'home'

well, after an emotional whirlwind tour of sydney, i am back now in London to have 3 days sorting stuff out and then back to school on the 2nd Jan.

thank you to everyone for their sympathy for Pop and for your prayers and support, it was warmly welcomed by our family.

and thanks to everyone who i was able to catch up with whilst over in sydney. it was fantastic to see you. (and thanks mum and dad for being patient whilst i saw so many other people!) i had a really good time back in aus, and at the moment, it really is where my heart is at, although, London is where i am at at the moment. so yeah, pretty cool.

was great to see people, sad to leave, but i am glad i am back in london and who knows what my life's adventure entails now...

hooray for small mercies

love you poppy. (this is my pop. he used to use cowpoo to keep his eyebrows black and bushy... aspparently.) and below, this is the lovely Val (step grandmother and the joy of his life), pop, grandma and granddad (on my father's side). ahhh bless them all.

thanks heaps to Reyna (she's my hero!) who came down to Canberra with me to get my entry clearance on monday. left sydney at 5:30am to get to the British High Commission for 9:00am. and praise the Lord, i got my passport back today!!! with entry clearance. so i will be going back to my job and i will be working on the first day of school. which is really exciting. after going to the Consulate, Reyna and i bummed around in canberra. we went to Questacon (science museum) and then went shopping. I LOVE just jeans, jeans west, portmans and sportsgirl. but they are heaps more expensive than my good old primark clothes (and they have gone up in price since i left too). stayed the night with Malcolm and Carol (my uncle and aunty in canberrra, thanks heaps guys!!!) and then drove to gundagai and gee, the countryside is sooooo dry, my goodness.

and then tuesday, in Gundagai for my pop's funeral. it was good to see some of the rellies after such a long time. Unforunate circumstances, but a lovely day. the weather was quite warm, i think at one stage it hit 40degrees and it was sunny. Jordan read out the grandchildren's memories of poppy and did really well (thanks bro).

so the next few days will be catching up with people, helping mum at work and getting ready for the rodgers annual christmas shindig. hooray. can't wait for that!!! oh and then enjoyin christmas with the family and getting ready to go back to england. hopefully the weather in sydney will improve and i can get to the beach. today reyna and i went letterboxing, but got rained on... stupid stupid.

well, that's all for now. i will put up some photos of gundagai and canberra in duke horse (ooops, sorry, i mean due course... pop's horse was called duke).

love youse all!!!
deev
xx

sydney

well, i'm not sure if you all know the news, but I was flying home for christmas to spend some time with my pop (on mum's side) because he was quite sick. well, unfortunately, i got news whilst i was still at school on wednesday that he had passed away. whilst we knew he was not going too well, it was a shock to all of us. so, a week before i was due to fly home i was then on the phone to QANTAS to try and get another flight home. no such luck, but hooray for flight centre who were very helpful and were able to get my on a flight for the next day.

so, a quick pack, flight home (this bit not so quick, but not too bad, even made a friend on the flight) and now i am sitting at home in turramurra with frodo by my side. it was really good to see mum and dad this morning. I am not looking forward to seeing Val (pop's wife) this afternoon. i think it will be very hard for both her and me.

so, not such good grounds to be here, but none-the-less, nice to be here. Although, who put on the weather??? cold and raining... have i even left the UK??

one thing for sure, is it is great to see my room, my old photos, wear some of the clothes i haven't worn for over a year... all that sort of stuff. don't know when the jetlag will kick in... hopefully never.

well, i'm off to take some funeral things to Val. prayer that we will feel God comforting us in this time of hardship.

love you all to bits
deev
dos besos

God bless bigger brothers.

so, they may find us annoying (fair call). and they may not always be kind (probably with good reason). But whenever we are in trouble, they can't help but come to our rescue (and show deep down they really do care). and my bro has done this time and time again. bless him. and tonight is no exception

so, the dilemma this time is... i have my aussie phone on, cos mum and dad might call.... you never know. and then i get this phone call from this broad aussie country bloke asking for some chick. i said, umm, sorry, this is davina, i think you have a wrong number.... no, no, the number he read out was mine. ok, so someone wrote it down wrong.

