Life goes on...



Kitchen



Lounge area



So it has been quite a while since I last updated this, but at the special request of someone very dear to me here it goes. Life has been very busy up here, between getting stuff done for school, attempting to do the touristy thing as well as going home to visit all of my dear ones, time has flown. The following photos are of my unit nearly fully furnished.



Laundry



Spare room/makeshift clothesline :)



It's a hard thing to be in a position like mine where there is absolutely no guarantee that I will be given a new position at the end of my contract. Therefore, you might find that the furnishings are a touch spartan, but that is more or less because I don't really want to be storing things if I end up back in Brisbane on the relief circuit... but hopefully it won't come to that.



   

Bedroom



Dining Area











The process of claiming my own space Part 1...

Front Patio

From Front door looking in

'Lounge' area

Kitchen area

My room

Having been given a unit by the department it meant that coming up here was much easier to do at such short notice. Upon arrival though I found that the unit was not quite as clean as I would have liked. So that meant, of course, that cleaning would need to be done before all of my furniture came up. These photos are of the unit before the cleaning took place. As you can see the unit is a little on the small side, but still very liveable. Cleaning didn't really take that long, but it did give me the opportunity to get a feel for the place. Once I'm completely unpacked I will upload more photos :) Super excited about moving in... such a pity it doesn't have power at the moment :(

Laundry

Spare room

More later xoxo

One week down...

Well I managed to survive the first week with minimal dramas! The large majority of my students are going to be absolute pleasures to teach but, as always, there are going to be a couple of real rat bags that are going to drive me absolutely insane.

The staff here are really fantastic. They are supportive and aways happy to give me a hand if I need it... which admittedly seems to happen a lot :S

I have a 'new' computer and all my sign-ins up and going which makes life much easier, although the computer is that old that it doesn't have an SD card reader so no photos yet. Having said this, apparently the staff are up for new ones in Term 2 so we shall see how that one goes.

Still living in a motel unit in town, mainly because when I went to move a whole pile of stuff out to my unit on Thursday I discovered that someone had been in it and had locked the glass door, a door that I don't have a key for :( I'm pretty sure it was just the Accommodation Officer out here doing a final check being the person that locked it and she managed to track down the missing key, but unless the person who has the key put it in my pigeon hole on Friday after I left school (not that I can get into the staff common room anyway) I won't be getting that key until Monday. So hopefully I will manage to make the move sometime mid week.

On the bright side, all my belongings should arrive on Friday! Yay for pots, pans and furniture! I am seriously getting sick and tired of noodles and frozen dinners!

Going to take a trek down to Cairns tomorrow for some household furnishings that you can't get in a town like Mossman, assuming that I can manage to stop procrastinating with the lesson planning, which means I'd better get back to it.

Love you xoxo

I've survived the first weekend!

Well, I've managed to survived the first weekend away from everyone. Spent a large portion of it in the staffroom at school using the computer and the internet, but I did manage to stay out of the school until after Sabbath at least.

The church in Mossman is small and very old, so you can imagine how the eyes of the members lit up when the much younger me turned up. Anyway, an old couple took me home for lunch which was the first real meal I've eaten since leaving home.

This morning was spend cleaning up my unit. Pics will follow once I've got reliable internet. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I feel better for having cleaned it at least. I just can't really wait until my own belongings come and I can make it feel more like home.

School starts tomorrow which is exciting, but I'm scared at the same time. For the first time I will be completely responsible for those kids. No superviser to give me back up or anything like that. But I know I can do it, because my supervisors knew it and to sell myself short would be to laugh in the face of everything they said. Not to put aside every bit of support from my friends and family.

Love you xoxo

One small phone call that changed my world

God works in mysterious ways... One minute I'm a boring retail drone, the next I'm being whisked half a continent away to take a teaching position in the small town of Mossman, about an hour north of Cairns. Lovely little town, as long as you don't value a towns beauty by the amount of McDonald's, Nandos and KFC's in the general vicinity (because if you do you'll be sadly disappointed by the fact that the closest ones are probably in Cairns).

Having not left my dearest family and closest friends for such a long period of time, homesickness has been a big issue for me over the last couple of days, so it was suggested to me to create this blog as a way of keeping everyone in the loop with what is happening with me so far away from many of you. I will attempt to keep this up to date but you will have to forgive me if I miss a few days as the life of a teacher is very busy.

So what has happend so far...

Currently I'm holed up in a motel across the road from the school I will be teaching at. The room is serviceable, but there's no place like home - which is something I really don't have at the moment. However, I do have a unit supplied by good ole Dicky for a nominal rent, however it is unfurnished, not very useful for a good nights sleep. Furthermore, it appears to have been rather empty for a while son there is quite a great deal of dust, not particularly healthy. But mercy upon mercies it does have a fridge, stove, washing machine and clothesline so there's a lot of money that I don't have to spend to make it liveable thank God!

The last couple of days I've spent basically familiarising myself with school procedures and curriculum - quite a lot to take in in such a short space of time so it has crossed my mind to move into the staff room temporarily and turn into one of those teachers that spends so much time at school they may as well live there :) but everyone needs down time.

Anyway more to come later, hopefully with pictures once I can get a computer set up at school.

Love you xoxo