My first night alone with the kids went well. Obviously it's not the first time I've nannied, but Adam and Enoch were such good kids and whilst Jarrah and Stella are good as gold, Griffin is a little nightmare. He's two, he's cute as a button but also the whiniest kid I've met in my life. Getting him to bed Sunday night was beyond difficult and once he was there he wouldn't stay there. I spent a good hour using the Supernanny technique until he stayed in bed and just cried. He'd had three stories, we'd all kissed him goodnight and tucked him in, he was warm, safe, full... he just did not want to go to sleep. So in the end I let him tire himself out crying and fall asleep on his own.
In the morning I was up at 6.45am and got the girls up at 7am. Breakfasted, school uniformed, lunches made, teeth brushed, bags packed, hair brushed and they were sent off to school. I entertained Griffin for a while until Eliza and Ash were up and then after Skyping with Vicki for a while, headed off into Melbourne. The train station is only about 5 minutes away, so I got there and bought myself a ticket. I've been having a continual fight with my iPod where it will look as if it's about to play a song and then go back to the previous menu, it's been getting progressively worse to the stage where it just wouldn't play anything, whereas before it used to be fixed by turning it on and off. I spent a lot of my train journey turning it on and off, trying to make it work. In my heart of hearts, I knew the only solution was a factory restore, but it takes so long to reload the music...
Got into Melbourne and wandered around Federation Square and into the tourism building, where I picked up various leaflets on the goings-on of the city. After wandering through the aforementioned Christmas trees and listening to some schoolchildren sing some carols, I walked along the riverbank and across the bridge. The weather was really nice, albeit a little windy, so the hours walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens was very pleasant. I hadn't really planned on going to the gardens, but more stumbled upon them and thought I'd take a short walk through. But that wasn't before I walked through Melbourne's famous Music Bowl which, although empty, would be an amazing concert venue. That short walk turned into three hours of wandering, laying in the sun and napping a little. Around 1pm I turned a corner to find the Tea Rooms and had a massive lunch of parsnip and sweet potato soup, then a cream tea. It was all very English and sophisticated since I sat by the water and a harpist played for the diners.
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| Playing with the Panoramic setting... |
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| Entrance to the Royal Botanic Gardens |
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| Inside the garden's Plant Craft Cottage |
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| Cream Tea in the Sun |
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| Bamboo Forest |
After looking around some more of the gardens, I walked through the Melbourne Observatory before arriving at the Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial and truly amazing building.
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| Shrine of Remembrance |
After this, it was getting very hot and I was very sunburnt, so I made my way back to the train station. But then I remembered my to-do list and set off for a Vodafone store to get a SIM card. For anyone interested, my number for the next 6 weeks is +61416478964. Having found success in that, and printed off my Vietnamese visa application at an internet cafe, I headed for the post office for a new passport photo for the application and to send it off with my passport, but the post office was absolutely packed. I'd had enough by then so headed back to the train station and headed back to Williamstown. Once I got back, I went food shopping with Jarrah and took Griffin in the pushchair. Add some judging looks at me pushing and pushchair and there we go.
Today I stayed in the area and got lots done, but boring things. Up early again, kids off to school then the morning doing housework. That out of the way, I edited my article for gapyear.com and tried to submit it, but my login details weren't working so I emailed the editor. I then booked my train to Sydney for the 20th, exciting times. I'm staying with my Dad's cousin Roger and spending Christmas with him and his sisters, Julie and Lyn. I'm so looking forward to meeting them for the first time and being with family for Christmas. I then took the plunge and sorted out my iPod, balanced my budget book (ouch). I then took a walk in the lovely sunshine to the local post office and had some horrendous passport pictures taken, attached one to my Vietnamese visa application then sent it off by recorded mail to the embassy in Canberra, along with my passport, visa fee and a return envelope for my passport. Bloody visas. When I'd finally got all I'd needed to do done, it was around 1pm and time for a very vanilla latte. Sunnies on, bare legs, cute dress, vanilla latte and a walk along the beach was my afternoon, and it was a perfect reward for getting lots done between 7am - 1pm. For the next couple of hours, I caught up with How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives and Russell Howard's Good News until I picked Jarrah up from school at 3.30pm. I made dinner tonight, a sheppard's pie and chilled out with the girls. Time for an early night... I like the nannying business.
Oh, I also got good news. The UEA's finance package has been approved, which means I'm eligible for an extra £3000 non-repayable help every year for coming from a low income background. I can either use this as a fee waiver or accommodation costs OR I can get £1000 cash and use the other £2000 as the waiver/costs, which is probably what I'll end up doing. I mean, I'll still be in loads of debt like everyone else but it's good news!
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