Procrastination

I cannot fathom what is the matter with me. Before the course books came I was so hyped for Tesol and ready to complete the whole lot in a couple of weeks and be...GONE. Now I find I can barely lift the cover (that's if I can find the books at all).

Firstly, it has to be studying alone...by distance, whatever. It is quite desperate at the best of times but in this case (in comparison to my 3 previous experiences of study via distance), the college really have abandoned me to my own devices. There are no online or phone tutorials (although there is a tutor I can contact via email. She is in Melbourne, I think). There is no 'Blackboard' or virtual learning environment where I might interact with other students. There is no schedule for learning and actual checkups as per the Gaelic course with Sabhal Mor Ostaig.

It's just me and these bloody books...and don't get me started on them! FRUSTRATING! It feels like there should be a second book to explain the first. There are huge gaps in information - and I am a bloody English teacher! A few activities I've worked through so far have been so sparsely explained I've actually had to email the course tutor - unheard of in the history of saoghalbeag studying!

I think it is also difficult because I am not based in a school to be able to apply the learning - or even to assess the learners themselves and comprehend where they are coming from.

There is also the one parent family procrastination. I find it impossibly hard to knuckle down for real study when she is around. I know I am going to be interrupted the minute I start so I don't. Start. I do everything else possibly possible before I start the TESOL - which means it usually starts around 4pm when there are no toddler programs on telly to distract her and she's starting to get tired and cranky and hungry and then I decide I should probably bath her and start dinner anyway...but by this stage I am getting desperate to at least do SOMETHING of the course so instead I persevere. I also feel guilty that here I am learning how to make learning fun for other people when I can't even find a spare minute to work on an activity with her. So I will make a cake with her or make a mess with paint and glue, or go into the garden...

We now have a fully landscaped and manicured front yard thanks to TESOL.

Frustration

I have neglected the blog...again! I am still here. Have just lost the will to blog in this past couple of weeks.

Firstly, I finished with my environmental education job and we are poor as dirt. The company had some crazy issues (or namely ONE crazy issue who verbally abused me after I spent 2 hours driving to the office on HER command only to be told my being there was pointless and costing them money! Staff turnover of 14 in under 2 years in an office of only about half a dozen is all I can say - shame on the Board!). They also had only one tour booked for the whole of term 4 so I figured it was an appropriate time to concentrate on finishing my TESOL course, doing prac, maybe even getting some work. The plan was to move to the Coast as there are numerous English language schools there and...NONE here.

This brings up the accommodation dilemma: my sister and I share a house that we bought last year. If I move away for work we need to rent it out - but where does she go? To our mother's...? What about the rising prices of rent on the Coast - unaffordable on a single income (which is not even guaranteed)? Not to mention it will be difficult to get a lease for less than 6 months so that puts all my plans out...I looked into staying with my Grandmother but before I could put the suggestion to her she was hospitalised by illness...

WHY IS EVERYTHING SO BLOODY DIFFICULT???

I also made myself sound like a numpty as the language schools started phoning me and I had to keep saying I was "waiting to hear back from my Nanna before I considered any posts"...

On top of that, of course, is the childcare dilemma.

Sometimes I really do wonder if there is any way I could give up my daughter for a month or 6...could I do it? Could she handle it? Would I handle it? They used to do it all the time in the olden days - had too many kids so the older ones would be shunted out to barren aunties or to be maids or lackeys in big houses...But I regret it instantly and know that I would sooner severe an arm or leg than let her out of my sight. I can barely sleep when she's not in the room or if she spends a night at her Nanna's. I get bored and listless when I haven't seen her for a while. I find it difficult to do things we always do together (like go to the shops or have coffee) without her. (word to the wise - do NOT look up the spelling of severe on google images. I nearly puked!)

Frustration...(well whaddya know, it's already a TAG!)

Something about nothing...

We haven't left yet >sigh<.

Still in the land of Oz, still working through my Cert IV in TESOL (towards which I have a disturbing lack of motivation...).

I have discovered that as I have a teaching degree, I have 2 options for jobs - international schools or English language schools. The first are mostly expat kids and very good money. The others don't pay quite as well but involve teaching local kids, which is what I am interested in. Although at this point lots of money sounds great because I have...

NONE!

It is starting to freak me out a wee bit, mainly because nothing seems to be on the horizon to change this empty coffers situation.

