Recounting 14.03.07

Yesterday, 14th Mac, was certainly a day of total bliss, fun, tiredness, surprise, excitement, joy, and guilty. The day started off perfectly as I wanted it to be, where I now, have to go School Based Experience (SBE) weekly - Tuesday for 6 weeks. The school i was put in is East Brisbane State School which is very lucky and easy for me because it's just in Zone 2 and I see no serious traffic congestion in getting to the school on time.

Things get a little nervous when the bus that is scheduled to arrive at 8.01 didnt show up, and my five friends and I kept glancing at the minute-hand ticking away. Speculating the bus would no longer show up, so we have to wait for the next bus which hopefully, would show up at 8.15a.m. And thank God, thing did get better as the next bus showed up at 8.20a.m. Finally we got to school (8.30) just in time to show our first-time-good-impression face.

Moving to describing the school, the school is genuinely with few hundreds students. It has a long historical background and though there are few renovation made towards building new buildings, the older ones are still being used as administrative building. I won't go too much into describing the school because right now, i am just being LAZY. About the class that i am observing, it's a level 2/3 class where the students are diversed in their cultures, level of language proficiency, socio-economics, races, religions, interaction etc etc and the list goes on. The students were very pleased to meet me and despite my duty as a practising teacher, i frequently smile at them and being friendly with them. And they are the bunch of cute and innocent boys and girls sitting there talking and having lots of fun. I was being introduced and being greeted as "Mr LING"; some kids apparently will come and ask me, "Mr Ling, can you help me with my work?", "Mr Ling, you are a nice teacher, becoooz not all teachers are nice."

Few things surprised me as a teacher in the school yesterday. First, there's this one student in my class who is autistic - have autism. Student who has autism could face many difficulties in learning because of the disability of neurons in brains. If you guys wanna know more about autism, can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

In her case, I really felt very pitiful for her at first because i found her facing many difficulties in learning. Often, she walked to me and asked me if i could help her? I did try my very best to teach her despite the difficulties she faced and my ongoing repetition. Finally, when she understood and remembered what i taught, i felt the relief and happiness in my heart. However, reflecting on her case, i felt that she is in need of greater nurture, assistance, guidance and motivation. There must be something that teacher can do to help develop her learning.

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Arriving back home, i chucked my bag at one side of my table, feeling really tired mentally, physically and emotionally. In the evening, as i was cooking my regular dinner of rice and vegetables, i got this one phone call from my friend - MiSam who in a way, surprised me. She is my Korean friend where we met in Bundaberg, fruitpicking. In some ways, we are still keeping in touch sometimes, exchanging experience of fruitpicking. Back in Toowoomba and Bundaberg, i met a lot of friends, good and bad, nice and evilish; so, for those good one, sometimes I still keep in touch with them, coz you never know that one day, their experience of travelling can teach me something. So, back to her phone call, we didnt talk much as i was cooking. However, an hour later, i realized that yesterday was March 14. On that day, in countries like Japan and South Korea, the guy in a couple relationship will give candies, chocolates and gifts to his partners. I got to know about this because of what she told me. Interestingly, on Valentine's Day, it is the female who gives chocolates, candies and stuffs to the guy, instead of the opposite. Well, this is just some interesting cultures i learned about other country.

Now, talking about the most crazy thing i have ever done in Australia, that is getting pissed. Well, what happened is that there's this one backpacker whom i met in Brisbane, apparently, he will be leaving tomorrow to Sydney and back to Germany for good. So, to celebrate his farewell, we decided to get pissed!!! What an idea i thought. Around 11pm, we met and talked about many things, crapping, talking about travelling and where to go and stuff, while on one of our hands, we are holding a bottle of beer each. I got three tallies of VB (Victoria Bitter) which i was so determined to finish. So, there we were, talking, listening to songs, then singing. Apparently, I did get pissed last night which i relunctantly denied, and i landed myself deadly on my bed.

Anyway, i am feeling much better after hours of additional sleep. Don't think i am going to get pissed for the second time. It's definitely not something beneficial to do in weekdays, especially when you have class the next day. Well, this excludes weekends... =P