Four months left of our year in Oz. We spend increasingly more time talking about what it will be like to go home, to be home, to leave here, to look back on this year and how, in god’s good name, we are going to get all of our stuff back home.
It’s been a contemplative time of late. Mark and I have spent a lot of time talking about what this all means—his school experience, my not working, so badly missing our friends and family, quality of life, culture, home…these are all big things. All this is to say that you are being duly warned that this is a much less newsy and much more musing sort of blog. Feel free to skim if you are not the musing type.
These last 6 weeks have been the longest stretch that we’ve been home, without traveling and without visitors. Our last visitors were Lisa and Josh (Mark’s sister and her son) in July. And we won’t have anymore visitors until November when Shannon and Suzanne come out.
Our only trip since we returned from Queensland has been an overnight into the country, the bush. We went to a little town called Gloucester, 2 hours from here, and its resident National Forest, Barrington Tops, named after the rocky “peaks” that stand about 1000 feet above the scattered valley towns. These little country towns do not center around weekend tourist activity as all the shops close around 1:00 on Saturday and are not open at all on Sundays so I can’t tell you how the central shopping district was. In line with most little Australian country towns we’ve driven through, this one was home to rows of efficient little houses made of brick
and siding and a 2-3 block CBD (central business district.) There was a sweet little river winding through town, necessitating little bridges and meandering streets. If you follow the river upstream, you venture up the center of a valley whose nooks and crannies cradle well-kept farm houses each separated from the next by a good quarter-mile radius of open space. We drove to the top of a high hill in the center of the valley and, in every direction, the green and yellow land rolled up one side of a horse-spotted hill and down the other side to a river bed and then back up and over again.
We received a tip to look for a track (hiking trail) called the Hidden Treasure Track up behind a B&B where a now defunct gold mine crumbles. We were surprised to find this track in the middle of the rain forest, not 20 minutes up a slow road from that wide open farm land. Back in the rainforest, we were happy to explore the now familiar strangler fig trees, elaborate giants with their root systems above ground and innumerable tree trunks that push themselves up to the top of the rainforest canopy.
We hiked on day two as well and then stopped off in an even smaller town on the drive back home where we were surprised to find one store open that sold gifts and used books and coffee and antique furniture. We bought a very old copy of OliverTwist.
But other than that trip, we’ve been in Newcastle now for over 6 weeks straight. The weather’s been winter which means that it’s been either cold and sunny or cold and rainy or cold and windy. Cold, meaning about 50-60 degrees both outside and inside the house. We are very lucky to have a gas fireplace that heats up the family room as many families don’t have any heat sources here, save for the portable space heater they carry around with them like a seeing-eye dog. Aussies complain about the cold. But they continue to build houses without insulation or central heating. It baffles Mark and me. Someone recently suggested that Aussies aren’t as driven to put barriers between themselves and the outside environment as Americans are. But short of that explanation, the lack of indoor heating continues to perplex us.
Everyone keeps promising us that come September 1st, spring will arrive like someone’s flipped a switch. Well, September 1st and 2nd were glorious. Absolutely, as promised, warm and sunny with no more wind. It just made you want to spin around in circles singing some sort of opera song. And then September 3rd came and with it, the wind and the rain and the gray clouds too and it’s been that way ever since. Someone may have flipped a switch but they didn’t leave it on for very long. However, the flowers and buds that have burst out of almost every bush and tree around reassure me that they know something that I can’t see yet. Spring is on its way if it is not in fact here already. We don’t leave our gas fire on all night long anymore, I have to run earlier if I want to see the sunrise from first glimmer and when I go out to throw food on the barbie, I don’t have to turn the verandah light on anymore because it is still light out even up until 6:00. I remember this time last year when we began corresponding with our exchange partner, Prue, and she told me that spring had sprung while, in Colorado, we were watching the sunlight diminish and the trees change color. That was odd. Still is, knowing that you are saying goodbye to summer while we are rubbing our palms together in anticipation, here it comes!
