I had the weirdest dream last night...
I dreamt that my mum and dad kept arguing and my mum then said to me,
"Do you know why your dad and I keep arguing? It's because the truth is I like girls...Yes I'm a lesbian!"
O.O
(NB My mum isn't a lesbian!)
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Tuesday 28 June 2011
The UV's Shine Their Way Through!
Our cousins are the new champions...of the Massey Leisure Centre Mixed Basketball Team league, or whatever it's called!
Tonight was the grand final and since they forgot to invite us to join the team (aheemm!) or watch any of their other games, they finally invited us to come watch their final game, which happened to be the final!
They were all in their fluorescent singlets which was fitting, considering they named their team the U.V's (Ultraviolets)!
The game got off well, with the UV's running out to a huge lead, thanks to their 'import' Jack, one of our cousins' friends who joined the team just for that game. He scored the majority of their points and was quite good with the ball.
By half-time the UV's were comfortably in the lead.
The second half was different, with the opposition slowly catching up to within eight points (that's still quite a big gap but considering they were leading for more than ten points for most of the game...) The UV's pulled away in the last few minutes though and eventually won the final comfortably!
Congratulations you guys! It was good catching up with the family this evening over a game of basketball!
Monday 27 June 2011
Year of the Ice-Cream
This year I seem to be having a thing for buying ice-cream, especially those Tip-Top Trumpets and the Magnum ice-cream popsicles!
In past years I've had a thing for buying hot chips, but this year I've been trying to cut down on the chips because of the salt and oil and clogged arteries, so I end up buying ice-cream, even in the winter!
(Don't blame the photographer, blame the camera :P)
Sunday 26 June 2011
The Auckland Harvest
Last night was the the first night of the Auckland Harvest, a Christian event held at Vector Arena in which Pastor Greg Laurie from the USA was going to give a talk. There were also going to be several well known Christian bands performing as well. They hold this event all around the world and apparently it's in huge demand, with heaps of people having to be turned down at the door.
We originally heard about this event at OCF several weeks ago, and mentioned it to a few of our friends in our youth group. Signs have been going up around Auckland in the last few weeks too and quite a few people have heard about it. That's why we were determined to get there early so we wouldn't get turned away and waste all our effort to get there!
We originally had a dilemma involving transport though, as we could only take one extra passenger, but we had about 3-4 friends who wanted to go too but didn't have any transport! I managed to convince my mum to let us take both cars, with Aonghas driving one and me driving the other (she could sit next to me if she really, really didn't trust me!). The weather was getting worse which made her trust me even less!
We finally left, with Hamish, my mum and I in one car and Aonghas, Jireh, Andrew and Ben in the other. I got to the city first and Aonghas and the others eventually arrived.
We all took a long walk through the rain to Vector Arena where there was already a huge crowd outside the stadium! We heard that we needed tickets to get inside, so while the others got in line, Jireh and I went searching for whoever was handing out tickets. We discovered you get the tickets as you wait in line! Grace soon met up with us, we eventually got our tickets and made it inside.
Rebecca had told me she was going as well, and so I rang her and found out she was waiting outside with her friends. Somehow I managed to spot them come in and take their seats which was unexpected, considering how many people were there! We all tried waving frantically and calling her (but she wouldn't pick up), but she eventually spotted us and waved back!
Finally a video played on the large screens, then a countdown began before the first band The Katinas began playing on stage. I have to admit I wasn't sure I'd like them but they turned out to be the band I enjoyed the most on the night!
After a short introduction by one of the pastors involved in organising the event, the second performance by Phil Joel, a New Zealander took place. He ended his performance with a rendition of the National Anthem.
Martin Smith (former lead singer of Delirious) performed after the offering (buckets were passed all around the stadium). We got a pleasant surprise when we discovered our old school friend Jonathan Wilson was playing the drums in the background for him!
To close off the music numbers, Jeremy Camp, who is probably the most well-known of them all took to the stage.
Even though I didn't really know any of the songs they sung (besides God Defend NZ), it was quite fun singing and screaming (with the words on the large screen) and clapping along to the songs.
Finally Greg Laurie took to the stage. He spoke of how we never know how long our lives are and how we are all sinners. He talked about a whole lot more, but I'm not very good at paraphrasing what he said though!
He was a very good speaker though, making references to celebrities and New Zealand which made for a very interesting talk. If only he could give a sermon at our church!
