For our family trip over the winter break, we went on a very short trip to the Mornington Peninsula. This is somewhere that has been on my wish list for a long while, since I have worked in hotels, travel and tourism. I always remember the Tourism Victoria image of the bright blue water and sunny skies. Lucky we did manage to get some sunshine for our little trip away to Dromana. It was a great location, with a walk away to many op shops and our favourite fish and chip shops! It was our mission to try out all the different places for their quality of chips and I have to say that The Lucky Catch chips were super crispy. I even managed to get myself a 90 minute chinese massage which got all the rocks/knots out of my body.

The first stop on our trip was the Point Leo estate sculpture park. There was a lot to look at and the location is spectacular! It was very cold out there looking over the ocean and we were thankful for the clouds for a bit of warmth. Still we saw all the incredible artists there including Murasaki, a Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin and Kaws. One of my faves is the bronze head with my son walking around it, it was mind blowing with its scale and perspective.

Dromana had everything we needed complete with a lovely place to walk along the pier in the evening and watch the sunset. Just to be out in the fresh air was something that I truly appreciate as these days I do not get to just wander around aimlessly admiring natures beauty. The art of the beach boxes, toilets and cafes really added to the charm of the seaside towns we visited.

Sunday was a day when we wanted to check out French Island. It was $30 return for a adult and really it is an excellent place to just go for a wander. As we were a bit lazy we got there later so we did not have much time to do a circuit track to see an echidna train (this is when the female is courted by many males!) Instead we did an hour track to see how many koalas we could find and we located three up high in the Manna gums. What I did not know is that the koalas had migrated to the north end of the island for the winter! Still it was strange to be on an island with only a few cars and no roads – just dirt tracks. There is an opportunity to stay at this island for a few days at the local Air Bnb and also tiny houses. It was so interesting talking to the person who drove the courtesy bus to the cafe. She shared with us a brief history of the island, as it is off the grid and its national park status. It is sad as there is so much potential on this island (which is bigger than Phillip Island) for some super cool eco tourism opportunities. Unfortunately, the way the parcels of land have been divided it is near impossible to get even a caravan on some spots because of the lack of care for the vegetation – it is overgrown with blackberry bushes. There is a long colonial history on this island with nearly 100 locals are mostly intergenerational families. It was interesting to think of living the dream off the grid but it does take solar energy, a massive water tank and ways to filter the water, innovative plumbing and electricity options and a house. Though there are people living that dream complete with Llamas!

Time has just flown by with working full time! Having only 2 days free and needing to recharge as well as do some fun stuff – my plans for writing have been put on the shelf. I have had an enjoyable time planning my art classes and learning a lot at work. With the end of the term approaching this week, it is time for winding down and just chilling but my planning time for next term has been taken away and this week we only have 3 days of children with one day of parent teacher meetings. I do not have to schedule any meetings one on one with parents but I am involved in taking minutes, hopefully with the classes I work with.

The National Gallery has the triennial happening so I had to make sure I dedicated some time to go before it was over. I love going there to recharge my soul with art and to be inspired. There was so much to see and experience. I also went to the Joy exhibition last Sunday and it was the best time with my friend. We love to go to super cool exhibits and take fun pics. We chilled out and chatted for ages on the cushions and we watched films of times gone by at the immigration museum. It is such a beautiful space to explore.

Of course, in between the art I have seen are fun art activities I have done with the children at work. I love lots of colour so we have been exploring watercolour with pipettes, collage with rainbow experimental painting which I incorporated into easter hats, mixed media with PVA glue for easter and the bonus was a reptile show I got to check out twice in the one day! Now that the initial shine has worn off I am realising the grind of teaching and its effect on you. I am discovering that there are monumental issues in a school that you cannot take care of and you just have to go about what you do each day and get through without taking anything on board. You see, that is when the system will get you down and I realise that now at the end of term. I have some great allies I work with and we have chats in our classrooms to just vent about whatever. This is what matters, the collaborative efforts working together and finding ways to laugh about the crazy things that happen in the every day! Never work with children or animals they say…

I’m getting onto my third week at full time work as a teacher which is pretty exciting and I’m really enjoying it! But what I like most is meeting teachers and Ed support staff and covering the teacher planning time. So within that time I work with students on some art activities. I’ve been also teaching science which has been pretty fun. It is cool to have a teacher job, but I am quite exhausted!

The First week went by super fast with meeting new people, inductions, finding my timetable, working out and navigating the computer systems, meeting teachers, parents and observing students after they returned to school after the holidays! (that was pretty big for everybody. Second week has been fun going to a different school and covering teachers there and I got into a bit of a rhythm, but it’s going to last another two weeks and then I’ll be changing again! From week five is the schedule that I am supposed to do which she is working with the 5 & 6 year olds and hanging out with them and doing art activities. There’s just a 3 day a week transition for this little ones for the first few weeks.

All I want to do is sleep but all I am doing is getting up & going to work then eat sleep repeat for 5 days. I am sure I will get into the rhythm of everything but for now it’s huge!

As I write this I am in Queensland just for one night visiting my mum. I had to get up at 5:30 this morning to catch a flight. I’ve been with her all day. I’m flying home tomorrow which is tricky though business people do this all the time?!

Apart from this craziness, there has been nothing else happening, and I’ve been enjoying having time to just chill, as I do not have to do job applications. I can search Pinterest for the activities for the children and dig around in my art closet at work and the fun part is, always making examples for the students, I like it very much! So far we’ve done some painting with rainbows and The Dot book and I am planning some clay pinch pot monsters next week so I’m pretty excited about that. There are so many cool art resources on the Internet and I really love the art planning for the term and building on the art materials exploration with the young ones. So much fun and creativity coupled with autonomy – it is the best!

I will have to say that writing this year will be very intermittent as I will be starting a full-time teaching job as of Monday the 29th of January. I went through a lot of pain and rejection with many job interviews to get here, but with each interview, I learned something for the next interview. I am pretty excited as I will be working as an art specialist with children 5 – 8 years old. The shock of getting a job offer was intense as I got in the car after the interview and called my husband to tell him. He said, you accepted on the spot and I just said, “Yes, as it was a dream come true for me to be teaching art to young people!”

I have spent the last week listening to art teacher podcasts, collecting resources on my Pinterest board, looking through my books for ideas for art and planning how I will begin my year with the children. I have to start slowly as Standard 1 in teaching is to “know the students and how they learn”. Until I find out more information about my students I can then start getting into the term planning. This is such an exciting time for me as I do love teaching something that I love, art is a part of my being and I am so happy to be sharing it with the students.

Other exciting news over the last couple of weeks is that Ms H had her C02 laser procedure and we spent a long 8 hours at the hospital! H was fasting because of a general anesthetic and we arrived at the hospital for check-in at 1pm and did not get admitted to surgery until 6pm! The issue was there was a case that took 2 hours instead of 45 minutes!! H was out at 7pm and it was 9pm by the time we left the hospital as it took ages for her to feel ok again after the anaesthetic. H was wheeled out in a wheelchair to the car by the security personnel as she felt a bit woozy and we got home for dinner at 9:30pm and went straight to bed! All is good now and the spots where the laser was are a bit red but that is OK. She has been working over the holidays and will be back to school on Thursday which is good.

So I am sure I will write here when I find the time! It is going to be a great year full of learning new things and meeting new people, I am so happy to have found a job that resonates with who I am.