Flying
Well well well, where has the time gone? Since my last update a fair bit’s happened. I started prac as planned on the 8th of May at my placement and enjoyed my first day. Things took a bit of a turn for the worse though as I started feeling miserable on Wednesday. I took Thursday off feeling unwell, and went and saw the doc.
On the weekend I picked up my mate Sam and we went and collected my awesome gorgeous new desk. It was at Absoe at West End, and is a bit second hand, but you really can’t tell when it’s in my room. We spent a fair bit of the day setting things up before I dropped Sam in town for soccer in the botanical gardens.
Sunday was of course Mother’s Day, which was a lovely day. Deano came around with maccas breakfast as is the tradition so nobody has to clean or prepare stuff, and then Mum opened pressies. We were joined shortly after by Berny and Karen and the kids for a nice day all round.
Monday it was back to the hard slog of school and more misery. I drove on as best I could though and attempted to make the best of it. Saw the doc again on Tuesday briefly with Dad before returning to school, and on Wednesday with more misery, that night I made the decision not to finish the prac and withdraw from the unit on medical grounds, especially with M&D (my main support folk) going away. I finished on Thursday with the school cross country and a water activity using boats they made out of paper. Dad had warned me about water activities and he couldn’t have been more right. It’s no wonder the teacher delegated that part of the activity to me. So that was the end of prac for this semester.
Thursday night we had a Cebs dinner at Gino’s Italian Restaurant at Hamilton. I picked up Daniel and we had a bit of an adventure getting there :p Was a good night though, with the whole meal being paid for by Cebs, which made it all worthwhile.
Friday morning Dad and I went and saw the uni counsellors to have a chat and add some weight to the withdrawal process - if you use all of the avenues provided by the uni etc and still withdraw, it adds credibility. I can’t speak highly enough of their counselling, but the service itself is not terribly easy to get into. Dad and I had a rather uncomfortable meeting with the field placement staff which was through their own stupid fault. These particular women were rude from the word go. Dad and I walked in and Dad went to say something and he was cut off when she said, “we have to speak to the student”. So that set a bad tone from the start, but that’s uni.
That night was the Cebs Games Night with a Bush Rally theme. We had 20 or so kids from North Pine and another 5 or 6 from Toowoomba, so it was a helluva night with really fun activities. We had 4 rotational activities followed by two direct competition events. My favourite rotation game was “The Gimmick”, in which billies were tied to a rope that went through a garden area. A water carrier had to fill the first billy which would move along the rope to the next person and they would swap water and fill a vessel at the end of the course. The team with the most water at the end won. So after all that, we went on to “Burn the String” in which the teams had to set a fire underneath a wet string, and funnily enough, they had to burn through it, and then a stretcher race around the grounds. It was a really fun night and I think everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.
And so that bring us to today with lunch with the whole gang at Berny and Karen’s which was really nice, and M&D frantically packing before they depart early tomorrow morning. Bon Voyage for the next 40 days! I’m sure they’ll have a great time. Lucky sods :p