Sorry! I have been so limited with the internet, but at last, here are some pictures of where I am. This is the house that I am staying in.
This is the view from the street.
This is the view from one of my windows, out into the backyard.
It's a nice house that has lots of windows, which has been really nice with all of the wind that we have been having. They keep telling me that the wind is not normal and that it should be going away, but I'd be alright if it never left.
A poorly put together 180 view, looking out from the front (almost the staff lounge) Click to enlarge
Here is the school that I am at, Burdikin Christian College. It has almost 100 students ranging from Prep (Kindergarten) to Grade 7 (I think they are are 11-12 years old). The school's claim to fame is that it is North Queensland's Greenest school. Let's see, my class... Well, I am in the Pre/Year 1 class and have students ages 5 through a few that have just turned 7 and boy to these kids like to run around and not follow directions. If you received the email from my mom, you will already know that these kids are really lovely individuals, but really bad as a class (we're talking telling me 'no', punching, tackling, and the occasional destructive tantrum which means that they kid has to be physically carried out.) However, while the children are a project, I am still having a good time. The staff here, while they are the must blunt, straight to the point people I have met, they are also really kind and supportive.
A bad picture of my lovely class.
Ok, other things that have been going on. Well, so far I have been bitten at least 10 times by a mosquito, but thankfully at the moment I only have three that really are red and itch. It's so not fair! None of the kids at school, nor the people I live with ever get bitten, and yet I cannot seem to go a night without getting at least one. I wish that the two geckos who have been living in my windows would just hurry up and eat them all. Christy, tell your mom that I have yet to step on one but I think I might have accidentally taken one's tale off when I was closing the window (he's alright, just a little shorter).
Here are just some other pictures to give you an idea of what is around where I am. Enjoy!
Cane field across the street from the school.
More to come soon, I just need to take more photos!
So, here is the introduction to my life for the next two months.I am living in a town called Ayr which I have been told is pronounced air (but you don’t really say the r).If you look for it on a map, just find Townsville (in Northern Queensland) and go south a little ways. Before I talk about the town I should probably mention how I ended up here. It’s rather simple, I told Biola that I wanted to teach in England and they said, “No” so I then found the only other country that spoke English that wasn’t the US and that was Australia and New Zealand. So I ask for a place in either of those countries and they sent back saying we found you this place and I said great, when should I get there.
Ok, so Ayr is a tiny town (and town is a generous word) and is about an hour away from the biggest city, which, without the military base would be nothing more than a town itself. Picture with me (at least until I get around to taking actual pictures) a town in more rural Florida. However, it is not like it is a hick town, they have electricity and running water, the streets are paved with what seems to be tar with rocks thrown on top of it and some of them are newly paved. The main feature of this area is the sugar cane fields; these fields surround the area where people live and then are sprinkled throughout the neighborhoods.
So, there is one main street, it’s about 6ish blocks long and the best way to describe it is they have taken a whole city and squished it into one street. Everything from the court house and the police station to the super market and the Country Target are found along this street, everything but the schools. Other than that, nothing is really distinctive, which makes it especially hard to get my bearings.
I am staying with a nice family, The Brocks, who live about a 6 minute walk from school and who are fairly close to the center of town, but like I've said before, I have no idea where that is. The family is mom, dad, 14 year old son and 11 year old daughter. They are really great people and I am very grateful to them for letting me stay with them.
The only downside so far is that I have to share the one ethernet cable with a 14 year old boy, meaning I never get on. Plus, to use it I have to sit in the family room with my back to the family room, in the middle of everything, so I feel wierd if I ever want to use the internet, but not be super productive.
I think that will be all for now, especially since I don't have any pictures yet. I will write about school later, but here's a small preview...I am the school's new toy, my gosh do these kids need some discipline and wow are there a lot of little ones in one class.
Well, I wish the whole "Winters Day" part of that statement would stay true, but alas, 'Global Warming' strikes again. I can not tell you how excited I was to be enjoying the wind and the clouds and the cool; I was actually convinced that we had left summer behind (FINALLY!). This is where I could say something witty about Mother Nature being a cruel temptress, but honestly I'm at my wit's end, so instead you get my statement of how much a really do want it to be Fall (please!)
As far as my picture every day, well life happened (mainly the of the homework variety) a before I knew it, there were days that had gone by where I had not even touched my camera. I, however, have not totally given up, so now instead I am just trying to be more proactive about picture taking.
