They call it intensive for a reason

Phew! Back from the Latin Intensive School (formerly called residential school)..... 9am -5pm  Latin for 3 days. 

Our lecturer supports the immersion method of language acquisition so all our text and a great deal of the teaching was in Latin. And of course we had to answer as much as we could in Latin - OMG!!! I must say though, I had a ball. I much prefer Latin over Linguistics or English so far.

What an interesting weekend..... 

Accommodation wouldn't have been a problem if I'd been going alone; I could have just stayed in one of the colleges but...... Huon is going through an anxious phase (he's afraid to be on his own and afraid that either Ian or myself won't come home) so we all drove up together very early Friday morning.

Apparently it was an auspicious date for holding events as, in addition to the Intensive, there was a music in the vineyard style concert which meant that every motel room and stable had been booked since December on the Saturday night. We were able to find a room Friday but had to head 40km out of town to find a room Saturday night. The motel on Friday night was close to the main road through town so not only did we have the local hoons squealing tyres and revving engines we also had lorries going past. Tired doesn't come close to how I felt for Saturday's class. 

You couldn't have swung a cat in the second motel room and quite unintentionally, I'm sure, it was back in vogue, being seriously vintage....including the bed. So, feeling as if I was living in some slightly out of phase reality I made it back for day 3. I was so tired at this point that I cared not a jot whether I made an ass of myself so I actually did better than previous days.

On arriving home, Sunday night, I all but passed out fully clothed on my beautiful, glorious, ever-so snuggly bed.

Today I nearly feel normal (whatever that is).

Deer in the headlights

I knew that uni was going to be a lot of work but....holy shit! I'm doing a 75% load and that still requires 45 hours a week. That's 9 hours a day if I only work 5 days or 7.something if I spread it over 6.  Jeeeeezus I'm glad I didn't sign up for the 4 unit trimester gig.

Studying by distance does have it's advantages but if I had a choice I think I'd rather be an on-campus student. We have forums where we can post questions or discuss the subjects and all the lecturers except one are really good at checking in at least once a day but I think it's a poor substitute for face to face input.

There appears to be a problem with our Classical Languages dept. or rather someone in the uni has caused a problem for them. I have no idea of the politics or whatever but our poor lecturer is having to teaching all the Greek and now the Latin stream as well. Why the uni wouldn't allow the prof that was going to take Latin to do so is anyone's guess.

When I'm not feeling like a deer in the headlights, I am really enjoying getting stuck in and ****brag alert**** we had the first of four Linguistic quizzes today.......results 23.75 out of 24. Only worth 10% but it's a start.

It's all go, next up is res school for Latin  - which should be loads of fun (and I'm not being sarcastic).

Liebster Blog Award

My very good friend and belly dance teacher Jade has awarded me the Liebster Blog award. Wow! My poor blog is such a starved and neglected little thing, I never thought anyone would think of awarding it (or is that affording it) more than a passing glance.


The conditions of receiving this award are that I mention Jade , that I leave her a comment and that I award 5 other blogs with less than 200 followers. 


So (drumroll please) here they are:

• Cotswold Peeps (gorgeous photos of the Cotswolds that make me homesick for England)

• Greenspirit Arts (beautiful natural art and photography)

• Snapper and Griffin (fabulous stories)

• Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast (although this blog is by invitation only and I'm not sure how its author will feel about accepting it. I feel it may be just a little too cheesy. I'm sure I'll be told. :) )

• Menopausal Old Bag (her humour often has me weeping with mirth)

It's a shame that I can't nominate Notes from the Fae Side or Moonlight and Hares but they have too many followers to be eligible.


Thank you Jade.

New Life as a Student

Well, the first steps have been taken. The excitement on receiving a letter of offer in response to my admission application has worn off. The enrollment is done and I am now officially a student. Books have been ordered - I just hope they arrive before teaching starts. Now I am just nerves, nerves and more nerves.

2012, here I come

Couldn't resist this image

Happy New Year! If I can still be saying that at this late stage of January. Let us hope that 2012 will shine as an outstandingly good and happy year for us all.

Those that are in the business of prophesy, scrying, card reading etc have promised a year of great changes. Well, the year has certainly started that way for me. I have made a decision that, had you told me a month ago, I would have thought you mad.

Having been disappointed in my attempts to gain even an interview let alone employment (despite what I think is a very good resume), I have decided (cue drum roll) to go to uni. I understand from the media that I am not alone in changing careers at this seemingly late stage. I'm hoping to enroll in a combined Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching course but am yet to hear whether my application for admission has been accepted. I should know by Friday - fingers crossed.

