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First Wedding Anniversary
A very self indulgent blog post today to share that today/Sunday was my first wedding anniversary 🙂
A lovely time was had by all – Mr K. and I like to celebrate things over whole weekends, giving us more excuses to eat out! After a lazy day shopping we ended up in Newtown for dinner on Saturday night. We had no reservations, and had braced for the dreaded King Street wander…eventually found a great restaurant called Twelve. They were full, but offered to call back in 15 minutes when a table was free – how nice! We had a rocket, parmesan and pear salad, and while hubby had a rump steak I had fig, basil and chilli linguine. So delicious! I highly recommend Twelve to anyone living in Sydney – it’s at the Marly-end of King Street, in between the Vintage Cellars (a lovely New Zealand Pinot Noir from there, thanks very much) and the 7 Eleven, across from Burgerlicious.
We thought we’d go for a drive down to the Rocks and under the bridge, but alas twas ANZAC day and much revelry had gotten the roads closed…so we ended up going for a very late coffee at Badde Manors in Glebe, where we were soothed by some jazz music and a very 50s feel. Two lattes and some carrot cake later, and the it was home for us.
Saturday celebrations really set us up well for a stress-free real-Anniversary on Sunday. Day consisted of a sleep in, a big bacon and egg breakfast, a little bit of laundry and a lot of general lazing around. A perfect day for someone on the brink of returning to school next week – one last holiday day. We were reliably informed that the gift de choix for first anniversaries is paper, and bought tickets to see The Grates on 8th May as a present to each other. So…more anniversary celebrations in two weeks 🙂
And…my thoughts on being married, one year on? Other than slightly amused at having a ‘first’ anniversary, after being together for 15 years 😉 Rather than try to find words for my own philosophy, I suggest that now more than ever I see the value of both of the following metaphors, taken from the readings we chose for our wedding ceremony. The first is from a poem by Kahlil Gibran:
…Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping,
And stand together, yet not too near together,
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in shadow.
The tree metaphor a little different in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres :
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
United Airlines – lucky they don’t work for tips
You know when you’re going overseas and you get yourself all psyched for chilling out with drinks, snacks, and movies on demand? I know that’s how I was feeling when I got on my United Airlines flight to San Francisco last weekend. And because I was travelling alone, I was also kinda counting on being occupied with film and booze 😉
Alas, my United Airlines flight to San Francisco had NO on demand viewing, not even individual screens. I (and my neck) thought that kinda sucked, but it was even suckier when they had to reboot the system a few hours in, because the business class system was acting up. Grr. Yes, I could have read a book…only I didn’t take one, and anyway, my brain was too fried to focus on anything substantial (as is usually the case when you’ve had a few days of rushing around getting ready fr a trip O/S).
Add to that the $6 charge for alcoholic drinks (on a plane leaving from Australia!??). And announcements that they didn’t bother stopping the movie to make (but then again how much can you miss of such classic films as The sisterhood of the travelling pants 2?)
And honestly, their service was just not good. They didn’t give any information about what was in the meals, or what to fill out to get through customs…it really makes you appreciate the friendly folk at QANTAS.
At the end of the day though, how much can you complain when you are one of the people lucky enough to be taking a holiday overseas? Well, when you are paying thousands of dollars of your hard earned cash for something, about this much, I guess 🙂
And I am one of the lucky ones. My trip was just boring – this poor guy had his brand new didgeridoo smashed by United Airlines luggage handlers, who refuse to accept liability. My sympathies Allan!
7 Things You Don’t Need to Know About ME Meme
Darcy Moore tagged me for this meme. So, 7 things you don’t need to know about me are…
- My great, great, great, great, great grandfather on my mother’s side was Thomas Rose, and his family came to Australia on the Bellona in 1792 in a small group of the first free and independent settlers in Australia. Ever visit ‘Old Sydney Town’ on a school excursion? You would have taken a tour of Rose Cottage, where my ancestors lived.
- My husband and I got together on my 13th birthday, so turning 28 last month meant that we have now been together for 15 years already. He is the love of my life! We were born only 10 days apart (both stubborn/ambitious/travel-loving Sagittarius‘), went to the same school, and moved out together when we were 19 because we didn’t like spending so much time apart at Uni 🙂
- I grew up in a 3-bedroom fibro house in Cabramatta West, which we didn’t move out of until I was 17. We would often go back and visit it after we left – then one day I was driving with a friend and took her to see the house. It had been demolished days before, and there was just a bare patch of land left with a few bits of rubble. I cried…and cried…
- I was Dux of my Primary School, and Captain of my High School. I am finishing my PhD now, and it has made me swear off that particular brand of over-achieving forever.
- I was in high school during the grunge years, so bands ranking highly on my list of favourites are Nirvana, Green Day and Pearl Jam. I remember when Kurt died, and how important it was to so many of us.
- The first time I went overseas I was 20. It was to Scotland to visit family, and it was also the first time I saw snow. I played in it every day and never once got sick of it.
- I watch Neighbours. Religiously.
I am passing this meme to:
…and to my Drama class blog. They will have fun doing this when school goes back 🙂
STOP WORK
I’ve just come home from this morning’s stopwork meeting organised by the NSW Teachers Federation.