Anyways enough with my talking, here is what I have taken since last time. From the 22nd and 23rd Biola had Torrey Conference, during that time instead of worry about going home or out to lunch we picnicked. It was nice sitting under the trees on a blanket with beach chairs in the Santa Ana's (well that wasn't very nice, but they felt good with how hot it was).
On the 23rd, my Grandmother was officially named Huntington Park's Women of the Century; They had a bronze bust of her and everything. I was the representative for my family which meant meeting loads of people that I had heard about, who knew my parents when they were little, whom I had never met. It was odd, but fun.
Per tradition, I went home for part of Torrey. Yea!! To pass the time in the airport, I wrote a letter to my friend Hannah in England. She decided that we were going to be pen palls, hopefully it will last, I like getting letters in the mail.
I really like going home. And it was the perfect fall weather without it being winter yet! It was cold, but sunny; everything was crisp and you could wear a jacket. My family is an obvious highlight to going home, and so is Oliver. He is the newest addition to our family and he is a psycho (in all the best ways). He is such a lover and a fighter, mixed with a very needy over excited toddler and he's all ours!
I also took so pictures of the leaves because they are actually different colors there.
The week between that and Halloween is lost in a haze of stress and black and orange. I'm not a fan of any of the Halloween pics I took, so I will spare you. The day after Halloween, Christy and I woke up 6:30am! Crazy, I know, but that day the two of us, plus Liz (another girl in the house) and a bunch of guys headed out to the middle of nowhere near Apple Valley to go shooting. It was AMAZING! I can't tell you what we shot, because while I know they are different, I couldn't tell you what they were. All I know is there were mainly riffles, a shotgun and a handgun. Despite that fact that were using deadly force on pumpkins from the night before, it was really relaxing. O and possible the best part was, with how flat and open it was we were able to see a storm collect, break apart and then reform.
Ok, I'm getting a little wordy, so here is the last one. It's just a picture of my head, but I still like it. I like wearing my hair with a headband and pulled back, but my hair is not always very cooprotave. Yea for submissive hair days!
Since I am home this blog will now become a tad more "traditional", however, I will refrain from all the emotional ranting that people tend to do on these things. I'm not sure that I would even want to listen to my ranting, so why subject you to it. Instead I am going to do this like an expanded facebook...more room to describe what is going on.
I am trying to become a more comfortable picture taker and to take more pictures of my everyday life, So here it goes.
October 18th
I made it! It was a kit from Micheal's, it's paper! While it was a bit labor intensive it I rather proud of myself and now it greets me every time I walk into my room.
October 19th
So there is an olive tree in my front yard and it, or at least its fruit, is the bane of my existence. However, since Halloween is right around the corner I am hanging ghosts made from trash bags. They are, in all reality, pretty childish but I think they're cute.
October 20th
It was the first day since England where I could justify wearing a sweatshirt. Notice I still needed the flip flops. I also must note that it only stayed on until about 11am, sad, but a step in the right direction.
October 21st
Perfect example of me just messing around with my camera. I think it also does at least a half decent job of capturing the panic that I am starting to feel.
I'll post more once the days come, gosh I hope they don't come too quickly!
My friend Talitha came to visit and the two of use went on a little side trip to York. I like York because it seems looks like what you think an English town should look like. It was a walled city with old ruins, a huge cathedral, wondering cobbled streets, and tiny allies filled with shops.
As with the rest of Europe, York Minster was under construction. They had to take it down to repair the damage from restoration the church did from WWII (if that makes sense). Anyways it was still really nice inside. It was light and airy as apposed to most cathedrials that are covered in 100s of decades of candle grime.
So I got a new charger so now I can tell you the fully pictured story of my Easter adventure. Brianna and I started our trip in Frankfurt Am Main.
This city is a large business center, making the whole city feel like the financial district. Since it was our first city, we contented ourselves with eating Frankfurters in the historic square.
The second day we were there was Palm Sunday, so we decided to attend a catholic service; in hind sight this was a mistake. The hardest part was probably the fact that the entire service was in German. The service was sung, and when it started, we marveled at how wonderful at the voices of the priests. It was like a normal song, there would be a verse and the the chorus. However, the novelty wore off after the fourth chorus and, I promise that I am not exaggerating, we remained standing for an hour! After an hour and a half, we decided to leave. After the service we went to Goethe's House. He was a writer of a book that became something of a cult favorite among young men, especially those who committed suicide. Apparently Napoleon took this book into every battle with him, just in case I guess.
