And a Hip to the Hop!

Wednesday already! Every time Wednesday comes around, I remember a funny cartoon that I got in an email a while back. It seems like a fun and quirky way to begin this post off!

Hahahaha

(The girl singing ‘It’s Friday’ is Rebecca Black and wrote one of the most annoying songs of all time, a song about Friday! But gotta love good old Wednesday from The Adams Family!)

Anyway, with that completely unrelated carton behind us, the focus can now be returned to the happenings in Balgo. I remember talking to Mary, one of the teachers at Luurnpa and hoping that this term would be a bit quieter than the last. She simply laughed, telling me that Term 3 is when everyone that needs to come to Balgo at least once a year decides to pop in before Term 4 comes around bringing with it the end of the year. She wasn’t wrong there! In the past two days we have had Kim Dullard from the CEO (who is great fun to have around) Ron Dullard, also from the CEO, Senator Jacinta Collins, parliamentary secretary for Education and the workplace and a Hip Hop dance group that is running sessions with the kids. Absolute mayhem, but I will go on about each of those things a bit later on.

Our new teacher arrived on Monday. Camille will be teaching in Primary C and Primary B for this term at least, coming all the way from England. The kids absolutely love her accent and spent the afternoon yesterday asking her to say certain words to see if she said them any differently to their own pronunciations. It’s really awkward for me, because I’m the type of person that accidentally picks up other peoples accents and unconsciously pronounces words a lot differently to what I usually do. It’s so embarrassing!! When I went to New Zealand I was speaking like a Kiwi for a month, no matter how hard I tried to rectify things. So hopefully things improve before I make an absolute fool out of myself. However with all that out of the way, I know Camille will be sure to do an excellent job whilst at Luurnpa. The kids already adore her and listen to everything she says which absolutely awesome and her calm and pleasant nature bring a lovely feel into the classroom. Plus, it’s great to have another female teacher around.

A hip-hop group targeted at indigenous children in the Kimberley is spending the week at Luurnpa, working for an hour with the lower and upper school students. They have come to the right place for awesome dancers and the kids love spending so much time doing something they love. I watched them for a bit this afternoon and was cracking up at some of their moves but mainly enjoying seeing them all so happy and smiley. Even the kids that had no idea whatsoever as to what they had to do were just bouncing around without a care in the world. Apparently there is a concert on Friday night after everyone has gotten their moves and routines down packed so that will be a lot of fun to attend. But for Primary C, it’s been great filling out our physical activity chart with four blocks completed every day. We’re well on the way towards receiving great prizes!

Hipping the Hop this afternoon

                                                                                                                                      

Kim Dullard arrived on Monday for three days just working with the teachers and devising new initiatives. Kim is a really chilled and fun guy to have around and we all love it when he pops in for a few days because he really makes an effort to develop a rapport with everyone, even Henry, Ale and I. However, I really felt for his pilot. Kim was staying in Halls Creek, flying in at about 9am each day and out at 4pm, meaning that his pilot was just kind of chilling in the staffroom with very little to do. When KP walked in to find him staring at the walls, she did everything she could to fix the broken TV in the Foxtel room and relieve his boredom and luckily succeeded in her efforts. It would be absolutely awesome to be a pilot and with small planes one of the only methods of transportation around the Kimberley; it’s a great job to have. The only issue being you can’t exactly fly back, do something in town and then fly back to pick someone up. Luckily today there was another pilot around for a bit so they both sat around and gabbed about plane stuff, but I felt bad that there wasn’t very much to do for them both. I suppose it goes with the duty!

We had Senator Jacinta Collins, Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Workplace along with Ron Dullard, CEO of the Catholic Education Office visit briefly today. They walked around and witnessed each class in action before checking out the Trade Training Centre which hopefully will open very soon. They were most impressed by all the children at assembly who sat and were very well behaved, setting a brilliant example for our school. The Senator asked the students if they had any questions for her and Frena asked about her family. Jenny and I always say that she will certainly be the first Aboriginal Prime Minister when she’s old enough so it was fantastic to see her political career beginning with that question. Julian caused a few giggles amongst the adults when he asked if the Senator liked Hip-Hop. She said yes but wasn’t going to show her moves, but luckily Antonio did. He was super brave, stood up in front of the whole school and did his robot dance. The crowd went absolutely wild! I love Antonio’s moves; even when I ask him to just walk over and pick up a book of his he’ll dance over in the funniest of ways. We were all very proud of his efforts and the visitors were super impressed.

Primary C!

Julian and Danielle

Chris and Joan, with a paper puppy face Joan made

The Senator and Brother Rick

Julian asking if the Senator likes Hip Hop

Antonio and his Robot dance at assembly today. We're so proud of him!

Anthony, Father John and Lorraine, a Church Leader left for World Youth Day in the early hours of this morning. They have quite a trek; driving to Broome, flying to Perth, then Singapore, then England and finally Madrid. Last night we bid farewell to Anthony in the best way we knew how; lots of food and cake. It will be sad to be without a fellow redhead friend for three weeks and we’ll all miss him dearly however I’m sure he will be a better person for having gone on the trip.

Cutting the cake - totally made it! (sooo yummy!)

'Do I have to eat it now?!'

With Anthony away, Brother Rick has passed the sandwich making duty to us STM volunteers. I just made 80 sandwiches; impressive! However they can’t live up to the sandwich fillings of Tuesday; sliced cocktail sausages and sauce! The kids went mental for them. I made Tuna, Carrot and Corn this afternoon which is their next favourite so hopefully they are happy with that. It’s good fun and kind of easier making sandwiches in bulk than in single, especially as there is no glad wrap involved!

The sandwich making process.

Mmmmm Tuna and creamed corn!

Primary B is absolutely sparkling and has a lovely clean smell to it. We’re almost done in that room, having cleaned the chairs, desks, surfaces and tomorrow windows and carpets. Even though I would never think of doing so, it might even get to a point of being so clean you could eat off it!

To finish, here are the funnies of this week. Firstly, the camel came into the school yard today just as the very important visitors were walking around; that was kind of awkward! It took a long time to get her out but not before a few kids had jumped on poor Jellybean and tried to ride her but I was too late getting the camera out so no photos of proof. The second was Julian in class today. I was trying to talk to him about something during Literacy time and he just put down his sheet, looked at me with big eyes and said ‘excuse me, please move. I’m working here!’ It was so cute and absolutely hilarious. And the last one features Corryanne. I was working with another Primary C student, looked up and just saw Corryanne giving me the funniest and daggiest face across the room. I love those little moments that just put everything into perspective and make me laugh!