Michael's Turn

I've been well enough to work the last few days, which is good in general, but not good for my voice. As I am slowly getting better from my sore throat and stuffy sinuses, Michael has come down with the flu and is currently out of commission. This is the most I have ever seen him sleep in a 24 hour period. At this point we are just trying to get through the week, kind of exhausted. We even missed our weekly frisbee game, which is a rarity.

I suppose it is just the season for a week like that. While everyone in the homeland is complaining of sweltering heat, we are all fighting sicknesses and trying to keep warm with more-or-less adequate space-heaters. I think the coldest bit of winter is probably already over by now; we'll see. "Christmas in July" themed events actually feel more appropriate here than the December festivities. The Northern Hemisphere expats can break out their tacky sweaters, unlike at the the real Christmas time. 

I always forget gargling with warm sea salt water is really good for you when you're sick, until I'm almost better. Then I think, "Why wasn't I doing this the whole time?! Why don't I do this even when I'm not sick?". You'd think that would be more valuable information that some of the other trivial things my brain remembers.

And now I'm off to get some early sleep. Buenas noches. 

Sick Day

I took a much-needed sick day today since I have no voice, and you kind of need a voice to teach. Not to mention, my sinuses were also horribly clogged and uncomfortable this morning. Usually if I have a day where I'm not working, I try to be as productive as I can. Not today - my goal was mainly to have as few human interactions as possible so I could rest my voice. I did a little bit of cooking and cleaning and finally watched the rest of The Theory of Everything. I suppose it's good I waited until a time that I could relate to not being able to talk, not that my day of little talking at all compares to not being able to speak or move most of one's body for the rest of one's life, but nonetheless it makes you think. 

It is nice to be able to take a sick day when I need to. Obviously I want to work as many days as I can so I don't miss out on earning money. If I need a day, though, it's nice to not need to get it approved by a supervisor, find someone to replace myself, or feel guilty that I'm leaving a team short-staffed. At my old workplace here they required all staff to bring in a doctor's note for any sick leave taken, which is a tad overboard on the how-little-do-you-trust-your-employees scale. 

Time for some weekly trivia. I'll bring a little notepad and pen so I don't undo the improvement to my vocal cords. 

Gong Greatness

Our team won the tournament this weekend, and it was a lot of fun. One of our friends broke his finger during one of the games, which was not pretty. It was literally bent sideways. He was actually back from getting it set and X-rayed with time to spare to watch us in the finals. There were a few other minor injuries on the team, but luckily nothing serious. Unfortunately, since I already had a mild sore throat/cold and was talking a lot on the sideline, I lost my voice. A small price to pay for glory, perhaps. 

More, please

You may recall I posted a while back about Michael training our cats to do tricks. The two tricks they can do when properly motivated are high-five and meerkat (standing on hind legs). If they don't see a reward at this point, they couldn't care less. Michael also started teaching Ninja how to sit, but we'll see if that one takes. 

Earlier I was eating some chips and dip. Eve was staring up at me me and high-fived my foot to get my attention, as if to say, "I'm here. Give me a chance to earn one. I'm high-fiving you. Give me one. Pleeeeeaaasssse." So I put my hand down and said, "high five" and she did it to earn a chip. We did that a few times and it was good times. She usually does this now when I'm eating chips. I suppose I can't think of better way of being able to tell whether or not training has worked - the animal initiating the trick when they see a reward they want. It's kind of like she only knows one word in sign language, and it only applies in one specific situation. It's still better than most cats, though.

Watch the tram car please

As the week comes to a close we are preparing for the (ultimate frisbee) Gong Tournament down in Wollongong this weekend. We went last year and had a good time. Meanwhile, our friends back in the states are doing their annual migration to Wildwood, NJ, for the big annual beach tournament. Wildwood is on a much more gigantic scale than Gong - I estimate Wildwood has about 800 teams to organize (200 fields with two teams playing each other at a time, and each team has a bye every other game), while Gong has... eight? Wildwood has it's sensory-overloading boardwalk, where you can get fried oreos and cheesesteaks, swim in the ocean with a couple hundred other people, or ride a roller coaster or play skee-ball when you're not playing. Gong has a few restaurants and bars, and a pretty quiet and empty shoreline in the winter. 

Whether it's a small beach town here or the Jersey Shore, ultimate players are taking over this weekend.

Picasso vs. Da Vinci

As a substitute, I get to experience different learning environments. So far this week, I've been to two familiar but polar opposite schools. 

One has pretty much done away with desks and allows the children to sit where they choose in the room to do their work. There are small couches, stools and a few tables, pillows, lap-desks, etc. It's a very unstructured space. The teachers and principal at that school are quite easy going and not particular about following anything to the letter.

