Movies, Balls and Pools

Just to clear the Angel situation up, she's about 6 years old or maybe younger, just for some reason remember that number. But she is sort of Br Lou's dog but even he doesn't claim full ownership because when he arrived at Boystown a few years ago, it was sort of their dog and he decided to do the looking after but she really does wander and visit a lot of the houses.

While putting photos on my USB the other day, I remembered about the Nintendo 64 emulator Spud sent to me one study lesson so a few nights ago I was playing Pokemon Stadium and as soon as Ale saw it, he asked if i could send it to him and since then, Steph's laptop is pretty much always out on the table to keep Ale entertained. He was even playing it last night when I was trying to educate him on Australian culture through the blockbuster hit, 'Crackerjack'. I really want to get him to watch 'The Castle', some how don't think he'll get it.

After the new collection of balls we have acquired, my new favourite past time (well it was before but now its a lot better) is tactically kicking balls around the house. The fact that Steph's room is often the target is completely coincidental :) so far, task have included but are not limited to:
- Grubbering the footy from the kitchen through the door into Steph's room
- Throwing a frisbee from the kitchen into Steph's room
- Drop punting a footy under the fan but over the couch to go through the kitchen door
and my new personal favourite:
-Kicking a small blow up ball from behind the kitchen door and curving it around the door and into Steph's room.

At the pool, the old routine was that after mungari time, I would have Steve's class (PRMD) who are a fairly wild class but Steve was always happy to run a few little activities before plenty of free time while I was able to sit back and talk to him about either running or guitars usually just keeping an eye out for any flipping/drowning/crying/punching kids. Then Jenny's class (PRMC) came out pretty soon after where she would run a good program for them which I would often help out giving pointers to kids or stand in the pool as a marker so they went all the way to the end of the pool each lap. Then there was a big long break which have some time to relax in the pool before Maggie's class comes out late and that was very much handed on to me from day one. On my first day at the pool, I was told that each teacher would run their own program but when Maggie first came in, I got them in line and then waited for her to take over... after about 10 seconds, she says, "Well, off you go." So I've pretty much taken it from there, and I'm pretty proud to say that they have become the best behaved class in the pool! At first they were terrors but then KP brought to my attention the fact that half of the children in the school are partly to very deaf and with water in their ears, its even worse so since then with a lot of loud, slow, very simple talking accompanied by a lot of body gestures, I have managed to get them into line quite nicely. Then, the secondary kids come out. At first I was happy to let them just enjoy their time in the pool since they had the shortest time and all fairly good swimmers, then I was given a bit of a talking to about the purpose of the pool and so on, so I went all 'Coach Carter' on them which actually worked really well getting them to do proper stuff. However, it only took about 3 days for them to work me out so eventually I was getting about 3 people swimming laps and all the others in their clothes saying they weren't swimming today, then as soon as I called free time, they all jumped in so we're back to letting them have their fun which is still good because all their games actually involve a lot of swimming.
Anyway, the purpose of my writing this section which ended up being a lot longer that intended, was that it was always a fairly laid back beginning of the afternoon and then the second half was the stressful bit but a few days ago, Steve had to quickly go meet Jaquie (Father John's mum who is in town for a bit) and Judy and asked if I could keep them busy while he was doing that. When he got back, he said "I didn't know you could do that! I might let you keep going with that!" So now I'm running a program for Steve's class as well which I guess is good considering I'm out here to help out but it does leave me with a nice sore voice every afternoon.

Wow, its already Thursday! The weeks pass insanely fast out here! Well, talk to you all soon!