Little Creatures Brunch

Earlier this week I had brunch with A'Strizzle at Little Creatures Beer Hall on Brunswick Street. I had no idea they did food and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, the best thing about the place is the awesome interior/set up. Their brunch menu goes until midday and is reasonably priced for Fitzroy pretension.

On Conversation

 

"Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."

 

Michel de Montaigne, Essayist of the French Renaissance,1580

There are so books waiting to be read on my bookshelf. Last year I spent so much time researching for my thesis I would dream about all the time I would spend reading novels once I was finished honours. Then the Dip Ed hit and time for leisure reading didn't exist then either; so the books piled up. Now I finally have the time to start reading again and the first thing I picked up was this little Penguin book with a selection of essays by Michel de Montaigne. I love the touch of humanism in the essays, the references to Plato and Aristotle and the theme of friendship, it makes me feel as though I am reading, and learning from, literature of two different time periods rather than one. Nerdy, huh? Anyway, whatevs. I read this quote over a few times and it stuck in my head all weekend. Michel de Montaigne was known for being cynical but in this case I believe he is correct. But, I guess I am known for being quite cynical too....

 

Oh well, off to brunch.

 

Only a week left to go...

So here I am writing notes about Flexible Learning Spaces, which I hate to be quite honest. I don't like the spaces and I don't like writing about them. What I  like is shopping. Yeah, I like shopping for clothes to wear to places I like with people I like.

 I also like wine, I've had far too much of that stuff lately,  I need to stop drinking my calories just because I don't want to think about my education assignments and the soul-destroying job search process. I want to think about all the fun things I will do over summer with the friends I have seen too little of lately. Obviously, when I think of doing these things I am in an alternate reality in which I actually  have money and humidity doesn't do horrible things to my curls. I guess this summer I will be discovering what 'Budget Melbourne' has to offer. Ah, screw that.

Here is a list of things I am looking forward to doing once I have finished this infernal course.

• Attending the Spanish Film Festival La Mirada
• Drinking Sangria on the rooftop bar of The Emerald Peacock
• Dog/Housesitting for my parents and taking full advantage of the air con, proximity to the beach, and the sunny balcony.
• Drinking mojitos on aforementioned balcony
• Making massive pitchers of  iced tea with fresh fruit.
• Finally seeing a film at The Rooftop Cinema after countless summers of intending to go but never making it.
• Two words: Beer Gardens.
• Reading books for the enjoyment of it.
• Meeting some members of the opposite sex. So many females all up in my Education course. I need some casual entertainment.
• Dancing up a storm at Soul Night
• Discovering some new brunch places with my friends.....
• ....actually seeing my friends

 

Yesterday I had a 'mock interview' for teaching. It went well but the guy told me that I should beef up my resume with some information about my interests. ' List the countries you've been to' he suggested. I laughed a little thinking that it'd take up half the page. Then I couldn't stop trying to mentally list the countries I've visited. So here they are, for my reference and, just to brag.

New Zealand                     The Netherlands

Australia                            Belgium

Singapore                          Poland

England                             Czech Republic

Hungrary                           Austria

Ireland                               Germany

Scotland                            Italy

Slovakia                            Switzerland

Wales                                France

Spain                                 Portugal

 

Exactly twenty. Not as many as I thought, actually. I'm hoping to get Turkey, Greece, Cuba, Belize, Argentina, and Chile on there in the next few years.

 

 

Rather live out a lie than live wondering

Did I ever complain about Honours? Well, that was nothing compared to how I feel about the Diploma of Education. At least Honours was intellectually stimulating. Seriously, writing about sexual violence in 12th century Arthurian Literature was more useful than this course. Just let me teach, already!

I feel like I am holding my breath until November; at the very least, I'm barely holding onto my sanity.

I was feeling quite settled in Melbourne until I had to find photos for my Teaching Portfolio (load of wank). I spent a good hour looking through my photos from 2009 and 2010, laughing at memories of my European students. Perhaps I will return to Europe sooner than I had anticipated.

