+of+Bayon+Cambodia.jpg)
After being named the Toastmaster of the Year in my Club, word started to trickle through the people I work with. A few club members work with me. 
I love that I live in an area where the 
This tree was so cold...
Looking across the park, through the chilly air, bright flames of colour leap out and warm my heart.
These trees make me wrap my jacket even tighter around myself... but even with my cold fingers and wet nose, I can't help but love the colours of the trees.
... well... a section of it anyway. I have to be honest and say that I have made a lot of progress in the area of Public Speaking and owe all of my new skills and cofidence to the club and its members.
At work, I am currently preparing some students for a public speaking competition. This is my first time to organise the students for this competition and felt relatively confident in their readiness for next week's competition. Another, more experienced teacher has expressed real confidence in some of the students and has marvelled at the way I have prepared them.... It's all down to Toastmasters. (I'll let you know how the students do.)
A few years ago, I adopted two cute orang-utans. Their little faces were filled with their huge, round eyes. Their limbs were long, skinny and covered with fine fur. Now, the two orang-utans are older and almost ready to think about leaving their rehabilitation centre... they are preparing to move off through the trees to an
independent life in the forest.I adopted Lear. Lear was a young male who was four months old when he arrived at the rehabilitation centre. A local villager had found him and then brought him to the centre. Now, he is four and a half years old and weighs eleven and a half kilograms.
This is what the rehabilitation centre have said about Lear: Lear is a little cheeky and likes to play jokes and he looks funny too! He loves to grab onto people’s clothes, steal their hats and pull at them. He has a big smile and likes to bite everything he can. You can’t but like him and he has lots of orang-utan friends. His best friends at the Care Centre are Hayes and Morgan, two other orphans. His favourite foods are rambutan and oranges. His carers are teaching him about the best and tastiest fruits.
The other orang-utan I adopted is named Roy. He’s five now. When Roy arrived at the centre, he was 10 months old. He had been confiscated by officials, which saved him from a life lived in a cage as a pet or perhaps being sent overseas to be sold.
He weighs 14 kilograms now.
This is the information I have on Roy: Roy is very playful and boisterous and loves to play rough with his friends Sidney, Tim and Dora. He has fun with his carers, teasing them whenever he can. He loves to climb and is very active, so he has no trouble finding his way in the forest. He knows how to make a nest to rest in during the day and knows where to find all the different foods in the forest. Roy was brought to the Care Centre at the age of 10 months after being confiscated by the Police and over the years he has learnt how to be independent. He is a fast learner and loves his food.
The future of the orang-utans is still depressing. Extinction in the wild is likely in the next 10 years for Sumatran Orang-utans and soon after for Bornean Orang-utans. Their intelligence is comparable to that of a five or six year old child. I first adopted the orang-utans when I had a young niece and a baby nephew. The ages of the orang-utans and the ages of my niece and nephew are close. We’re so closely related to these beautiful animals and it has been fun hearing how quickly Roy and Lear are growing up. I adopted these two orang-utans through the organisation known as The Australian Orang-utan Program.
This is their website: http://www.orangutan.org.au/
As I cleaned up the music storeroom, locked the doors 
I don't understand this! It is like another language - a language which I never learned. It is full of secret symbols and encrypted messages. I recognise some of the symbols.... I even know some musical terms. I know that there is a line of notes in the top picture - but those notes with the tails... and those ones where they join up at the top... I'm lost.
So, I was surprised when I was asked to replace our music teacher while she was away on holidays. This teacher is lovely. She's energetic and enthusiastic and our students are lucky to have her as their teacher. She is very efficient and highly organised, and for this, I am very grateful. It was her efficiency which made her type up a few sheets of paper for me. These sheets of paper were my lifeline and I clung to them desperately during the first week. On these pages, she told me where I needed to be and when I needed to be there. She told me which resources I needed to take with me, which storeroom I would find the resources in and the best times to collect, set up, clean and return the sources. I followed her detailed notes absolutely and relied on them totally. They were constantly with me and never far from my reach.
By the second week, I was beginning to feel more confident. This allowed my child-like curiosity and energy to set in. I began looking through the storerooms to find interesting instruments. This is one instrument I found... 
I love these! I started to carry the rainstick around to all of my classes. I would sit in front of the students and play the instrument. Their little faces would light up and they would watch with excitement. Then, I would tell them that the rainstick had nothing to do with the lesson. I told them that I loved the rainstick and was playing just because it was so cool. Then I would go on with my lesson.
Then they would get a hammer or stone and hammer the thorns back through the cactus. They would push the thorns into the cactus, so that the centre of the branch was a mass of thorns - layers on layers of thorns. 
The tribesmen would seal off one end of the branch. Then, they poured dried berries, pebbles or grain into the branch and sealed off the top end. Each time they turned the branch, gravity would push the pebbles or grain to the lowest point of the branch. As the pebbles fell towards the lowest point, they would hit each of the thorns. 
