Drought-busters

THE RAIN
We have been dubbed, by Mark's co-workers as The Drought-Busters. It has rained here more this month than it has in 12 years during the same time period. So for all of you who have told us that you were jealous of our having summer while you are enduring the cold and snow, mostly we are watching sheets of rain fall from gray skies.


It's good for the land, I know. Selfishly, it makes me a bit sad, however, to watch our only summer in Australia trickle away, day after day as we spend most of our time inside. I do feel a bit justified about complaining as most Aussies we talk to are whining too.




THE MOZZIES
Other than the rain, there are the mozzies. (I'll just get the whining out of the way first.) The mozzies (mosquitoes) are rampant and hostile. My poor children are covered in mozzie bites. They look like walking chicken pox casulties. I have to spray myself with bug spray just to drop the kids off at school each morning.





This is the view from our backyard. Can you see all the mozzies???

THE CULTURE
The other thing, while I'm complaining, is that there is this weird cultural thing we've noticed that continues to baffle us. I've come to call it an
invisible membrane that surrounds most Aussies I meet on the street. They seem completley oblivious to us and won't give us the time of day or help us if we're struggling or even smile as we pass on the bike paths. UNLESS we ask. If we approach them, they are more than happy to help or say hello or chit chat about all numbers of topics. But you have to break through this membrane (that is frankly pretty off-putting) if you want to engage with them.

For the first few weeks we were here, I was bound and determined to continue to say hello and smile at everyone I passed while running, thinking maybe this one American could infiltrate the country with friendliness toward strangers on the street. I got to a place where I wanted to shake each of them and say, "Be happy! You're in Australia! You're one of the lucky ones!!" But it's gotten disheartening to get so little response that I've all but given up. We went to a party this afternoon for all the exchange families who are here from the US, Canada and the UK. We had a conversation with a few other people who've noticed the same phenomenon so I am pretty sure it is not just us.

What is important to note, however, is that once we engage an Aussie, they seem thrilled to talk with us, learn where we're from and how we're finding it here or how we're getting on, and they will go to great lengths to help us if we ask. When we are just walking by each other or conducting normal business in a store, they don't seem to see us. But as soon as we say hello or start chatting, their faces light up like they hadn't even see us there. I look forward to finding out what the Aussie perspective is on all this.

THE KIDS
I think those are the only complaints at this point. Other than those very minor things, we are still having a good time here. The kids finished their first week of school. Gabe has made lots of friends, he bounds out of the car every morning consistently forgetting to say good-bye to me. (For those of you who have seen him in the halls of Front Range Waldorf School over the years, he's come quite a long way from the boy who screamed hysterically if he thought I'd forgotten to give him hugs and kisses before I left the building! Now I'm the one who wants to cry if we don't say good-bye to each other.) And at the end of the day, he is covered with mud, happy and exhausted. He tells us lots of stories of what his class does throughout the day--also a big change from when he was younger and we heard very little about what went on while we were apart. On the second day of school, he said he was more comfortable because he knew more what to expect. He had difficulty understanding the teacher some of the time so he just followed the mass of kids wherever they went. He pantomimed what it was like to hear the teacher say, "Okay, blah, blah, blah" and the kids would go running off so he'd just hurry up and follow them, having no idea where they were headed. By the end of the week he said he still didn't always understand what she said but he had a general sense when it was lunchtime and where they went to eat.

Jordan had a wonderful week as well. Her teacher told me that she was very engaged, happy, smiling, talkative and wonderous all week. She apparently found a hiding place during one of their games where no one could find her. Literally. So after the whole class went inside, her teacher noticed she wasn't there. She said her heart started pounding, she sent another teacher out to look for Jordan and he found her, sitting happily in her spot feeling very proud of herself that no one could find her. (She's had issues in the past with hide-and-seek, feeling like she never could find really good hiding places.) Because she didn't know that she'd essentially been abandoned or that her teacher was on the verge of a heart attack, this was a big success for her.
She loved eating the corn on the cob picked fresh from the school garden and having Dulcie the cow and her calf Daisy to visit daily. She has proudly learned two songs already and is confident enough with the words and tune that she's performed them for us. Her one criticism of the school thus far is that, "This school is all about the sun. We sing songs about the sun, hear stories about the sun. We can only paint with sun colors. It's getting sort of boring to have everything be about the sun all the time." I assured her I'd meet with the principal to discuss this catastrophe first thing Monday morning.



















Jordan's hair gets mighty curly in the humidity!



























Big fun fig trees to climb here.


MARK
Mark continues to learn more and more about his school, the kids and his role. He has two classes that each contain about 3-5 kids who are off the charts unruly. Those kids may have the power to make or break my sweet husband. I'm optimistic that they will help him refine and clarify for himself who he is as a teacher but there's always the chance that they will be the death of him. Keep a good thought! He also has several classes of quite lovely students who he enjoys very much. He loves that they call him "sir" and they play all kinds of games with him and his American accent and lexicon. He is enjoying his Wednesday afternoons as the entire school does "Sport." This means that all the students sign up for one sport each term and on Wednesdays, they leave campus and scatter about Newcastle engaging in that sport with several of the teachers as chaperones. Mark signed up to take students to the beach for beach volleyball on Wednesdays (there were no kids who signed up for golf so he's already started recruiting a few to sign up for next term,) so he's enjoying that. Because of the rain this past week, the temperature was signifcantly more comfortable in his classroom. He said it was nice to be just hot rather than dripping with sweat.

ME
I had a lovely week. I dropped Mark and the kids off at their respective schools at 9:00am and picked them up at the same places at 3:2o. In between I wrote and swam and laid on the beach (because the only sunny parts of this week were in the mornings) and got a few things done around the house. This lifestyle suits me. I have a few phone numbers of women I've met who I would really like to get to know better. But the thing is, these new people might get in the way of my new-found freedom. I'm not sure I'm ready to share this time with anyone else but me just yet. Maybe this will get old at some point but right now I feel like, after being stranded in the desert for years, I've got an endless supply of water in front of me and while my body may not be dehydrated anymore, I'm still really thirsty!

We are working hard at planning our holidays that will be coming up in the next few months. It's a bit daunting to figure out where we want to go while we're here. Imagine if you had several chunks of time and weekends to visit all of the US knowing very little about your options. Where would you go? How would you decide?

Until next time...