The halfway mark

Well, we are halfway through our adventure. I was thinking, Mark and I spent about 4 months planning to get married and then we got married and we are still married. We spent 18 months planning to have children and then we had children and we still have those children. We spent 5 years planning this exchange to Australia and then we went to Australia and in 5 months, it is going to be over.

So where are we with it all? I’ll start with the whole reason we are here: Mark. He is having a very polarized experience, to the point that I can never tell who is going to walk in the door at 3:45 every avo (afternoon). Some days he comes home aggravated, telling me about the two or three kids who make it virtually impossible for him to teach the remaining 20 who seem to want to learn. He lists the ways he thinks administration should be dealing with these situations. He tells me about the holes and gaps in the system that make him feel ineffective.

Other days or sometimes even an hour later, he tells me about the connections he’s making with kids. My recent favorite story is about how the P.E. teacher asked him to bring a few golf clubs to school so he could give her gym class some golf lessons. He noticed one boy who seemed to have a natural swing. He recruited six kids, including this one, to sign up to do golf on Sport Day. So this term, he is taking this group of kids to the golf course for an hour on Wednesdays. He thinks this one boy, who never picked up a club before, might become a golfer. Who knows where it might lead him. And there are other stories like this. Students here, just like in CO, tell him that they like maths for the first time because of him; that they like to come to his class even though they hate maths; that they are learning more than they’ve ever learned in maths. And his lowest functioning class is doing more work in his class than other teachers would ever dare to expect out of them. He’s brought his gift here and has found ways to connect with kids just like he has always done in Thornton.

I’m not passing this blog by Mark for his approval this time. It is important to me to write this down because watching his progress at Cardiff High School has been one of the biggest parts of this Australian experience for me. I am in awe of his perseverance but, then again, anyone can do anything for a year. What is more impressive is that he is able to shine like he can shine, like few teachers in the schools across the world can shine, even on days when he feels powerless, clueless, frustrated, aggravated, angry, resentful, whiney and jealous. He can still walk into the classroom and connect with every single student in ways that matter to those kids. He is still teaching.

I don’t know if he’ll be able to leave this country knowing that he did more than most could do while he was here but I know it. And even though I have to muddle through his whinging and self-pity that sometimes oozes through our house for hours on end, I find myself in awe of the teacher that he is. So who knows what the second half of this teaching experience will bring him. And who knows if he’ll ever find peace in this foreign system for himself. But I am pretty sure that his ability to connect with and teach students will continue to rise above any of his personal opinions and complaints about the way they run things around here. I know you would all be very proud of him.

Other than his job, Mark is enjoying bike riding and has an eye on a 170 km bike ride along The Great Ocean Road in October. We’ll see if we can make that happen. He continues to enjoy the family time that he has in the mornings and all afternoon and evening. And he’s eagerly awaiting spring when it warms up enough to get back in the water. He’s ready to get back on the boogie board.

In other news, Lisa, Mark’s stepsister, and Josh, her son just left us tonight after spending 5 wonderful days here visiting. Their trip began with a Disney tour to Cairns, Uluru and Sydney and ended with a stint here in Newcastle. We loved having them here to share a bit of our life with. I realized, as we tried to think of things to do during the day that Josh might enjoy while Gabe and Jordan were in school, that Newcastle is not a tourist spot. It is a home for people who live and work, not a tourist attraction with amusement parks or museums or zoos. In the winters here, if it is not sunny, people stay home. If it is sunny, it is still cold and often windy so people stay home then too. The beaches are like ghost towns and, when it is windy, the whirling sand makes that seem even more so. We like being here this year. It has given us the opportunity to just be home and be together. But it occurred to me this week, while trying to entertain guests, that this is not a tourist spot. I have lived in touristy towns ever since I was 15 years old. This is the first time since living in the suburbs of Detroit that my town is not a destination for anyone. It’s odd.

We were sad to see them leave tonight. Like they are going back home and we can’t come yet. Not that I want to. I would be devastated if our time here was over right now. But when people come and then they go back, I feel the teensiest bit abandoned. Just the slightest bit.