5mins later, another broad aussie bloke rings.... in response to my add. ok, maybe another wrong number, a bit weird 2 in the space of 5 mins. and then again and again. all in response to my add. so i ask one guy... umm, excuse me, which add would this be?? he got all embarassed and said the one in the paper. i said, sorry, which paper, and he told me. one in queensland. right... and now my phone hasn't stopped ringing.

so, i told my bro, who told me to divert my phone to his (bless him) and he'll sort them out. i'm sure they got a suprise when they ring and hear his voice on the phone. unless of course the add in the paper is for a holden ute (sorry about the stereotype!!). and i am just really curious to find out what is so good about me that i am getting so many country blokes ringing me up!! the mind does wonder!! again, unless of course the add in the paper is for a holden ute, or maybe some cheap barnsie tickets.... man, i would ring the number too if it was for cheap barnsie tickets!!!

anyways.... update on story to come. sorry i don't have the resolution there.... tune in next blog entry for.... what on earth my number was doing in a QLD regional paper!!! (thanks heaps jordan!!!)

hope it was a typo and not some sick joke!!

i love being able to edit posts... will leave the original bit there, but after much investigation (thanks to my bro, bless again!!) we have a resolution!
'the lady gave the wrong number, her number is 0432 *** ***'. i may harrass her later... she went into the paper looking for a refund because of the wrong number...
fab. so she wanted compensation.... for telling them 1 digit different. my number is 0403 and the rest follows the same. stupid stupid. i jasked if she was going to get it and then give it to me for having to deal with dirty old men down the phone (again, unless they are are looking for a holden or barnsie tickets...)
'she didn't get a refund, they told her about the inconvenience caused... apparently she's a lady of the night... not selling a holden...'
lucky we got to the bottom of that one!!!! so i must be a pretty good lady of the night in Queensland. I mean, they would only have to pay what $1500 and have a 24hr trip just to get to london, let alone to me and then back to Qld. man... not bad.

well, best of luck to her and hope the dirty old men start ringing someone else!!! hope your day was exciting as mine yesterday!!

love you all, see some of you soon, and probably the others when i return from Aus.
hugs a million
deev
xx

post no. 100

happy 100 post! yay.

well, last weekend i went to paris, only for a flying visit, but i had a great time. i was able to catch up with Beth and meet clement's family and also meet one of mathieu's friends. fantastic time!!!

and then tonight, we had our family (62 MG) christmas party. lucia and i cooked up a storm. thanks mum for the corn fritters recipe, everyone loved them. we also did tapas and lucia did a great chicken dish. and clement did our fabulous dessert of bannoffee.... congrats to clement, it tasted grand!!! loved it!!!!

school is manic at the moment, with 2 yr 7's excluded for fighting, 2 other students fighting today and well, lots of issues.... bring on next week i say! (am still loving it, just all the staff are tired and kids are narky and it is showing.)

and now, unfortunately i am really tired, so i will be piking early on our family christmas 'do'. the others have gone to watch amelie, so not missing too much. Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Feliz Navidad. and i'm spend.... bonne nuit, buenas noches snf good night.

dos besos, deux bisous, two kisses
deev
(the tri linguist, or not!!!)
xx

get ready for rocky horror picture show 62MG style on thursday. yay!

busy busy busy

well, this week has been a busy busy busy week filled with lots of fun things. as i already wrote, on monday, i caught up with Jana and Matt and went museum hopping (well two) in London. Lots of fun. on Wednesday night i caught up with Mark and we had dinner and then went to see Avenue Q, a bit crass, but incredibly funny (would recommend it definitely!). Yesterday arvo was great to catch up with two girls from school, Jess and Ali. Jess i had seen about a month ago, but Ali, haven't seen for 6 years, so that was rather nice. how to catch up on 6 years of someone's life over smoothie and about 2hrs. Lovely to see you two!

And then, to keep the musicals streak running, i went to Chicago last night with Lucia. It was great to spend some time with her (will be sad to see her leave, but can't wait to visit her in Madrid). We had a snack at an Italian restaurant, and in true spanish style, went for dinner after the performance (at a GREAT thai place in Soho).

tonight will be a night in to recover (do some washing, pampering and watch a dvd) and then on tomorrow off to Paris for the weekend. Where i hope to catch up with Louis (ex-housemate), maybe marion (ditto) and Beth.