Read more about the Teachers Federation Staffing, Standards and Salaries campaign here.
The meeting finished half an hour ago, but I am resisting the urge to use the time to finish off some school work…not just because I think it is important for teachers to ‘stay true’ to the stopwork by, well, stopping work, but also because I am so burned out with school work right now that an imposed 2 hour break is a welcome relief.
Over the past couple of weeks my blog has been neglected, emails have gone unread, and I haven’t even been opening Twitter. No comment from me about Barack Obama’s historic win in the US election. No comment (still) about the proposed National Curriculum, and (perhaps worst) no reflection on my teaching or engagement in professional learning.
So, while filling up on petrol that had nearly run dry because I’ve had no time to fill the car, and after picking up some take away breakfast because I had run out of time and skipped mine earlier in the morning, I decided to use the rest of my stopwork time to write this post.
A little bit of a cheat of course, because as far as I’m concerned blogging = professional learning, which = work! But the school workload atm is so depressingly huge that I’m prepared to cheat on this…until reports are finished at the end of this week, I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to blog again…
Back in the Saddle
Visitors to the blog may have noticed a new page addition – one for my PhD thesis.
When I created this blog, in an attempt to pin down the broad areas that I expected to post on, I added the subheading ‘teaching, research, and the rest’. I was inspired by Darcy’s blog, which proclaimed it would be about ‘education, technology, life’, to also make my blog a place where the professional and personal, the public and the private worlds could happily overlap. But, unsure I could commit to (the pressure of) saying anything much about ‘life’, I thought I would be better to clump anything that wasn’t related to teaching or research into a vague, and perhaps unpromising, ‘the rest’.
The teaching part was far more obvious – I’m an English teacher and I love sharing resources and reflecting on my practice. The ‘research’ category however, has been sorely neglected. In fact, it’s barely made a peep. And even though I have added plenty to the blog about the Gifted and Talented education action research I was involved in at school, even this is really more about teaching than research. The real research that I should be focussing on is my PhD thesis, which draws to a long awaited conclusion next March.
Well, after a semester away from uni I am indeed back in the saddle, and am hoping to add more to the blog about my PhD in the coming months. For now, I’ve dusted the shelves, bought a new bottle of multi-vitamins and paid off my library fines. Work is progressing…though not without a little procrastination, including a return to my favourite grad student comic strip, Piled Higher and Deeper:
Chores
Goodbye Year 12
I had my last class today with my HSC English class – the first HSC class I have ever taught, so they are a very special group for me. It was a pretty emotional day (have to admit having a bit of a cry when the bell went, but the dears came and gave me a big group hug which was really very nice of them!)
This is an especially refelctive day for me, not only because they are my first HSC group, but also because it has been ten years since I finished high school myself…this feels like an important milestone. To top it all off, I teach at my old high school, so today really was a trip down memory lane!
So much has happened since I finished high school…people are married (and divorced), some with kids and/or step kids; some people now live and work overseas; some people have drifted apart while others have stayed friends all this time. People have bought houses (some have already sold and rebought), or are saving up to get into the property market, while some are renting (not sure if anyone still lives at home – bound to be some!). Some have struggled (and some continue to struggle) with substance abuse and addiction. Many have experienced problems with mental health at some point. Some went to uni (and some left uni) while others took different paths. One or two have died.
Ten years ago I would have known that all this was going to happen – of course it was all bound to happen – but I could not have imagined what it would feel like to be on the other side. Nothing can really prepare a person, I think, for the constant pressure of adulthood. But the other side of that coin is the independence that comes with adulthood, and for some that is the bigger surprise.
I wonder how “my” students will fare over the next ten years? What joys (and sorrows) will they know? And I also wonder…will anything I have taught them in English help them to get through life?
The Choice Generation
On Hack (JJJ) today the whole program was dedicated to looking at the paradox of my generation – the “Choice Generation”. Hack reported on a generation that is well educated and geographically mobile, and that has delayed the traditional milestones of adulthood such as marriage and parenthood. Yet despite having more freedom and opportunity than any previous generation, people in their late 20s and early 30s are feeling anxious and stressed by the pressure to do and have everything. The choice to make the right decision and take advantage of what’s on offer is a burden. With so much on offer, we are torn.
On average in this generation:
- 8 out of 10 will complete Year 12 – most of these will go on to further study
- we will have stayed at each job for about 2 years so far, and we will have about 20 employers in our lifetime within five diffrerent careers (which we will retrain for)
- we are more likely to have rented than owned and therefore have moved lovation a couple of times
- overseas travel and careers are expected
- marriage and children are occuring about seven years later than they did for our parents – on average we’ll start having children when the woman is 31 and the man is 33
Apparently we’re also quite socially progressive…but is my generation also selfish? Spoiled? Reluctant to delay gratification?
Looks like Saturn’s Return, currently playing at the Wharf 2 Theatre (Sydney Theatre Compnay) explores similar themes:
Tommy Murphy’s new play is grounded in observable reality: people’s lives do have a tendency to shift in their mid-late 20s/early-mid 30s…Growing up, or not, is the point celebrated, delayed, mythologised and avoided in this psychologically deft and satisfying work.
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