The kids are doing well. Jordan took a week to get over her feverish sickness, whatever it was. But now that she’s well again, she’s well again and we’re all happy about that. They are both enjoying their friends, their teachers and their school life. Gabe continues to go across the street everyday after school to play with the neighbor kids. We have playdates and go to birthday parties and I feel like I keep writing the same thing about them on every update. They truly are having a great time. They haven’t said they are missing anything about home in quite a while. Jordan says she is struggling to remember what her bedroom in Lakewood looks like.

Here we are celebrating Jordan and Josh's birthdays...

Gabe and Jordan both talk Australian far better and more often than Mark or I, even though Mark and I try much harder than they do. I was trying, just today, to say the word ‘fire’ the way I heard a man say it as I passed him on the street. I contorted my mouth, lowered my voice, and hung my head just so and I still sounded like I was from Texas rather than Oz. Gabe nailed it on his first try.

And then there’s me. I finally, after six long months of working almost daily on my book, have a plot! It is amazing how hard novel-writing is for this unschooled, unguided, aspiring writer. But I think I might finally have something I can really wrap my pen around so we’ll see what happens next. I’ve been reading a lot, trying to educate myself on the craft of writing and many authors have reported that it takes them about 2-3 years to write a novel and that the first one or two or sometimes three finished manuscripts never saw the light of day. It was their fourth attempt that finally had enough merit to be bound and sold. Some days that is encouraging and other days very discouraging. I will be sure not to quit my day job, after, of course, this year of not having one.

Other than writing, I am happy to report an increasingly active social life. I have a few friends now with whom I think I’ll stay in touch after we go and who might even come visit us in CO. I am enjoying getting to know these people and having people to turn to right here when I need help or commiseration or guidance or companionship. I was hoping to have people here I’d miss and I think now I will.

The weather is always something people in America ask about so I’ll tell you that it is winter, winter, winter. Time-wise, it is the equivalent of February here which is when I tend to get the most sick of winter in CO. So it is not surprising that I’m pretty much over winter here as well. The trees seem more bare than they have the last few months. The air seems crisper, the sun seems weaker, its yellow, more muted. The wind cuts deeper and the rain feels more terminal. The sun just doesn’t impress me as much as I know that its efforts will be easily overrun by the gray, the rain and the wind. Nice try, I tell it. Call me when you’ve really got something to show. The temperatures are in the 50s and 60s most days and drop into the 40s at night so it isn’t awful but it never quite gets warm. And then we read online that Denver has had a record 3 weeks of 90+ degree days and was slotted to see triple digits this past week. Frankly, I’d prefer this so I am done complaining.

We are about to enter our longest stretch without visitors since the first three months we were here. We won’t see anyone until November now. And we won’t have any big trips until the end of September so we are nestled into normal life for 2 months. There are a few restaurants I want to try nearby and I hope to get in the ocean in September for the first time in months. I am going to take an online writing class and I’d like to get together with my new friends some more. I hope Mark gets himself out on the golf course a bit more often and I will try to set up many playdates for the kids during the week. I also want to see the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney and am hoping to sneak away to Melbourne with a friend of mine for an overnight sometime soon. But other than those kinds of things, I am thrilled to have the time to write, to be home with my husband and kids, to turn my face to the sun on the days that it shines unimpeded and to run along the ocean’s threshold as often as I can. I am in no hurry to come home but I miss you all very much.

Dunk Island

We flew on a 12 person plane to Dunk Island. Dunk Island is one of the many islands in the Great Barrier Reef. They are all unique in terms of human visitation and habitation. Dunk is an island with a resort on about 1/20^th of it and the rest of it is untouched National Forest. We arrived on a sunny day and enjoyed some time on the beach the second day but then never saw the sun again until we got back to Newcastle. Not only did we not see the sun but it rained curtains the whole time we were there. And this was their dry season.