He was a very good speaker though, making references to celebrities and New Zealand which made for a very interesting talk. If only he could give a sermon at our church!
It didn't feel like his talk lasted very long, despite it lasting for at least an hour. He finished his talk by inviting everyone to declare their commitment to God by coming down to the floor in front of the stage and praying together.
As The Katinas played, we all went down and I'm sure a sizable chunk of the audience did too. Greg then led everyone in a mass prayer in which we recited what he said (I'm aware of how cultish this sounds!).
People then handed out these Bibles with commentary written by Greg to us for free. They also took down our contact details as well to get in touch with us later on I suppose. Grace, Hamish and Aonghas were apparently snubbed by some lady after she asked if they could speak English and if they went to church (to which they replied 'yes' to both questions).
People were slowly leaving the stadium and we made our way out. After I made a trip to the toilet, we bumped into the Living Water Fellowship! It was cool how they recognised us and said hi to us! We all took a group photo before leaving.
It was 10pm and we were all starving so we decided to find somewhere to eat - McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's. None of us could decide so we dropped by McDonald's before finally deciding to go Wendy's!! Oh yeah! Some of the guys had huge meals while some *cough* Grace *cough* only had a teeny weeny cheesecake!
It was 11pm by now so it was time to head back home just in case the others' parents were worrying! The guys went back home in Aonghas's car while I took my mum, Hamish and Grace home, getting lost on the way.
It was a great night out with Christian friends, and a good first experience at Vector Arena!
Saturday 25 June 2011
All is Well Again
My recorder and music theory classes actually didn't go too badly today! My students weren't as out-of-control as they have been in the past weeks, and I think they all actually did some practice!
The only slight let-down was a couple of my students in my music theory class finding the class too hard, which has given me something to think about. I'll have to do something about it to avoid losing their interest completely!
Something that was really nice...in a weird way that was said to me after my last class was when one of my students' grandmothers said to me
"You must have a lot of patience to teach these kids!"
She asked me what I'm up to with myself these days, and I told her I was an intern pharmacist. She said she would've thought I was doing something in teaching!
Something that was really nice...in a weird way that was said to me after my last class was when one of my students' grandmothers said to me
"You must have a lot of patience to teach these kids!"
She asked me what I'm up to with myself these days, and I told her I was an intern pharmacist. She said she would've thought I was doing something in teaching!
The Anderson Name
I managed to trick someone into changing their surname to mine!
Here's to Ruth Anderson (for 24 hours!).
Thursday 23 June 2011
Happy Birthday Dad!
Tonight to celebrate my dad's birthday, our family went out to dinner in the city. We went to Dynasty Restaurant which is just up the road from the AUT Tower, mainly because we bought these vouchers off a one-day website where we could spend twice as much we spent on the voucher. In other words, we bought two $15 vouchers ($30 in total), which meant we could spend $60 on food at the restaurant.
Work was quite slow today so I was really looking forward to dinner after work. We had booked a table for 7pm, so I just waited at Metro to use free wi-fi while waiting for the family to arrive.
Just before dinner time I met up with them outside the restaurant and we all went in together. It was almost empty so I guess we didn't have to book in the end!
My mum had come prepared with a list of dishes she wanted to order, so we just trusted her judgement and let her order (she always makes the good decisions anyway!). She ordered dishes such as Mongolian meat, a tofu dish, chicken pieces with lemon sauce (the dish Hamish seemed to be obsessed with) and some stuff that looked like chop suey.
We just talked for a while as we waited for the food to come out. Hamish has a job interview this Saturday and Aonghas had an exam this morning, in which there was a question that was wrong...
Anyway the food came out quite soon! I'm pretty sure the bowls we had to use for the rice were small, as I found myself refilling my bowl several times!
I seemed to make the most mess though...
The food soon ran out which meant it was time to go and it was barely 8pm! My mum doesn't usually start cooking dinner by 8pm! We got Aonghas to pay the difference and then we decided that it was time for dessert!!
The only reasonably affordable place we could think of was McDonald's, so we all walked down to the one on Queen Street, and I shouted everyone an Oreo shake.
I chose the Strawberry shake as I had tried the Oreo shake when I was with Shen and friends. I think I prefer the Oreo shake though.
We then managed to get home in time for 20/20. I think that was a good night out for dinner! Next time we should try something different, like Italian or Mexican!
