We are now certified English teachers, Perth, Australia

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Travis

Over the last 5 days we completed a TESOL certificate through the Australasian Training Academy. TESOL, which stands for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, is a fundamental course which teaches the necessary skills to teach English in foreign countries.

Whilst, the course was crammed into 20 hours, with homework and presentation preparation during after hours, the course was still a lot of fun. Generally, the course was centered around teaching children, with some brief mention of adult students. One of the memorable techniques taught is the Rassias method, invented by Professor John Rassias, which teaches students a foreign language through a form of theoretical learning.

The highlights were group presentations, where we had to create and execute a 15 minute lesson for children. These lessons were in a non-English language, which gave both the student teachers and students an idea of how teaching and learning a foreign language felt.

Sonya’s group taught the class five words in Mandarin, and my group taught the class four words in Spanish. The teaching predominantly consisted of Flash-cards and various children’s games, all which the adult students seemed to enjoy immensely.

Sonya teaching the class the Mandarin word for ginger

Travis teaching the class the Spanish word for Autumn

More photos from the group presentations can be found here.

Beethoven Restaurant, Perth, Australia

Posted on August 5, 2008 by Travis

For Sonya’s birthday we decided to invite our friends out for dinner and try the Beethoven restaurant in Applecross. We chose Beethoven due to its German cuisine which we all hadn’t had many experiences eating.

We all didn’t know what to expect, and judging by their website; which needs immense improvement, we thought we would all be for an interesting experience, to say the least.

On arrival we were greeted by Helga (the restaurant owner) and shown to our table which was situated next to the fireplace. The interior was cosy with German flavoured decorations, and an obligatory painting of Beethoven above the fireplace.

The night started with customary very tall glasses of German bear made by the Weihenstephan brewery. For the entrée, we shared a Munich platter of meats and sausages which were all very nice. I ordered the Wiener schnitzel, and Sonya the chicken breast. Our friends ordered various other dishes.

After placing our orders was when things got a little weird. A few minutes later, the waitress informed us that they had run out of rib eye steak which forced a few of our friends to reorder. About an hour or so later, the waitress informed one of our friends that his pork shank had been overcooked, and if he would still like it served.

At around two hours from ordering, our meals finally arrived. The chef somehow managed to leave out the gravy, and included diced mushrooms only in a gravy jug accompanying my schnitzel. Our friend, who decided he would still like his pork shank, found it to be severely burnt on one side, but continued eating from the other. Finally, when we had all finished our meals, they brought out the bowl of fries we ordered, apologising and offering to remove them from the bill.

Overall, it was an interesting experience, and was fun to try something different for a change. The waitress was friendly, the interior nice, but the food a little too dear for the quality.

Our Camping Adventure

Posted on May 3, 2008 by Sonya

For weeks Travis and I had envisaged a camping adventure. We talked about lighting campfires, toasting marshmallows and living in the wild. The ANZAC day long weekend approached and we decided three days would be enough to live out our camping desires. Of course, it wasn’t, and we didn’t quite start a campfire, but we had a lot of fun anyway.

Day One

We left Perth early for our long drive up northern WA. Kalbarri, in the mid-west, was our destination. While we had both previously traveled south many times, drives up north have been rare. Generally because everything north of Perth is so far away. For instance, Kalbarri is about 590km away from Perth.

During our first day we took the drive slowly, stopping at a number of small towns along the way. Our first stop was Lancelin. By some lucky chance, we managed to find ourselves in the massive sand dunes of Lancelin where plenty of dirt bike riding and sand-boarding was taking place. Took plenty of photos and walked around the dunes.

On our drive we tracked geocache locations (or waypoints) and stopped to stretch our legs and search for a geocache. Many of them were a lot harder than first anticipated, but we had a few laughs looking for them.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Green Head..I’ve never heard of it either (and I’ve lived in WA for most of my life). Travis brought along the trusty picnic bag which contained all necessary utensils and kitchen items and we made sandwiches.

As evening approached, and we found ourselves slightly north of Geraldton, we decided to search for a campsite for the night. After the continual spotting of “no unauthorised camping” signs we accepted that our fate was to that night camp on a proper camping site. We found a little hippy-esque site close by the beach, where over a dozen baby boomer retirees had setup camp. Impressive were their mobile homes, extravagant five sleeper tents, portable gas stoves and TVs. Whilst we were setting up our cosy little tent, we noticed one of the other campers had spotted, and was trying to pick up (the brave man), an echidna. We went over and had a look. Cutest spikiest thing ever! The sun set about 7pm. Not much night life at the camp site so we settled down and watched a film on Travis’ laptop.

