Christmas is Coming!

1st of November today and on a trip to the mall, I was greeted by a tastefully decorated space! Christmas in Oz is probably the only time being here in this wonderful land feels 'odd'.  Perhaps that'll change the longer we're here.
It's mainly because the temperature gauge flashed 29 degrees at lunchtime today... I s'pose that we'll just have to forget the cold UK weather, the great Christmas telly as well as a Christmas roast dinner and, instead, choose a sunny beach, BBQ fish followed by a pavlova and some (lots of) wine at sunset! 
However, to help us with this 'transition', we have been invited to spend Christmas in Noosa with some friends who own an apartment there.  ...sigh... someone's gotta do it...

Sunfest

Oli's school held its festival this afternoon... very warm! It was 27 degrees at 4pm... phew... Oli persuaded me to go along, found me for some dollars and then disappeared with his mates... Hey Ho...the stalls were good although I can't get my head around a BBQ sausage being served (with onions) on a slice of white bread with no butter! The sausage is placed corner to corner, onions arranged on top and then presented to you on a paper napkin: WHERE'S THE FINGER ROLL????

statistics...

I have just been clearing out my job application file and I am astounded by the following statistics.  Here goes.  Since arriving in Australia on the 22 September 2011, I have applied for 55 advertised teaching vacancies, 22 non-teaching vacancies as well as making 29 speculative approaches to schools for potential work.  What's bizarre is that the very first vacancy I applied for in Australia is the vacancy I have now been offered 12 months later as the girl appointed then is now leaving!  Funny old world. 

Yay!

Imagine if you will... a rural, private, Christian school with around 400 pupils in total between prep and Year 12... classes of between 10-15 students...  kangaroos and kookaburras abound... state of the art facilities ... the English teacher teaches senior students in a lecture theatre... and guess who's just been appointed their FULL TIME and PERMANENT English Teacher from term 1 in January???

Banks in Oz

I was chatting to a teller in the bank here this morning and mentioned to her that when I joined the staff of NatWest bank in 1979, I was able to smoke cigarettes whilst in the office.  
She mentioned that when she joined a bank in 1978 in an Oz country town, the bank manager had a gun for 'security' and had to go on training courses annually to ensure he was still able to use it.  
Smoking in the office suddenly seemed awfully tame.