Work was quite slow today so I was really looking forward to dinner after work. We had booked a table for 7pm, so I just waited at Metro to use free wi-fi while waiting for the family to arrive.
Just before dinner time I met up with them outside the restaurant and we all went in together. It was almost empty so I guess we didn't have to book in the end!
My mum had come prepared with a list of dishes she wanted to order, so we just trusted her judgement and let her order (she always makes the good decisions anyway!). She ordered dishes such as Mongolian meat, a tofu dish, chicken pieces with lemon sauce (the dish Hamish seemed to be obsessed with) and some stuff that looked like chop suey.
We just talked for a while as we waited for the food to come out. Hamish has a job interview this Saturday and Aonghas had an exam this morning, in which there was a question that was wrong...
Anyway the food came out quite soon! I'm pretty sure the bowls we had to use for the rice were small, as I found myself refilling my bowl several times!
I seemed to make the most mess though...
The food soon ran out which meant it was time to go and it was barely 8pm! My mum doesn't usually start cooking dinner by 8pm! We got Aonghas to pay the difference and then we decided that it was time for dessert!!
The only reasonably affordable place we could think of was McDonald's, so we all walked down to the one on Queen Street, and I shouted everyone an Oreo shake.
I chose the Strawberry shake as I had tried the Oreo shake when I was with Shen and friends. I think I prefer the Oreo shake though.
We then managed to get home in time for 20/20. I think that was a good night out for dinner! Next time we should try something different, like Italian or Mexican!
Wednesday 22 June 2011
Monday 20 June 2011
Chubby Bunny!
Today one of the Sunday School classes went out for lunch at a restaurant during their class which meant us older people in other classes were left behind at church and missed out...so unfair!
Anyway I brought along some marshmellows as I had a score to settle with Rebecca. You may remember that we have been having a few challenges lately, with the most recent ones being the onion and egg eating. We realised it's all tied up so we decided to settle it with a game of Chubby Bunny!
Chubby Bunny - each person takes turns putting a marshmellow in their mouth and saying 'Chubby Bunny'. They keep on putting another marshmellow in their mouth and saying 'Chubby Bunny' until they can no longer do so. The person who can fit the most marshmellows in their mouth wins!
Sharon and Jireh joined in since they had nothing better to do too, and because we were surrounded by little kids they came along and tried to join in (we're not good role models are we?)
So who was the eventual winner? MEEE!! :D
Originally the punishment for Rebecca was to draw a mono-brow and keep it on throughout youth group this Friday, but she was afraid of not being able to remove it, so her punishment is now to wear one of my shirts for the entire duration of youth group this Friday! It just happens to be a combined youth group too!
(This was the best of the worst photos taken of Chubby Rebecca hahaha)
The marshmellows were too much for Tommy, one of the little boys to handle. I shouldn't have told him to spit it into the toilet....it wasn't flushable!
Anyway I brought along some marshmellows as I had a score to settle with Rebecca. You may remember that we have been having a few challenges lately, with the most recent ones being the onion and egg eating. We realised it's all tied up so we decided to settle it with a game of Chubby Bunny!
Chubby Bunny - each person takes turns putting a marshmellow in their mouth and saying 'Chubby Bunny'. They keep on putting another marshmellow in their mouth and saying 'Chubby Bunny' until they can no longer do so. The person who can fit the most marshmellows in their mouth wins!
Sharon and Jireh joined in since they had nothing better to do too, and because we were surrounded by little kids they came along and tried to join in (we're not good role models are we?)
So who was the eventual winner? MEEE!! :D
Originally the punishment for Rebecca was to draw a mono-brow and keep it on throughout youth group this Friday, but she was afraid of not being able to remove it, so her punishment is now to wear one of my shirts for the entire duration of youth group this Friday! It just happens to be a combined youth group too!
The marshmellows were too much for Tommy, one of the little boys to handle. I shouldn't have told him to spit it into the toilet....it wasn't flushable!
Friday 17 June 2011
Two Fellowships Together
Tonight our Oddfellows youth group combined with the Living Water youth group from our sister church in the city. This has become an annual occasion since we got together two years ago. I missed last year's one since it took place down in Christchurch. I'm glad I was up in Auckland this time!
My brothers and I got there just on time since we had to buy supper (the people who usually buy supper *cough* Rebecca!*cough* couldn't make it), and we were surprised at just how tall the guys from the other fellowship were, and how many of them there were! They definitely outnumbered us, since the number of females in our youth group were a little low.