So life in Newcastle. Let’s start with Mark. He has essentially settled into a routine of ups and downs at school, trying to focus more on the former than the latter. The parts that frustrate him used to have so much more power than the parts that make him feel useful or entertained. But he's recently recognized that and is now able to tip the scales in favor of the happier perspective more often than not.
He told me after school yesterday that one student in his Year 10 class said to him recently, “I reckon this is the worst class you’ve ever taught, huh, sir?” Mark thought, "Indeed, mate." But then, when he returned to the classroom after missing 3 days to go skiing with 50 students, that same class told him, in no uncertain terms, “You can never, ever leave us for that long again, sir.”
Mark spent 4 days at the snow with 4 other teachers and 50 kids last week. The kids were all from the top classes of Year 9 and 10. They were a joy to be with. They needed very little management or supervision--a circumstance hard to picture happening smoothly in America. He enjoyed being able to teach skiing again to kids who were so enthralled with the snow and learning this new sport.
He’s really enjoying his Wednesday afternoon sport with the 6 golfers he’s recruited. That has been a highlight. The question he asks himself from time to time is how will his perspective of teaching back in Thornton be changed by this experience? We won’t know until we know but it is interesting to try to imagine how he’ll see classroom management issues, teacher-student relationships, curriculum planning, discipline strategies, etc once he gets back.
He has noticed that he is getting more and more proficient at teaching these kids each week and that, given a few more years here, he'd probably have it down. That's a good feeling for him, I reckon.
Jordan next. She continues to love, love, love school. She remains close with the now three girls that are her favorite. In several different ways, she’s made it clear that she doesn’t feel like the new kid anymore. She courageously plays all the games now where in the beginning of the year, if she was intimidated by a game, she’d stay close to the teacher. There’s only been one time in the last week when she’s held onto me when I’ve dropped her off. Otherwise, she sees her friends when we arrive and I have to work hard to get her attention to let her know I’m leaving.
If I had to come up with the one thing in Australia I am most grateful for, it would be the kids’ school. I’ve never felt so comfortable leaving them in the morning and so consistently reassured by their behavior and their reports and their teachers’ reports that this place is nearly idyllic for them.
Gabe is also doing very well in his little life. He wakes up in the morning and is ready to go to school an hour before we leave the house during which time he plays. At school, he has 29 other children that he plays with all day long. When he gets home, if he doesn’t go to someone’s house or bring someone home with him, he darts across the street to the park to play with Sam and Ellie until dark. We have to stifle our laughter and keep from rolling our eyes when we ask him to help set the table and his response is, “I haven’t had enough time to play.” He’s learning to stop saying that upon our request.
And then there’s me. This last month and a half has been the most surreal for me. I spend the bulk of my time home alone writing or reading or working on assignments for my writing class. I have not been busy with planning travel or traveling or hosting guests. I have settled into the reality that my social life here is sparse, which is sort of misleading as I have found a few people with whom I connect and spend time with during the week. But let’s just say there are more people actually reading this blog, word for word, than there are people in Australia I could call friends. I have recently gotten frustrated that I can’t do any projects here. I can’t buy, make, paint, build, refinish, or decorate anything here because 1. this isn’t my house and 2. I would have to find a way to take it home. I went so far as to bring home a piece of driftwood from
the beach a few weeks ago just so I could paint something.
The weather has made it unappealing to take day trips from here and besides, I get lonely exploring by myself. This is a far cry from the days when I was running around all the time trying to maintain my family, my home, my business, my running schedule and all four of our social lives while I dreamt about freedom and free time and maybe someday having enough time to write a novel. And here I am with all the freedom and free time a mother and wife could ask for and I’m actually writing a novel but I’m finding it hard to stay focused on what I have while I have it. It sounds romantic and sometimes it feels luxurious. But it can also feel crazy-making. I’ve never spent this much time alone before. And I’m still not able to tell you whether or not I like it.
