tales from a fish bowl: being a reflective practitioner

Now in my 4th week of uni, I've been learning to write and reflect about the various things I've learnt and the questions I may have about them. For the past 2 weeks I have been observing a primary and a secondary school. I have to say it was definitely an eye-opener for me. Perhaps I've been bombarded with too much talk on reflection from my workshops and lectures, but recently I've found the sermons at church relating to the things I've been learning at school. Weird? Coincidence? Divine? The other day I had a bit of a revelation about my Christian walk. As a silly grad dip student I've analogised it with my 3 unit objectives from my course (yeah what a geek! but it did help me see the light) I'll try to explain it briefly: i) the function of schooling - church is an institution just like a school, and it's role is to help establish relationships, it's a community ii) the diverse roles and responsiblities of teachers - leaders in church help look after the community, caring, and responding in appropriate ways to help nuture others, it's not just talking about the bible, but being relevant iii) the differing abilities and needs of students - we're all students, learning; even teachers who strive to be teachers are learners, we all have different issues in our lives, different backgrounds, but we have one thing in common, we want to learn more about our God our Father.

I've been really struggling with finding a balance in my life for a while now, and my sister gave it to me straight the other day that it was really upsetting her seeing me the way I am knowing the potential that is covered by my constant fits of stressing out. It really made me wake up and I felt so much peace once she finished saying all she had to say to me. Balance is not mine to control, my life isn't for me to control, balance is in the stillness that I find when I wait for Him. Sunday night's church service was called 'Still' and Paul Morrison had some amazing points. One of the things that really interested me was that we live in a very very busy and noisy world now compared to 20 years ago that it now takes over 2,000 hours just to record one second of pure silence (compared to around 3 hours to record a second of pure silence back in those days). How crazy is that!

Anyway on a lighter note... a few more pics. Apologies I only uploaded my pictures off my camera the other day and have got pics from last year... oh well better late than never!... Bits of household news: my brother has been in town for almost a month, he's leaving on Saturday, we've been able to hang out with my cousins quite a bit which has been lots of fun, it'll be very sad when he leaves. My auntie and cousin came over for a short visit from Taiwan during their Chinese New Year holidays, my cousin is so into LOTR that he got play versions of Froddo's cape, the ring and the sword in the city, plus Sarah gave him our stuffed toy parrot Puffy which he adores. Two baby birds have hatched, grown up and now almost ready to leave their nest in our passionfruit vine permanently, we'll miss them when they fly away! What a long entry this has become, I'll stop for now!