Now for the final part in the series of “Getting Caught Up” by Brooke vs. the World.
The Entrance: There’s a fishing town up north actually called The Entrance that a bunch of my friends here go to. Someone has a shack up there (basically a run-down tiny house) with loads of beds that everyone can sleep in, so it ends up being tons of fun. Unfortunately, when I arrived on Saturday the weather turned to crap and decided to be super windy with rain. Boo!
The fish weren’t particularly in a biting mood either. This is all Honky caught:
I did finally learn what a refuge island was. Do we have these in the States?
Third Job: Third job finally came through! I am now working with The Furnished Property Group in Sydney and excited about it. Part of the job will include building and writing a company blog for them – Life in Furnished Property. If anyone is thinking about coming to the Sydney area and needing a place (minimum 1 month stay) let me know and I’ll hook you up!
I’m very excited, especially because I have left the tutoring job and my evenings have now opened up. Life is good here!
Moving Places: I have also moved out of my shoebox International House room to a much larger and nicer one on the corner of Redfern and Surry Hills. I love my new place. It is of course with The Furnished Property Group, but I was looking to rent with them with or without getting my new job. I WISH I had known better before I started looking for places on my own because this was an easier route to take that would have saved me many headaches when leaving.
MacGyver Skills: Even though the circumstances surrounding the discovery of my MacGyver skills were unforeseen and stressful, I’m somewhat proud to announce that I am officially awesome. I went back to my room last weekend to clean up and prepare for inspection. I hung my keys on the hook inside and ran downstairs to throw away my coffee cup. Low and behold, the wind, for the first time in nearly two months, actually blew the door to my room shut, which automatically locks it. All my important things were inside – my laptop, purse, money, keys to new place, etc.
The landlord -surprise, surprise- was not answering his phone, so I was stuck. Of all days! My house mates got their laptops and found me the numbers of various locksmiths, but I was determined to figure it all out in some other way. I know the crack at the bottom of the door is very large, but it was still too difficult to get to the key hook way high. So I went through the tiny crack at the top.
I grabbed a metal hanger and straightened it out. After sliding it through the top crack, I bent it and started swinging. It wasn’t doing much at first and Emi was standing behind me dictating the locksmith’s number because she didn’t see this going anywhere. “Ten minutes!” I shouted.
Finally, I did it. I hit the keys and knocked them off the hook to the floor. I pulled my hanger out from the top and twisted the end into a hook. I got down on my stomach and hooked the keychain from under the door. I. was. successful. I. rock.
To make the day even more unbelievable, I was able to use my amazing MacGyver skills to hook the keys stuck in the back door. We have two back doors – one door and one gate like 7-8 feet apart. The gate is locked with a bike lock and the backdoor with a key, but both are one the same keychain. Someone left the keys in the backdoor and proceeded to lock the bikelocked gate door. I attached two hangers together and latched the keys from the lock in the backdoor to save the day yet again!
Thus concludes this three part series on getting caught up. I’m sure I’ve left out loads, but at least now I can start talking about the rest in their own posts. Happy reading!
Basically, I figure these people are here on their own volition and to do one thing: learn English. I know most of them don’t have a lot of money, and a lot of them have even lost their jobs recently, so I want them to get the most bang-for-their-buck. The other day I actually had a few students in a higher level ask me why I was not their teacher this semester. They continued by saying that they liked their new teacher, but they thought I was stricter and they need that. Ha, imagine that!
