Tuesday 13th November 2007

Hi I'm Pamela, the Elementary class teacher here in ACE Manly. I come from Drumsna, which is a small village in the north west of Ireland. Drumsna is on the river Shannon and every year, thousands of tourists come here to fish and to relax on the river cruisers. As a child I used to spend lots of my summers working on one of the locks of the Shannon with my father. He has been the lock-keeper at Albert Lock for the last 30 years. His father was the lock-keeper before him, and his father was the lock-keeper before him!

Our family is quite small, there are only four of us, my mother, my father my brother (Paul) and I. My brother is an engineer for a company called Hewlett Packard. My mother is a psychiatric nurse and next year she is going to take early retirement!

I left home when I was 17 and went to Limerick to study English and Media and Communication Studies at University. I left Ireland at the age of 19 and went to a town called Ribadeo in Galicia in the north west of Spain as part of my college placement. I taught English in a private language school for one year here. After that year I returned to finish my degree.

After that I moved to Japan for two years and taught English in four different high schools there. I absolutely loved my time there. I really miss the food, and so much of their culture. This winter just gone by, I came to Australia, and the rest as they say, is history.

I now live in Manly and am quickly beginning to love the relaxed life here. I am also happy to be skipping a winter after two very very cold ones in Japan!

In my free time I like singing, snow boarding and cooking- but now at the same time obviously! My favourite bands and singers are Coldplay, Snow Patrol, The Cranberries, Paulo Nutini, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, U2 and REM. The films I have enjoyed the most are Forest Gump, all the Back to the Future movies, The Shawshank Redemption and Remember the Titans. My favourite actor is Johnny Depp and favourite authors Dan Brown and Maeve Binchy.

I am a total television addict and love Lost, Desperate Housewives, House, 24, and Grey's Anatomy but my favourite show has to be Heroes!