Last 2 days in NZ (omg.. the formatting is killing me)

How good time flies.. my holiday in new zealand ended, really too soon.

In general, sheep roam the country. Mountains, lakes and beautiful green patches of land are all about New Zealand. Sorry for my poor description, but these are all that I see while rotting on the bus for more than half the trip. lol.

So here are the pictures that say it all!

Day 7 - Farmstay & Christchurch

Saying goodbye to our hosts at the Farmstay.

At Farmer's Corner.

Views of Christchurch

Our cute tourguide

tourguide lookalike:

Reminds me of the song, "xiang yao guang zhe jiao ya zai shu shang chang ge...."

Willowbank Wildlife Reserve

Maori Cultural Show

The tribe was so fierce that children were afraid. They recited the "Gambate gambate kora kora..." , which reminded me of my secondary school talentime where my class performed a tribal dance!

Audience engagement

Dinner

Lamb

Diabetic Pavlova.

Last Day (free and easy) - Christchurch
We made some friends along the way from our tour group and decided to spend our last day travelling together. First we went to take the Christchurch Gondola, then to the Wildlife park, Go-kart and lastly dinner and shopping at Christchurch.


On board the Gondola

We could even spot sheep on our way up the mountain! We noticed them when we heard "baa baa..."

Magnificient views from the top.

After lunch, we were off to wildlife park. The highlight of thi attraction was us being caged up in a van and the lions were free to walk around us. They even went on top of the van and the brave zookeepers fed the hungry and ferocious lions meat with their bare hands!

We found a small egg on the ground.

Rhinos behind. There were lots of other animals that can also be foound in sg.

Go kart. It was rather small.. only the 3 of them tried :)

They made him the champion cause he overtook them a few times.. it was quite exciting towatch them!

Huge chess in town!

Last meal in NZ. Big portions.

5 hours before departure for NZ

Went to school this morning:

Cant believe my CCA is St John Ambulance....
Teaching sec 2 science and sec 3 A and E maths, CME, PW next year!!
And lots of other committees.........................

Acutally quite happy and excited with the arrangement. But gotta start preparing when i come back from hol! Classroom management is still a nightmare to me though they are all express classes. I should stop doubting my skills and build some confidence. (:

NZ here i come!!~~~

Nov is ending. Just 2 more days and I am off to New Zealand!! How i wish my holiday would last a long long time! Cause when I come back from NZ, it will be time to face reality and start my engines working. I will know which classes I will be taking for next year on the day I will be flying off for NZ. I hope i can try not to think about the classes during my trip and only think when I am back!! *worried*  And one more thing... Max is going to miss us for sure, and I am going to miss him badly too.

Just started using Lancome cleanser and toner, they feel so comfortable when applied to the skin, no stinging pain like the Clinque toner that I used previously and the cleanser is so nice and smooth. But it is so expensive..wonder if it will work some miracles for my hopeless skin? I must be dreaming la, my skin is already beyond hope...

I am really looking forward to boarding the plane, resting comfortably with my dar beside me, reading my fav book and knowing that I will fall asleep when my eyes get tired! (i dont usually fall asleep on planes, always have trouble doing so... but i think this time i have found my solution -- my book)

Nov holidays

It's finally the holidays! Hee.. so happy! But then again, there are preparations to do.. preparation for next year's work and also the wedding programme etc. So many things to keep me occupied. Sort of can relax, but at the same time, if relax too much I think I wont feel good. So I must make sure I'm productive. Hee.

Nothing interesting happened... I wish to wake up from my blurness, if not I dont even know that next week have cme lessons. Haha. And we've to report to school on 30 nov!! and my NZ hol is like 1dec to 9dec!!! Can u imagine if i book a day earlier to go hol? that would be disastrous.

Quite happy with my tuition kids' results, but im gonna drop alot of them for next yr so that i dont work myself to death. My health is ok now, but still get panic attacks sometimes..hais. dunno when i will ever recover from this stupid thyroid thing.