My casual job has peetered out to nothing - my final tour was last week (oh, I also resigned - long story don't ask but there was no further work really for the rest of the year anyway) and it's final term here so supply teaching is limited. I have my first day ALL term coming up in two weeks time - so it's a dire situation.

So I have been trying and TRYING to find a solution work-wise for the period from now until January (which was our EDD) but strangely enough things keep going cockeyed. I had a couple of positive phone calls for jobs on the Coast and thought we might move in with my grandmother to keep her company and save money etc (also short term so a rental would be hard to organise), but she went into hospital right as I was about to ask her if we could stay ... perhaps she guessed??? Another family member offered us a room but now the jobs may have fallen through...argh!

In the meantime I am thinking...(not always a good thing!) What if we looked into jobs NOT abroad for a spell (say, 6 months), which would give us a chance to save money, rent the house out before we left the country, practice living 'away from home' and also give me some relevant experience prior to trying to secure a job OS?

So I have emailed NT schools and another organisation that runs literacy projects in Cape York...both sound really interesting (working with kids from Indigenous backgrounds) and would be incredible experiences in their own right, buuuuut...I feel like I am wimping out AGAIN and finding more excuses not to leave. Don't get me wrong - oh, I still want to leave...desperately. But dreaming and doing are two different cats. Leaving is scary...maybe a job a little closer to home would make it easier to go further away? Plus there's the lack of funds...I feel awfully more apprehensive planning a sojourn in Asia with $20 in the bank than I might if I had a few thousand dollars.

I even emailed some hostels in New Zealand about working there over the Summer - a couple of them had links to English language schools or classes and I thought that it might be a fun way to start the RTW, but so far my emails have been met with SILENCE - more on that in another post as it has intensely irritated me. It is SO rude. And why don't they want me???

So...a lot of something about nothing because we still haven't set off. So far my CV has done more travelling than I have but I am ready to go. I just spent 7 days landscaping my front yard and this week I am planning to start the BIG JUNK CULL of all our ... junk! So, stay tuned for that exciting development!

One more thing...

The whole purpose of this morning's blogs (when I really should have been getting dressed and ready to head to the library for Friday morning Storytelling and Craft) was because I stumbled across this (on silversprite's blog):

The Isle of Berneray e-shop. They sell such delights as a

as well as this (my personal favourite): a keepsake box adorned with a local black face:

and of course, the Berneray calendar. This is the single page version. You can also buy a 12 months calendar (okay, of course they're all 12 months but this one has a picture a month):

With all the drama going on in Kyleakin at the moment, it is refreshing to see a village who have embraced modern technology and are doing what they can to keep their home alive.

REALLY should be at the library by now, so more on Kyleakin at another time.

Other blogs

So...given that I was going to be a librarian in a place early convict settlers described as 'the mouth of hell', I thought a great name for my blog (down there) would be something along the lines of "the librarian at the end of the world" or edge of the world or ... you get the picture.

Google informed me that sadly, there was already a librarian at the end of the world and I would have to try harder. Of course I went for 'the librarian at the OTHER end of the world' but then not getting the job kind of got in the way of that blog.

So, who was this librarian at the end of the world? Imagine my delight to discover they were in Scotland! And the westerly islands to be precise! Given the name (silversprite), and the profession (librarian) I was (terrible generalisation) expecting an elderly man or woman with a twinkle in their eye. I am pretty sure this is not how silversprite would be described in real life.

Photo from silversprite also available in the Berneray 2009 Calendar

Anway: a plug for the blog if you have not already found it from my links to the left. Brilliant photos, interesting anecdotes from Berneray (island he lives on). There's also some IT speak that goes on which usually leaves me feeling hopelessly inept and old but hey, that's how I found out about Second Life before the Australian media...:)


Another brilliant, brilliant blog is Shauny's 'What's New Pussycat'. That one has been in my Favorites (sic) for a few years now. An Australian girl in Scotland - how could google not bring me this delight the day I got my computer and plugged in the ADSL??? And yes, that's pretty much how I found the blog. There's heaps more to Shauny - even the really old stuff (I am embarrassed that she has been blogging for YEARS and YEARS - and that I had not discovered it. I stupidly thought blogging was relatively new and that it had not been around when I was travelling, but NOooooo, I am just ignorant!) The pic is from a recent entry discussing the infamous British Washing Up Tub/Bowl.


