Explorations

Rejoining the Stream

Far from being a cruisy introduction back into the swing of university life, the past week consisted of a sudden bursting back upon the world, or a bursting of the world back upon me. Transferring faculties was a little daunting, but I am now a proud Education student, happy to be studying a degree that will actually get me a job. The ever-loyal arts student in me was, however, immensely gratified when an old friend of mine, who is now focussing on the Arts segment of a combined degree admitted that even though she would be spending far fewer hours in formal classes this year, she found that she was spending “every second reading”. I only wish that this debunking of the infamous “bachelor of attendance” myth had come from a former commerce/law/science student, seeing as engineering is probably the only faculty that has as many taunts thrown in their direction.

In terms of the class-time/ independent study balance my new course seems to be situated on the Arts end of the spectrum, with 8 hours of classes and a three-day week of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. As well as starting back studying teaching, I also started actually teaching at church. Sunday the 19th was my first day teaching primary Sunday school for the 5pm church service. Apparently the children behaved better for my presence, which was an encouraging change from high school scripture teaching, but I wonder how long it will take the new-scary-teacher novelty to wear off. Its sooo hard to find the right balance with kids…you know on the one hand I’m scared of them and want them to like me, and on the other hand I can comfortably slip into my scary persona and frighten the living daylights out of them. Highlights so far have included discovering that John the Baptist actually wore a novelty glasses and moustache set, and shocking a child into silence by rousing at them in Japanese. I’ve also started teaching English language classes at Church on Tuesday mornings. Its such important work, helping these people out of the isolation caused by the language barrier. They’ve assigned me to work one-on-one with one of the women there, who speaks so little English that she can’t even be integrated into a beginner’s class. However, we soon discovered, much to our mutual relief, that she and I both speak French. Tomorrow I’ll have to be more discipline and use as much English as possible.


Having Mondays off gives one more freedom to enjoy the weekend without the pressure of needing to recover or study in preparation for the coming week. I’m thinking about going in to uni on Fridays, however, since it will give me more opportunity to either use the computers, library and gym, or hang out with my friends (depending on how disciplined I’m being). The last two Mondays have been spent doing chores, running errands and writing blogs etc. This Friday was much more interesting. In the morning I went to see my specialist in Sydney and despite taking ample materials with me I managed to do almost no study during the entire round trip. The first leg of the journey was spent chatting to the elderly lady in the seat next to me. She was rather loquacious, confiding to me that her daughter is always telling her she talks to people too much, so we had something in common. It turned out that she was quite an inspirational woman, having managed to raise twin daughters and work as a professional accountant in the days before women’s liberation. I suggested that she should get involved in helping and counselling younger women, but she told me that no one was interested in what she had to say. I guess it just goes to show what the ageist miss out on.
On Friday evening at FOCUS (Fellowship of Overseas Christian University Students) we had a pot-luck international dinner to celebrate the first week back of uni and the beginning of the Introducing God course. I rang up a friend in the group and suggested that, if she was cooking, rather than going all the way home, I could go round to her place and we could cook together. She wasn’t, but she said I could come anyway. However, I ended up feeling quite terrible, because here I was basically taking over and messing up a strange kitchen for my own purposes. I made a carrot salad according to our family recipe, and spaghetti bolognaise. The evening went well but there was plenty of my food left over, so I gave it to my friend’s housemates as a kind of ‘kitchen-rental’.

If it doesn’t sound like I did much actual study this week, that’s because I didn’t. I attended classes, but the rest of my time was spent doing all those beginning of semester chores like fee-paying, paper-sorting, book-buying etc., and, of course, catching up with friends whom I hadn’t seen for a while. On Wednesday I went shopping with my sister, whose wedding photos won her a handsome gift voucher for the jewelry shop she purchased her accessories from. I quite considerately insisted that she should not be allowed to spend so much money all by herself, and my selfless offer to be her shopping partner earned me some lovely presents for my imminent 21st birthday. On Thursday I had lunch with Helen from China, who gave me the most gorgeous present (embarrassing seeing as my present was pretty cheap) and Apeksha from India, a fellow Bollywood fan.

Of course I am aware that I haven’t been keeping up with my distant/online friends (especially Nicole, Karen, Lisa, Claude, Uncle Colin and Marlean) Apologies, Hugs and Kisses guys. I will EVENTUALLY get up to date with my emailing. In the mean time, I do try and keep my blog up to date so we have some sort of communication going.

posted by Foodfairy @ 11:53 PM