[New Year's Eve Eve] Worky work work work. It's a song.

My boss is quite paranoid about people stealing money. Fair enough, it's happened. Though it's also quite hard to get away with it. There are cameras over both the cash registers and the safe. So she doesn't teach people how to close very often and then something happens like tonight: the only people who were available to close were people who worked earlier in the day. My boss actually called and apologised that I hadn't been trained yet. She never trains anyone until a situation like that pops up.

So I was taught how to close tonight. It's not really that hard now that we don't have to count the money at the end of the day. Though I don't know how it's done after it's been put in the safe. You just put together the float for the next day and put the rest of the money in the safe.

Mopping however, created more difficulty. You wouldn't think mopping is too hard, and it's not. Except the blueberry stains are a bitch to get out of the floor. Despite the blueberry and white chocolate scones being delicious. And that's not even the worst part. Basically I think that more water ended up on the floor than in the bucket. Because I spilled it - twice. The back room, which was the first part of the shop that I mopped was still wet at 7:30 when we left. It should be dry by the time the bakers get in though.

[Christmas Day] Peter Costello has a lot to answer for with the baby bonus

Church was absolutely chaotic last night because there were several small children who would not sit still. The children at carols by candlelight were better behaved. Hmm. I don't know what to say about Christmas.

Carols: I love Melbourne. So much. The city that held the first Carols. Anyway, Hi-5 performed and sang the Santa song. I know all the actions, I think I should join Hi-5. Except for the fact that I don't like them at all. Wiggles FTW!

Work: My boss called at 7:40 am to ask if my sister and I could come in earlier. Because I have never worked a shift quite as insane as that one. Funnily enough, the customers were very organised and queued efficiently in a single file. That's not normally how it works at Bakers. You know it's busy when you bake nearly 2000 dinner rolls and 420 bread sticks and you sell out of both. Sandra bought us all drinks, which was not what I expected and Emily and I had a laugh at the expense of Deakin. Hmm, I want chocolate.

Christmas: We went to the park which was fun. My grandma said "Who are ACDC? Are they a music group?" which made us all laugh very hard. What else happened? My cousin somehow drew a perfect circle on her knee. Still haven't worked that one out. How she managed it, I mean.

I laughed very hard when I opened my present from Kat, because it's a tardis book. I have no idea what it's for, something to do with tasks, or something. Like Kat wrote in the card. I'll write something more thoughtful on stuff soon, I am currently watching Allo Allo, which is hilarious. Therefore it is hard to concentrate on the blogalog. But Happy Christmas.

[Results 2008] I don't have to go to Deakin!

I've been awake for over 10 hours. That is not something you should ever be saying at 4 pm. But results are a frightening prospect, so you sometimes wake up at 5:30 am against your will and the small amount of sanity you have left. In the end it turned out that I had nothing to worry about. English was my top subject, which wasn't surprising, followed by Geography. And I got second in the class for geography, which was surprising. Even though there are only five people in the class.

So I can get into Arts at Melbourne easily. I can also get into lots of other things, but I don't want to. Like biomedicine. Or Commerce. Or engineering, but they don't really interest me. I could also get into Arts/Law at Deakin, but that would involve going to Deakin. I don't think I've ever been to a presentation where it's been so bad that it's actually put me off something except for the Deakin Open Day. The solar power man at assembly that time would have if I wasn't firmly in favour of renewable energy.

I'm so happy at the moment. Life is good people, enjoy it. Also, I received something in the mail from Kat today, and I'm wondering whether I should wait to open it. Then again, I just bought myself Let it Snow as a congratulations gift (it would have been a commiserations gift if I hadn't done as well as I would have liked). And Jingle Spells 2 should be arriving soon. Speaking of which, here's another song from last year's Jingle Spells which I love. And this one features Lauren Fairweather, Sam Friedman and Melissa Anelli. I hope this works.

;sldkfjsldkfjlskjblkdjflsdkjf <--- Leah stresses out.

Basically because I am a nervous wreck. OHMYGOSHRESULTSTOMORROWFUCKFUCKFUCK. Apparently that isn't a word. I don't know why, I think that is probably what 50,000 people are thinking. There was an article in the Herald Sun today, which I read on my break that told me that there's some Western Bulldogs recruit who's trying to get into boimed at Melbourne. Well it's nice for some. Wouldn't it be great if he got into premed and become a professional athlete. At least Katrina was at work today so I had someone to fret about it with. Nellie at work has already been offered three uni places because she had folio interviews and such and they don't look at ENTER.

