Mid-Year Break

It's public school holidays time here in NSW. That means I won't have any teaching work for the next two weeks. I may get other event or temp work in that time, but I'm not sure yet. In the meantime I'm going to be running errands, going to the dentist, cooking more home-cooked meals, working out, washing the scooter, doing minor maintenance on my bike, etc. It's nice to have some extra time to get things done and rest up so my cough/cold will go away. 

Sneaky Meeple

While we were out and about yesterday with some frisbee friends, firefighter meeple made an appearance in my drink when I was playing pinball. It continues.

Swans vs. Tigers

Last night Michael and I went to our first AFL game with a large group of frisbee friends. The Sydney Swans played the Richmond Tigers. It was a really close game; Sydney up in the first half and then Richmond had a big comeback and won. 

I have not attended many professional sports games, mostly only Washington Nationals baseball games. That being noted, these are the main differences I noticed. There was less hokey stuff, like no T-shirt cannons and wacky races comprised of people dressed as dead presidents. There was less music, and there were no vendors walking around in the stands. 
One thing I found interesting was that during the game there were people running around on the field wearing pink jerseys bringing the players water and giving them messages from the coach. When the Swans started doing poorly the number of pink jerseys increased. 

All in all it was a fun and entertaining night out with friends.

Inside Out

We went to a fun low-key BBQ yesterday and then saw the new Pixar movie, Inside Out. As a Psych major, I thought the movie was really interesting and funny, and I could probably watch it several more times to pick up on more symbolism, themes, and little Pixar Easter eggs alluding to their other movies hidden throughout. 

The movie made a lot of good points about the nature of growing and learning and the feelings that go along with them. It's interesting that the emotions themselves undergo changes over the course of the film, for example Joy learns that she can't always run the show and fix things, Sadness plays an important role and needs to take the lead sometimes too in order for Riley to ultimately be healthy and grow. It was all very intelligent and very meta, and I'd be curious to hear what a kid thinks about it since there are so many levels to understanding the film. 

Many of my favorite moments in the film are quick asides. One is when Joy accidentally knocks over a box of facts and opinions and is trying to put them back in the right places in vain, saying they all look, "so similar!". Another character nonchalantly replies back something to the effect of, "Oh don't worry, that happens all the time". Another funny moment is when these little creatures are throwing away old fading memories and they arrive at Riley's piano memories, saying, they will just keep "Chopsticks" and "Heart and Souls" and throw away the rest. Anyone who ever took piano lessons can relate to this. 

It was an all around fun film and Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, and Lewis Black were particularly well cast in their voice roles. 

Cigarettes in Prison = Sparkly Stickers in Primary School

Unusually, I subbed the same class for most of the week. I was actually able to learn almost all of their names and see them make little improvements over time. 

Since I've been in the same school a lot, I've gotten to know a lot of the kids in other classes too, so they say hi to me in the halls or on the playground. It's funny how some kids who I don't feel like I was particularly nice to (I just taught their class, but it wasn't necessarily a "fun" lesson or anything), smile and are happy to see me simply because I am now familiar to them and they know my name. I may or may not have bought their love with sparkly horse stickers, though. I didn't think little boys would like the sparkly horse stickers, not more than the girls anyway. I definitely overheard one boy telling another that he wanted all the stickers, and he was very serious. Time it takes 25 kids to clean a room = ~6 minutes. Time it takes 25 kids to clean a room with the goal or earning a sticker each = 1 minute. 

Veronica, you say, tomorrow is Friday and the week is not over. Yes, I know, but my teaching week is over. Tomorrow I have a team building event, just to shake things up. Adults' love is harder to buy. Usually the ones I deal with at events are motivated by the fact that they get to drink alcohol at the end, and they will do anything to speed the time up so they can receive said alcohol sooner and stop solving puzzles. 

We are all motivated by something. Eve is motivated by the promise of eating human food and will high-five for a tortilla chip or a cheese crunchie. She will not, however, high five for boring everyday cat food. 

With the rainy dreary weather we've been having the last few days, I am motivated to do nothing more than curl up under our gigantic fluffy blanket and watch Parks and Recreation reruns. Goodnight.

Common Courtesy

Oh, the nature of my work. 

Monday I found out last minute I was to lead a workshop because the leader I was supposed to be assisting texted me last minute saying she was having car problems. Long story short, I led everything with the backup of a few wonderful people and it went fine, but two people that could have easily made my situation easier simply did not help. Thanks for nothing, guys. It's just another one of those situations where you see who you can count on and who you can't. I think I can predict who, in the longterm, will be more successful and happy and all that jazz. 