I want to add a picture to make this post prettier. But...no.

Melbourne Brunch Favourites Part #1

My two favourite brunch haunts of late. They're both restaurants which are generally a bit too pricey for a student, but the brunch menus are reasonable.

The European, Spring Street, CBD
Close to Parliament Station or take any tram up Collins or Bourke
I think weekday brunch ends at 11 or 12, but goes til 4 on weekends.
Favourite Meal: Turkish Eggs $18
The European is stylish, classy, and way out of my student budget for anything other than the breakfast menu. It's a popular lunch venue for business people of Collins Street... the Paris end, that is. I was once waiting for a friend and the waiter gave me the wine list to peruse, there was a bottle of French wine for something crazy like two grand. Me: " Tap water, please".

Manhattan, Toorak Village,

Catch the No. 8 Tram towards Toorak

I went to Manhattan for the first time a few weeks ago and have been back four times since. The waiters are lovely and the menu is great.

Favourite Meal: Flat Iron Eggs around $17

Give me a second, I need to get my story straight.

Today I met my lovely friend, 'Mountain Range', in the rainy CBD for a very book-themed day. We started off with lunch at Della Nonna at QV. They do delicious pizzas. My favourite pizza is the Al Capone, it has tomato, rosemary, smoked mozzarella, and potato. The waiter was also very cute and that never hurts... unless they're too aware of it and act as if they're doing you a favour by allowing you to gaze upon them while you order. Then it hurts.  While eating we updated each other on our ' love lives' and over-over-analysed everything. We pretty much just agreed I am confusing.

After lunch we had a quick look at the 'Love and Devotion' exhibition at the State Library. It seemed interesting, but there were too many people and I hadn't been able to let go of the over-analysing so I didn't take much in.

Then we skipped, and by skipped I mean huddled under my umbrella and carefully walked, down to Collins Steet to find a library I had read about. The library is in the Athenaeum building, which has been there since 1842, it is a lovely setting and a great place to escape the rain or kill some time in the city. It's also a great place to browse book shelves and internally over-analyse things, like a sucker. Sometimes I am such a girl.

It's so cold in my apartment. I'm drinking wine in bed to keep warm.

Lately I've been re-watching Dawson's Creek. I'm halfway through the second season. It has the strangest effect on me. Every time I watch the opening credits, and hear the theme song, I am hit by nostalgia. Okay, 'hit' doesn't describe it well enough, more like I am almost brought to tears by a sledgehammer smash of nostalgia. It instantly sends me back to when I was eleven years old and only recently arrived on the Gold Coast. Fuck, I was so innocent. Youthfully oblivious. So that's it, I want to cry at how oblivious I was and I also want to cry that I will never be able to be so naive again. Then I want to punch Dawson in the face because he is such a little bitch.

Take me to the docks, there's a ship without a name

I'm on holidays. I am bored and my feet are freezing. I'm dreaming of Spring days (minus the hayfever) and overseas adventures. Where does motivation go on its time off? On the bright side, I have finished all of my soul-destroying education assignments for the first semester. Who would have thought it would be so mentally painful to earn qualifications for a job I know I like? Ah well, I enjoyed my first four years of uni, I guess I shouldn't be academically greedy.

Whenever I look at the paintings of the Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich I become totally lost in dreams of other times.

Pros and Cons of Teaching at an All Boys School

Pros
- There is no bitchiness
- You don't have to witness painful teenage flirting/giggling/slapping etc.
- Students are unlikely to notice, and comment upon, you wearing the same shoes/top/hairstyle three days in a row.

Cons
- Teenage boys are champions of the silent and violent farts (and then looking innocent).
- All the popular history subjects seem to be related to war/military history.
- ....I actually can't think of any more cons.