In other news, work was hardly busy and there were two people across the road playing Christmas carols on the trombone and clarinet. Very badly. And there were only two different carols! We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bell Rock. I was quite the fan of Jingle Bell Rock, but I wonder if that has changed. My favourite carol at the moment is actually "An Epic Christmas Tale, Chapter One: How the Thestrals Saved Christmas" which is on the first Jingle Spells CD. Chapter Two: Murder at the Top of the World, is on Jingle Spells 2. That is one the way. In the mail by now hopefully. I wonder if Frak shipped mine, because if he did, I might have gotten a Frankie Franco original drawing. Speaking of Frak, I wonder if I can find his awesome video from the other week with the owl drawing.

Umm... not much else to report on. My mum is going to bed, I probably will soon, though I doubt I'll get much sleep. Ooo, I can stay up until 11. Not that that will do much.

[21/10/08] And now, the moment we've been waiting for...

... is here.

I'm about to go and get ready for work, but I wanted to begin writing this when I was wearing my year 12 rugby top. I'll tell you what, the school knows how to make a day exhausting. And even so, I'm working tonight, and I'll be pretty bleh. Oh well. I will write more soon. Or in about 4 hours.

Make that 5. Today started with the Korovian Club breakfast. The food was good, and we were presented (seriously, they present us as many times as they possibly can) to the president of the Korovian club and this time we got keyrings. We had to catch the tram back to school, and I love that my school is so small that we can fit an entire year level on a tram. Sure, some people had to stand, but it's not like we were squished in like sardines. It was a double length tram though, I'll give them that.

Oh, the funniest part of breakfast happened after breakfast, which is when Kim and I needed to find the toilets. We decided to ask Mrs Jewell (actually, the funniest part of yesterday was when Kim asked Mrs Jewell how to get a detention because she'd never had one) for the toilets, and to get her attention, I poked her. You know you're getting too comfortable with your teachers when you start poking them. Anyway, Kim said "Mrs Jewell, do you know...? Oh wait, there's a sign over there." It was hilarious. Then afterwards we saw Mrs Pappas and she was reading a card that Cat A had given to her and it said "good luck with Brad", Brad of course being Brad Pitt.

Period 2 was the Revue, and having seen it three times before, I didn't find many of the jokes as funny. We did it in a traditional assembly style, and I loved the way it started, with Sally as the Principal rising from the lecturn with the Darth Vader music playing. One of the best lines was "I hope you keep studying hard, so the school can look better and we get more and more money". Alex was absolutely fantastic as the tour guide lady. I also loved Shannon doing the reading from the Gospel of John Bon Jovi "wo-oah, we're halfway there. Wo-oah, living. On a prayer" - the way she said it was great. We don't even know her name, but it was the best. For once we didn't make fun of Ms Barnes. I think the only teacher that took offense at anything was the psychology teacher, but from what I heard, none of that was exaggerated. Oh, and then Mark didn't know that the "China pictures" were actually the facebook powerpoint. Let's just say that the only reason we weren't merciless is because we would have gotten in trouble. Actually, that last photo was cut out, but I liked it. The video was great too. I'm glad we got the fishbowl thing in. That was weird, but fun. At the end, there was just footage of us, and the group photo from the formal and that's when it started to get sad. So they made it worse with the baby photos.

A short interruption: I had (very) short bursts where I was crying, but my overwhelming emotion was not sadness. I have finished 13 years of schooling, and I was lucky enough to share the last 6 years with a wonderful group of girls, all of whom I am extremely proud. The international students have gone through more than we can possibly understand, being in a country where English is not their first language and fitting in with the rest of us. Alyson and Carol both spoke beautifully yesterday. Citizenship awards at the formal assembly (yes, I did get one, but considering what else has happened in the past couple of days, it's not the most important thing that's happened to me in that time) were plentiful, and all of the captains made the best speeches I have heard in my life. But most of all, we didn't have an accompanist for the opening hymn of the assembly, which was years 6 to 12. And we sang it without accompaniment, and it was beautiful, and it is moments like that I will miss the most. Those moments where everyone does what they know they have to do, whether they're sure of themselves or not, and there is a 'feeling of togetherness', which is more amazing than you can possibly imagine. I'm going to have to learn that German word.

So I have moved onto the part where we have the formal assembly. Oh, back to the Revue, we did a thing with the school chaplain where her stuffed wombat was dead. She brought the actual stuffed wombat (a toy, not a dead wombat that has been stuffed) to the formal assembly. Then there were the captains' speeches. I already said they were some of the best I've heard in my life. And I'm talking speeches in general. Forget Barack Obama. Dani, the Arts captain spoke of how she hated the phrase "think outside the square", because what is this square that everyone speaks of? Grace made a great speech as debating captain, and I really wish I remembered more of it. She used lots of poetry, which I liked, there was definitely Robert Frost there. Oh yes, she spoke of Dead Poets Society (watch it if you haven't, it's an amazing movie), and used what I think was the closing lines of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and then closed with a Mao quote, which made all of the history students laugh. Oh yes, the thing I liked was that she encouraged everyone to have opinions and to make them known. Grace is an opinionated person, but sometimes it feels like opinions aren't valued, so I really like that she encouraged that.

