the student side of life

I've booked my courses to study to fulfill my visa requirements. I will be studying Elementary Spanish 1 all semester (Sept to Christmas) and Elements of Creative Writing for six weeks (late Oct to Dec). Spanish I get to study during the day, Monday and Wednesday mornings, while the boys are at school and Monday nights for creative writing. It's nice to know what is happening now and having got it all sorted.

san francisco zoo

Last Friday SuhRa invited me to go with her and her three kids to the San Francisco Zoo since I had the day off. I haven't been yet so I accepted. We got in for free since her family has a membership card. SuhRa's charges are 9yo J, 6yo M and 1.5yo K. They know me pretty well since I go to SuhRa's place often. It was a fun adventure--funny to see the kangaroos and koalas and emus in an enclosure as a spectacle. The bears were cool. Aparantly their area is new and while we were watching them the two of them started fighting/playing right on the other side of the glass where we were standing. Quite entertaining. There's heaps to see there. We didn't see it all. K got too tired and we were hungry so we went to a nearby restaurant for a late lunch. It was good to join them and see the zoo.

The Golden Gate under heavy fog and SuhRa with her charges

The bears at play and SuhRa and K watching the bears up close

me, J and M and an anteater and a meerkat

Just off the GGbridge heading north and further into Marin County the weather changes and the traffic gets compacted on a Friday afternoon

longest stretch ever

I just finished working my longest stretch ever...so far at least.With my host dad (camp doctor) and B away at camp and my host mum away overnight to join her sister in greeting her new baby through surrogacy, I just worked 33hrs straight caring for the two younger boys. But it went pretty well. We played at parks and they ate well for me. We went swimming in our pool yesterday arvo and that was fun. Their grandparents took us out to McDonalds for tea. They were tired and went to bed fairly easily. It took a little while to get them to sleep. Y went to sleep without his binky (dummy) for the first time I've known of. I was concerned about T waking up in the night as he can get paranoid about being alone. I thought he might freak if he went into his parents room in the middle of the night and found they weren't there. But he was ok. He did wake up and get up but he also went back to his bed. And it took him a while to get back to sleep. Meanwhile I trudged up the stairs three times to check on him and reassured him. We had a nice casual day today. T and I caught little butterflies to feed to Croaker and he enjoyed them. We played hide n' seek and Y napped and we read books and stuff like that. They mostly behaved well. Even used their manners more today. Now I have a few days off.