We started off with a bit of singing. This year it was the city church's turn to lead singing and our turn to run the games. They lead three songs, and it was pretty good and meaningful. They sing songs a lot faster than we do!
For the last song we were all asked to stand up together and sing before Gabrielle, one of our youth group leaders started the games.
The first game was to sort ourselves out into alphabetical order based on the first letter of our name. It took a while to get that done! We then called out our names for everyone to hear.
Gabrielle then gave us each three clothes-pins and told us the two banned words for the night were
'No' and 'Know'
If we said either of those words, we had to give one of our clothes-pins to the person who made us say it. It wasn't long till I had to hand over one of mine to Carmen!
We all then headed into the gym where we played a game our youth group played on the very first youth group. Two teams sit opposite side a sheet. One person from each team come up to the sheet and as soon as it drops, both people have to try call out the name of the person facing them and whoever does so first wins. For the first few times people from the same youth group faced each other so there wasn't much getting-to-know-the-other-youth-group going on! One team eventually realised they could see the other team's reflection in the window so we had to cover it up!
The final game involved each team sending one person to sit up in front. They were each assigned a celebrity (they weren't told who they were) and took turns to ask yes/no questions as to who they were, in order to be the first to figure it out.
The first round involved celebrities, with Cleo figuring out that she was President Obama first (key question: am I black?), followed by Claire who correctly guessed she was Jet Li, then our team's representative Tiana guessing she was Beethoven (she went from completely lost to correctly guessing!) and then the final guy Jed realised he was Kate Middleton.
My brothers and I got there just on time since we had to buy supper (the people who usually buy supper *cough* Rebecca!*cough* couldn't make it), and we were surprised at just how tall the guys from the other fellowship were, and how many of them there were! They definitely outnumbered us, since the number of females in our youth group were a little low.
We started off with a bit of singing. This year it was the city church's turn to lead singing and our turn to run the games. They lead three songs, and it was pretty good and meaningful. They sing songs a lot faster than we do!
For the last song we were all asked to stand up together and sing before Gabrielle, one of our youth group leaders started the games.
Gabrielle then gave us each three clothes-pins and told us the two banned words for the night were
'No' and 'Know'
If we said either of those words, we had to give one of our clothes-pins to the person who made us say it. It wasn't long till I had to hand over one of mine to Carmen!
The two teams were then asked to split into four teams. One team was predominantly made up of Oddfellows and maybe one Living Water person, while one team only had one Oddfellow (poor Joylynn!) and one team had no Oddfellows! I decided I'd go it alone and join that team! I almost managed to memorise all of their names but in the process lost another one of my clothes-pins!
The next game involved each team having to send one person to touch Jireh as fast as they could based on the attribute Gabrielle called out, e.g. if she called out someone who has a grandparent who can speak English, then whoever fit that criteria had to try run to Jireh (who was standing in the middle) and touch him to earn points for the team. I only ran twice - 'someone who can play more than three musical instruments' and 'someone who's been in a production'. I didn't win the second one though! Some of the kiwi guys in the other fellowship were quite dedicated, diving to touch Jireh first!
We then played a game of Chinese whispers, only drawing on people's backs. There were many funny drawings of cats (one ended up being a vase!), trees and boats! The best were probably the boats as the drawers caught on to what the picture was supposed to be and just jazzed it up!
The final game involved each team sending one person to sit up in front. They were each assigned a celebrity (they weren't told who they were) and took turns to ask yes/no questions as to who they were, in order to be the first to figure it out.
The first round involved celebrities, with Cleo figuring out that she was President Obama first (key question: am I black?), followed by Claire who correctly guessed she was Jet Li, then our team's representative Tiana guessing she was Beethoven (she went from completely lost to correctly guessing!) and then the final guy Jed realised he was Kate Middleton.
The second round was a little longer and more complicated as each person was a fruit. Our team representative correctly guessed that he was a boysenberry, while the second person to correctly guess he was a rockmelon cleverly started asking whether there were 3 letters, 4 letters, 5 letters.... Poor Eva was the last to guess she was a mango!
We finished the night with a big group photo before we had supper and some of the guys from the other fellowship played basketball with some other people from our church. The Oddfellows vs Living Water Fellowship basketball challenge didn't eventuate. I don't know why, maybe we got intimidated by just how tall they all were!