Cal also used some English references in her speech, saying that she was like Big Brother, only the face of what goes on behind the scenes. I really like that she said being a captain doesn't mean that you're more powerful, it means that you have a responsibility to the students to make them happy. I think she was a great international captain, and that she really deserved it; she wanted to lessen the segregation that we have between the international and local students. Kim was next, and she's always been able to speak, but she lives in that music department, I don't think anyone realises how much she'll miss it next year. Ms Barnes got her a gorgeous bracelet. And she finished by saying the start of the chorus to "Thank You for the Music", and by the end we were singing it. It was cliche, but I loved it. I really like that the Palm Leaf Editors got to say something, because the Palm Leaf is something we'll keep for the rest of our lives, and considering they hadn't made many speeches, the ones they made were good.

Meagan made a great speech as Social Service captain, and she spoke really well about being a community that is outwardly focussed. Next was Keely's Sport captain's speech which was also great. They were just all fantastic speeches this year, and I don't think I could be happier with who we chose as captains. I love the way Keely said that she was waiting for her interview with Doctor Otzen and she decided that when she was looking at the trophy cabinet that she was going to be Sports Captain. I love hearing those stories.

Freya and Georgi began their speech in German by saying "we have mixed feelings about leaving Korowa, as the community has a great feeling of togetherness" or something like that. So the German girls laughed, because that German word for 'feeling of togetherness' is really really long. They said some thank yous together and then separately. Georgi said something about us as a year group supporting them, and how for the environmental quiz, when they were worried no one would show up. She also thanked Freya, which was gorgeous. And of all the speeches, I think Freya's was the best. She spoke about how the school has shaped her, and how being school captain has helped her grow.

Then we were all called up to sing the year 12 song. I love it so much, and I've had it in my head since then. The one time during that whole assembly when I cried was just before singing the line "and is this the last time you'll see us standing here with you?", which was originally the line that a few of us (including me) wanted to cut out of the song, but it was very appropriate. Then (0f course) there was the school hymn, and we did have someone to accompany that. I think it may have been Kim, I can't remember. We sang the descant (fancy word for harmony part) beautifully, and then the year elevens made a guard of honour for us as we left the hall.

Here is possibly the most bizarre part of the day. We did the Hokey Pokey at the back of the hall while we waited for the younger students to leave. It was fun, but bizarre, so I'll definitely remember it. Since at this stage it may have been midday, we all went to the park and had fish and chips for lunch, and it was just a nice way to end everything. Oh yes, and we were signing each others' school uniforms. I'm taking mine to the speech night rehearsal tomorrow. Oh, at one point I went to the toilet and when I came out, I just saw all the navy blue rugby jumpers (I bet everyone wears their rugby jumpers and jeans tomorrow for the rehearsal) and that's when I felt the most pride and love for all those girls.

[20/10/08] And as we journey beyond these walls...

... to face the world out there...

Today was my last day of high school classes, and there's a bunch of stuff going through my head right now. Though tomorrow I will be a wreck. I got there at normal time even though I didn't have class until after recess; we had to rehearse the year 12 song, which we'll be singing for real tomorrow. And I did sort of cry at one point, it sounds amazing with the cello, I love Sarah. We had our very last roll call, which was kind of bleh. It wasn't particularly emotional, since we have a house system from year 9 to 12 and had our last house meeting on Friday, that kind of did it.

Then I finally gave Laura her birthday present, which was Pretty Odd. Oh yeah, her birthday was June 3rd. I am awesome with birthday presents. It was only 4 months and 17 days late. My double spare in the library was highly unproductive, I wrote half an introduction to a language analysis essay. Also, the librarians were being loud (pretty much exactly the way we'd written them for the Revue) and there was a spider in the library at some point, so they called maintenance to take it away. This was probably a good thing, since Grace was in the library at the time. Cath also showed me this amazing book of sea creatures, and there's a double page of photos dedicated to this octopus which imitates other sea creatures and it's epic. I want to visit this octopus.

For recess we went up to French, because we had singing practice on Friday, which is when we were supposed to have our last class. Madame gave us these delicious chocolate things and we all got our environmental posters back. And she cried, which was the most adorable thing ever. She's singing at the Spiegeltent for the Melbourne International Arts Festival (it's a big deal), but it's the day before the English exam; we really wanted to go. Madame has also helped me deal with things that are affected by but somewhat disconnected to schoolwork, so I'll miss her. I had no idea that telling her what was going on initially would work out the way it did. For those of you reading who think that's cryptic, it's supposed to be.

