Day 130: 10/5/13
I slept through the alarm somehow this morning- I must have turned it off in my sleep. Luckily I woke up about 30 minutes later and just about had enough time to get ready! Mooching around in the dark is great fun when you're in a rush!
I checked my bank balance this morning and I had gotten paid for the first full week I did. I was really disappointed because it was about 40 dollars less than the amount I was expecting after last weeks tax and about 110 dollars less than what I had been expecting the week before. So I'll have 660 less dollars than I thought I was going to have. I got paid more in Brisbane for 3 days work than I did here for 5 days, which is ridiculous. I checked the email to make sure the days were all accounted for and they were, it was just the stupid tax! I text the other Irish girl aswell to make sure the tax was right and she got about the same so it seems like that's going to be if for the next few weeks. Now I don't know what to do about travelling! It's a pain in the ass. I really have to start researching how much exactly every single little day trip and accommodation an stuff would cost because I can't go unless I know I can afford every day of it! I have two more weeks I can work before I need to be in Sydney so maybe it would better to just work them. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!
Anyway, today I was in the same school as Monday and Wednesday. I was with the grade 1 class that I had for an hour the last day- the one with the girl that wouldn't listen to anything and kept knocking things! That was great!! She wasn't too bad today. I didn't let her away with too much.
The teacher had left awful work! First was share and chat time which was fine. A few of them had to share work they had done on shapes. Then we had to do two Mother's Day activities. One was drawing a picture of their mother and writing why she was special o the back. The other was to make a basket of flowers with paper and paper plates. Neither of them were hard really but we just had an hour and a half to get them both done! The message and picture were fairl pathetic because I rushed them onto their basket!
After break they had art so I just supervised in another room while they wrote a counting story. Then we had reading groups which wasn't too bad. They were noisy though as two groups were using iPads to record a sock puppet show!
After lunch they had a listening activity to do where I called out different things they had to colour or draw. That was fine. Then came the fun bit! She wanted them to write what they knew about a cube in a little booklet, then they had to make the cube from plasticine and matchsticks. Then I had to take a picture of them and their cube with an iPad so she could stick it into their portfolio. The portfolio is for their assessment but I don't know if she wanted them all to have it right or whether she wanted them to do what they thought was right. I didn't have time anyway to get everyone to fix theirs up so I ended up taking booklets with very little written and taking pictures of things that weren't even cubes!! It was an awful activity to have left for last thing on a Friday evening!! Their was plasticine and matchsticks everywhere even though they weren't messing with them really- they just seemed to drop them! Then when we had all that cleared we had to make sure they all had their baskets and pictures for their mothers!! All the parents were standing outside the window staring in wondering why we were late!! I know the other classes did these activities earlier in the week so I'd say she left them purposely for someone else to do!!
After school I didn't have any text from the agency so I rang them to see what they had and the girl that answered didn't have anything yet and said she'd ring if she had something organised. I got no call by the time I got the train and by then it was half four and the office was closed. So, they better have work for me on Monday!
When I got back to the city I just had some food and then read a book for the evening. I'll think about the cost of my travels tomorrow.