Well, that's all from me. oh, and i do manage to teach in there, and extra curricular things too. If your in London, come along to my church's christmas carols service on December 17th 7:00pm. I'm in the choir.

hope you're all well. have a great lead up to Christmas. maybe have a bit of a think about why some people celebrate it.

love you,
deev

hola barcelona

once again the photos are a little bit random order, please bear with me. above is umm, a thing on the seaside with mat's head in the foreground. yes, it even rains in barcelona. below, is clement, jose, mat, me and note jose's beautiful 62MG top. go gang 62MG... (which is going to change yet again, as we are going to lose lucia to madrid...)

la sagrada familia by night... still to see it by day! next time for sure! below, matt, jana and myself with our tickets for the slides at the tate modern. we went to the slides today in tate modern which were heaps cool. level 4, for real the best slide, although i hurt my elbow on it. but i had a great day today with Matt and Jana. (i left school at 12:45pm and met with matt and jana at tate). we then had lunch over looking the thames and tried to go to the natural history museum to see a big squid, but the tour had closed, so maybe another day.
below, Jana coming off one of the slides, look at the smile on her face. yay!!! heaps of fun.

mat, me and clement sitting on a bench in a park. don't know where, somwhere in barcelona close to Arc de triumf. very close to where Jose lives. oh and there are the boys and the arc.

some of the mosaic in Parc Guell, i thought that was awesome and then below, the view from tres cruz at the top of Parc Guell.
mat and clem, you are like 5 times bigger and older than those girls. ha. i helped the girls up onto the play equipment and then we left. hopefully the girls were able to get down again without breaking their arms. we tried to help them get off, but they didn't want our help. oh well. not my fault!!
so, there are some photos of my last weekend and today... now for the news.

well, in the last week, i have been had the lovely offer from two EU citizens to marry me in order to keep me in the country. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), my visa is actually coming through, so i had to decline them both as i no-longer need it. oh and also they are too tall!!! ha. but it is very kind of them to be so selfless as to think of my needs and offer! since being over here i have discovered that i quite like shorter guys. like one or two inches taller than me... weird. mum, thinks i am crazy (especially seeing as dad is 6'2''). ok, well that is my randomness for today.

anyways, the weekend was Barcelona to see Jose, and it was great to catch up with him. as it turned out, Mathieu and Clement were there too. (both housemates). we had a great weekend, but instead of going out on saturday night, i stayed at jose's and slept, cos i was so tired.

i did still have a great weekend wandering Barcelona. We went to the beach, around the town and of course had tapas for lunch. then at night went to La Sagrada Familia and wandered the main shopping street. the next day, we went to have tapas again with Jose and dropped him at the Estacion Nord. Then we wandered and this time we went to the Parc Guell and umm, actually, i think that was pretty much it. Parc Guell was fantastic!!! I would love to go back there and spend some more time in the parc and then explore the city, maybe one day.

this week i am having a few nice nights out. one with marky mark to go and see Avenue Q and one with Lucia to see Chicago.

well, i think that is all for the moment. next stop, next weekend paris.

and tonight off for choir practice at church.
hasta luego.
deev
p.s. once again, those in aus, keep the 23rd free for our christmas party. hopefully you can see the invite below (click on it to make it larger). e-mail me if you need a reminder of our address. can't wait to see you. unfortunately i am only home for a little while, so this is one of my only chances to catch up with people. hope you can join us all!!! i wouldn't miss it for the world, ok, well i chose the world last year. whoops. but this year, i wouldn't miss it for the world!!!

yay

big thanks to Chris and her friend who cheered me up a bit on Wednesday night (after a crappy crappy day went to a lovely dinner) and then to Michelle H and Nick for listening to my whinging on Thursday (before, during and after spanish class).

and glad to say, i am pretty much out of my homesick feel sorry for myself stage and back to good old deev. so yay for that!!!

and i do still love my job, my house, my church, my area, my life. so praise God for that.

hope you all have a good weekend.
(congrats to Ty and Shane who are getting married this weekend)

deev
xx