Shelby got us flowers and made us cards, which I think is the sweetest thing in the world. There are so many people I'll miss this year who aren't in my year level, and she's one of them. The flower she gave me is in the same vase as the rose I got at house meetings on Friday. I should be getting them things, not the other way around. Though I don't think that Ariane should be allowed near another toy sonic screwdriver. Then Meagan and I went down to the uniform shop to get our Rugby jumpers!!!!!!! which are awesome and thank goodness they stuck to the navy rather than making them grey.

Mrs Lynch was awesome in geography. We had non-alcoholic champagne, strawberries and chocolate. I like the sparkling grape juice better than real champagne actually. So we took a lot of photos (we took photos for every class actually - I need to remember to take my camera to school tomorrow). I had chemistry afterwards, and nothing particularly exciting happened, unless you count the four practice exams that DJ thought we would enjoy doing. 

Lunch time was a rehearsal for the Revue in the Hall, which we locked. Top secret stuff. Some year nines came in at one point to collect sheet music off the piano, which we didn't know at the time, so we pretty much abused them and told them to leave. Then they came back with a teacher and explained the situation. And then the Rev came in and told us that Rachel was there to say goodbye, which was just inconvenient. So when we got back to the hall, a very nice person just said "where the hell were you?"

We had our last ever high school class after lunch. Mrs Jewell baked for us and gave us more stuff for practice essays. We didn't do any work though. We took photos. And did... nothing else, I don't think. After that was another singing practice, and CJ announced the awards for Speech Night on Wednesday. Emma was so cute. She got the Korovian Club award, which is what the Amy Paterson award has been renamed to. First she was in denial that it was her name, then she decided that it was some sort of consolation prize. Then we found out that it was the Amy Paterson award.

Next we had to run to St James because apparently the Rev wanted us to practice our prayers for the Leavers' Service, but we didn't. I really liked the service. Sarah cried at the end of her speech, but it was beautiful. I really liked all the speeches actually. Fi's was good, and Alyson's made me cry. Mum was saying afterwards that Alyson and Carol (international students) spoke better than some of her year 12 English students. And we got to sing Parts of the Vine (though we did choose that). The readings were good, one of them was 1 Corinthians 13. If you don't know it, it is the Bible passage that is most often read at weddings (I nearly typed weedings), and is about love, and it doesn't mention God at all. We were then presented with Bibles, we said our prayers - there were no mishaps, clearly a rehearsal wasn't required. Then we had a lighting of candles where we all stood in a circle. That was nice. We sang the school hymn and it was actually quite moving. Though we will be singing the school hymn at least another three times in the next 2 days. That's all from me for the moment, until next time, DFTBA

[18/10/08] Rich got pwned by the ice cream lady.

Last night I went out with Meagan, Kim and Rich for ice cream on Glenferrie Road. Since we convinced Rich that Coles was a terrible place to go get ice cream, we went to Cold Rock. But we did park at Coles. My mum wasn't aware that Rich could drive until today when we went back to Glenferrie (more on that later) that there was a car involved in this outing. Rich said that he's organising another one after exams, and my first reaction was "not Coles". He promised no supermarkets, thank goodness.

We didn't know quite what to get, so we got a large family sized pack. Don't do this unless you have a freezer handy, it melts and then the flavour at the bottom is all slop. We just got the four sorbets, which were lemon, orange, raspberry and mango. And we did the whole thing with fillings. Meagan, Kim and I decided it would be fun to get marshmallows with the mango. Yes, an unusual combination. Rich was not happy about this decision, so he tried to get passionfruit, as per the lady's suggestion. But then she asked who was paying, and Rich said "me", so she decided to put in marshmallows. I laughed so hard.

Then after we finished our sorbet, marshmallows, sour worms, skittles and gummi bears, we went to Steve Madden because they had nothing over $30 and Kim bought some yellow flats, which match her awesome yellow hat. The next thing we did was take Kim home. She said we didn't need to, but Rich and I were like "road trip!" because you know, she lives so far away. It was fun. Then Rich decided to brake really hard, which wasn't that funny. He swears the light was red, but I don't believe him. Oh yes, and "So What" came on the radio, so we of course had an argument about it, but it's a good song. Then I came home and watched Heroes. Sylar still freaks me out. And I don't like Mrs Petrelli, but I never did. Oh well.

EDIT: Rich just told me he and Meagan are going out. That is the least shocking news I've heard in my life. It's about bloody time.