Some of the people I had talked to from the other fellowship were keen on getting together again sometime this year, so hopefully we do it again more than once this year!
Trying Something New
Once in a while I like to try something new and share it with the family, so tonight on my way to the bus I went to the Asian bakery I sometimes visit, and this time decided to try (now I can't remember exactly what it is but I'll give it a go) chocolate and custard tea buns.
To be honest they tasted like normal buns with a bit of a chocolate flavour, but that's OK!
How Lucky I Really Am
In the past couple of days the pharmacist I work with has been looking through CV's sent in by fourth year pharmacy students looking for a pharmacy to undertake their internship next year, and I've sort of had a glimpse at some of them as she does. There's been quite a few impressive CV's!
What it's really made me realise is just how lucky I am to have found a site to do my internship. When I look back, I realise I had no previous pharmacy experience prior to this job, and I can't speak more than one language fluently which are two things that count heavily against me.
One of the applicants came in today to work at our pharmacy for an hour today. Originally I thought I wouldn't have to do much work (which is not hard considering there's very little to do already due to exams and holidays coming up!), but she was only here for a short while. I figured I better look and sound like I know what I'm doing so I don't get shown up by a 4th year student!
Anyway, I've got to be a lot more thankful at times!
What it's really made me realise is just how lucky I am to have found a site to do my internship. When I look back, I realise I had no previous pharmacy experience prior to this job, and I can't speak more than one language fluently which are two things that count heavily against me.
One of the applicants came in today to work at our pharmacy for an hour today. Originally I thought I wouldn't have to do much work (which is not hard considering there's very little to do already due to exams and holidays coming up!), but she was only here for a short while. I figured I better look and sound like I know what I'm doing so I don't get shown up by a 4th year student!
Anyway, I've got to be a lot more thankful at times!
Thursday 16 June 2011
Smiggle and Food
Thursdays are starting to become a bit of a shopping day for me, having to buy prizes for my students and other various things.
I ended up catching the bus all the way to West City and bought some Smiggle rubbers for my students. It's like the fourth time I've been to Smiggle to buy some rubbers, even the girl who works there knows me by name now! I think it was my mistake to buy the kids Smiggle stuff in the first place. They seem to really like it!
I also couldn't help myself and went to my favourite takeaway place to buy a $1.00 cup of chips. The people at the takeaways shop know us as we're regulars and they recognise my mum. I don't know if they usually fill cups up this full but this is pretty good for $1.00 considering it costs about $3.00 at uni!
I've started asking for no salt just to make myself feel a little less guilty!
Wednesday 15 June 2011
A Farewell with Curry
Tonight a few of my high school friends and I got together at this Indian restaurant to have dinner and farewell Shen, as he is the latest one to be moving overseas to Singapore. He's scored a job with PriceWaterhouseCoopers over there! Go Shen!
On the way there I got stopped at a police checkpoint to have a breath-test. I spoke into the machine which said
'No Alcohol'
I thought that was it till the policeman asked to see my license! Maybe he didn't trust me!
I got there slightly late because I had work, but everyone was already there when I got there, so I had to order quickly. I thought I'd give the goat curry a go, as well as some plain naan bread!
The food took a while to come out, so while we were waiting we caught up with each other and especially Shen.
He brought this little booklet our class put together back in year 10, called 'Reflections of 10MT' (10MT was our form class back then). There were drawings of each of us in our future careers. My future career was as a court judge!
The food finally came out. I don't think I've tried any Indian food like it before! The rice were in bowls put in the middle of the table while we were each given a small bowl with the sauce.
Fortunately my curry sauce was mild so it wasn't too hot. I tried dipping my naan bread into it and it tasted good!
I was sorta the last to finish since I decided to eat all the rice and finish my sauce. Once we all finished, Shen took photos with each of us before we decided to head out.
Now it was time to decide where to have dessert! It was almost 10pm and so we didn't know what places would be open, so we just decided to go over to McDonald's for dessert!
Shen and some of the girls ordered some cake while I ordered a thickshake. I ended up getting into a deep discussion with Evan about pharmaceutical funding in New Zealand which surprised me as I never knew I could talk so much about pharmacy despite it being my current occupation!
There was a bit group of people sitting at a nearby table making heaps of noise as they were watching the State of Origin on the large screen. I never knew they played live sport on TV at McDonald's! I should go there a bit more often to watch sports you can only see on Sky TV!
