Last week, I blogged about some of the stress involved with casual teaching on a day to day basis. After I came home and wrote that post up, I worried about having to do that for a while - I was thankful to have a few days of work come in, but I was not looking forward to them at the same time. Funnily enough, that's when something random {and wonderful} happened.

Today I had my first day back in a classroom.

There are so many differences when it comes to teaching on a casual basis compared to working with your own classroom full of kids. It's the attitudes of the staff and the students. It's the complete lack of routines that are in place. It's the uncertainty of knowing whether you have a timetable to follow, any work left for you to plan. It's the unknown of where the classroom is, where you should park your car, where the roll is. It's the 'going in blind' approach, especially when it comes to children and their behaviours, personalities and strengths/weaknesses that you know absolutely nothing about.

It's a real eye-opener, that's for sure. You might remember that when we first moved to London, I started out doing some casual relief teaching there too. I stuck it out a few weeks, and really struggled to find a rhythm with it - which was when I started looking for other roles in education, and ended up working in an office environment for the majority of my time there instead. Well, today brought back flashbacks of coming home miserable and wondering what else was out there. It's early days yet, and I have potentially got a few more days booked in at a different school next week - but we'll see what happens there.

To break down some of today's more eventful happenings, I'm enlisting the help of some bullet points.

• Got a phone call at 7.30am, asking me to be in by 8.15am - got up, showered & dressed in ten minutes, threw together some random token food products and made sure I had a few resources in my bag ready to get going.
• Arrived at school early, only to find no parking spaces left in the lot or along the street. Parked next to a dumpster in the school car-park, went into the office to check that I could leave it there & was encouraged to drive right in to the car-park, blocking in several cars. (I wasn't too comfortable about that, but the instruction came from the Asst. Principal, so okay...)
• Found classroom - no work left, no time-table set. Decided to see about photo-copying some of my resources & told that school has a strict policy: casuals only allowed to copy 2x worksheets that have to be approved & signed off by the senior staff & only admin allowed to use the photocopier.
• Left without copies for first half of the day - so kept busy with other things, though more than a little stressful.
• Had a class of Year 1 students, which was nice. Kids okay, just kids. Quite a few personalities, though it felt comfortable teaching them - although we had a pants-wetting incident midway through the day, so that was fun.
• Administration staff not particularly friendly and/or helpful when it came to filling in my casual teaching paperwork. They treated me like a teacher fresh out of university, very patronising - and if it weren't for the kindness of a teacher that overheard our conversation & could offer some assistance, I may well have had to drive back there on another day to bring back forms that they should have provided.

And we're now back to our scheduled rambling.. with just a dash less whinging. I'm sure the job thing will work itself out eventually - and in the meantime, I'm going to keep looking, keep applying & invest in a few 'lucky' objects to push me in the right direction.

Moving completely along though, I'm doing my best to become a whiz in the kitchen. I don't cook every night - probably every other night? But I'm starting to experiment with different things a little more, and I'm like the results. Jase got a slow cooker from my parents for Christmas {such an awesome gift!... for me) & we broke it in last week - it is delightful! We had guests over for the evening yesterday and I whipped it out again - threw in my apricot chicken go-to recipe, and served it up to rave reviews. I even baked a chocolate cake in two layers! All it needed was some frosting. Plain, simple, chocolate frosting.

Unfortunately, this is my kitchen weakness. I cannot make icing. I've tried the simple icing sugar/liquid/cocoa powder ratio. I've followed recipes to make cream cheese frosting. And last night I experimented with a chocolate and sour cream (!) icing - and it STILL went runny. Apparently all of my cakes are meant to look like drowned, chocolate covered space-ship domed blobs. Lucky they still taste good.

So I have the ultimate question for you: How do you make the perfect frosting? Spill the beans!

Excuse me while I interrupt my lovey-dovey wedding happiness - I need to vent, and it's not going to be pretty.

Job hunting sucks, you guys.

It's still early days in the school term, but I've not had any calls for work. It's frustrating, that's for sure - but in actual fact? The more I think about it, the more I feel that I don't work well with this whole casual teaching thing. I did it for a while when I first arrived in London and ended up hating it - the waiting around, the different place every day, the never knowing what's been planned, the complete disarray that comes with it: all things that this uber organised girl struggles with.

I've come to the realisation that I need to find something stable. In my perfect little career bubble, that would be in the form of a full-time, permanent classroom teacher role. Unfortunately, finding a school in Sydney that will take you on as a permanent member of staff is harder than finding a needle in a haystick. It's pretty damn irritating too, considering all teachers ever hear about is the dramatic shortage of quality primary teachers in the Western Sydney suburbs. Ha. Well excuse me, but I know of a fully qualified and experienced teacher, with a car, who is ready to settle down with a classroom of kids and willing to work in some of the more 'challenging' suburbs and she is STANDING RIGHT HERE. Well, sitting, but you know what I mean. AND SHE IS NOT WORKING.