On a different and more professional note, I have recently visited two agencies here in Newcastle that work with parenting and post-natal depression. It is interesting to see the similarities in types of services and the differences in types of funding. This socialized-style health care delivery system has many advantages—people are getting services, they are getting them for free and they are all centrally located or packaged so one person doesn’t have to search all over town to find what they need. The downsides, however, are that the programs are under-
funded and therefore not able to meet all the needs. So while I’m raving about all the great work they are doing here, they are struggling with support groups that ideally have 8 participants but twice that show up. If only we had that problem. And they used to follow women for 12 months post-natally but now can only follow them for 6 months because their client loads are so high.
On the traveling note, I’m registered to run the Sydney marathon on September 21st so the 4 of us will spend another weekend in the city. Mark and I also have tickets to go see a show at the Sydney Opera House in November and Gerry and Jeremy and their two daughters, one of our favorite Aussie families, have agreed to take the kids overnight at their house. The last of the three school holidays is coming up at the end of September. We’ve decided to spend those 2 weeks on the New South Wales northern coast. We’ll rent a mini-van and take bikes and boogie boards and stay in little cottages on the beach. I’m looking very forward to this trip because we are going to spend time at our favorite places and get a more in-depth look at that area. But I’m a little sad that we will be leaving Australia without visiting Tasmania. Next time. There’s no way we could do it all.
This painting was done by an Aboriginal man for our family. The hands in the center are our hands. The painting has a story in it which we'll tell you when you come to see it in our house in Lakewood.
I’ll wrap this up with a few examples of what it is like to be American in Australia.
I was running the other day and an older man rode up to me on his bike. We got to talking and he asked where I was from, Canada or America? I’m asked that all the time, but typically people just ask if I’m Canadian because, and this may come as no surprise, Americans aren’t offended if someone assumes they are Canadian but Canadians may bristle if they’re mistaken for American. Anyway, this man on his bike told me how much he loved America. He’s been to both coasts. He says he’d live there if he could—beautiful country, cheaper food and gas, great night life, “like in Las Vegas.” He says if he could, he’d live in San Diego so he could pop down to Tijuana for some pot. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we don’t all party in Vegas every weekend nor did I want to crush his romantic fantasy of having to wrestle his way into the outlaw town of Tijuana to score dope when he’d find plenty of it in just about every urban and suburban neighborhood in the United States. Good ol’ US of A—that cheap, partying, pot-smoking country of ours.
I was listening to the radio yesterday morning when the d.j.s mentioned our election process. They were talking about how long our candidates spend campaigning. “You think we have to suffer throughout a long presidential race,” the d.j. said, “and ours is only 6 weeks. In America, presidential campaign lasts like 3 years! Those poor people must get so sick of it.” Well?
I realized a while back that when I talk to people, they aren’t really listening to the words I say as much as to my voice. I can tell because while I’m talking, they stare at me without responding to my intonations as I tell a story or ask a question. They just stare. Then when I’m done, they don’t respond right away. They don’t even blink for a moment or two. Then they blink to snap themselves out of it and eventually, they get around to responding--oftentimes after I’ve repeated just enough of my story to give them a bit of a clue as to what I was talking about. I feel like a strange yet interesting person worthy of more observation.
Mark said while he was on the ski trip with four other teachers, he felt very American. Their ribald humor and general conversations were just different enough for him to feel like an outsider most of the time.
When I left the US, I was a bit nervous to come here and admit from whence I came. I was afraid people would assume I would be loud and rude and demanding and egotistical and wasteful and self-centered--generally full of myself and uninterested in learning about the outside world. I do love America’s beauty and geographical diversity but I’m not all that proud of its behavior on the world’s playground. What’s changed for me is not necessarily that I am “proud” to be American--that’d be like being proud of being a sloppy eater or a bumbling clown. So proud is not the word. But I have discovered a profound sense of connection to America that I would not have known was there had I never left. I feel American, for better or for worse. I come from there, it is home.