It was getting late and I couldn't drive home on my restricted license, so I called my dad to come pick me up. It was a good way to farewell Shen, and hopefully I'll be able to say goodbye to him one last time this Saturday when he departs New Zealand!
Tuesday 14 June 2011
Taking Initiative
Quite often I (and many other guys I'm sure) get complained for not making the first move or taking the initiative, but there is a very good reason - when we do and we often get SHOT DOWN we just start to not bother.
One good example is when texting someone. I admit I sometimes let the other person initiate the conversation all the time, and use this as a way to determine how interested they are in talking to me. If they constantly text me first, I can tell they're still interested in talking to me. The fact that I don't text first doesn't mean I'm not at all interested in talking to them. I will reply to them and keep the conversation going (as best as I can) and will be interested in texting them too! I will sometimes even go out of my way to reply in places where I'm not supposed to!
As per my previous blog post, conversations/friendships tend to die down over time, and this is a good way to gauge just where things are at and whether your friendship is about to die!
I usually find when it starts to cool down and things are in reverse and I'm the one initiating the conversation, I don't get replies till the cows come home or I will get short and brief replies, and I'll be the one left to carry the conversation forward...if I can be bothered. If I can't be bothered then we just stop talking.
Another example would be meeting up with a friend. When a friend asks you if you want to hang out or catch up, you'll tend to go out of your way to be able to accommodate their request. You'll skip something you originally planned to do just to hang out with them. When you initiate and ask the friend if they want to hang out, they'll say they can't because of one reason or another.
Therefore if we constantly get kicked in the balls whenever we try initiate/make the first move, why bother?
There was a good quote I got from Twitter this morning:
One good example is when texting someone. I admit I sometimes let the other person initiate the conversation all the time, and use this as a way to determine how interested they are in talking to me. If they constantly text me first, I can tell they're still interested in talking to me. The fact that I don't text first doesn't mean I'm not at all interested in talking to them. I will reply to them and keep the conversation going (as best as I can) and will be interested in texting them too! I will sometimes even go out of my way to reply in places where I'm not supposed to!
As per my previous blog post, conversations/friendships tend to die down over time, and this is a good way to gauge just where things are at and whether your friendship is about to die!
I usually find when it starts to cool down and things are in reverse and I'm the one initiating the conversation, I don't get replies till the cows come home or I will get short and brief replies, and I'll be the one left to carry the conversation forward...if I can be bothered. If I can't be bothered then we just stop talking.
Another example would be meeting up with a friend. When a friend asks you if you want to hang out or catch up, you'll tend to go out of your way to be able to accommodate their request. You'll skip something you originally planned to do just to hang out with them. When you initiate and ask the friend if they want to hang out, they'll say they can't because of one reason or another.
Therefore if we constantly get kicked in the balls whenever we try initiate/make the first move, why bother?
There was a good quote I got from Twitter this morning:
"Sometimes we expect more from others because we would be willing to do that much for them."
Sunday 12 June 2011
Better Start Saving
With quite a few of my high school friends leaving overseas for jobs or just for holiday, it's made me think about possibly going overseas next year before I find a proper job.
With nothing else to do besides researching laptops, I tried looking at return airfares to Hong Kong (my number one destination!) and I couldn't believe how expensive it is! Airfares for flights between January to May range from $1900-$2200. Assuming I will be working for another 26 more weeks this year, that means I will have to save about $100 a week just to be able to afford the plane tickets, and there is still no guarantee the prices will stay the same by then next year!
What is even worse is that return airfares to New York would cost around $3100! Boy it really is expensive to fly overseas!
Eggs!
We had church this morning, with me having to lead kids worship. I chose to do two Chinese songs, so I had been practising last night and in the shower this morning. Fortunately it went OK and any screw-ups were covered up by my helpers Angie, Sharon and Amelia!
I got a little side-tracked during the main service though thanks to Rebecca...
We have a history of competing in challenges to see who has to suffer the punishment, so I challenged her to a food eating competition, with the loser having to have a mono-brow drawn on their face for this coming Friday's combined youth fellowship with the city church. We were originally going to do marshmellows but I didn't have time to buy any. Instead, it became an Egg Eating Competition!
I swear I won that! Rebecca won't accept it though so I don't know who will be mono-browing it on Friday though! I reckon she should!
