Good Morning Sunshine :)

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend. Mine was great and it all started with my presentation on Thursday.

As many of you (anyone who's on Facebook) know, I was working on a massive (40%) group 50 min presentation on "How to appropriately/ respectfully teach both indigenous and non indigenous students". This is the assessment I’ve been devoting my life to up until now lol. When we finished (we were almost 20 mins over on time :S woops! ) the prof said we did excellent :) she only had one complaint but everything else was great. She really liked the way we started with examples of  our ideas today -- we started with the clip from the song savages by Pocahontas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wr42kNOuRA just the first 35 seconds) then we looked at some horrible comments people posted on YouTube about the indigenous people of Australia such as "dirty filthy race of people" "they should be taken away and shown how humans live" "drain on my economy " stuff like that. Then we moved into the MySchool website where we looked compared two schools tests results (one with %20 indigenous and one with 1%) to show the difference. -- we then moves on to the new Australian curriculum -ACARA -  and lastly moved on to different teaching strategies that will aid you to teach...such as learning math through stories (i.e. there are 10 stars that got lost and fell from the sky. You and your friend need to help them return . How many do you each carry..And just using the terms like sharing instead of dividing etc.) . Another thing she LOVED was our four scenarios. (each group had to create 4 scenarios that could be encountered as a beginning teacher) She said ours were really well done (WOOT since I made them all YAY ME)

After our presentation I went to go pick up my marked Arts/SOSE assessment 1. To say I was nervous was an understatement  as these have the potential to ruin or make your whole weekend. So when I picked it up and saw D- on it I just about cried. That is until my friends reminded me that D- here is actually pretty damn good (somewhere between 75-80%) and that the D stands for Distinction or level 6 out of 7. So YAY !!! I’m glad I did well especially since I had the cranky pregnant one mark mine. 8-)

Please excuse this whole paragraph while I rant....  

Have I mentioned lately how much I dislike having housemates?! well just one really: Daniel. -- just a reminder..He’s the one I saw going into the other girls room in only a towel, the one who felt a need to tell me his whole life story etc. Alright so on Sat I decided to just have a lazy day after a long week and it worked out well cuz none of the housemates were home ...until about noonish when Daniel knocked on my door. Apparently whatever he wanted to tell me (that he saw the new Eclipse  poster) was so important he couldn’t go get dressed so he just stayed in his towel fresh from the shower when we had our chat and his "Sugar Mama" (as I call her -- she only ever is over when he needs $$) showers. Then they go back to their room and she leaves to go get groceries and he cooks dinner. Well I get hungry and go out to the kitchen where he comes in IN HIS TIGHY WHITEYS (WTF!?) to keep cooking. A) I am not the only one in the damn house B) You KNOW I’m home c) EW just EW. So not cool. This is then further heightened when he comes to chat again on Sunday (once again in his towel ) while Sugar Mama (aka Catalina ) showers. Then as if they have some  issue with getting dressed she comes back into my room in just her jeans and bra. WTF ?! can these ppl not put on clothes?! grumble grumble..

On an up Note Gabriella went back to Italy. While I wont miss the loud Italian being shouted through the house I will miss her cleaning that she does after Daniel because lord knows I’m not doing it.

Sunday was prob my fav. day of the whole weekend. On Sunday morning (ANZAC Day) I got up really early and went with Amy and Tammy to go see the Parade. I wanted to go see the wreath laying ceremony but it was a dawn service and started at 430am – lets face it anyone that knows me knows that I don’t voluntarily get up that early ever lol.  On my way downtown for the parade (around 8ish) I swear to god I saw a pimp. A real live pimp...or at least he used to be lol He was sitting in front of me and had a pimp hat (complete with feather)  Huge Gold rings on every single finger, a suit, and a giant whale/shark(?) tooth with gems in it on a thick gold chain around his neck .He was awesome. Anyhow once I got downtown and found Amy etc. The parade was close to starting. The fighter jets flew overhead at exactly 10 am which signalled the start of the parade J now there were 2 really awesome things about this parade. 1) as each group of veterans walked by they held a banner with their battalion number/name on it as well as a list of the wars they faught in. I thought this was really cool especially to see the ones that are still helping out in Iraq and stuff. 2) everyone clapped as the veterans went by. While this seems like a small feat it was really great considering the parade was 3 hours long and yet not one vet walked by without getting cheers and applauses. I think its an amazing thing this country has done to honour their vets with such a huge display (its also a national holiday J ). I only ended up staying for an hour of the three though because Amy’s boyfriend is in the Australian Air Force and once they marched by us we walked to the end of it to meet him and his friends where we then went out for breakfast beers :D lol --- side note: how lame is it that you cant get a beer in this country before 1 pm unless you have a full sit down meal?!  “ Ok so ill have a beer with my bacon and eggs LOL” hee hee – Here are the pics from the first hour of the parade (don’t mind the large amount of pics of the Air Force/ Brendan  cuz Amy doesn’t have a camera so she was using mine) : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123321&id=119100065&l=7db40600b5

Well now that you’ve read my 1144 word update (yes I checked) ill leave you with one last video to watch. I was laughing so hard when Keenan showed me it. If you don’t laugh then you  have problems.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs  400 BABIES bahahahaha

xoxox

Manda ~ 63 Days

Ps. 

Dear Mom and Nathan,

Please note that you are never allowed to go away together again as i am terribly lonely without ethier one of you. 

That is all

-Manda 

PPS

Jess is the Queen of Awesomeness. It shall soon be revealed why. for now just note that she has been upgrated from saying "My Daddy said ima princess" ....to "Amanda made me Queen Of Awesomeness".