Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Friday, 24 August

Book Week Dress up Day! Today we celebrated children's books all day! Kids were prompted to dress up in the costume of their favourite book character; which was absolutely awesome. Some of the teachers had some pretty cool costumes too. Some of us, like myself, were kind of at a loss when preparing and choosing a costume, because some of us didn't read all of the same books growing up. I wanted to dress up as the Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George, but I was told that probably the kids would really get it. Damn! So, I went for the next best thing; I got some wire, pulled on my tall striped socks, and went as Pippi Longstocking. I'll get a picture up here as soon as I can, but I of course didn't bring my camera to school, so photos of me dressed up are not in my possession.
The three male teachers at my school who, for the first time (ever, they said) didn't dress up as women. They went as oompa loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; orange face paint, white pants, brown shirt, awkward spray painted green basket for hair (that was terrible), but otherwise it all worked out well. In the afternoon to actually celebrate book week, we split off into houses and read a children's book together. After reading the book, all of the students worked together to build a mural out of large butcher paper. The adorable books we read were:

A Bus Called Heaven by Bob Graham

Look! A Book! by I can't find who

No Bears! by Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge

One other book I can't remember; I'll double check on Monday and add it.

Also for the last couple weeks we've been reading a series of six children's books chosen by...a group of very important people I'm sure, for us to read to every student in the school, and then have all the students vote on their favourite as well as discuss the books and different attributes of them. The books we read were:

No Bears by Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge

The Last Viking by Norman Jorgenson and James Foley

Rudie Nudie by Emma Quay

Come Down, Cat by Sonya Harnett

The Runaway Hug by Nick Bland & Freya Blackwood
And....one other one that I can't remember. I'll come back and add it.

Anyway - these were all great books that I really enjoyed, and I think for the most part the kids did too!

Friday night we headed out to a restaurant called the Skinny Dog Hotel, which was really, really delicious. It turns out chicken parmigiana here is absolutely magic! Breaded chicken, like we have at home, but instead of the ham folded into the chicken, the ham is laid on top and then covered in cheese. Wow it's good. Luckily, Blake ordered a huge one, and I got to eat the rest:-D. It was a nice, low-key night.

Saturday, 25 August

Here was the plan:

Go to Maling Road (a cute little street of Boutiques and Coffee shops), find a fun dress/top to wear out tonight, go home and relax. We did not stick to the plan.

We picked up Kelsey from the train station and we all hopped back on the train and headed up to Maling Road. We walked around those shops for a bit, but the very cheapeast things we could find were along the lines of...a scarf, for $60. Although Kelsey found a fabulous dress/top thing for a decent deal, we headed back onto the train after not too long. Choo-chooing back along the train track, we were about to pass through a different stop, when we decided just to get off and explore a little bit! Hah.

We hopped off the train at a random stop and started wandering around. This train station apparently is attached to a mini-mall kind of thing. There was a HUGE food court with chinese, chinese, vietnamese, japanese, chinese, general asian, and more chinese cuisine. It was interesting to see and listen to the variety of languages being spoken in this little shopping center; seriously diverse area. After striking out there, too, we headed back to the train to get to our home station. After making it there, we had to wait about twenty minutes for a bus to take us all the way home, but we went to the chase across the street to see if we might have any more luck:P We didn't. Although we did run into my host teacher, and two of Kylen's students. 

We hustled back home to get ready and then headed out to a Vietnamese restaurant called Tahnh Tahnh I think? Pronounced Tauntaun - like the animals that get cut open to hide Luke on Hoth. It took me a while to get over that before I could start eating their food, but it was delicious! :-D

My new favourite I think is Lemon Chicken - way better than Orange chicken at home. Yummm!!

The rest of the night we went to a few different places; one of which had a pretty decent live band playing, but some guy there tripped and fell right into Kelsey like dominoes! It was so ridiculous to watch - funny, after we found they were both okay, but it was crazy! We had a great time with Blake and some of his mates from footy, and did well in forgetting this past week (that was pretty difficult for all of us) and just having a good time! Exactly what we needed:)

Sunday, 26 August

Tonight we may go to a huge shopping center called Chadstone with a friend of mine from school, and then I have a netty game tonight at 8:15. I'll let you know how it goes after it all happens, but thanks for reading!

Lots of love,

Megan