An Update

I am learning so much up here in the NT but it is very different form home!

I’m quickly falling into a routine here with the children. It is extremely hot out here and I wish I had brought more dresses up with me! There is no TV and very scarce internet so a lot of my spare time is spent reading books, exploring or riding horses.

 A run down of my day:

6-7am- Arrive at community to help children prepare for school.
They wash their own uniforms and have to wear a school shirt, any pants they would like and some shoes to school. They don’t have to take anything as the school provides most of it.


8am- Children to school.
They have breakfast and brush teeth at school building

 8-10am- Schoolwork provided by teacher while I feed baby cows, baby turkeys, baby goat and the pet turtle.

 10-10.30am- Recess. I prepare the food for the school children- usually fruit salads or biscuits with milk or water. We have to be very careful with how much we eat, as we don’t want to run out of supplies before the next grocery delivery.
Last wet season, a plane dropped food off as the community ran out of food a lot faster than they thought they would.

 10.30-12.30pm- Younger children are with me for the rest of the day doing educational activities such as writing letters to relatives, making craft, reading or creative play.
12.30-1pm- Lunch with all the school children.
I prepare this and it is usually sandwiches, water and fruit.
We have beef sandwiches usually as we have so many cattle on this property to eat! Today though, we had hamburgers. Yum!

1pm-2pm- Older children return to school and I look after younger kids. Usually, we do activities like water play, puzzles or ride bikes.
It is very hot out here. It has reached 40 degrees most days and a low of 23 at night.

 2pm-4pm- I have both older and younger children with me. I read the children’s reader books with them and do homework. I usually hide some fruit around the yards as the children are more excited to eat if I let them do a treasure hunt for it. We make craft out of recyclable items such as milk cartons or old pipes. If we order in craft supplies it can take up to 8 weeks to get to us. The children then have showers and baths before I walk the children back to their homes. Most of them share houses with up to
4pm-6pm- Prepare next days activities.

 There are so many snakes out here. I see Pythons daily. As it is the weekend today I went into the main homestead and helped the owners brand, de-horn and ear tag the bulls they mustered up this week. It was really interesting to see how they do it all. 

Bulls in the yards

This is my baby goat that I look after. He is adorable!