Day Two

We woke early on the second day and headed straight towards Kalbarri, stopping by Northampton for fuel and food. We bought some natural yoghurt, multigrain bread, ham and cheese and ate breakfast along the way. We visited a geocache site but unfortunately, after spending half an hour looking for it, could not find the site.

We arrived to the spectacular scenery of Kalbarri (ocean on the left and national park on the right) mid-morning. The ocean was blue and the air was warm. At the visitors centre, we decided to head straight to the national park which is approximately 35 km from the town. Most of the road to the park was non-sealed, so it felt like quite a long drive. We went to the look out firstly and took some photos.

We then continued on to The Loop, a famous walking track which features the “Nature’s Window” rock formation. Due to the extremely sweltering weather we decided that it was not a bush walking time of the day. We walked to the Nature’s Window (did not do the full Loop) and continued to the Z-Bend which presented us with a 1.3 km walk before reaching any kind of oasis (or swimming area). Hesitant to walk such a distant during midday, we decided to go to the beach.

We left the park and went to a nice beachside park. Here, we had a picnic and lazed under a tree for a while.

Our next stop was Red Bluff, beach surrounded by amazing rock formations. We intended to search for a geocache here but upon arrival noticed someone was already looking for it! We walked around the area, dipping our feet into the ocean before heading to the cache site. After a bit of rock climbing and looking around, we found it (it was an easy one). We signed the log and then decided on a dip. The waves were huge and I got dumped every single time.

We decided to setup camp early after the previous days experience. We had found a nice caravan park / camping site right next to the beach. It was more than double the camping fee of the previous site ($23 as opposed to $10), but the facilities (e.g. bathroom, shower, swimming pool, kitchen, barbeques, etc) made it worth the money. Gone were the thoughts of living in the wild, we both longed for a shower and hot food.

After setting up our campsite we headed to the local supermarket to pick up food for our picnic. A barbeque chicken, a Caesar salad and some Shiraz. Watched the sunset as we relaxed and ate our food next to our tent. After the sunset we watched another movie.

Day Three

This was the drive 600+km home day. I commend Travis on his driving skills – he managed to drive the whole way back without requiring my assistance. Before leaving Kalbarri we visited a few scenic ocean sites – The Natural Bridge and Castle Cove.

The drive home was pleasant and took approximately 6 hours. We even stopped for a geocache (and fortunately found it) before arriving back to Perth mid afternoon.

Discovering Perth, Geocaching, Perth, Australia

Posted on February 18, 2008 by Sonya

A few weeks ago, Travis and I begun geocaching. I had not heard much about geocaching until Travis purchased his GPS and didn’t stop talking about what it could do, how it could do it, how cool it was etc etc. I figured geocaching would be a good way of exercising, whilst not actively thinking of about exercising and went along for the adventure.

The official Wikipedia definition of geocaching:

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world.

So far we have searched for five caches, with three successful finds. The first three caches we selected were relatively close to our houses, and required a 2-3km walk to the location. Our most recent cache was slightly further (about 7km) from Travis’ house, so we drove and then walked (I know, we could have walked the whole way, but it was getting dark!).

At this stage, we seem to be sufficiently skilled in locating the general vicinity of the cache, however we have spent some amount of time within the 5m radius from the cache (according to the GPS) searching high and low for the cache. Perhaps this is commonly the most difficult part of geocaching, or maybe we have a bit more learning to do!

After a few searches, we have so far encountered large eight-legged insects, climbed rocks and suffered minor injuries. The injury was inflicted on Travis whilst exploring a cliff face marked “Cliff Risk Area”. Despite all this, our efforts have rewarded us with beautiful views around places we’ve never explored. It’s also fascinating to see what’s inside a cache, who has been there and where in the world particular items have travelled.

My personal tips for geocaching would be: bring insect repellent, a camera and wear comfy, closed shoes.

Anyone for a game of chess?

Careys Find

Sonya and Travis

tales of travel and adventure

Category Archives: Australia