On a related note, if you are a teacher that knows ahead of time that you will have a substitute teacher covering your class, and you have work for them to give your students, don't make it any more difficult for the sub than it already is. If you have handouts, print them out and leave them on your desk. Don't make the sub look for them on your computer and figure out where the printer is (when there are multiple printers in multiple buildings in your school) in a limited amount of time... only to find out that they printed out blank for some unknown reason without any additional time to go back and forth between buildings trying to troubleshoot tech issues. "I didn't know if you were going to do the lesson" was a reason she also didn't print out that and other future handouts for subsequent lessons, and she also mentioned that she hadn't even read those lessons yet. Well yeah, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do the lesson either because you didn't give me what I needed. Now you're also telling me you're giving me more lessons that, not only are you not prepared for, I will not be prepared for them as well. Yes, now that I know I can do what I can to prepare for them. However, why are you making my life harder, and thus, probably making your students' lives harder, and thus, your life harder in the end? I'd prefer to be left no plan than vague plans I have to decode.

Being a teacher of any kind is not easy. When it comes to a regular classroom teacher versus a substitute teacher, the regular teacher obviously has a home field advantage. If you don't make life as easy as you can for your substitute, in the long run you are making more work for yourself because you are going to end up having to re-teach a lot of lessons. You're going to have to follow up and address behavioral issues, etc. If you actually do what you can to make your sub's life easier, your students will be more successful and probably make your life easier. I have been fortunate to work with a few teachers that seem to understand this and act accordingly. Sometimes I have very good days teaching.

I think this idea of the making coworkers' lives easier translates to many professions other than teaching. Even if you do it for the selfish reason of making your life easier in the longterm and the bi-product is that it helps others, then do it. Sometimes it really doesn't take that much, and people's laziness really irritates me. 

OK, rant over. I guess I'm just a big picture kind of person, and not everybody else is. 

On a completely un-related note, how about that Game of Thrones season finale, folks? Pretty crazy, right? And people wonder why I enjoy shows like that and Walking Dead when I have to deal with kids and adults that test my patience nonstop all day long. 

Jurassic World

We saw the long-awaited Jurassic World today. It was enjoyable. Some of my thoughts and feels below (spoiler alert)...

I really liked Chris Pratt's character, despite being pretty one-sided and kind of overly masculine and confident. I think I wouldn't have liked his character as much if it had just been played by some heartthrob actor that had always been hunky. I like that he has played both the goofy chubby guy and the hero, and other roles in between. Also, Michael and I got really excited when he was training the raptors with a clicker, since that's what Michael did with our cats. Clickers work, people; even with dinosaurs, apparently. 

I thought it was funny the only person they brought back from the original was Dr. Wu, considering he was such a minor character in the original - practically an extra. 

There was some unnecessary background character development that was unresolved at the end of the film, so they could have just left it out altogether. For example, there was a few minute scene with the kids talking about how their parents might get divorced. It was totally irrelevant to the plot. Same with showing the audience the teenager has a girlfriend he doesn't really care about. It doesn't influence his actions or feelings at all throughout the movie. We see him looking at other teenage girls in the park, but he never talks to any of them. He doesn't get reunited with the girlfriend or break-up with her. Why have her in the one scene at the beginning at all? Also, there was no reason to make two boys that aren't even old enough to drive good at fixing cars. I liked that they went to the old park, but there could have just been a jeep there that worked. Having them fix a car did nothing for the plot. 

As compared to the original, the kid actors in this movie were not as good. Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards were so good portraying a wide range of kid/adolescent emotions in Jurassic Park. I was indifferent to the two boys in Jurassic World, whatever their names were. Speaking of the actors, I think they also tried too hard to have the same types of roles in this film. The two kids, the couple, the scientist, the guy in the control room, the guy who wants to play god with science. Try to have some new character dynamics, Jurassic. I hadn't seen the second and third sequels as many times as the first; I know their dynamics were a little different. Then again, they were also the less popular movies, so maybe I'm wrong.

The other thing that I thought was really good in the original was the building of suspense at certain times, one example being in the scene where the two kids are hiding from the raptors in the kitchen. The flow of this one was very different because they just had so many shock moments, and everything escalated to insane action sequences. For example, At the end when the raptors were fighting with the indominus rex and one gets thrown into a restaurant window and bursts into flames. Presumably it landed on a grill, but the amount of fire was quite unnecessary, as were some of the other pyrotechnics during that big fight. There were less scenes where there are one or two people dealing with one or two dinosaurs, like in the original, and I think the entertainment value of those scenes went overlooked because the director tried so hard to put in so many "wow" moments. 