The school I worked in today is super structured, with each child having their own spot and expected to sit or stand up straight at all times with their eyes on you like a robot. When they are at an assembly lining up they are expected to be perfectly behaved, with not even a whisper or looking in another direction. They are so particular at that school down to the fact that the principal will critique the way a child greets him if he is unsatisfied, and he will insist they repeat doing it until perfect. 

There are pluses and minuses for me and for the kids in both settings. The unstructured setting has fewer rules for me, but it also means I have less to enforce with the kids, which can make getting them all on the same page difficult some times. If I'm asking them to do something in an orderly way and they are not used to it, they just stare at me blankly. There is not the expectation of my class looking perfect when someone walks in. They want to see the kids engaged and working, but that could mean the kids are talking to each other and sitting stretched out comfortably on the floor. At the very structured school, if someone walks in and the room is not in perfect order and silent, even if the kids are doing their work, you get an instant shame glance and the kids are reprimanded. The plus is that, since I know the structure and correct language, if I say certain things to the kids at any class in the school, they are likely to respond and do what I say. Since I know the reward system, I know what carrots are available to dangle in front of them. There is continuity among the staff interactions with students.

There is no right way to structure the school setting, and I think the "perfect" one would have a mixture of structure and un-structured space and time. I enjoy going back and forth between different worlds, but it does kind of boggle my brain sometimes.

Ultimate Update

In case you haven't been following ultimate frisbee lately, Australian ultimate has made some big strides internationally. Ellipses just became the first non-American team to ever with the US Open tournament a few weeks ago. Also, just yesterday, the Australian mixed team came in 2nd (the US team came in first) in the Under 23 World Tournament. It's always nice to see people we have played with or against go on to be successful. Congrats, guys!

I'll be there for you

It has been an eventful weekend, full of a lot of the usual stuff. We played some boardgames with friends, climbed with friends, ate savoury and sweet pies with friends, had some drinks and explored the Glebe/Chippendale neighborhood with friends, and played frisbee with friends. It was quite a social time. Our favorite new places we discovered were Friend in Hand and Knox Street Bar. 

As the weekend winds down, my work assignments have picked back up and I'm ready to hit the ground running.

Guten Tag

Term three is getting started at NSW Public Schools. I've had some days of work, but not a completely full schedule like I had at the end of last term yet. I think things will pick up again shortly. 

A new frisbee season has started in our Wednesday night league, and Michael has joined for the first time. We have started off with a win under our belts, so that's always nice. 

Michael recently earned a promotion at work, which we will celebrate with a meal at Pinbone tonight. We were actually already planning on eating there already and found out about the promotion after the fact, but it's still a good retroactive excuse to plan a nice dinner out. A friend sent us an article about the restaurant, about how it's basically really good and loved by the regulars, but it's still not popular enough and is closing down within a month. It will be bittersweet if we we end up really liking the place. So it goes.

Right now my parents and brother are traveling to Munich for the wedding of a family friend. Michael and I were invited to this wedding, but could not make it all the way over to Europe this time, considering all the other travel we have this year. Living on the East Coast of the US and flying over to Europe is the equivalent of living in Australia and traveling to Asia, and vice versa. It's one of the pros and cons of being here. Asia is more accessible, but Europe is less so. Anyway, Munich is one of my favorite cities in Europe, so I'll be there in spirit. I will also be eating gummy bears, chocolate, obatzda, pretzels, brats, drinking golden brews at long wooden benches, and singing "99 Luftballoons" in spirit as well. 

The Teeny Tiny White Thing

One minute you're trucking along, totally normal, going about your day. The next minute, "Ahhhh, get this microscopic stabbing thing out of my eye!" That was me Monday. I was taking a shower around 5pm and all of a sudden I felt something in my eye. I've dealt with this about a thousand times before, so I did the usual stuff. Since I was in the shower I flushed my eye a little with water, I closed my eye and moved it around, I tried to flush my eye with eyedrops, and I even held a hot compress on it after a half hour of other things not working. Eventually it came down to, "If I don't take a cab to the nearby clinic in the next few minutes, the clinic will close and I may have to deal with this pain all night". I also didn't want to damage and irritate my eye any further than it already was in my attempts.

It's a good thing I got to the clinic five minutes before it was about to close. The first doctor couldn't get it out. The second was able to get the teeny tiny white thing off my cornea my after numbing my eye and using a device that was essentially a pin; if he hadn't been able to get it out I would have had to go to the hospital. Apparently this mysterious white thing had lodged itself into my cornea, and it was scratching up the inside of my eyelid for the last hour. 

Now my eye is on the mend and I have some eyedrops to keep it from getting infected. The whole ordeal of going to the clinic and then getting a prescription only took about an hour and I was still able to make it to trivia only five minutes late. 