Saturday 11 June 2011
Crossing the Line
Today I had probably one of the worst experiences I've had in my five or so years of teaching music. My first class of two six-year-old girls weren't paying attention. They would just ignore me when I started counting, urging them to be ready. I split them up, getting one of them to sit on the other side of the table, but to no avail. I even threatened to tell their parents or send them home, to which they responded with
"Yayyy!! Then we can go play on the playground!!"
They would get out of their seats and run around the classroom as well.
As just a Saturday morning music teacher there isn't much I can really do. It's not like I can give them detention. Fortunately my supervisor came over to ask if I needed any photocopying, and I mentioned I was having problems with these two girls and so she sat down and helped control them. This is the first time I've ever had to ask for help with controlling kids. She talked to the parents at the end of the lesson, recommending they sit in on the class from now on. Hopefully that will work.
I've never had a class as disruptive as this before.
Anyway on a lighter side, here are a couple of drawings of Charmander one of my older and more well-behaved students drew!
"Yayyy!! Then we can go play on the playground!!"
They would get out of their seats and run around the classroom as well.
As just a Saturday morning music teacher there isn't much I can really do. It's not like I can give them detention. Fortunately my supervisor came over to ask if I needed any photocopying, and I mentioned I was having problems with these two girls and so she sat down and helped control them. This is the first time I've ever had to ask for help with controlling kids. She talked to the parents at the end of the lesson, recommending they sit in on the class from now on. Hopefully that will work.
I've never had a class as disruptive as this before.
Anyway on a lighter side, here are a couple of drawings of Charmander one of my older and more well-behaved students drew!
Friday 10 June 2011
The Values Auction
Tonight in youth group we played a game called 'The Values Auction' where we got into pairs and bid on certain things in life we would like to experience (with a maximum of $10 million spending money).
Such things put up for auction included discovering a cure for cancer, donating $50,000 to a charity, having a loving family..you get the drift.
Anyway I teamed up with Hamish, and our main objective was to score the SUPER HOT GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND!
Along the way we ended up bidding for stupid things like doing something special for the family, scoring a professional sports contract for two years (that was a slip of the tongue when the highest bid was $1 million and I just accidentally called out $2 million without thinking!), feeling safe (we were only told after we made the highest bid that we'd only be feeling safe, not actually being safe! I suppose at least life would be better somewhat...), and having the respect of your peers.
It was interesting to see that the girls were doing all the bidding initially while the guys decided to proceed cautiously and wait a bit to see what other auctions there were. The girls soon started to run out of money, which left all the good ones to us!
A common theme seemed to revolve around making your life being better than Calum's, like getting a degree you really want unlike Calum, getting you dream career, unlike Calum, and having respect of your peers, unlike Calum who gets bullied by little girls. Yes, yes my life's become a joke!
Anyway, finally the auction for what we most desired came up - for the super-hot girlfriend/boyfriend! Let's just say Hamish and I took it out for a little over $2 million! That makes up for all the other things we wasted our money on!
Thursday 9 June 2011
Marking the End of a Life and Beginning of Another
Tonight was the first time my family and our relatives on my dad's side of the family got together for a family dinner in a long time! What made today doubly special was that not only was it exactly a year since our Uncle David passed away, but it was going to be the first time we'd get to meet our cousin Greg's new daughter Vida! She was born about a month ago now!
Hamish, Aonghas and I arrived late because of work/studying at uni, so we were the last to have dinner (lasagne, roast vegetables yum yum!) before dessert was served (pavlova, truffle YUMYUM!).
We all got to briefly introduce ourselves to Vida before they had to take her into another room for rest I think. She was quite a loud girl!
After the meals were out of the way, we all just sat around and caught up, which was really good after a long time apart. Our cousins have formed their own basketball team to play in a league, so my brothers and I will have to go support them sometime!
The night was getting on and our aunty and uncle had to leave, so we all had a group photo before we parted our separate ways. We'll have to catch up again sometime soon!
Hamish, Aonghas and I arrived late because of work/studying at uni, so we were the last to have dinner (lasagne, roast vegetables yum yum!) before dessert was served (pavlova, truffle YUMYUM!).
We all got to briefly introduce ourselves to Vida before they had to take her into another room for rest I think. She was quite a loud girl!
The night was getting on and our aunty and uncle had to leave, so we all had a group photo before we parted our separate ways. We'll have to catch up again sometime soon!
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