OMG! A fortnight of trawling the internet, of hair tearing and gnashing of teeth over poorly designed websites and worrying over my application and all I end up with is one tiny paragraph. *sigh*  The bureaucratic hoops that have to be jumped through are enough to put all but the most fervent future student off study forever and I admit that the Centrelink application form for Austudy was sufficient to bring me to tears. I dare say that it won't be the last time either.

"Why be happy when you can be normal?"

There's a book I want to buy. It's author is Jeanette Winterson and I've borrowed its title for this post. Despite the recommendations made by friends, I have never read any of her work......that is until today. An edited extract appeared  in the magazine section of today's paper and it was this question that struck a chord. Except that I would (and have) asked it the other way around "Why be normal when you can be happy?"

 It was this question that had me leave the corporate world and Sydney and move to a little town in regional NSW where no-one looks askance at hippies, ferals or any other non-normal person. Art and music proliferate and there is a grass roots movement to a more positive, sustainable, community centred approach to life. Yes, it's all very idealistic and the competition for who has the biggest income/superannuation fund/house etc has been replaced with who has the most sustainable lifestyle, who buys the most organic and how big your permaculture vegie patch is and whether you have your own chooks*.......(sigh) Nevertheless, I am happier here than I ever was in the city, wearing the corporate uniform and playing the role (which I think I did quite well) while in my quiet moments I felt lonely, out of place and living a lie. I wanted to grow my hair long and let it knot into dreads (not that I did), I wanted to wear tie-dye dresses and leave my face devoid of make-up, throw my basic black courts in the bin and run barefoot and wild along beaches and take dips in almost pristine creeks and feel that I had found my "tribe". To an extent I have succeeded. 

So it saddened me the other day when I went shopping for an interview outfit to find, despite my stated intent to buy bright and colourful clothes that could pass for appropriate office wear, myself back in the corporate uniform and immediately feeling the heaviness and dread from memories of that earlier time.

Colourful is, I suppose, another word that could be used to describe this town - most of the time. As a result of visioning workshops run by Transition Bellingen we now have a new festival. One to celebrate the river that runs through our town. It was held last Saturday, a perfect Spring day. There were canoe races, entertainers, musicians, storytellers, interactive circus for the children and in the evening there was a loy krathong ceremony (which, unfortunately, we missed) and lantern parade led by carnivale style drummers and dancers.  We had a great day and I for one hope they hold it again next year

(This post was meant to be put up in October 2011)

*Chickens, for those not up with Aussie slang. Googs are what they lay, (Don't ask, I have no idea.)

Too Long

I'm sitting here wondering what to write and how to write it given that it's been such a long time since I visited here - you can blame facebook for that. There seems so much to write about but where to start. Like when you catch up with a friend after a year or two and you both know a lot has happened but to encapsulate that in a phone call or over a cup of tea seems impossible. How on earth do you tell them what has happened whilst also conveying all the emotion and meaning held in those events. Or do you just list the things that happened and hope your friend knows you well enough to understand what you went through? Then there are all the little day to day things that make up the year that still add to the journey - like...... the plant you put in last year that has finally decided to bloom or...... learning that it just isn't smart to feed the cat from a china bowl after she woke you at 2am when somehow she managed to smash it even though it was already on the floor....and remembering what sleep deprivation is like when you have to drag yourself from a warm bed to sit with your child at midnight because of a thunderstorm for the second night in a row....or the not so small and quite stressful event of having the landlord "prune" with chainsaw many of the trees that had, so far, provided you privacy (even if it is lovely to have sunshine in the living room). Given that everyone I know seems to have had at least one upheaval this year it shouldn't come as any surprise that we too have had our share.