We then went to Rothenburg, a cute little walled town that looked like it belonged in Disneyland. This town is most famous for it's Christmas market, but seeing as we were there in March there were only the established shops. Even thought we only had the established stores, I have never seen so many Christmas ornaments in my life! I wish I could have taken a picture, but they militantly patrolled the store, yelling at all sightings of a camera. This was one of those towns that was wonderful to just wonder around in.
We climbed to the top of the city council tower. It's funny because at the bottom there are all of these notices that you need to not be afraid of confined spaces or heights, and they were not kidding. The best way to describe the stairs was as close to walking straight up, but in a square.
In this picture I am only 3 steps below, the second step was at my knees. But the scaling of the tower was worth it, it was such a nice view of the whole walled city. After climbing down, we enjoyed these really random dessert cookie-ish things called "Snowballs". It was interesting because the main day we were there was Saint Patrick's Day, and yet you could tell who was an American and who wasn't based on what color they were wearing (we were the only ones wearing green).
After Rothenburg we headed to Munich.
Munich I thought was the perfect combination of a big city and a small town, while it was physically large the people were friendly and there were lots of winding streets. The bitting breeze was a bit hard to deal with, so to compromise we ate some hot candied almonds as we wondered through the shops.
The second day, we made a side trip to Dauchu, one of the concentration camps from Nazi Germany. This was a really interesting and sobering experience. This was mainly a labor camp, so it was not as appalling as what I was expecting, but none the less it was surreal to actually walk through it.
After that depressing trip we went to Nyphenburg Palace, the residences of the king of Bavaria. It had impressive paintings, but admittedly, after Versailles, things seem to pale in comparison. It was here where the snow started, but at this point we still thought it was a fun thing.
After wondering the grounds we headed to Hofbrauhaus, one of the indoor beer gardens. Here Brianna drank a huge mug while I contented myself with a pint of soda. It was fun to sit at these big tables with people who you have never met, sitting listening to the Polka band and sip your drink.
Munich behind us, we headed down to Fussen, a tiny town that rests against the Alps. This town is know for its two castles, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. We went to Hohenschwangau, this was the the summer home of the same king that owned Nyphenburg. We had a wonderful tour guide that walked us through this house that was full of amazing painted walls and ornate presents that the kings had received over the ages. We then went across to Neuschwanstein; we deceided to spare the hourses from having to haul us up that huge hill and deceided to walk it.
This castle looked like it should have been a fairy tale; part of this is due to the fact that it was designed by an artiest rather than an architect. Again, everything inside was wonderfully painted and the wood and marble were worked with such detail. Sadly, he ran out of money (and he might have died) before it was fully finished.
We then caught the train to Salzburg; this might have been my favorite city, but least favorite hostel (I will spare you the details). It was so wonderful to wonder around the city and to come upon scenes out of the Sound of Music.
We also toured the house and birthplace of Mozart. It was interesting to listen to just how much he hated Salzburg and it's residents and yet here we were in a city that now loves him. This aside, like I said we were really excited about the Sound of Music and managed to find at least a few of the movie sites.
Steps that the kids hopped up and down on while singing "Do Re Mi" This was a real find, we were literally climbing up random stairs when we found the Abby. It's still an Abby so we couldn't go inside
We also went to the top of the of the local mountain, to the fortress. Thankfully the sky obliged to part and reveal the surrounding mountains, it was beautiful!
Just as Rothenburg was know for its Christmas Ornaments, Salzburg apparently is know if its Easter eggs. Seeing as it was Easter, we thought it was only appropriate for us to purchase these delicate ornaments. This, however, meant that from then on we were carrying painted, hallow chicken eggs. They traveled safely all the way back to Leeds and then to Italy where my parents kindly took charge of them and delivered them home in one piece. Hooray!