So I start the second part of my teaching placement tomorrow. I am terrified for four main reasons:

1. It's a private school which is something I have never experienced before.
2. It's all boys. ALL BOYS. Only boys. Lots of boys. Teenage boys everywhere. Scary!
3. I'll be teaching history for the first time. I haven't been in a High School history class for eight years and my uni course gave me about 2 hours of instruction on teaching history this semester - thanks shitty uni course.
4. The classes I'll be teaching will be mainly on modern history which I know close to nothing about.

You know what, I am actually quite excited about teaching content I have learnt the night before to classes of rowdy, wealthy(spoilt?), fifteen year old boys. Seriously. I'm not even being sarcastic.

So tomorrow I will put on my PABSTOY (Private All Boys School Teacher Outfit Yo) and I will walk in there and hide my terror like a boss. As one of my wise course tutors told me: fake it til you make it.

Photo: Tim Barnes

18 year old boy says...

* At work*

Him: My friend made out with a whale last night!

Me: WHALE? Is that some new acronym the youth are using these days or are you just telling me he kissed a fat girl?

Him: Yeah, a fat chick.

Me: .......

Him: So later I went up to him and was like  ' dude, I didn't know you liked sea creatures'. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha


Me:
ha ...harr...

The bitch is back

So I had a fling with another blog (tumblr) and have returned to Anthology begging to be taken back. We just have so much more history and textual integrity.

Today is a lazy Sunday. I also had a lazy Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I should be on teaching placement right now but my university couldn't find a school/mentor teacher for my History specialism, so I will have to do my placement during exam period. My first three weeks of placement were wonderful and reinforced my desire to become a teacher.

Here is a blog post from my first week at the Language school:

Day three
I have started placement and it rocks! Just as I thought it would. It’s wonderful to be out of those dry uni classes. I have been lucky enough to be placed with a wonderful mentor teacher and the department I’m working in seems to be fairly good in general. The school is in quite a rough area but my department teaches less than fifty students over three levels, and they are all lovely so far.

This is such a change of mood for this blog. Which has pretty much just been me bitching since the beginning of the month. I am still extremely unimpressed with the uni side of things. A couple of classes have picked up a bit since the first two weeks, but the general running of the course leaves a lot to be desired. I almost feel as if there is no point in making any complaints, or pointing out the many issues or injustices of the course since I’m only doing a one year diploma and it would probably hinder rather than help my results to make a fuss.

Anyhow, back to placement. It’s the third day and I haven’t taught on my own yet which is a bit of a letdown - I’m ready to get up there. I’ve observed lots of lessons, done some team teaching with my mentor, been on an excursion, and sat in on some parent/teacher interviews. I’ll start teaching my own classes when the next term begins after Easter. I already feel attached to the wonderful students I’ve been in class with for the past three days, I’ll probably be one of those teachers who cry at the end of the year.

I have worn my three favourite ‘teacher’ outfits. Time to start mixing and matching.

I don't think this blog is working out. Anthology and I may have to break up.

Excuse much, rude or anything? The Artist and Teacher Fashion

Today I went to the Palace Kino with Mum to see The Artist. I hadn't read anything about it before I went and I'm glad I didn't because it may have put me off going; silent, and in black and white, it was not really the type of film I would usually see. Set in the late 1920s and early 30s the plot follows a silent movie star as he deals with the decline of his career when films with sound are introduced. I'm not really sure whether I enjoyed it or not. I'm glad I went to see it but the thought of watching it again is not appealing at all.

When I wonder why I wouldn't want to watch this film again, even though I didn't mind the plot, I realise that what I love about so many movies are the memorable dialogues: bantering lead characters with witty comments and (cringe) romantic speeches. I think watching a film without sound limits the depth of the characters. It is easy to read their faces and watch their actions to discern what is going on but without words there is less to savour after the film is over. I like my quotes. I used to watch individual episodes of Buffy a dozen times before I tired of them, and I would quote characters from the show in everyday life (what a geek, I know) whether I thought people would realise what I was doing or not.

Topic change.