Beware of teeny tiny white things, though. They strike when you're least expecting it. 

What an exhausting weekend.

Saturday we went on the Sydney Pelagics and Nature Watching Tour (the above photo was taken by someone on our tour). This is no little two or three hour tour, it's an all day affair. The boat went out to an area where there is an underwater mountain where fish and sea birds tend to congregate, and then to the continental shelf. We saw several species of albatross, which are quite majestic and graceful since they have such a long wingspan. We also saw a few other bird species we hadn't seen before, several humpback whales. and dolphins. Bird photos can be seen in Michael's Flickr album (the new photos are mostly under the "Albatross, Petrels, and Shearwaters" heading. The trip was pretty fun except for the two times they stopped the boat for extended periods and it was rolling from side to side quite a bit, making us not feel so great. I could have done without that. As soon as we got moving again, though, things were fine and it was a nice, cool, sunny day to spend out on the water. After returning, we had another delicious dinner at Micky's and relaxed.

Sunday was all frisbee all day. We played in a local one day tournament, mostly with and against friends and local rivals. It was good fun and we brought home the victory. And now we are sitting on the couch under a big warm blanket nearly about to pass out before 8pm. 

Ticket to Ride

Perhaps re-watching Parks and Recreation subliminally inspired me, but made arrangements for us to visit Yosemite National Park during our trip back to the states in September. Michael and I love the national parks and are want to see as many of them as we can. Yes, we own the National Parks Passport and collect the stamps. Between this, seeing Lake Tahoe for the first time, enjoying attending a wedding with friends, and seeing our friends and family back home, these next two months cannot pass fast enough. 

I've been away from the states for a year straight at this point; the longest ever for me. It'll be nice to go back when the weather of both places will kind of match up. Last time I went back from the middle of winter in Australia to the middle of summer in the states. Early spring here will be sort of similar to early fall back home, I think. 

On an unrelated note, since Michael and I go to boardgame nights semi-regularly, I have found a new game I love: Sheriff of Nottingham. It's a game that involves bribery, mind games, deception, and lie-detecting, and leads to a lot of laughs. It's also simple enough that you could play it with people that are not necessarily gamers. This game has shown me that I am at best an average liar, but I am really good at detecting when other people are lying. Michael is the opposite; he is pretty good at lying, but bad at detecting when others are lying. 

Add this to the list of reasons we know Michael's brain works very differently from mine. I'm left-handed/ambidextrous, he's a righty. I can visualize anything in my mind's eye, and he does not think visually at all. I often think in words, like an internal monologue, he doesn't. Brains are so interesting. 

Mmmm... brains... I have no way of bringing this post full circle so I'll just end it here :)

All the Time and Energy

My two-week-long school holidays are in their final days. It has been a pleasant change to have all the time and energy to do everything I've wanted and needed to do. Appointments complete. Errands complete. Extra projects complete. Apartment clean. Travel reservations booked. I think the school break will end just as I start itching to have more work again. 

Proud from Afar

So proud of the US team for winning the Women's World Cup! 

Independence Day Activities

It took a year, but we have kind of got a regular climbing thing going now. We usually go late Saturday morning with a few friends and then go out to lunch afterwards. This weekend we tried The Pie Tin, which we have only heard people rave about. It lived up to the hype. They have traditional Australian savoury pies with mince or steak, but they also have more modern/fusion ones like mac n' cheese with spinach and pumpkin, duck, spiced lamb, lentil, etc. The crust is just perfect, which I think is what sets apart a mediocre pie from an amazing pie. On the side you can get a choice of salads or chips (fries) or kumara chips. Kumara is a fancy word for sweet potato, and they are delicious. They also have a ton of sweet pies for dessert, like whipped lime, tim tam, snickers, oreo, lemon meringue, etc. They are all also picturesque and delectable. We will definitely be going back to the Pie Tin. Between eating there and the Bourke St. Bakery, I'm gonna need to climb, run, and bike more. Worth it.

After lunch we went to see Avenue Q at the Enmore Theater in Newtown. It was an impressive display of puppetry, and of course it was funny. I suppose this was the most American thing we did on the 4th, other than over-eating. 

We ended the long day with dinner at our friends' place at Bondi Beach, which included playing some classic Pac-Man, tasting homemade crackling, and discussing terrible riddles.

Happy Independence Day!

Flatball

Last night was the finals in my Wednesday night frisbee league. We lost the game at universe point, making a big comeback (but not big enough). We came in second in the league, which is pretty good, especially considering our best thrower/captain was absent for the last two games and I had to act as captain. Michael came to cheer us on; it was his first time visiting the league even though he knows a lot of people who play there. It's funny to end on a loss but still consider it a victory of sorts. In two weeks the league will start up a new season and I will have a new team.