My aims for Nov (before i go on hol):

• to pack and refurnish the room for the wedding
• to finish up my story books (reading books by Jodi Picoult) - can u imagine me reading books? wahaha. good influence of my nie friends.
• to prepare the most i can for the wedding (coming out with ideas and stuff) - so vague hor..

When i come back from hols i must rem to start focusing on my preparations for next year's work!! Gambate!

Went out with hui hui to shop, eat and do pedicure.. nua the whole day away. Heh..

my fav flavours of ice cream! cookies and cream (but this one was so chunky that i cant really taste the ice cream) and green tea ice cream with some red beans in it!

Painted them brown... quit ugly. Haha!!!

Happy day

today is such a happy day that i just wanna blog abt it so that i will always rem such a happy day!! :) firstly, dar and i went k lunch at jurong safra in the morning! this was to satisfy my ktv craving since dunno when!! and the ktv session with mel & limin yesterday was not enough as I was late cause i went to meet my students first. Hehe.. Yup!! and the ktv being very new was really fun~! we still think that the 3 hrs was not enough though. Haha. The ktv had a touch screen where we select the songs from, and I also recorded 2 songs which daryl sang and blue tooth it to my hp!! COOL rite!

after a fun filled ktv, we went to suntec city games fair and then travel fair, where we booked our dec trip to new zealand!! im so excited abt it! after that we met my parents and went to the food fair to eat dinner. Had laksa, barbecued duck meat, yam paste, fish maw soup, kebab, hungary cake (the one which we had in prague!!) and also the freebie food tasting :) Yum.

In the evening, we went rtc for bowling! and this was the one of the best session i had. daryl's whole family was there, and we played 3 games in total where i scored 149,160,148! so consistent! Dar was even better, he scored 270 in the last game!

when we got home, the ampoule which i bought online on thurs had reached my house by mail already! didnt expect it to come so soon. And the ingredients in the ampoule is exactly the same as the one that i m using right now. I bought my current ampoule from my beautician which costs 69 bucks. it is made in USA. the one which i bought online is made in france and it costs only 18 bucks. Wonder if the result will be the same? Cause my current ampoule is helping me control my oil glands quite well. Wonder if i should switch cause of the price?

happy happy day. Smiles.

Last game:

The bread/biscuit/cake thing that we ate in prague during our exchange:

bored at home

Though 1 week hols has passed, i am still feeling quite slack!! haha.. for this month, i would only need to go school for 3 days. Woooohooo.. hehe. and each day the max is 4 hrs! (: This period of time is really honeymoon, and i hope it willpass slowly!!

Dug out a photo of my bro and me, taken 4 to 5 years ago.


And then this photo that was taken recently:



I am really looking older!! SOBs. Missing ktv, looking for ppl to go with me! Slacking is so much fun!!!

Practicum Week 10

Hurray, its the final week of practicum. FINALLY! HAHA. For week 9, i took 3 days of mc.. was feeling sick - cough n fever. until now still sick but better already.

After week 10 is 1 week of sep holidays! So cool rite!

Went Sattine to try my gowns already.. and already finalised the design of my wedding gown, so happy! but i dunno how it will turn out in the end, cause i can only imagine it for now :) So excited to wear my personalised gown!

Quite slack in school now, cause nothing much to do already. Hee.. getting ready to pack and GO! Haha.. i sound like i really hated practicum? no lah. its more of feeling happy that it is all over now.

Max is back to its boh-tak look. daryl's father says he looks like a refugee. Skinny legs! We shaved him cos the room is infested with ticks. we're really having problems about that. Dunno what to do. Been spraying insecticide non-stop but can still find ticks almost everywhere. YUCK.

Practicum Week 8 this week!!