I am going to be a History teacher and I am so effing excited about it. I am also excited about looking like a history teacher. Not one of those camel toe, squinty-glasses, smeared lipstick history teachers, no no no...well, I guess all of those badstyle things can happen to good people. In my spare moments (there are too many of them at the moment) I have been 1. looking for a new flatmate (knock myself unconscious can't deal with the stress) and 2. browsing the interwebs for some teacher fashion inspiration (knock myself unconscious I don't have any money to buy clothes).

Photos: All from The Sartorialist except for the third one down which is from Garance Doré

Changes

I have a love/hate relationship with change. I find it exciting, but I also find it stressful. When I have the immediate future planned out and pinned down I find it easier to relax and get excited about things... but when I know there are things to come which could cause hassles, I can't focus on anything but that.

My rent has gone up and I can no longer live in my current apartment. My flatmate has decided to move to a suburb I'd rather avoid (I've heard those stories of syringes in cinema seats) so I'm on my own. I would love to live alone, I've been fantasizing about it for quite a while now, but I just can't afford it. I know I sound like a brat, but I'm not used to knowing what I want and simply not being able to have it. But, I suppose I've never wanted anything quite so expensive before.

As well as having to find a new abode I'm also starting a new course at uni: Secondary Teaching. That's right folks, here's a huge shocking twist - the girl who studied history at university is going to become a history teacher. I'm actually really happy about my decision to get a proper teaching qualification, although we'll see how I feel three weeks into the course when I start doing pracs and remember what little shitfaces teenagers can be.

My 25th Birthday is coming up. The older I get the more I am convinced that age is just a number. Writing that I am 25....25....25....it just doesn't seem correct. It doesn't look real. Gosh, I even struggle with being 24. It's not that I feel old, I don't, it's that I've grown up with notions of what it means to be 18, 21, 25, 30...etc. and as I reach (and pass) these ages I'm realising that although I become wiser, age doesn't dictate when you should have achieved something or when you should act a particular way. You change as you get older but age is not an accurate marker of when significant life events should occur. Yeah, I'm aware that probably doesn't make much sense, that's because I'm not planning on becoming coherent until I'm thirty. Suck it, bitches.

Well, that's just a bit of an update. Time to go shopping in the 35 degree heat. Leaving you with a couple of photos of my dream homes.

Photos: The Selby

New Zealand photo spam

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Sleepwalking in Wellington

Hello! I'm in Wellington, New Zealand. Sitting in a lovely cafe called The Lido, on Wakefield Street, where I have been twice in the 18 hours I have been in the windy city. Staying in a hostel last night has promptly destroyed the hint of backpacker romanticism which was creeping back into my naive and nostalgic mind. My back hurts. My head hurts. I slept all night with the light on. My bunk bed creaked every time I exhaled. YAY TRAVEL.

Perhaps being sleep deprived makes travel feel like more of an adventure. It's like travelling on a hazy cloud of grumpy. Also, being tired makes one care slightly less about the fact that they look like shit thanks to having to keep bathroom trips/makeup application to a maximum of five minutes so that the others in the dorm don't go on a sighing, moaning, foreign-language mumbling rampage. Yes. I am tired and I look like shit. I don't know how I did this backpacking thing for three months straight at a time.

Anyhow, no more hostel sleeps now as I'm meeting my parents today and we're going to stay in our beach bach for a week or so. It's a rickety old house (with retro furniture and definitely no internet) next to an isolated beach of black sand, seashells, and driftwood. It used to belong to my Grandad and I love going there because it is the only place which has stayed constant throughout my entire life. I have so many childhood memories of building sandcastles with my Dad and Grandad, and riding the motorbike over sand dunes while my Grandad ran along behind me swearing at me because I wouldn't stop. My best friend is coming to stay with us for a few days, the last time we were there together we were nine and everything seemed so big and exciting; climbing a sand dune was like climbing a mountain. I haven't been back since my Grandad died and I am hoping I feel the same way about the place as I did when he was there.

Third coffee coming up.

Photo: Anna Rosa Krau