Getting Creative!

While the cooking skills are improving, my kitchen safety skills seem to be getting worse. On Friday I made bacon and egg pie; pretty impressive considering my sincere lack of culinary experience. It turned out exceptional however one of our tea towels was left a little worse for wear when I accidentally burned a huge hole in it. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to flick the tea towel up onto the still hot but off stove while I opened the oven. Luckily the flames were put out without the use of the fire blanket (saving that for an emergency worse than that) before the house was engulfed. Knowing the fire trailer takes seven minutes to get anywhere in Balgo has made me a little more wary when it comes to fire!

The 'Uh-Oh'...

...balanced with an 'Aw Yeah!'

Cassie and I enjoyed Saturday night by our very own made fire! We were incredibly impressed with ourselves, managing to not only build a bonfire ourselves but keep it going for a few hours. Sure, we did attempt to light a huge log with a stick but discerned that small amounts of kindling were better than burning our fingers holding the lighter to the wood. It eventually took off and was super warm, keeping the mozzies away which was an added bonus. We chilled Balgo style, lying on a blanket under the black sky, counting some epic shooting stars. I seriously thought there was a meteorite shower or something because I haven’t seen that many shooting stars in such a short period of time since the time my family and I went star gazing during the Leonard Meteorite Shower! I suppose that’s one of the perks about living in an area with no major lights; clear view of the night sky!

Happy belated Fathers Day everyone! The staff of Luurnpa all celebrated the day with a lovely shared lunch in the staffroom. After watching Ann Marie, Robert and Louise’s two year old daughter and Steve and Glenda’s three year old Ella playing with each other, Henry kindly pointed out that I was the third youngest there and should therefore eat at the kids table. Ha de ha ha Mr. Jones!! However Ann Marie picked up the telephone and for some reason was talking to me (she kept saying ‘Steph, Steph!’ into the phone, so cute!) so I ditched the oldies and hung out with the young ones. At the end of the lunch, Ann Marie had learnt the words ‘dishwasher’, ‘texta’, ‘dinosaur’ and had learnt where the water came out from in the sink. I’m like the baby whisperer!

Three more sock puppets have been made over the past few days. Sharelle, Danielle and Renelle all made excellent puppets and with different types of socks used, everything stuck on a lot better than the first lot. They actually look really cute! The students are now learning about explanation texts and are learning how to teach a method to someone, the example being how to make a sock puppet talk. Everyone loves playing with the puppets, making them talk and learning about something completely different at the same time.

Danielle's

Renelle's

Sharelles

The worst thing happened the other day; the mangarri room ran out of milk! Absolutely awful! However, the kids didn’t think so. They’re usually only allowed baked beans and spaghetti on Fridays but with no way to properly serve the weetbix (I suggested replacing milk with juice, didn’t go down well) only hot breakfasts are allowed at the moment. Woo :) Anthony ruined the excitement over extra baked beans and spaghetti yesterday bringing in the milk powder that you mix with water, but it looks kind of gross so I’ll wait for the proper milk to arrive, simply because when you serve the kids something more exciting, they like you a little bit more. Yep, that’s right! Bribing children with food to love me more!!

On Monday in our health lesson Camille taught Primary C about Head lice. The students looked at pictures of lice, learnt the difference between nits and lice (the nits are the eggs, the lice are the parasites) and discovered that lice suck your blood. Needless to say, I was feeling rather queasy the whole lesson and Frena, as clever as she is, picked up on this. The kids all had to make a book teaching others about head lice with illustrations, so Frena decided to base her characters on me drawing a red-headed female with lice in her hair and big arrows saying ‘STEPH’ all over the page. She certainly did make me feel even queasier than before and last night I ended up having absolutely awful nightmares about lice and nits and all things itchy. I remember waking up in a panic, scratching my head and freaking out until I realised that I checked my hair for lice on Saturday, as I do every week and there was nothing there. Phew!! That’s the downside to working with children; a constant paranoia concerning even the slightest head itch!

Cheers Frena. Thanks

(Nice drawing though)

The past few weeks has seen a strong haze surrounding Balgo as large controlled burns occur around the Kimberley. The smoke looks like storm clouds and every morning I wake up thinking we’re back in the wet season. Yesterday though there were definite rain clouds in the sky. I asked the kids today if they thought it would rain, because they’re just so in touch with the weather almost always their analysis of the clouds is accurate. They all said yes, but Antonio went one step further to look at me with big brown eyes and in a super serious voice say ‘You know what Steph? I’m like a dog. I can SMELL the rain!’ It was the cutest thing ever!! However unfortunately they were all wrong; no precipitation all day! No matter, the clouds today signaled the return of the wet, my absolute favourite part of the Kimberley. Roll on the thunderstorms, monsoons and refreshing rain!

We made masks this morning in Primary C. While the surrounding area looked like a bomb had hit it after the activity had ended, the results were quite spectacular. I made my own at recess to use as a demonstration when I showed the students what we were doing and admit I may have gotten a little too into it. We were making a bird, therefore involving a beak, painting to develop a feathered apperace (the whole morning I could be heard going 'and dab everyone, dab with your brush!') and using actual synthetic feathers to really prove it was a bird. The students haven't yet finished but mine is below, along with some excellent painting designs.

Mine!

You know it's awesome!!!

By Frena

By Kiara

By Rachel

On Friday the Rugby World Cup begins so I'm expecting not to see Henry, Ale or anyone originally from over east for the next month. Pretty certain they'll be sleeping in the Foxtel room in swags which means a house to myself! Woo :)