We were there on Easter and at seemingly random points throughout the night before dozens of church bells would start ringing. The next morning we tried vain to go to a sunrise Easter Sunday service, but since the cute little old nun didn't know English and we didn't know German, when we turned up, no one was there; actually I don't think anyone in the whole city of Salzburg was awake apart from the two of us. Tired, we caught the train to Lucerne, Switzerland. This city was the a small town on a lake. We also found the famed Dying Lion statue. This is a monument, carved directly out of the solid rock hillside, that was carved to honor the Swiss Guards who died at the battle of Le Tuileries; they died in an effort to protect the royal family from the mobs that were invading the palace during the French Revolution. Mark Twain said it was, "the saddest, most moving piece of rock in the world" and we had to agree.
Brianna wanted to go up into the Alps, so we caught a gondola to the top of Pilatus, the highest mountain in the area.
When we first got to the top, it was really bright with a light breeze; I don't think I've ever squinted so much in my life. After about 10mins, it got really windy and as the clouds started rolling in, as is obvious from the picture; with the combination of the sun's reflection and the swirling icy snow, it felt like we were being stabbed in the eyes. The next day we went to Freiburg; this was an utter disappointment. We were aiming to be in the Black Forest, you know cake and cuckoo clocks, well neither of those things nor a forest for that matter could be found. Skipping that, I'll tell you about Belgium. This city was like Frankfurt, as it is the capital, but with one HUGE improvement, CHOCOLATE!!! It was so much fun to just wander up and down the streets going into each of the several dozen chocolate shops, buying one candy from each. While wondering, we found the Manneken Pis, a little bronze statue of a little boy peeing.
After that we were done with the city, but it was only about 4pm. Deciding that we didn't want to just sit in the room, and after looking for ideas in the travel book, we discovered that Waterloo was only a 30minute bus ride away, so, we hoped on the bus and headed out. I think that it would be prudent to mention that it gets dark around 6-6:30 and that it had been raining on and off all day. When we got on the bus and asked for tickets, the bus driver flat out told us that we were crazy. Well, we managed to find it, and even it was now pouring, dark, and locked, had a little walk around the outside.
We never did figure out how to go around to see the front of the lion, but hey, we get an A+ for effort even if we get an F- for planning and timing. On the way back we were cold and Brianna insisted that I had to try an Belgium waffle, and why would I resist the eating a Belgium waffle in Belgium.
The next day we went to Amsterdam. In the three days and two nights we successfully avoided all areas of the Red Light distract. Instead we went to the Van Gogh and Rijks Museum. It was in these two museums that I truly appreciated the work that goes into most museums in the United States and England, at home the building is laid out in a way where there were not bottle necks, the things on display are easily viable from a distance, and the building in it of itself is beautiful. All the things that we went to in Amsterdam were the exact opposite, it was slightly disappointing. We also went to Ann Frank's house. The best part of this house was the bookcase that hid the stairs that led up to where they were hiding.
The highlight of Amsterdam was the trip to the flower gardens in Lissen. We went when it had only been open for a week, so not all of the flowers were out, but even still it was beautiful. There are no words to describe how nice it was to wonder around these huge grounds and see all the flowers. Then, inside the greenhouse we were able to see all the varieties. It was impossible to pick favorites, they were all so unusual and beautiful. Sadly, I don't have very many pictures yet because of my camera dying, thankfully I think Brianna took enough for the both of us and then about 100 to spare.
The next day we were heading back to Frankfurt, but we were in no hurry. Instead of doing nothing in Frankfurt we stopped and had lunch in Delft. Delft is known for the Girl with the Pearl Earing and its pottery, which looks like traditional china, but it feels a lot lighter. We met this really nice man that was actually panting the pottery in his shop and from him I bought two little bud vases. At first we thought his were too expensive, but then when we went to the tourist shops, we couldn't bring ourselves to buy the imitation stuff. Oh, I guess the Netherlands is known for its cheese, so it was really fun to ride through Gouda on the train and then see shops like this, even if they did smell a bit weird.
The only way that we could get from the Netherlands to Frankfurt was on the high speed train. For the first half of riding it, I wanted my money back because we weren't going any faster than the other trains that we had taken. Then once we left Kolon, we really started picking up speed, reaching 300km/hr (it sounds so much faster in km). I was really glad that it was dark outside, with the little that we could see, which was hardly anything, I was feeling sick.
After that there was nothing really exciting, minus the getting up SUPER early to make sure that I made my flight.
I think this is sufficiantly long, and now I must get back to the more boring writting that I am to be graded on. I have gone to York since then and I am planning on going to Wales and Chester on the 26 and then to Whitby on the 27, so there is more to come. Until I have more time, see you!
