel like a number of factors, both in and out of my control were working against me. Oh well. I wonder what Tara’s report will say, possibly much the same, I suppose.

This week has been a fairly bludge week for me, all my classes are wrapping up and having assessment, so I’ve not done much teaching. Today I helped kids move chairs from the classrooms up to the hall in preparation for tomorrow night. It’s really hot, but it keeps showering every now and then.

05/11/08 Practicum Block Day 23

< Happy Birthday Melissa! >

I’m supposed to be in a class, but apparently the grade 11’s are doing an exam, and so there is no point in my being down there. Meh. I can’t say it’d matter either way. I don't have lessons to plan and I don’t have marking to do. Oh well.

I took grade 8 music this morning. I’ve realised I’m really boring when it comes to class introductions. I think it’s because I’m under the impression that the grade 8’s just want to do their work, and so I don't want to waste time trying to “capture them” :P Oh well. Something to work on I guess.

As far as everything goes, I defiantly feel like prac is winding down for me. The grade 8’s are finishing up their sibelius, the grade 11’s are getting ready for their performance → so my teaching is done in those classes. Next week the grade 9’s are working on their manga of their life, so it’s not like I’ll be teaching much there either.

I guess now I just have to finish well.


Friday 07-11-08 – Prac Block Day 25

It’s Friday. Yay. I feel like I’m running around trying to make sure everything is done and everything is not really done at all. And, I got my referee report from my first prac supervising teacher yesterday, who wrote lovely things, and it just makes me remember how much of a difference this prac is.

Last prac, I acted like a teacher, I taught like a teacher, I was a Paula-style teacher. This prac, I’ve been everything but and worse, when I am asked to do what I would so, I copy what other people do. I’m a fraud.

It doesn’t bode well for my future job prospects, or my final report which will be given at the end of next week. ☹

Anyway, yesterday there was a lot of running around and busyness – which was a first for Thursday; usually the slowest day of the week. I had a meeting with the prac liaison officer person who finally showed up after 5 weeks of prac. She was supposed to be here at 11, she turned up at 11:25. Sam, Karen (another prac student) and I waited in the office wasting time. Then she didn’t tell us anything new. Pretty annoying really.

And I was in the middle of making worksheets for the grade 8 music kids and other random worksheets so that Sandy could see what my literacy is like.

Today has been pretty standard. Grade 11’s were practicing. It will be interesting to see what they come up with on Monday for their performances. I unpacked all of the new headphones and sorted out the general keyboard problems. Sandy had some other filing for me to do, but I’m a bit over everything at the moment. And I need to get ready for Jap this arvo. It’s so hot, I wonder if I can find a video for them to watch… humm.



In other non prac news – I’ve finished watching pride and predjudice and I must say I prefer the BBC version to the 2005 movie version. It’s a lot more detailed, historical and has a better story line. I also like that they haven’t made as many concessions to make it more “modern” and “popular”.


Monday 10/11/08 – Prac Block Day 26

This is my last Monday. Yay. I got to mark grade 11 music students today. They were pretty phenomenal. The boys who were ripping it out on guitars came early to set up and orginised big black blocks that they could jump off and worked on their head banging and everything.

The grade 8’s are just wasting time now. I sorta wish that Sharon would come up with something for them to do, but she’s a bit like ‘they can just do this’ which I think is a waste of time. They are practicing their platitude performances. I wish there were a way I could record their piano parts to play with… hum… maybe I’ll spend tomorrow morning trying to figure that out. Oh well. The good thing about grade 8’s is that they forget things that you tell them.

I think honestly though, that their assignment was super easy. And really easy to pass too. I marked so many drafts, if the kids have been dilligant enough to fix their mistakes – they will get an A on their final. I’ve only given A’s and B’s and I’ve marked 2/3s of the class.

The grade 9’s are about to start their manga task, but I doubt they will have it done by Friday. Maybe I’m being pessimistic though. They were really annoying and unfocused today.

Monday 03-11-08 Prac Block Day 21

No matter how many lessons I take, I still never get kids and why they are in the mood they are. The teachers in the staff room blame the weather, the time of day, the food they eat. I dunno what it is, but kids are so unpredictable (except possibly with the exception of Friday afternoons last period when they want to do absolutely nothing and there is absolutely nothing I can do to change that.)

Monday again, only one week and 4 days to go. The more organised I am for my classes, the quicker the week seems to go. It’s really annoying though, when technology fails me. This happened today. I want to play a dvd, the dvd does not work *sigh * I’m glad I test these things before the class, but still. I guess it just shows me the great need for a contingency plan. At all times – have a contingency plan.

Also needed is a dictionary. Or some way of predicting the words students will use so that I can look them up before hand. As always, my greatest let down in the classroom is my spelling.

Anyway, how do I feel about teaching?

Teaching is fun. I like to do it. I am capable of doing it.

How can I improve my teaching?

By being more aware of students needs and understanding their learning difficulties. By creating lessons which are applicable to all students, rather than just some (though I don’t think I do this, it’s good to improve on).

Honestly though, after having struggled to write my 500 words of blah about why I’m going to be a teacher and what I’m doing that makes me a good teacher, I can see that coming up with stuff to say about it all and actually putting it into practice are two very different things. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do everything that I say I can do, but don’t tell the teachers that :D.