Also, the scene with the flying dinosaurs attacking everyone was pretty insane and then left unresolved. We know that eventually those people that survived made it to the evacuation site and then left the island, but the heroes just essentially had bigger fish to fry and left all the guests to continue to be attacked until I guess the flying dinos were just done. We don't know because we didn't see the end of it. We just saw that same area later when it was empty. I kind of just wish they had shown one peripheral character at least doing something to divert those dinosaurs or get people to safety or something while everyone else left to deal with the bigger dinosaur. 

Wow, I didn't plan on writing this much about an action movie. Anyway, overall it was entertaining and fun to see on the big screen. There were also some little allusions to the first film that were fun to spot, like Mr. DNA in the visitors' center. There were a few satisfying moments where characters and some dinosaurs get their comeuppance. 3 out of 5 stars.

Buongiorno

So we had beautiful frozen gnocchi left over from our class over the weekend. I my attempt to reheat and cook it I have utterly destroyed it. It is still edible, but no longer resembles its original shape and texture. Sadness.

In other happier news about sort-of-Italian things, I recently found out my little cousin/goddaughter is acting in The Barns at Wolftrap's production of The Marriage of Figaro. From what I know it's a little part with no individual lines; nonetheless, it's still quite impressive for her first gig. All little girls have some fantasy at some point about being an actress, but she's actually getting to do it. One day when she wins her Tony or Emmy or Oscar, hopefully she'll thank me for my encouragement during our afternoon Justin Beiber dance parties back in the day. 

...That's all I've got. Finito. 

Long Live the Queen

Thanks for giving us the day off, Elizabeth II! 

After our short Hunter Valley getaway, we have filled our weekend with family facetiming, doing some chores, and going out and having a few drinks with our ultimate frisbee friends. Today we are going climbing at the gym and attending trivia. Gotta love a long weekend!

< 38

Supposedly, the average American spends 38 hours stuck in traffic a year. I imagine if you live near a major city like Washington, DC, you experience much more than that. 

Since living in Australia, I suspect we have spent 1-2 hours in traffic. It makes a difference when you don't drive a car nearly as often, but even when we do it is simply very rare that encounter traffic. Obviously there are less people in this country, but in general there is better infrastructure that minimizes the need for driving, which eliminates the traffic for those who do drive. Buses, trains, and bike commuting reduce the regular peak hour traffic. If people travel between major cities more than about a two hour drive away, they tend to fly.

If Michael and I were going to leave the DC area for a weekend getaway, we would simply expect for our driving time to be increased by an hour or two no matter what direction we were heading. Here, we just don't need to factor in extra time like that. It has been nice to live mostly without that frustration. 

Hunter Valley Getaway

To celebrate our anniversary, we decided to spend a night/day out in the Hunter Valley. Hunter Valley is about a 2 hour drive north of Sydney and is a famous wine growing region in Australia.  After heading up Friday after work, we spent the night at the Hunter Valley Bed & Breakfast which was average at best. The only redeeming qualities were seeing kangaroos in the field from the breakfast table and Michael playing fetch with Mojo (the dog). 

Afterwards, with little useful advice/direction from the b&b, we headed over to check out the Hunter Valley Gardens. On the walk up towards it we were discussing how much we were willing to pay to walk around a garden and settled on $12 each.  However, when we found out admission was $27 per person that settled that. 

Instead, we decided to aqua golf, i.e., drive golf balls into a small lake. If you managed to hit a ball into one of the tiny floating nets, you win free prizes (depending on the net hit). Amazingly, 1 ball after calling it, Michael hit the ball into the net that won us a free entry to the gardens. Afternoon planned. 

However, we didn't have time to see the gardens yet as we had to head over to the restaurant for our gnocchi class! Below are some pictures from the restaurant, Il Cacciatore.

Class was followed by a delicious lunch including some of the gnocchi we made. 

After lunch we headed back to the garden to redeem our prize. The garden was broken into different regions: Chinese Gardens, Italian Grotto, Indian Mosaic, etc... It was nice, but definitely not worth $54. Michael was happy because he saw 3 new birds, bring his total up to 182.

We enjoyed our time in Hunter Valley although I can't say that we had a typical visit to the area. Next time, maybe we'll actually visit a winery.

La Vie en Rose: Quatre

Today Michael and I celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. These past four years we've travelled around North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Michael supported me as I completed my masters degree. We've moved from Northern Virginia to Sydney, Australia. We've jumped out of a plane together. I can only imagine that the next four years will include more travels and unexpected events. 

I'll leave you with two songs; the first was the song that was playing when I walked down the aisle, the second played as we departed.

When did June happen?

It's cold here. That is all.