Of course, there is Prague blog, which I think I've already mentioned. Found this one when I was looking into Tesol a couple of months ago. I really want to go to Prague now...but baby steps! I think it's called Delayed Gratification - I think it will be good for me to live in Asia for a while. And everybody says it is good to gain experience there. If I also manage to save some money these will both help in Europe where apparently you can't get jobs without experience and they don't provide accommodation and other perks that seem to flow freely in Asian countries.


And Angus keeps me abreast of Scottish politics...the only politics that have ever managed to make me cry, or even to capture my attention for more than 5 minutes. They may not let me vote but they will never take my freedom to pretend I did! (I won btw). He also manages to explain away many of the nagging questions I had after living in the Western Isles for a few months in 2004 (schools, ferries, windfarms...). Photo from recent entry discussing the axing of nearly 100 workers at a local fish processing plant. You can read it here.

There are others, but these are the main ones that have me rushing to my laptop instead of tending to my daughter...

Something good

I have been following Silversprite's blog for most of this year. I think I stumbled across it initially during one of my mad, "I want to be a librarian" periods. I still want to be a librarian but I can't commit to the postgrad study so maybe in a few years...

Ahh, I remember now - I had applied for a job in Strahan, which is a tiny place on the wild west coast of Tasmania. Cold, mountains meeting the sea, olden days buildings...heck, they are still using steam trains! The job was in community education - managing the local library and learning centre (yep, the job I'd dreamed of years ago back in Scotland). And whaddya know it looks just like Scotland. Have you seen how cheap house prices are in Tassie? It was perfect, just perfect! My mum, by chance, even happened to be visiting the village right at the time I was applying and being interviewed.

On that note, what a circus! It took WEEKS (possibly months - I initially applied in December, heard nothing until late January, early Feb and interviewed in February) for them to process the job applications. There were no less than THREE senior staff interviewing for the TEN HOUR PER WEEK post. Yep, 10 hours a week and all that drama. Not only that, but it took them so long to process the applications that I think I phoned twice to check the job had not been given to somebody else already, only to be told the panel had not even met to discuss it. Bearing in mind that when my Mum visitied the place in December (around the time of the job application), there was already a temporary staff member in there who told Mum that they were struggling as they had so few staff. Then interview lady tells me that they were also looking for people for nearby Zeehan and Rosebery (sp?) and would I consider those? I said yes to everything, took the interview (VERY stuffy and formal and except for Portree High School Interview the First the most excrutiating half hour I've ever endured).

So, I didn't get the job. It devastated me for quite a while. Not least because although the bastards advertised in November and applications had to be in by December, all their fluffing around did not produce a result until sometime in MARCH (and by the way, I was NEVER informed, which I thought was a common courtesy for people who reach interview stage). So, for those not in Australia, March is like October in the Northern Hemisphere. Both school and uni have resumed, so it's too late to get a teaching job or start a course. I was facing another long year of supply teaching when I stumbled across the Bremer Tafe Diploma of Community Services Management, completely misunderstood what it was about and spent a lot of money on hot air...but that vitriol will save for another time.

For now, I am talking about Silversprite (and may have been slightly distracted). I may have to start a new post...

A good reason for not getting the job in Strahan...look at the size of that thing!

Working 9 to 5...

Okay, I'm not. I have a toddler and I am studying - I work part-time. Or at least I did, but the organisation I work for have let the program slide into ill repute so only one group booked for this term. I am on the move, anyhow, and recently sent off my CV to a few English language schools on the coast. I have not finished the Cert IV yet (that would be a miracle!) but hoping my existing teaching quals will help out.

I really want to get some experience before I go overseas, plus now that I'm getting into the workbook I'm so keen to get into a classroom and try things out...

Plus I need the money. Starting to freak out as the days count down to January and I am still on the poverty line.

Wrote off to Select Education (aka Teach Anywhere) but they are the strangest teacher recruitment agency in the world. They flood me with mailers and poorly punctuated/spelt/grammartised emails about teaching positions all over the world but will not respond to direct questions. Hopefully they are not like Smart Teachers, who would also bombard me with job lists, then refuse to respond to my applications and subsequent emails wondering if they even got them, and further emails asking if there was a reason I was not being considered...

English teacher for sale!