They had a kids club which absolutely made the trip for Gabe and Jordan. When they weren’t in the camp, we played a lot of monopoly and cards, read books and made sure to get ourselves out on the covered squash and tennis courts once a day.

It was relaxing, I’ll give it that. But by the third day of non-stop rain, we were all whinging. And poor Jordan got really sick again with a high fever. She stayed in bed most of the last two days.

So that was Dunk Island. I don’t think I have much more to say about it than that. I’m sure it is pretty when the sun shines.

Tropical North Queensland

We’ve returned from Tropical North Queensland after a successful two weeks of adventure. We left on Saturday, July 5^th the day after Mark’s 49^th birthday and America’s 232^nd birthday. There was a noticeable absence of fireworks here. We flew up north to Cairns (pronounced ‘Cans’). We met Diane, Tracy and Andrew up there as they’d gone up two days before us. Together we barely stuffed all 7 of us and our luggage including someone’s golf clubs into a mini-van and drove an hour north to Port Douglas to a 3-bedroom apartment where we stayed for eight days.

Port Douglas reminded me some of Seabrook Island, one of the resort-style barrier islands outside Charleston, South Carolina where my Grandma lives. But it is more wild and tropical than that. The little town hosts 5 blocks of high-end stores and restaurants with diving, boating and snorkeling outfits scattered conveniently throughout the town for tourists to pop in and book their dream trip to the Great Barrier Reef.

These are the Sunday Markets where we watched a skillful man crack open coconuts with a huge machete and stick a straw in them for people to drink.

There are quite a few interesting aspects to the northern tropics of Australia, not the least of which are the resident crocodiles. The relatively small and non-man-eating freshwater crocs thrive in the rivers but they will get scarcely more than a nod on this blog compared to their menacing, spiny, evil-looking giant relatives: The Salties. Saltwater crocodiles are the reason there are signs everywhere warning tourists of their existence. Apparently, Germans need to have it spelled out for them more than any other non-English speaking tourist as all the signs read, “Achtung” (‘danger’ in German) next to the picture of the open-mouthed crocodile.

Salties live in the muddy rivers that flow down from the jungled hills into the ocean but they can also live quite happily in the ocean itself. You just never know. There are signs around areas where crocs have been spotted so we just took their word for it and stayed out of the water altogether. However, Port Douglas, in its civilized way, has one beach that is patrolled and in which it is safe to swim. It’s far enough away from the mouth of the river that crocs aren’t likely to swim up that far.

While we were up there, we saw two crocs on our own, three on a crocodile cruise down the Daintree River and two more in captivity. None of them failed to stop us all in our tracks. But the thing about crocs is that mostly, they don’t move. Especially in the winter (which it is down here right now) because they are in semi-hibernation mode, focusing all their attentions on staying warm enough to remain alive. It is because they don’t move that I found it most interesting how long each of those seven crocs could hold our attention. They were so not moving that they might as well have been made of plaster and yet, we were mesmerized. There’s something indescribably fascinating to human beings, it seems, to see an evil looking prehistoric animal that has not just the power but the inclination to come chasing after us to eat us up. It was as though we could all see blood dripping off its teeth and hear the screams of the person it was currently digesting.

In keeping with the wild carnivorous animal theme, I regretfully report that we only saw two non-venomous tree snakes, though Queensland is the home to more venomous snakes than any other state in Australia and Australia, as many of you know, is chocked full of deadly snakes. We also didn’t see any sharks or deadly jellies. We came across many insects and spiders, but none who wanted to kill us.

Traveling with Diane, Tracy and Andrew was fabulous. Gabe and Andrew played like brothers without the sibling rivalry. The four adults had a wonderful time doing things in all combinations of twos, threes and fours. And Jordan, who earned the Trooper of the Month award, weathered the boys’ antics well and enjoyed some special attention from the adults, especially as there were many mamas to bounce between. She did struggle some from feeling left out and sometimes pushed out but I’m hoping the beaded bracelet she got to make for herself as a special gift for not getting to have her own friend along helped a little. We all spent time on the beach, rode bikes, walked around the shops, ate ice cream and cooked some fabulous dinners together. I can’t say enough how wonderful it is to have our close friends come visit us here.