{deep breath}

Anyway, numerous permanent job applications that I've put in through the Department of Education here have led to nothing. The system is ridiculous - it really is. I must have applied for twenty different teaching roles on offer in the last two months, and only one has even got back to me, just one. The one response I got? Was that the position had been filled internally prior to the ad going live. This leads me to question if the jobs on display are actually even vacant jobs at all, or just ones that are advertised because they have to be. Chances are, they've already got their own teachers slotted in for the vacancy - so there's no real job there.

As much as I didn't want to do it, I'm going to have to start looking for work outside of teaching again, because I can't afford to sit around and not work. We have so many things that need financing, and I feel incredibly guilty that Jase is busy working and I am not. I've tried to keep busy - I'm doing as much as I can to help with home/wedding/life stuff, so that he can relax when he gets home from work. But what about me? This is ridiculous.

Feel free to send your good-job-vibrations this-a-way. I'll take 'em.

So... have I mentioned that I'm marrying the love of my life in oh, around four months time?  Can I just say how happy that makes me? So, so happy. Except that now, everywhere I go I see things I want to use in the wedding. I have bookmarks and photo files coming out of the wazoo. Everything is pretty! adaptable! would look perfect! Yep, I'm obsessed. And so without any further ado, let's get busy with the looooove.

And as for people? Well, I have loads that I loooove:

My family: they drive me crazy, but they also keep me sane. I was so happy to be able to spend Christmas at home with them this year, for the first time in the three years we were away. They helped us move into our new apartment, they provided us generously with spare furniture and cookware, they've made our transition into life back home that little bit easier.

My two boys: Jase & Oscar-cat. There are two things that make my heart melt: men with their babies & men with their pets. Obviously there are no babies here yet, but watching Jase fawning all over the cat is one of the most adorable things and I'll never get tired of watching them together.

It has been mighty, mighty hot here the past few days - and it's predicted that Sydney is going to have one of its hottest weeks ever. To that I respond with a resounding 'UGH'. 

I've held off on plugging a little project of mine for the past month - mainly because I wanted to see if I could stick to it properly, but also because I wanted to let it grow a bit before I share it. See, I kind of forgot to set myself resolutions this year - though that was kind of accidentally on purpose, you know? Rather than make a big song & dance about resolutions, I decided I'd focus on trying a few things out this year. These are the top contenders:

Have you ever made a decision about something that ultimately came back and kicked you up the butt?

I have. And it did.

It was in that post-engagement glow period, where all I wanted to do was tell everyone! make decisions! book the entire shindig! all in the space of about a week. I was so far away from friends & family while we were in England, that I was itching to share all of my big plans with anybody who was willing to listen. (And even some who weren't willing to listen, if you know what I mean.)

One of the first things I wanted to do was to choose my bridal party. Before I was even engaged, I knew that I'd be asking my bestie, Miss K, to be my Maid of Honour - it was a given. But as for other bridesmaids? I wasn't sure. Newly engaged Bees, this is where I give you some advice: don't pick your wedding party too early. It's common sense for most people, but from personal experience, I know how tempting it can be to go with the moment and get busy asking straight away.

I asked two other girlfriends to be bridesmaids for me: one, a university friend of mine, who is one of my all-time favourite people and is always there for me, even when we're thousands of miles apart. Miss E is one of those rare friends that don't come along every day; the kind where you can not see them for months, organise a catch up session & feel like not a second has passed. She's brilliant and was thoroughly excited to be a part of our wedding day.

And then there was my final bridesmaid: let's call her Miss X. I've known Miss X for the past few years, though since she lives interstate I don't see her as often as I'd have liked. She is a mutual friend of Miss K & I - so I had grand visions of us having epic planning sessions and enjoying our time doing all things wedding together.. and, well, it seemed like a good idea to ask her at the time.

There were a few warning signs that things weren't starting off well. My parents, while polite about my decision, were worried that she, being a few years younger than myself, wasn't the right choice for a bridesmaid. (I believe Miss X sealed the deal with them when she made jokes at our reception venue about being placed near the 'open bar': I could see visions going through my mother's head of drunken and belligerent bridesmaids sloshing alcohol all over the pretty carpet.) While looking at bridesmaid dresses, Miss X shot down every single one of my suggestions: no long, no fancy, no satin, no strapless & also wasn't very supportive of my colour scheme. I'm not a diva of a bride, and I don't even have a specific dress that I want my girls to wear, but I felt like all of my suggestions were being thrown back in my face. And the last straw for me? Along with Miss K, we travelled through Europe together this past October as a threesome. Arguments happened, feelings were hurt, and true colours really shined through - suffice it to say that through travelling, I learned a lot about Miss X that I hadn't known before. After our travels were over, I finally stopped and listened to all the alarm bells ringing in my head, before realising that I'd made a huge mistake: I should never have asked her to be a bridesmaid.