Okay, so....... Ian has lost his job. Now this sounds a very straight forward thing to say and yes it is but the convoluted path to that outcome started a couple of years ago and much as I would have liked Ian to have walked away from that path, his commitment to the people he worked with would not allow him to do so. Without boring you all to tears with the nitty-gritty, suffice to say that I will never work for a management committee nor recommend doing so to my worst enemy. Having done all he thought possible, he accepted legal advice and allowed things to proceed as they did. Needless to say there are ongoing legal matters associated with his dismissal which I find draining when really I'd like a clean break and to be away from such a toxic environment. We are okay at the moment with the termination payout but that is going to run out soon. Luckily we have a social security safety net that should stop us becoming homeless but I'm hoping Ian will be able to find work soon before we have to resort to "rice and lentil dinners" and candlelight. We've discussed him going back to geology. He gave this up to stay home and help with Huon when it became clear that being autistic, Huon was going to need more and quite different support to a non-autistic child especially when, at the time, we had no label for Huon's behaviour and it was all very stressful and scary. Now Huon is older, talking, going to school and manageable-ish, Ian feels he could go back to fly-in fly-out (fifo) jobs where he might work 10 days on and 5 off or something.All this also means that I must relinquish my role of lady of leisure and look for the perfect job (hahaha) - you know, in school hours with school holidays off and time off to be with Huon when he's home with flu - the same as every other mum.....I wonder what's around the corner.

In the meantime I have put my singing coach on hold but I'm still singing (I'd go mad....er if I didn't) and am continuing with bellydancing..... for the the moment. 


But let's stay with singing......picture a small informal soiree at a friend's house to welcome the installation of her new grand piano. The sun has set and the lights are gently illuminating the room. My small selection of songs has been sung (phew) and enthusiastically received (I love my friends), the piano quartet are setting up for their part of the programme when, for no apparent reason, the power goes out. This is exactly what happened back in July. What would have been just a pleasant evening of music turned into a fun memorable event. Having checked the circuit breakers the search was on for candles and torches - we were not about to pack up and go home. Now instead of being one of the audience, there I was with torch held high so the violinist could read her music. Ditto other "audience" members for the remainder of the ensemble. 

a little too dark to see

 I was so busy reading the music so the torchlight was shining on the correct page, I don't even remember whether they played well or not. The power came back on just as we had all packed up and were about to tuck in to homemade pizza, salad and red wine. What a night!

I have promised my cousin in the UK I would record Panis Angelicus for her wedding anniversary so am trying to organise that. I had been imagining a string ensemble in one of the local old (for Australia) stone churches - video as well as sound - but all that is going to be far too expensive now. I'll have to make do with piano accompaniment in a recording studio and no video - sorry Sarah.

This term I have been learning Tribal bellydance which is improvised troupe dancing. I've been having so much fun but now our teacher wants us to dance at Relay for Life - in public!!!!  PANIC. I've been avoiding thinking about it even when we had a tribal bra making workshop. I was able to just concentrate on choosing bits of fabric and coins and decorative chains and fringes and......mmm being sort of creative and I succeeded in pushing the other thing to the back of my mind. However, the closer this performance gets the more frequently the lurker is jumping, no, more like pouncing to the front of my mind and sending my heart thumping and drying up my mouth. I really hate performing when things are under-rehearsed. Now, I know I said this was improvised dance but there are sequences and signals for those sequences but bloody hell we've only just started learning them - it's going to be disastrous!!!! And I still haven't finished making the bra yet.

work in progress

A chance to get back in touch with my creative skills occurred a couple of weeks earlier during Book Week. School had a favourite book character parade and as we had just had the Harry Potter movies on tv Huon had HP on the brain (and no quips about brains and sauce please). Obviously, with red hair, Huon would make a far better Ron Weasley than a Harry. This was a good decision in the end as about ten Harry Potters participated in the parade but there was only one Ron Weasley. I can't take the credit entirely - Ian did a marvelous job gaffer taping a piece of bamboo for the wand and stuffing an old stocking to make Scabbers the rat. Grandmama printed off a picture of the Gryffindor badge which I laminated and Ian sewed (don't you just love a man who can sew) onto a black hoody. Even with the minimal notice I was still able to dig up some left over wool to hurriedly and therefore badly knit a Gryffindor scarf (I certainly won't be entering the scarf in the craft section of the local ag show). Lucky it was still wintery weather.

Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow.

We had lots of happy feedback from the teachers saying what a great Ron Weasley he was and how much fun all the children had with the wand and the rat  (oops) playing with the rat and making up spells with the wand.

So now it's Spring and we're dressing for three seasons in one day it's either that or dashing home to completely change one's outfit. It's school holidays between third and fourth term and since Ian is home and the weather is getting warmer we may just take the tent down to a friend's property near Crescent Head and see how Huon likes camping. Proper camping - no power or loos or shower facilities (thank goodness there's a dam nearby), lots of wildlife, no neighbours and clear (hopefully) starry skies. Of course if it looks like rain (like it does today) we could just stay at home and make do with hiring a dvd, playing Wii Sports Resort or go 9 pin bowling......