The moment I realized that I missed America and with all its character defects was during the ½ marathon I ran in July. All along the way, spectators were encouraging runners with their subdued “Well done’s”. It sounded comically British to me. I expected to look over and see a man dressed as a butler holding a tea cup with his pinky sticking out and his bent elbow paralleling the ground saying, “well done.” There was a turn-around point in the race so for about a mile or so, the road was split down the middle and the fastest runners were making their way back so we were seeing them coming toward us. Now there were runners offering their well done’s to other runners, clapping like they were on a golf course. Until, from somewhere not too far behind me, I heard a scream, a voice-straining cry that rang out over the hills we were running on. “Go Phil! Yeah! You rock, dude!” I felt like E.T. You could tell as much by his volume and his verbiage as you could from his accent that this inappropriate, attention-getting, wild man was my people. Home. My face broke into a huge grin that no one saw and I laughed out loud. How many times have I scowled at such juvenile displays of male bonding? This behavior was precisely the kind of behavior I didn’t want to be associated with when I first arrived here. But on that day, in the hills of the HunterValley, I fell in love with America.
Here are the kids making a fairy house and the last picture is of the friend they had watching them just above their heads the whole time.
district.) There was a sweet little river winding through town, necessitating little bridges and meandering streets. If you follow the river upstream, you venture up the center of a valley whose nooks and crannies cradle well-kept farm houses each separated from the next by a good quarter-mile radius of open space. We drove to the top of a high hill in the center of the valley and, in every direction, the green and yellow land rolled up one side of a horse-spotted hill and down the other side to a river bed and then back up and over again.
We received a tip to look for a track (hiking trail) called the Hidden Treasure Track up behind a B&B where a now defunct gold mine crumbles. We were surprised to find this track in the middle of the rain forest, not 20 minutes up a slow road from that wide open farm land. Back in the rainforest, we were happy to explore the now familiar strangler fig trees, elaborate giants with their root systems above ground and innumerable tree trunks that push themselves up to the top of the rainforest canopy. 
Everyone keeps promising us that come September 1st, spring will arrive like someone’s flipped a switch. Well, September 1st and 2nd were glorious. Absolutely, as promised, warm and sunny with no more wind. It just made you want to spin around in circles singing some sort of opera song. And then September 3rd came and with it, the wind and the rain and the gray clouds too and it’s been that way ever since. Someone may have flipped a switch but they didn’t leave it on for very long. However, the flowers and buds that have burst out of almost every bush and tree around reassure me that they know something that I can’t see yet. Spring is on its way if it is 
not in fact here already. We don’t leave our gas fire on all night long anymore, I have to run earlier if I want to see the sunrise from first glimmer and when I go out to throw food on the 
goodbye to summer while we are rubbing our palms together in anticipation, here it comes!
alone writing or reading or working on assignments for my writing class. I have not been busy with planning travel or traveling or hosting guests. I have settled into the reality that my social life here is sparse, which is sort of misleading as I have found a few people with whom I connect and spend time with during the week. But let’s just say there are more people actually reading this blog, word for word, than there are people in 
The weather has made it unappealing to take day trips from here and besides, I get lonely exploring by myself. This is a far cry from the days when I was running around all the time trying to maintain my family, my home, my business, my running schedule and all four of our social lives while I dreamt about freedom and free time and maybe someday having enough time to write a novel. And here I am with all the freedom and free time a mother and wife could ask for and I’m actually writing a novel but I’m finding it hard to stay focused on what I have while I have it. It sounds romantic and sometimes it feels luxurious. But it can also feel crazy-making. I’ve never spent this much time alone before. And I’m still not able to tell you 
whether or not I like it.
while I’m raving about all the great work they are doing here, they are struggling with support groups that ideally have 8 participants but twice that show up. If only we had that problem. And they used to follow women for 12 months post-natally but now can only follow them for 6 months because their client loads are so high. 
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