There were a few days when we went off in search of adventures: a crocodile cruise, an Aboriginal walkabout and presentation, a trip through the Rainforest Discovery Center, Breakfast with the Birds in the Rainforest Habitat and of course, our snorkeling trip on the Great Barrier Reef. As we may have mentioned before, we are not great tour group kinds of people. The kids get bored and Mark and I get boreder. So we didn’t do a lot of that. We spent a day driving around in the rainforest and stopping at several places to get out and walk around in it.

This creature is a tree kangaroo. We'd never heard of or seen anything like it. It hopped like a roo but climbed like a monkey!

I think our general consensus was that the rainforest was “cool” and everything, but we wondered if maybe there was more to it than we were getting by the little roadside samples and views from the beaten paths.

Then one morning, I got up before sunrise in search of hills to run on, something the town of Port Douglas has essentially none of. I drove about 10 minutes into the rainforest and found a good spot. The sun came up and the soft light of morning made me feel safe enough to start running. Within a few minutes, I started to understand the rainforest’s appeal for so many people, ancient Aboriginals and modern-day locals alike. There was a mysterious feeling. I sensed that these hills, thick with vines and palms and big-leafed trees ten stories high held not only snakes and
Cassowaries and parrots and exotic flowers but also secrets, a history and a blueprint to sustain life that defies taming. The Rainforest is often talked about as though the entire forest itself is a living entity. That morning, looking up at the mist nestled into the sides of the dense green hills, the diversity of plant life leaning over the road that had been carved out of its mid-section, I understood. It is not a place I’d like to live. It is not even a place I need to go back to any time soon because it doesn’t feel habitable to me. There are some people who are drawn to live in that part of the world but it seems to me that their attempts at doing so have been just barely allowed and accepted by the land. There are so many things they have to take into consideration—deadly animals, a whole season of torrential rains, half a year when the ocean is unsafe to stick a toe in (due to deadly box jelly fish) and humidity that can slow people down to snail’s pace (which I know is part of the appeal for many) but that keeps most everything from ever drying. Mold appears on bread within days. Clothes don’t dry, long, curly hair doesn’t dry, kids shoes don’t dry. So it is not a place I’d like to live but it is a place I’m glad I’ve experienced.

When 7 people get together for a week, there are bound to be some unforgettable comments made. I will spare you the bulk of them but there were two that were funny enough that, while cognizant that I’m risking telling you some of those ‘had-to-be-there’ sort of stories, I’m going to share with you anyway. The first comment came one afternoon when we were having some down time back at the apartment--not the kids’ favorite time of the day, as you might imagine. Andrew, who was experiencing a severe case of restlessness but who had enough cunning to know that complaining about it was not a good idea, came to Diane and said,

“Mom? I’m boredish.”

Translation: I’m excruciatingly bored but I know that I’ll get in trouble if I tell you that so I’m not going to come right out and say it but I am going to test the waters to see what you will say if I confess my true feelings about our painfully understimulating situation right now.

The other funny comment was when we were driving in the mini-van, all 7 of us, on an hour-long ride to Cairns for the day. At the beginning of the drive, the kids were already silly and wild in the back row. Diane, in her wisest parental voice said to them, “Why don’t you guys just relax, close your eyes and enjoy the scenery.”

Okay, I guess you had to be there afterall.

Sadly, after our 8 days as a 7-person family, we had to say good-bye to Diane, Tracy and Andrew. We also packed everything up and got on a plane ourselves but we still had 5 more days of vacation left. To be continued on the next blog...

Birds of Queensland

Here are some birds of Queensland. We visited a Rainforest Habitat one day and ate brekkie (breakfast) with these birds.

Tropical Flowers of North Queensland

Here are some of the flowers we saw in Port Douglas. I thought I'd decorate the blog a bit.