Christmas with the Smiths, 26-12-04

Original email December 26, 2004

Hope you all had a beautiful Christmas :)
we did. it was our first christmas together...and we loved it...and we just got a little carried away in spoiling each other with gifts. Danny gave me heaps of chocolate (as always), jewlery, and... if you haven't yet heard -- a digital camera. :D
it's the most technology i've ever owned. too much fun for words. so now you can see my first experimentings with it :)

I went to my first ever Midnight Mass for christmas-- it was beautiful! then We had a lovely and quiet christmas morning together. after sleeping in and giving each other gifts, we had breakky and listened to Garrison Keillor CD's that my sister Audra sent us. mmm... a little bit of Minnesota. such fun and funny stories!
we spent most of Christmas day at Geoff & Pam Smith's home. it was a really nice day, and good to be with family.
(These are some photos ... )

I suppose since i have your attention now, i should share a little more good news. I'm on break from school now-- for a total of about 5 weeks. The new school year will start on January 20, and I have a full time job for the whole year :)

I'll be an ESL teacher at 2 schools. My base school is called Junction Park. I was there for the last 3 weeks of this school year, helping out the other ESL teacher there who's got her hands full with over 100 students. Next year Denise and I will get to work together. Nearly all of the students there are refugees -- from the Sudan and from Afganistan. Being there for the end of the year was really intense-- they're incredibly needy kids in all kinds of ways. but it was one of the most meaningful and rewarding and fun things i'd done all year. I am SO looking forward to teaching there all of next year. Denise is an awesome teacher and really fun to work with. it's so good to be part of a team again.

The other school i'll be at for 2 days a week is just down the road from our home. There's lots of refugees there as well. i don't know much about it yet, so that will be another adventure soon to come.

so for the next few weeks i get to be on holiday and preparing to be a full-time teacher again. so glad to be done with all the subbing for now. so glad to be doing what i love.

Today we enjoy boxing day in Australia. which for us really means we look around at stacks of boxes and try to decide what to do with them...and then we try to stay cool and play with christmas toys. danny will spend most of the day here on the computer-- installing and playing with the new flight programs i gave him. and we will relax and enjoy having 4 days off together :) so this will be a fairly short holiday email. i will go make some boxing day pancakes now
and wish you all a very peaceful and happy holiday week.

and a happy new year :)
more soon and lots of love,
Alicia