Its been an interesting few days, I went to the country on the weekend, I lit a fire in a few paddocks, and watched them burn. Mark has been at his parents house, on holidays from work.

He has been in Echuca for a few months, working hard at a new job and new position. He has gradually becomming more and more unhappy with it, being so far from friends and family, and me, and the managers at work he is just not getting along with. Sunday he woke up and decided he had had enough. He went to the doctor, and the doctor said he was suffering from stress and depression, and needed to get out of the environment that is making him sick. I rang him monday night while I was on a break from work, and he said he needed me, so I left work sick and drove the two hours to the farm.

He is in the process of getting work transferred to Melbourne to see if a change of scene is all he needs. He went to Echuca with so much promise, and it only takes one or two people to screw that up. If Safeway doesn't work out, maybe he could get his flying licence, do a uni degree, apply for a business job somewhere in the city. There are so many possibilities.

Nice

You will perish of fits. Repeat this to yourself:
"Things can work out even if I don't get
my way. Things can work out even...."

What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
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Echuca would have to be one of the most boring places to drive to ever. That straight road just keeps going and going and going. I keep thinking, 'gee, must be almost there', and then come across a sign that reads 80 kms to Echuca.

Getting here is good though, I am off to work in Echuca today, try something different. Mark is sick, hope that I don't pick it up. Know I will though.

I got better things out of my friday class this week than I did last week. We have to be thinking about interesting and creative ways to present our assignments. Have to have a think about it, the one due first is to look back over our schooling and talk about how we came to choose teaching as a profession. They also want us to think about teaching theory and decide where we stand on that. This course is making me think a lot. I haven't had to think much over the last few months...

We finally had our bunny cage delivered by Stephs parents, yay!, now the bunny can go outside where it can eat grass all day and get really fat. One less animal inside will be great. Last weekend Steph and Annettes parents came to visit, and bought their dog, so we had six people sleeping in five different rooms of the house and a dog, a bunny, and a kitty. Full house!

So after heaps of issues, my enrollment is now finalised, and everything is working out just fine. I am catching up with all the due dates that are coming up soon, but the assignments are not too long yet, and are very interesting. Everything that I am learning at the moment is very useful in the real world. They are skills that I will be using in a few weeks. All the teachers are making very sure that we all understand our legal obligations in schools, I have heard many times these last few weeks that you can't touch students at all, and never be in a room by yourself with them. This is especially underlined in music teachers, as we often give one on one lessons. Have to make sure that there are glass doors, or leave the door open.

I am sitting in the computer room at the uni. Got the three one hour lectures out of the way for the morning. They have been interesting, giving me new things to think about, or new ways to think about things I already know. One of the lectures was talking about language and text, including graphics. I think the guy is being paid by Microsoft, he talked on and on about their latest ads. He was talking about looking at text and graphics, and the instinctive deciphering that happens when we look at things. All the lectures were saying today that a picture or a graph is not self explanatory, you need text to go with it, and prior knowledge about the things in it to understand it.

I have a meeting to finalise classes and hopefully sort out the placement, but I am running out of time before school holidays start for the highschools. If there are no city placements left, I am thinking of taking a country placement, I could do it in Shepparton, back at good old Wanganui, (not shepp high, I don't think) I could do it at Echuca too, or any of the neighbouring cities. We'll see where they suggest.

The house in Melbourne has been so busy over the weekend. I am looking forward to the visitors all going home so that I can have some quiet and things back to normal. I have had a great time with my sister Jill over the weekend, we cruised around the city, taking photos for her art projects and we went to the beach and swam and laid in the sun for a while. We shared a bed for the weekend, and as a sign about how we have grown up, we no longer have trouble sleeping in the same bed, We used to have to have pillows down the middle to seperate us, so we wouldn't kick eachother in the middle of the night.

Anyway, time for lunch. Yum, pumpkin soup.