It is week 8! 3 more weeks to go!!! So excited abt finishing practicum! and guess wat? i actually enjoyed myself in my 2 classes today, although there are ppl still not doing work etc, i act feel quite comfortable in class today. :)

the observation that i had last week with my nie sup and mr lee was quite bad, in my eyes. Cause mr lee didnt feel pleased cause i was sorta rushing through and never slow down. That was cause i was really rushing for time and wanted to finish. Certain questions that my nie sup thinks that i should have asked, i also would have asked if i had the time!! :( so sad. when Mr lee says i would either get pass or credit, i was super disappointed and displeased.. cos i really put in alot of effort and my nie sup gave me 10 double pluses and gave me an excelling grade for classroom management. Hais... i really hope can get my credit loh. 3 ppl (mr lee, me ang and nie sup) will give me my final grade. if i get pass only, it must be mr lee lah. Mr ang already said its a credit most prob. *pouts*

work aside, daryl's birthday is on tues (tmr)! think my creative juices are sucked dry by my work. i have no idea what to do for him... HAHAHA.

Practicum Week 6

Week 6 was smooth, only 4 days of work, but i actually disappointed myself quite badly once. It was during the math observation. I taught the wrong concept! OMG. i think in my heart i have already failed my math observation!! but my ct was nice enough to tell me that i am still new so still not familiar, ok to make mistakes. to him it may be ok, but to other ct, i would have failed miserably. If i was posted to a sch with strict cts, i die already. So, i am so glad to be blessed with nice CTs. :) hopefully he doesnt tell my phy CT, who will be so disappointed with me..

This weekend is a long one, with friday as the national day celebration, and mon is a public holiday! But guess what, time flies and its SUNDAY now!!! ARGH. really too fast already.. :(

Went to Yanjun's ROM yesterday nite, it was at amara hotel, nice ambience and pretty yanjun! Never seen her without specs before so we were all very surprised and couldnt recognise her at first! After that i went over to daryl's mum birthday celebration where we sang KTV till around 1.45am..

Here are some pics:

Practicum Week 5

Just realised that i forgot to blog last weekend.

Everything is ok so far. Except that more than half the class failed the math test. which means that whatever that i taught has sort of gone to waste.. only a third of the class are listening while i was teaching. how terrible. :( I was very disappointed with them when i marked the papers, and i am still feeling disappointed. but what to do? gonna have a talk with them bah, but dunno if it works too. SIGH.

Yup and im in the office now, starting a brand new monday again. SIGH. But luckily this week is a short week, with a long weekend ahead too! so really looking forward to it. Friday is national day celebration and mon is a public hol, so cool. :)

back to work! starting lessons at 8.35am.

Practicum Week 4

Wow, almost halfway there.. 6 more weeks to GO!!! really counting down! busy everyday.. very tired every night. Which is good, cause I had no time to hu si luan xiang, and my thyroid seemed not to be bothering me at all. :)

Have been doing well so far. Observations have been fine, have done 4/10 observations. My math CT said i will prob get a credit. Yay. At least i know, i can teach! Hahaha. But one thing that i hate is, i always go out of tune when i raise my voice. My students can laugh at me a few times each lesson, how diu lian! But I am ok, be teacher must be thick skin, so whatever lah! Another difficult thing is chasing homework from them!! ARGH. really have no idea how to get them to hand in their work. :( I really idolise teachers who can chase students to hand in their work on time, and those who can keep the class really quiet during lessons! For me, my math class can be noisy sometimes. But they can be really good when my ct is around. When my NIE sup came that day, they purposely made alot of funny comments and were so restless!! they purposely one. i asked them where the centre of the circle was and one of them told me it was at my tummy!!! ARGH. But my sup seemed ok, she even laughed during the lesson..

WEEK 5 I will survive!

Practicum Week 3

It has only been week 3. so slow!! Haha.

Practicum so far has been fine. Both CTs say that I am doing well, and that gives me more stress to do even better, and I keep telling myself I shouldnt go below my usual standard!! I am giving myself quite alot of pressure. OMG. wanna faint.

Yup, my classes are nice to teach in general, but the homework part is sucky, esp the chasing of homework and the marking of copied answers. Seem rather meaningless. Hais. they all are not interested in doing hw.. and i decided to restrict homework to once per week during the weekends.. if not i will have to chase for hw like mad!

Had some good and bad experiences in class, esp with this girl.. initially she refused to do any work, but after scolding me (cause i kept nagging at her) i think she felt guilty and she started doing her work. then i showed appreciation so her attitude became better, i hope for a long period. :) Overall i am still coping well with the class. feels good. But i always have the butterfly in the stomach feeling before entering class! ARGH.

Week 4 here i come!!

Today is our 5th anniversary.. we went to the flyer, shopped, bowled and had a sumptuous meal at the jap restaurant at RTC.

Practicum Week 2

Yeah! week 2 is over! 8 more weeks to go!


Initially, Meiping and I were sharing one pathetic table in the staff room. Meiping didnt even have space to put her legs while working on the table. Everytime students knock on the staff room door, we had to open it cause we were the nearest to it! And we have to help them to shout for the teacher's name to see if the teacher that they are looking for is ard. We felt really pathetic. However, our nice science HOD found us 2 seats at a cosy corner in the staff room. Now i can finally work in peace and comfort. :)

I started teaching my 2 own classes only on Thurs, and actually both classes were of good experience! They are both sec 3 express classes. My nightmares of noisy and uncooperative classes are over. But i have to be very careful, because now my CT is in the class with me, that may be the reason why they are so quiet while I was teaching... cuz when i entered the 1st class of express for relief, they were quite noisy when i was teaching. the class that im teaching is the 5th class n their behaviour seemed to be much better. My phy class is the 1st class n they are really lovely to teach. :) Super cooperative.

From the feedbacks from my ct, i had a good start with my classes. And hopefully I will progress well n maintain the class in an orderly manner.. its hard to say... when it comes to homework next week, things may change.

JIA YOU myselF!! and to all my frens/colleagues in practicum!

Practicum Week 1

First week of practicum has passed! it was easy, cause I just had to observe the classes that my CTs are teaching. :) I really like my physics CT, he is the HOD of science. He's really helpful and friendly, someone that I can trust in school. So happy to have a nice CT. Almost as nice as Dr charles chew!! My math CT is also not bad :)

Yup, so next week i will have to start teaching! So scary!!! cant believe that after living for 24 years of my life, my heart still behaves like a child.. not strong enough to face the students and speak with confidence... I am really worried!! esp when the nice CT is looking at my teaching... i dun want to disappoint him as well. :( I must be brave, come on, i can do it!!

Next 8 weeks are gonna be real busy. Homework to mark, lesson plans to write, powerpt presetation to prepare, worksheet and test paper to set etc etc. BUSY!! AND TEACHING in front of many many ppl!! OMG.

Luckily Monday is a holiday! :) happy youth day!

Doggies Day Out and School Reopens

We went to west coast park as there was a doggies day out event. Max was really naughty, he barked at almost every dog that he saw and was dead tired after the walk-a-jog. haha.. the fun part was the sight of so many dogs walking together!! dogs of many different sizes, from real skinny ones which can run very fast, to the fattest hush puppy! the owner of the hush puppy said something real funny "at the rate you are going, u will take ten years to reach the end!" and he was really walking very very very slowly. So FUNNY!! and cause max was sweating so badly, a boy who saw him went "yuck! this dog got so much saliva!" LOL.

We got lots of free dog snacks and went back after the jog. Think there were different competitions later on for the dogs but i bet max would fail anyway so we didnt stay.. and also the sun was so HOT. maybe if there was a salivating competition or competition for the loudest/noisiest dog, then probably he would win. haha. Was a bit sad that i didnt bring my camera along, i used the phone and took only a few shots:

max with the other schnauzers, can u recognise him? :)






look at this schnauzer with a mohawk


AHHHH my last day of JUNE HOLS is here. (CRY OUT LOUD). time to face reality!!! hope everything will go well. Lao tian ye, please bless me with 2 caring and nice CTs and give me courage!!

My last week of june holidays is approaching!! Hahaha.. my big plan of preparing all my lesson plans and activities before school reopens failed miserably!! Wahaha... dont care already la. i just pray hard that i will survive, get a minimum of pass for my practicum! I really cross my fingers and hope to have more angels in my classes. The fear of getting kicked out of NIE due to poor practicum is still in me, but I shouldn't be so not confident rite? At least I know I have previous experience with these students before, and expecting the worst may not be a bad thing since i would have set my mind to prepare for the worst? haha. dunno wat i am talking abt le but u know the pressure is there!!!

Going to see the wedding gowns later! So exciting.. for today its just to visit the shop and get a feel of the gowns there and have in mind what i really want. hee.. we have signed up with Sattine cause their featured gowns are wonderful, they dun hard sell and the photographs that they take are superb! wondering what colour of evening gown i should choose. hehe..

Was very touched by the quote Junyong has on his msn - "before you talk about what you want, appreciate what you have". It reflects so well on most human beings, always asking for more and never really see what they already have around them.. greedy human beings. I should be so satisfied that i have a husband who loves me only, no matter how unromantic he is. :) thanks mel!

Life has been slackish. almost half of my june hols are over, time really flies! how i wish this period of my life will just stop for a long long time, so that i can rest for a long long while!

I am definitely not looking forward to the 29th of june. haha.. that's when my practicum starts, and i can see myself leading a hectic and stressful life. there will be nonstop of lesson plans to write, and everyday i will have to face groups of students who may bully me!! that's what everyone says, i look like a teacher who will be bullied. Sobs.

Of course, i m gonna portray myself otherwise. i am going to try my very best to look like a fierce teacher and act like a strict teacher!! wonder how successful i would be in doing that? I have been giving myself some stress recently, like i've such a long period to rest, i should be spending my time wisely, practising my math and thinking abt how to engage the students and build rapport with them etc... but i am really too lazy to do any of these, and my laziness is creating stress! heh. crazy me..

my plan to go vietnam failed.. cos daryl cannot take leave on time.

i often get envious of ppl who have romantic husbands. husbands who talk abt their wives on facebook, who create surprises, who reads their wives' blog. daryl does none of these, and sometimes i really feel quite upset abt it. but i also dunno whether im reasonably right for being upset? cause i know he is not romantic already, but sometimes i wonder why cant he do a little more rather than sit in front of the tv every night when he's back? or am i really asking too much? sighs. its not that we are having problems.. i'm just wondering abt how we are working this relationship out.

Dr Charles Chew!

I just wanted to blog about this really much. I have a super wonderful teacher in nie! hehe. He is dr charles chew. The way he engages us in his lessons really makes me go WOW. he is so fun, so friendly, so knowledgeable... too bad my vocabulary is limited else I will really praise him like mad! He was HOD and VP before, and he has even written a text book for physics that the studetns are using now. You see, he is so professional and high up there in his career yet he has no airs around him. He laughed with us during our micro-teaching, make funny jokes and is very very encouraging!

Had my micro teaching today and before I presented, he said that i looked very nervous. Act i was a bit nervous but half the time I was trembling cause the room was too cold. Then he just told me not to be nervous, just present whatever i have prepared. So sweet of him lah. Then at the end of my microteaching, he commented that it was very good cause improved alot from the trial microteaching! I was the only person to get the comment "very good" from him! I dont think it was cause i did better than the rest, it was cause he wanted to encourage me cause of my nervousness! And i thought that was real kind and sweet of him. :)

Just one last month in NIE, then im off for a month of june holidays, after which, it would be "hell time" cause its gonna be 10 weeks of practicum. And i heard that i would have to write lesson plans every single day of my life there. OMG. Dreading it. Wondering what i can do during the june holidays to make it a fruitful one? I think i will prob go source for useful teaching materials and do my tys!! haha.. hopefully i wont nua the entire hols away :P

These few days we've been looking for a suitable hotel for our wedding next year. There were lots of ups and downs during the entire process. It is really not easy to find a perfect venue that gives me everything that i want - a perfect name of the hotel, available date, with good food and good ambience, and reasonable price. My dream was to hold it at shangri-la hotel, and to me, everything is just perfect there. but 10apr and 10oct next year are all taken by others already so we've to resort to looking for other hotels.

Daryl's new car has arrived! im soooo happy abt it. But that means that we really really have to spend wisely... i havent bought any clothes since CNY! (i think) Great job!! :)

Going back to my assignments now...