Guys, there is nothing harder to do than to tell someone that you're sorry, but that you don't think that their being a bridesmaid is the right decision to have made. Since I had no phone access at the time, I spent days drafting the perfect email that would explain the situation to her and when I finally sent it off, I felt awful. I knew it was the right thing for me to do, but that didn't stop me from feeling bad about doing it. Since I was still overseas at the time and with limited phone & internet access, I received her response a few days later: she was upset but she understood and hoped we could still be friends. I was relieved and thoroughly happy that she seemed to have taken things well, and on a personal level, it felt like a massive weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Unfortunately, the next week when I checked my emails once again, she had experienced a change of heart & sent me a long and hurtful email, ending with a request to 'not bother inviting her to the wedding, it would be too awkward'. I'm sad she feels this way, but I do understand the awkwardness -so I don't hold it against her: it would've been hard for any friendship to survive that whole debacle.

Here are a few tips that I learned throughout my whole snafu of an experience:

• Like I said before, don't rush when it comes to asking your nearest & dearest to be in your wedding party. Particularly if {like yours truly} you have a VERY long engagement - there's no real need to get that sorted immediately, and you never know what might happen in twelve or eighteen months time.
• Weigh up your pro's & con's of asking each member - what is your friendship or relationship like now? Has it gone through any weak spots? Do you see your friend still in your life in 1, 5 or 10 years time? Do they get along with your family members, your fiance?
• Trust your gut instinct. If you have a niggling concern, listen to it. You can always involve your friends in other wedding-related activities without having them be a bridesmaid, which is a potentially safer option if things go sour later on.
• If in doubt, fix things early. I was lucky in my situation, because no financial decisions or purchases had been made when it came to the girls. Things only get harder when money is involved - so I'm blessed that I made my decision early.

So that was my epic mistake when it comes to wedding planning so far. In a way I wish things had turned out differently, but I know now that I did the right thing and should have gone with my gut feeling all along. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I have a new third bridesmaid now: one who I was honest with sharing my story with, so that she wouldn't feel like a 'replacement' bridesmaid & who my heart tells me is a very, very good choice.

Originally posted on Weddingbee: view it here.

So it's about time I caught this here blog up with everything wedding related, I think. I've been a busy little bee (excuse the pun) writing as Miss Jaguar at the Weddingbee blog, but I realise I've completely neglected to keep YOU, my lovely blog friends, up to date with all things wedding.

Along with travel recaps & general life happenings, expect to be seeing a whole lot of wedding related goodness popping up in your readers over the coming weeks. It's time to get this blog moving again, so let's get to it!

So. Wedding stuff. One of the hardest things that I've learned to come to grips with when it comes our ceremony, is the lack of freedom. A Catholic ceremony, while beautiful and traditional in its own right, is very rigid in terms of how it works. It's still a wedding celebration, and it's still about the couple, but it's based on the principles of the church - so you work within their guidelines to enjoy your ceremony.

There are still a whole stack of ceremony details we haven't gotten into yet & won't be tackling for a few months yet. You'll hear me talk about more in depth ceremony details later on down the line, but for now? It's all about the music. Now that's something I can research without being there in person.. fabulous!

I would've loved to walk down the aisle to something I picked myself - a church appropriate song, of course.. no busting it out to Akon's 'Sexy Chick' as one of my bridesmaids is longing to do! All of our music choices need to be approved by the church though, so we're not left with a great deal of choice. That means that my dreams of walking down the aisle to 'Everything' by Lifehouse, aka: the band that brought us together, was out the window.

One option, if the church & priest agree, is to find an instrumental version of a modern song that we love and see how that goes. I've been scouring You Tube and online for covers of songs, whether by piano or by guitar/strings, and there are loads out there. Unfortunately, none has jumped up and screamed 'I'm the one!' - except I did find a guitar instrumental of 'Everything' that is a pretty big contender.

The more common option is to go with classical music, which is what I'm leaning towards right now. I'm pretty sure I'm going to choose 'Canon in D'. {Click for link} It's classical, but not quite so obvious as Wagner's 'Bridal Chorus'. Also, I could listen to it for hours on repeat, it's just so beautiful, so that's a good sign. I love how it builds up - from soft at the beginning, to more pronounced as it goes on. I think that would work really well with our Catholic ceremony, since the church I'm using prefers you to use only one piece of music for the entire procession.

The next step is to try and figure out how we'll get the music played on the day: if my budgeting goes well, my dream would be to have a string trio playing in person before, during and after our ceremony. I'm already swooning at the thought of how beautiful that would sound in our cosy little church. That's not a necessity though, as much as I'd love it to be one, so next up will be getting everything onto audio copy and seeing how that works in the church's facilities.

Any other church-friendly music suggestions out there? Spill the beans!

For more countries visited on this whirlwind trip, you can start reading from here: