tidbits

Life between trips

As we're gearing up to start traveling again next week, I thought I'd blog a bit to catch up before we have lots of stories from The Great Barrier Reef. So here are some bits and pieces of our life these days...

We had a visitor on our front porch the other day. We have no idea where this chicken came

from or where it went off to after we said good-bye to it.

Here is a picture of our "Snail Mail"--the snails literally eat the mail in our mailbox. Some letters make it through better than others.

Weather, Climate and our anniversary

We muddled through a few weeks when it rained every single day and sometimes for days without stopping. Granted, I did get a lot of writing done. I wasn’t pulled to go to the beach—I wasn’t pulled to leave my spot in front of the fireplace actually—so I spent hours a day writing which nearly made up for the lack of sun. I was about to send out a blog about a month ago when the rain first started and here's what I wrote then:

It's been raining for 3 days. No thunder or lightening, just water coming down out of the sky like someone's left the faucet on. I'm wondering when Mother Nature will run out of water. Doesn't she know it is bad for the environment to just let it run on and on like that? Mark says this weather is coming from the east so the winds are coming in off the ocean and scooping up all that sea water (sans salt) and dumping it over our lives. It's impressive but after three days, I have to say it is getting a bit old. But I've never seen rain like this before, not in Michigan, not in Charlotte, never in California and for sure not in Denver.

The rain has seemed to stop for a while so we are mercifully warmed by the sun every day. The sun is warm and the air is cool. When it is windy, it’s downright cold. Mostly the temperatures are in the 60s during the day and drop down to 40s at night. Mild, mild, mild. The only thing that makes this winter hard for me is the feeling in my body that it is supposed to be summer. Otherwise, if one has to have winter and this is as bad as winter gets, I’ll take it. I don’t miss skiing because who skis in June? I do wonder what we’re going to do about Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas as those feel like they should be right around the corner but there is no evidence that any of those holidays are imminent.

The torrential rain storms of a few weeks ago reminded everyone here of the day last June when the Pasha Bulker, a 40,000 tonne bulk carrier ship (1 tonne=1,000 kilograms=2,200 lbs) ran aground on the lighthouse beach in Newcastle. (If you want to see some amazing pictures, google Pasha Bulker in Newcastle.) Apparently, ships were encouraged to move themselves far out to sea during the storms. And apparently that ship’s captain, in his infinite wisdom, chose not to. At 9:00 in the morning on a Friday, the ship was clearly and inevitably heading toward the beach. There was grave concern that the oil it was carrying would spill but thanks to the forces at play, it did not. It beached itself so securely that they weren’t able to move it so there it sat for about 3 months until Mother Nature decided its stay on Nobby’s Beach had come to an end and she gently rocked it back out to sea. Many people of Newcastle (called Novacastrians for reasons unknown to us or anyone we’ve asked. One person I talked to believes it arose out of a conversation held in a pub) were sad to see it go.

Speaking of anniversaries, Mark and I celebrated our 10^th a few weeks ago. We thought of all of you who were with us on June 14, 1998 and who are still with us in spirit, in email and even in person. For our special day, we went for a hike in the local bush. We found a place with a fantastic waterfall, tumbling down several stories over the edge of a vertical rock wall. We were amazed by the foliage, the lush, rainforest-like vegetation right there in Newcastle’s backyard.

Mark and I put together that Newcastle must be a sort of border town laying between tropical rainforest to the north and cooler temperate climates, complete with changing seasons, down south. This must be why, we decided, we have palm trees next to naked trees, next to trees whose leaves are just now, in the middle of winter, changing color, next to evergreens, next to trees who are still all green and leafy. If Mother Nature (who, I overheard Jordan explain, is different than Mother Earth who is again different from God) were to call all the trees back to their original climatological zones, I imagine Newcastle would be barren.

And speaking of trees, on our hike, we saw an amazing phenomenon. There’s this tree, this certain type of tree, that has a habit of climbing up on automobile-sized boulders and wrapping its exposed roots around the boulder like it intends to smother it. Or maybe it is giving the rock a proper cuddle (Australian for hugging). It’s baffling to think about how this relationship began. Did the tree’s seed fall onto the top of the rock in just the right spot to sprout, subsequently wrapping its loving roots around the rock’s body? And that happened to happen on several boulders in this one particular area? Or did the rock find its way under a growing tree somehow? Or do these trees need rocks on which to grow? Is there some sort of invisible symbiotic relationship going on here? We never did work out how this occurred much less how it occurred several times in this one spot.

Social life:

Here is an area of our life that has picked up momentum. In the last few weeks, we’ve had much more fun with the people we’ve been getting to know these last months. We spent the afternoon with one family who accepted our invitation to come travel with us to Tasmania during the third and last school holiday in October. We went into the hills with a large group of families from the kids’ school to celebrate the winter solstice (!) with a fire and roasting of apples and “damper” (bread dough stuck on the end of sticks that becomes bread when held over hot embers.
Then you pour on honey or Golden Syrup
(real maple syrup is hard to come by here) and enjoy.

There were some marshmallows floating around that did get roasted but they were the undervalued stepchildren of the apples and damper. Though Jordan was quite happy to see them. We’ve had a family over for dinner and have had multiple playdates with Gabe and Jordan’s friends. But probably the thing that is most different is that the quality of the conversations I’ve had with other parents from the kids’ school (my single source for friendships) have gotten much more relaxed, more entertaining, more meaningful, more real.

I was beginning to think we wouldn’t get to experience real friendships here and while that was okay, part of me was sad that that was how it was shaping up. But I suppose these things take time which is why I’m so grateful for every week of the 52 we have here.

Mark and school

No blog is complete without a glance at Cardiff High School. The latest understanding Mark’s gotten about the system here is that there is no structured special education program at Cardiff. There are scant resources for kids who don’t learn or don’t behave like their average peers. Therefore, kids who Mark is accustomed to not having in his classroom or who bring an aide of some sort with them wherever they go are now in his classes and he is expected to not only teach them but to teach all the other students while these one or two are upsetting the maths cart.

This will sound like a digression at first but stay with me. Diane, Tracy and Andrew are here visiting. Gabe and Andrew were together last night for the first time in 6 months. Needless to say they were wound up. The grown-ups and Jordan were sitting at the kitchen table. Mark had his back to the family room where the boys were rolling all over each other and their ball like
puppy dogs. I asked Mark what he was planning to do about the ruckus behind him. He said to me, “I am going to ignore it. It is a new skill I’m honing. I will focus on the people who are listening to me and ignore the rest.”

“You are being the calm amidst the storm?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Apparently, this is how it looks in his classroom everyday. He is trying to learn how to ignore the parts he can’t control so that he can focus on teaching rather than exhausting himself trying to manage behavior that refuses to be managed. Maybe this is some new version of the serenity prayer: Grant me the serenity to ignore the kids I cannot teach, the courage to teach the kids I can, though I don't need much wisdom to know the difference.

Mark is enjoying work more, though it doesn’t hurt that he is just a handful of classes away from a 2-week break.

Whales and dolphins

Tis the season for whales and dolphins. I’m not sure why we’ve seen so many dolphins lately but the whales are journeying up north right past our beaches here. We have seen whales out there more times than not whenever we visit the beach even if we are just running by or driving by. One day, Jordan and I stopped at the beach on a cold and windy day just to use the toilet, as they so succinctly refer to it here. We stepped out of the bathroom and there, a few hundred meters out to sea, was a breeching whale. The lifeguard who announced its appearance called it a “playful” whale which is a funny term for an animal of that size. But it truly looked like it was having a blast, jumping high out of the water so we could see its belly and then slapping its tail on the surface of the ocean sending water splashing up multiple stories high. It was quite a sight. They stop everyone in their tracks as the town of Newcastle watches their whales pass by this time every year.

We spent a day in Port Stephens on Tomaree Headland climbing up it and looking out from it and playing on the beach at the foot of it. Here's beachlife in the winta.

Daily routines

We’ve fallen back into a wonderful rhythm that I miss when we’re traveling. The mornings are easy as we have plenty of time to get to school. Mark rides his bike to school and I take the kids. I spend the days taking care of the needs of the house and the kids and Mark (errands) and myself and writing and having lunch with my one friend who is available during the day and walking on the beach and hiking and riding my bike and making myself hot home-made lunches every day. Then we all reconvene at about 3:45 at home where we spend the rest of the afternoon and evening together. Well, except for the hour or so that Gabe and sometimes Jordan go across the street to the park to play either footy (Australian Rules Football) soccer, rugby or cricket with the kids who live across the street. During that hour, if Mark and I are thinking strategically, we catch up with each other. It gets dark at 5:00 so everyone is usually inside by then. This is when we make dinner, do crafts, play games, take showers and things like that. After dinner we resume showers and games while Mark does dishes. Then the bedtime routine and kids are asleep. Mark and I are compulsively watching old seasons of The West Wing most nights and I’ve knitted two jumpers (hoodies) and a pair of gloves in the last few months. And that is our life. I just love it. It’s so relaxing for everyone. So cozy. So not-rushed or planned or stressful. The phone doesn’t ring off the hook and when it does it only takes 13 seconds to recognize and politely hang up on the telemarketers.

Our experience with this lifestyle has spurred many a conversation about whether and how we might replicate this when we get home. Many major changes would have to happen to recreate this in the world where there is golf coaching and me working and 30-minute commutes and longer hours at Mark’s school and kids’ extra-curricular activities and me teaching classes in the evenings and a healthy, vibrant social life and a bigger house. Time will tell.

Gabe’s camp

The kids finished their 2^nd term at their school, bringing home a folder each of all their drawings--a treasure trove for us to peruse. Gabe went on a camping trip with the primary grades for 2 days and had a blast floating the boats they made in woodshop in the lagoon and actually paddling around in the canoes that the high school kids made in wood shop. They did lots of hiking and game-playing and had an overall wonderful, bonding time with each other and their teachers in the bush. I am continually grateful for all this school has to offer.

This is Jordan at a birthday party at the same spot where Gabe's camp was.

Jordan’s friends—I won’t miss a day of school

For the first time in Jordan’s life, she reported to me that she has more than 2 friends. Until now, she has played with lots of kids but when asked who her friends were, she would only name the two she felt closest to. Recently, however, she told me she has lots of friends at school. Another time she told me she is friends with everyone. Another time she went down the list of all her friends’ names. On a recent morning when she woke up feeling sick, in response to my wondering if she wanted to stay home from school, she said, “I’m never missing a day of school ever.” Needless to say, Jordan is thriving.

Diane, Tracy and Andrew arrived a few days ago after surviving a 40-hour high-conflict journey here. We are so glad to see them. Ahhh...home. All seven of us will spend a week together up north before those three have to go back home and then we''ll stay up there for another week. Stay tuned for the next installment from the tropical north.

Byron Bay, Take Two

Sadly, Byron Bay has fallen off the short list of places we’d like to live because of its crowds. It's too bad because the geography and the climate rank up there near utopia. Byron Bay is like Crested Butte, Santa Cruz, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Sedona, Moab, shall I go on? The shops are hip, the food is organic and the dreads are locked. There are two kinds of people who live in Byron Bay (as there are in its kindred towns)—the rich and the transient. The rich kind push the prices of the breathtaking real estate into the millions. The transient kind wait on the rich kind and on their days off, they surf (which is Byron’s outdoor adventure of choice.) The one thing that both kinds of locals have in common, now that they’re living in paradise, is the desire to shut the door behind them. This type of town is so familiar to me that I almost forgot I don’t live here.

In winta, this part of northern New South Wales can be warm and gorgeously sunny or it can be cold, windy and rainy. Our first day here, Friday, was the former. Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were the latter.

On Friday, we were at the beach doing our beach-thing. Halfway through the day we took a long walk up steep hills that edge the coast to the most easterly point of Australia and the lighthouse. This is the stuff vacations are made of. We stood three hundred feet above the ocean over-looking the expanse of undulating water out in front of us, the rocky cliffs spilling into the sea below us and the winding coastline running north and south.

Here we saw one of the most spectacular sights I’ve ever seen. I think I mentioned happening upon a few dolphin surfing in Newcastle when Dean and I were walking the beach one day. Well. This time we saw maybe 40 dolphins that’d found a sweet surf spot. A dozen of them would catch a wave at the same time, and fin to fin, ride it, allowing it to carry them forward before it crested over them. Once the wave passed, several of them jumped completely out of the water as though they were saying “Righteous, dude!” Or maybe, “That was mad, mate!” (‘mad’ is Gabe’s new word for groovy, cool, awesome, sweet or phat, depending on your generation.) I suppose since the dolphin couldn’t yell out, they had to jump for joy. The highest one I saw jumped a good 6-8 feet out of the water. In between sets, the dolphins didn’t swim around like dolphins tend to do. Instead, they floated. They came together in a mass and literally just floated. They looked like surfers who sit up on their boards while they ostensibly wait for another set or another burst of energy or, I suppose, until they finish meditating, as the case may be. The dolphins just laid there on the top of the water and let the waves rock them and the current carry them slowly down the coast a bit. Then another set of waves would catch their attention and off they’d ride and jump.

Sadly, we didn’t bring our camera on this particular hike (and we’ve kicked ourselves enough so that you don’t need to waste your energy on that.) But we decided to come back and take pictures another day. Sadly again, the whole area was closed Tuesday morning when we tried to go back because they were spraying for something up there (which can’t be good) so we will never have pictures of this scene to look back on. Instead, we all agreed to work really hard to burn the images into our mind’s eye. I can’t imagine forgetting this one.

After our trip back down to the car, we noticed that Jordan was starting to feel punky so we took ourselves back to our fabulous 2-bedroom apartment, made dinner and called it a night.

Saturday and Sunday we planned to get together with a whole crew of exchange teachers and their families. That was the motivation and the excuse for coming back to this area this particular weekend. We met up with them at the beach and it was cold and promising to rain and Jordan was running a fever and didn’t want to leave my arms. Therefore, we canceled our snorkeling trip but sent Gabe away with another family who had a daughter for him to play with for the day. While Gabe played with his new friend, Mark sat in what was to be the last we’d see of the sun for a few days and read his book, Jordan slept and I went shopping.

Sunday, Jordan was feeling better so we hopped on a tour bus with the other exchange families and headed into the Hinterland, the hills beyond the coast. This area is as breath-takingly beautiful as the coast. The hills rise up from the sea and roll up and down in every direction. They are covered with thick forest and open meadow, farmed land and wild bush. The greens span the color wheel. Individual little homes and tiny towns spot the valleys. Apparently the price of this land has become out of reach for average people as many of the rich and famous are buying it up and building. Such is the way of the world these days, isn’t it?

We spent the morning at the Channon Markets—a huge outdoor display of wares and foods. Apparently, at its origins, it was a hand-made only market. Clearly that policy has gone by the wayside but it was a good way to spend a cloudy and soon to be rainy morning.

The next stop the bus made was a town called Nimbin. Nimbin is a place I won’t soon forget. In the early 70s, this town apparently had a Woodstock-like Festival and hasn’t stopped since. Marijuana is available on every street corner and in several stores.

One woman was purchasing some pot at a store and the cashier made a point of saying, “Now we’re both clear that you aren’t buying this from us. You are merely making a donation of $25.” There is a store called “Bring-a-Bong” and if you go out the back door of the Nimbin Museum, which is a trip in and of itself, you will likely acquire a contact buzz. It was a weird place to bring our kids but the entire scene stayed above their innocent little heads so we didn’t have to do a lot of explaining. I was waiting for questions like, “Mama, what’s a bong?” “What is that smell?” “What are all those people doing in that smoky room?” But they didn’t seem to notice. I’ve tried to think of a town in the US that rivals Nimbin but I can’t come up with one. Apparently the police have a heavy presence here but they don’t arrest anyone unless things get “out of hand,” whatever that might look like. This is a town for people who want to have nothing to do with mainstream society. Not that I blame them, necessarily. But I imagine if the government did, in fact, legalize marijuana, which seems to be Nimbin’s main if not only socio-political focus, the locals would likely find another way to engage in prohibited behavior. Just a guess. I also wondered what university admissions folks think when they see an applicant from Nimbin High School.

From Nimbin, we traveled further through the hinterland stopping at a few other towns and sights. Touring on a bus is a new experience for us. I’m not sure I’d ever seek out spending the whole day with someone else driving me around really slowly again but it was nice for a rainy day with a semi-sick child.

Sunday night we had dinner with the exchange teachers and I had a very interesting conversation with an Irishman who is here on exchange. We were talking about the differences in culture between all of our English-speaking countries, including England. As we know, Ireland has very strained relations with England and so this Irishman has been even more surprised at Australia’s continued umbilical relationship with England. He was significantly more offended by it than I am for obvious reasons but it highlighted for me again in how many ways Australia feels British.

We also had conversations with many other teachers who are having very similar teaching experiences to Mark’s. Their frustrations vary a bit but it seems to boil down to a lack of resources and classroom management issues. The woman who hosted the weekend is an American who is now living in Australia and has been for 13 years. So she has chosen to teach in Australia permanently, a proposition Mark would not be interested in. She says that it isn’t that one system is necessarily better than the other. Her opinion is that there are easy and hard parts about teaching in both systems and that it comes down to what you’re used to. She would prefer to teach in the US for some specific reasons but she has been so turned off by the US’s recent preoccupation with national testing that she’s more than happy to be here avoiding that nightmare. It was a very helpful perspective to include in with all the others Mark is gathering this year.

I keep being reminded of the frog in hot water story. Apparently, if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat to boiling, it will just sit in there and cook. That’s what all these cultural differences remind me of. Coming in from another culture, many things feel like boiling water and we recoil or want to jump out. But when it comes to our native cultures, we don’t always jump into action to change when we notice things aren’t working. I suppose it is the downside to human beings’ adaptability.

Monday was a rainy day, probably the rainiest. We spent the morning at the Crystal Castle. Apparently this area has very strong healing energies and a crystal-rich earth. We spent a few hours walking the outdoor labyrinth (walking being a relative term for the kids), strolling along the path through the rainforest and browsing through the shops that sold crystals and fairies and books and Buddhas and meditation chimes and jewelry. I’m not kidding when I tell you that all four of us felt incredibly relaxed while we were there and for a long time after we left. There seemed to be something in the air there.

The rest of the rainy day was spent inside doing projects and playing games together.

Or sleeping as the case may be.

Tuesday morning we packed up and since we had until late afternoon to explore before our plane ride home, we made our way up the coast to where the weather looked like it might be clearer. We decided to go to Surfer’s Paradise because, well because who wouldn’t want to check out a town called Surfer’s Paradise if you were right there and had time to kill.

Surfer’s Paradise is a conglomeration of the worst of what human beings can do with too much money and some space. This place was as disturbing as the Crystal Castle was peaceful. Infinite numbers of hi-rise resorts poured tourists out onto the streets. These ominous skyscrapers effectively destroyed any chance of a pretty view. The town was packed with people and cars leaving virtually no where to park--and this was on a rainy Tuesday in the middle of winter. The strip along the beach boasted every fast food chain Australia has been stricken with, booths offered tourists the chance of a lifetime to partake in any number of adventure tours and activities and amusements parks. The most disturbing part for me was seeing the people there fall right in step with the mood of the place. Just as the crystal castle people dressed the part in flowing gem-colored dresses, the S.P. people touted silicone implants, high heels with shorts and severely dyed hair. I saw more evidence of eating disorders in S.P. than I’ve seen anywhere else in Australia. We spent the day on the beach, as cool as it was at least there was sun and some uncontaminated space. We got outta there as soon as it was time to get on the plane.

Returning to Newcastle, it was good to be home.

The day to day

We just finished eating our traditional Sunday night pizza dinner, just the four of us, for the second week in a row. Two in a row is a record for us of late. And today, Gabe went to a birthday party, Jordan had a friend over, and Mark and I puttered around the house all day. We don't have many Sundays in Australia like that so I thought I'd write about that too

I just had a few things to write about so I thought I'd get at them before we leave again this weekend for Byron Bay. It's the Queen's birthday, you know, so we have a 3-day weekend (though we've decided she deserves 5 days.) So here are some random and sundry topics...

Mark's school:
When I came out of the grocery store the other day, Mark and the kids were sitting on a bench and Mark was chatting up a retired teacher from this area. She cringed when Mark mentioned that he teaches at Cardiff High School (a common reaction from those in the community who know schools). She said that was one of the tougher schools in the Newcastle area. She completely understood the struggles that Mark has in the classroom with the behavioral issues and though she didn't have any sage advice (save for suggesting he hone his relaxation techniques which isn't a bad suggestion) he said it was really good to talk to someone who understood his struggles. Mark seems to go through some sort of cycle. For a time, he's content to enjoy the bits he enjoys and can leave the rest alone until some bug gets in his bonnet and he gets frustrated that there is no recourse for teachers when the behavior makes it nearly impossible to teach and that frustration leaks into his evenings and weekends. Then he remembers what his priorities are and that he's not here to change a school system and that there are parts to teaching here that he truly enjoys and all is restful for awhile again. Until...and around we go. Someone told us recently that consensus is the kids at Cardiff are great, until you want them to do something. That pretty much sums it up.


Sport:
We have a new after-school activity. Mostly Gabe does but the other three of us join him from time to time. There is a park across the street and next door to this park is a house. In this house is a family who just moved in a month ago. In this family there is an 8-year old boy and a 12-year old girl (both former Waldorf students, coincidentally). With this family, Gabe and the rest of us have begun what may turn out to be a seven-month long extended Australian Rules Football (Footy) game. Footy or AFL is a very weird game. It seems they've taken an assortment of things one can do with a ball and incorporated them all into one game. But it's a fun game if you are looking for a pick-up game in a park. Much more fun than touch-football, in my opinion, but quite odd. We're happy to have this family across the street now so that Gabe doesn't have to suffer in the house after school with just us. (He's getting to that age.)

Whale watching:

Yesterday we had an adventure right here in our own backyard.
Well, Newcastle's backyard. We went out on a boat
onto our very own ocean here on a search for the humpback whales who make their way from Antarctica to Queensland (home of the Great Barrier Reef which is north of New South Wales where we are) every fall to mate and stay warm in the winter. Then those who conceived the year before, have their babies and they all make their way back to Antarctica. Apparently, it all happens in Queensland. This whale watching cruise was just gorgeous even without the whales. It was so good to see this coastline from the ocean.







We got some pictures that I think will remain very special for us for years to come because of the vantage point from which we can now see some of our favorite places in Newcastle.

And the whales were enchanting. We spotted them out where the big ships lay in waiting for their turn to load up with coal. There were two humpbacks and when we first saw them, they were breeching. The captain steered the boat closer to them and I'm not sure who was more happy to see who. We were not allowed, by law, to come closer than 100 meters and we didn't. But they did. They came right up along the side of our boat, probably 15-20 meters away and stayed with us for an hour and a half. We finally had to leave them at the end of our 3-hour cruise. They must have enjoyed our company--must have broken up the trip for them--because they never left our side. After the initial excitement and breath-taking view of these enormous creatures, we all, including the whales, settled into a very peaceful morning of floating along in the sun and breeze with two majestic and gigantic animals rhythmically surfacing and diving, surfacing and diving. I could have stayed in the presence of those two animals for days. It felt like, while they were there, all was right with the world.

















I couldn't and still can't wrap my head around their size. These guys can weigh up to 40 tonnes. 1 tonne is 1000 kilograms. 1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Therefore--I'll help you out here--humpback whales can weigh up to 88,000 pounds. That is not a typo. They look the size of the tour buses that go up to Central City but they must weigh as much as four of them. How can something be that large? And how can something so large be so graceful? When I come back for my next life, I want to be a humpback whale. (When Jordan heard me say that she said, "Come back where?" I responded with something like, "Look over there, honey!" We'll save the whole what-happens-when-we-die talk for another day.)







Which is a great segue into some other deep thoughts I've had of late:

I've felt slight bouts of homesickness lately for the first time since we left Colorado. It's not that I miss my house or certain places or specific activities, per se. It's that I miss being "home" in a bigger sense of word. This seems so cliche to me and I had no idea I would feel this but I miss being on American soil, as they say. I miss being connected to my roots. And most of all, I miss my friends (family included). I really miss my friends.

On the other hand, life here feels very normal most of the time, (aside from the fact that we still derive an endless amount of humor from the differences in language. Jordan told me this morning that snapping fingers isn't snapping, it's clicking. Last night when I said I'd take the book back to the library, she told me that it isn't a library but a "li-bree" and that we don't eat strawberries but straw-brees. Mark said that they don't write inventory but in-ven-tree)

Driving on the left side of the road feels normal. I was writing the other day about an American girl getting in her car and for the life of me, I couldn't picture her getting in on the left side of the car. She just kept getting in on the right. And there are some places I drive regularly that I don't have to think about anymore. And if I'm going somewhere new, I can often find my way without once consulting the map.

Watching the sun come up over the ocean most mornings feels normal to me now. When I don't run and therefore, don' t see the sun come up, I experience sunrise-over-the-ocean-deprivation, I think it's called.

I've gotten grocery shopping down to a science now. I've memorized all the strange places they've chosen to put things. Applesauce is not with the fruit it is with the other sauces (like tomato sauce, pronounced toe-mah-toe, otherwise known as ketchup.) Frosting is not by the cake mix, it's by the sugar which is in a different aisle than the flour and a still different aisle than the spices and I know all that. And I never hope to buy bread unless I show up first thing in the morning. If I go shopping in the avo and expect to find bread, shame on me.

This house we are in feels like home. I really love it here. I love that its smallness makes us all pick up our stuff much more frequently than we used to so it is a neater place to live. I love that we are only ever one room away from each other, max. I love the coziness and the familiarity.

On yet another hand, more than five months into our twelve month visit, I'm beginning to think about all the things I'm going to miss when we go. When we thought about what we'd miss leaving Colorado, I just kept reminding myself we'd be back. When I think about what I'll miss here, I can't reassure myself in the same way. I'm sure we'll be back but it will never be the same.

But on the fourth or fifth hand now, I wonder how the second half of our year will unfold. Will it be a time of getting more and more comfortable with all that we've learned so far or will there continue to be new opportunities and new adventures (in addition to the travel, of course) and new friends? Are there things about Newcastle and Australia that we haven't bumped into yet? Or have we pretty much gotten the gist of things and now we just get to live out the lives that we've settled into? I wonder if I should continue to try to cultivate friendships or if I should just allow these people the distance most of them seem to want to keep and focus on the few who've really taken an interest in us.

So there's where it all lays for the moment. You are in our thoughts and hearts. Write/email when you can! Oh, and we had to finalize our return flights recently so we know that we will be coming home on the 25th of December. I think we'll have a party on Saturday, December 27th (though I swear I haven't set the time or planned the menu yet) and you are all enthusiastically invited!

Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road

Last Thursday night, the kids, Mark, Dean and I boarded a plane in Newcastle. After that lovely airport experience, we hope to never have to fly out of Sydney again.

We landed in Melbourne (pronounced Melb'n, NOT Mel-born) at 8:00 and were snuggled in bed in our old but good enough hotel right down in the CBD (pronounced as Jordan loves to say: Say-Bye-Day.) First thing Friday morning, the 5 of us bundled up with coats and hats and waded through ankle-deep leaf piles to the Queen Victoria Markets--600 plus booths of produce, meat, bread and aisles and aisles of what I lovingly refer to as "crrrrap" (you must exotically roll the 'r' to get the full effect.)

But allow me to back up a moment to the leaves.
It is autumn down under the equator.
However, in mild Newcastle, the trees whose leaves turn rust and gold and fall off stand out amongst the deciduous trees that retain their green leaves apparently all year round.

But not so further south in Melb'n. Here, all the trees were in the process of changing and losing leaves by the millions. What added to the excitement of fallen leaves was that many were the circumference of soccer balls. Their size caught Gabe and Jordan's attention. The two of them spent the weekend competing to see who could find the biggest.

This is the park across the street from
our house.


We kicked and skipped our way through the puddles of leaves to the markets. Melbourne effectively paralyzed me with its cornucopia of sensory stimulation. There were people of every culture, language and costume; smells from morning bakeries and restaurants whose door opened onto the city blocks we walked along; cold winds whipping through my clothes; sounds of people laughing, vendors selling, and children screeching.





This is Gabe and Jordan trying to plant a
palm frond in the wind at the beach in
Melbourne. They did finally manage to
get it up! For a minute.









We spent time meandering down the long aisles banked on both sides by wares of all kinds. Mark and Dean surprisingly enough, lapped up the unending supply of touristy crrrrap to bring home to loved ones--oops, that might end up being you! I chaperoned the kids who are learning spending techniques and watched them pass by much of the crrrrap, that was either too expensive or too, you know, crrrrapy.







Then it came time to decide what we were going to do the rest of the day. I sometimes freeze in situations like this when the options seem limitless. Luckily Mark and Dean have much more honed filters so they can sift through it all and zero in on the things that our crew would most enjoy. Where I see limitless options, Mark tends to pave a most practical path. We left the Market and spent the rest of the day getting on and off the tram, exploring several pockets of this great city. I have decided that if I come back in another lifetime as more of a city girl than I am now, I will live in Melbourne. The only thing that it has working against it is the weather. It's either really cold or really hot. Otherwise, it is easy, friendly, culture-rich, eccletic and beautiful as it wraps itself around a bay, has saved lots of room for enormous parks and has a river running through it.

We have a sequel to the story about the mentally unstable populace on city street engaging and terrifying our children. The kids inadvertently plopped down onto a tram seat across from a man we later determined was mentally handicapped or developmentally disabled. What was remarkable was that both kids, independent of each other, picked up on the fact that even though this man looked and talked abnormally and even though he was very talkative to them, he was safe and friendly. Gabe noticed that the man sat back when the kids sat down, allowing them space rather than getting in theirs. Jordan picked up on his ability to think logically because he suggested that the kids use their newly acquired chopsticks to bang on pots and pans early in the morning to wake up their parents but that they only do it once. He said the first time would be funny but after that, they might get in trouble. That proved to Jordan that his brain wasn't "messed up like that lady." Fascinating to watch them learn discernment. Not that it was our intention to introduce the topic of differentiating between alcoholism, mental illness and mental retardation, but at least they are handling these unforeseen situations quite well.

After a very long day with miles of walking and tram-riding, complete with a pre-birthday sushi dinner for Dean, we all collapsed in bed back in our hotel rooms.

Saturday morning, on Dean's birthday, we awoke to pouring rain. It was disappointing to say the least as we'd hoped to spend some time in the Botanic Gardens and Gabe had his heart set on visiting the local amusement park, Luna Park. (I am sure that is where Dean wanted to spend his birthday as well!) This would have been Gabe's first viable opportunity to ride the big roller coasters since he's just recently poked his head up over 48 inches.

What the rain did do for me was force me to stay sitting inside the car most of the day which was the right way to spend the day before a marathon. We did don rain coats and jump out to explore the fabulous children's section of the Botanic Gardens before we left town. The garden paths wound in circuitous routes demanding adults to stoop beneath the low cut trees. We explored a dense and very vertical bamboo forest, hopped from rock to rock along a small stream and watched the kids crawl through the tunnel of a huge tree. I love kid-centered places, especially outside in natural settings where children get to feel like masters of their own domain. It's so magical in places like that. It awakens the few nerve endings left in my body that can still feel that magic too.

Into dry clothes and back into the car, we headed south and west. Destination: The Great Ocean Road.

Through Geelong (which we all took to calling either G-love or Geelong Funk, thinking fondly of George all day) and then into Torquay which advertises itself as "The Surf Capital" (though they don't specify of what they are the capital--Victoria? Australia? The world?) As Torquay gave way to even smaller coastal towns like Jan Juc, Anglesea and Fairhaven, we were awed by the scene to our left. The ocean crashed on rocks and rolled gently onto beaches. The color was that same turquoise blue that never fails to evoke comments of disbelief that that color actually exists in the wild outside a tube of toothpaste. The waves were five and six feet high and higher. In some places, because of the sandbank formations, the waves rolled in unbroken for many meters. In other words, very fun to ride on a surfboard which many people were doing.

On the other side of our curvy road was bush and hills. I imagined, before white people built roads and buildings, what it must have been like for the Aboriginal people to crest the cliffs after their trek through the thick, dark forested bush and pick their way down the steep declines to end up right there on the beach. Likely, what they did was follow one of the rivers that carved a valley between cliff walls that would lead them down gentle slopes and then open out onto the beach.

Once we reached the town of Lorne, the adults in the car became singly-focused on assessing the remainder of our drive to Apollo Bay for run-ability. Lorne would host the marathon's starting line the next morning and 8am and Apollo Bay , where our rental house awaited us, would host the finish. We drove the 45 K (28 miles) noticing the abundance of healthy rolling hills. None of them impossibly steep but the sheer quantity of them made me wonder what I was getting myself into. During our drive, we were all gaining hope that the dreary rainstorm of Saturday would mosey on out of town by Sunday morning. Call it naivety or self-preservation but I truly had an inability to fathom that the gods would allow hundreds of hark-working, dedicated and pure-hearted runners who were not out to hurt anyone (aside from themselves, of course) to run in such dismal conditions. Little did we know that rain was only one of the climatological elements we needed to pray would go away. While we were working on hoping the weather would improve, we didn't consider that it might actually get worse.

We made it to Apollo Bay in time to pick up my race packet, go to the grocery store, and make and eat dinner and a special birthday cake. I went to bed that night listening to the rain and the every-increasing wind outside the window. I didn't sleep much.


I woke up early Sunday morning, bundled up and hopped on one of the buses that carried a few hundred of us to Lorne. It was raining and windy and then it would stop and the patchiness of the clouds would spur false hope that maybe it was going to clear just in time. That would have made for a great story, wouldn't it? But literally three minutes before 8:00, it started to pour again and it was at that moment that I opened my closed fist and let my last kernel of hope for good weather fall to the ground and roll into a puddle.

I ran this marathon and in spite of the on again, off again rain, in spite of the strong often gusty head winds and in spite of being unprepared to ascend and descend so many hills, I had a great time. The few times the sun came out lifted my spirits the way those crazy spectators can sometimes do when they are ringing their cow bells and cheering with gusto. I felt fresh and strong and steady the whole way. I was well-fueled and well-hydrated. I had a feeling all the way along that I was only hours away from finishing my first marathon since 2004. And I was right. the bonus was that I beat my previous time by 18 minutes on a much more challenging course with "adverse weather conditions." (You know, that's a nice way of saying the weather stunk which is a nice way of saying something else I won't say on this family friendly blog.)

The part of the race I liked least of all--even worse than the weather or my sore quads was the fact that this particular marathon was three kilometers longer than a real marathon. So after you run the first 42 kilometers (26.2 miles) and cross a finish line with a big digital clock displaying your finishing time, you have another 1.8 miles left to go before you can stop. 1.8 miles down the road is where you get your official time (without which your 42 K time doesn't count though to whom it doesn't count I'm not sure.) It's also where your family is patiently waiting in the same adverse weather conditions to see if you're still alive. So while my goal of running a strong 26.2 miles was achieved, I had to convince my aching quads to keep at it for another 15-20 minutes. I walked for a while which was unfortunate because it made it almost impossible to pick my pace back up to even a jog. But I managed so I could come around the corner running the last several hundred meters rather than walking for no other reason that I thought it might be really confusing to the kids, after we all made such a fuss about this race, for them to see me sauntering over the finish line. And I'm glad I was running when I got to where they were waiting, just 100 meters before the finish line, because both kids grabbed one of my hands and the three of us crossed that finish line together. I was a proud and happy mama.

Meanwhile, Mark, Dean and the kids slept in, made pancakes and built a huge fort in the kids' bedroom. Oh, I forgot to talk about this house. Suffice it to say, Mark and I decided we'd like to come back to Apollo Bay every Christmas break to stay in this house and we'd like any of our family and friends who are so inclined to join us there. It was spacious, clean and well-stocked for a large group to live. and it was just down the track from the beach and a few blocks from town. Pencil it in if you're interested.

After the race, we went back to the house where I sat for the majority of the rest of the day (save for my 30 minute massage during which I, of course, laid down.) Kids played inside mostly and Dean and Mark explored what they reported as a very wild and alive section of beach/sea.

Next day we got out fairly early so we could make a number of stops on our three hour drive back to Melbourne for a 5:00 flight. First stop was (ridiculously for me) a steep little hike to a breath-taking lookout spot above Apollo Bay. What a view. I again thought of the Aboriginals whose home was this area and wondered if they felt the same awe looking down on the edge of the lush land cradling the wild sea.

We met a couple at the top who were on a post-retirement jaunt around Australia in a self-contained camper van. They'd been gone 14 months and when they reached Melbourne, they planned to flip a coin to determine which direction they would take back home, the long one or the short one. What freedom.








Here are the kids climbing even higher on the hill looking over the town of Apollo Bay.

My attempts to walk back down this hill were pathetic. Especially as the kids ran down, back up and down several times for every pained and limping yard I manage to descend.

Our next stop was in Kennet River where we were told that if we drove up this road a bit, we might spy wild koalas. So we did and we did. None of us had even hoped to see wild koalas as they have several qualities that keep them well-hidden.
They are the same gray and beige color of the trees they live in, they are very shy, they look like filler in the crooks of the trees and because they sleep 20 hours a day (that's what a high carb, no protein diet will do for you) they rarely move. But nonetheless, we pulled over on the side of this dirt road and spotted a mother and her little baby in the first tree, sleeping. And if that weren't exciting enough, there was another one in the same tree who was awake and climbing around, albeit at a snail's pace. It was good fun to engage in this mutual checking each other out. They looked at us with the same inquisitiveness that I felt. So yes, Serena, we have seen wild koalas



















Here are Gabe and Jordan waiting patiently in hopes that the parrot will land on them. In the end, the birds out-waited the kids.




Our next destination was a golf course but not for the reasons you might think. We stopped there because we'd heard about a resident mob of kangaroos and we were not misled. We arrived at the golf course in Anglesea and there, on the 10th fairway (the closest hole to the parking lot) were about 30 kangaroos. They were splayed out all over the hillside right below the tee box. I imagine they were safe enough there unless a complete hack came up and whacked the ball all of 30 yards in which case, they'd be at risk of being beamed. Otherwise, most balls probably fly right over their heads. We parked and walked over to the 10th tee box and there were three or four kangaroos hanging out on the side of the tee box, prepared to spectate but, on this slow Monday morning, bored. They were all laid out in the centerfold pose that I love so much about kangaroos.

Onward we went to Bell's Beach, our last tourist stop before we made our way to the airport. Bell's Beach is world-renowned for its surf appeal. I didn't really know what to expect and why we were headed out to this beach but I knew that I couldn't drive right by without stopping to see. And now I get it. We parked on the top of a bluff and walked down some stairs (my poor quads) to a lookout point. From there, we could see down to the ocean which was probably fifty feet below us. None of us had ever seen anything like this before.





The waves which that day were probably five or six feet high, formed maybe 200 yards out and rolled all the way into shore before they broke. Once a surfer caught a wave, which didn't look hard that day as the ocean was glassy and smooth, they could ride it for 20-30 seconds. That's like the difference between skiing in the midwest where you can maybe make 20 turns before you get back on the chairlift and go back up and do it again and the Rocky Mountains where you can get off at the top of a chairlift and spend 15 minutes coming down having to stop and catch your breath because the runs are so long. It was unbelievable to watch these surfers ride a wave for so long. They must have been in heaven. No wonder this spot is so well-known, even amongst non-surfers like us. If I were a serious surfer, I would make sure not to leave this lifetime before I surfed Bell's Beach.

That being our last stop, we made our way to the airport and successfully and easily arrived back home in Newcastle, well-traveled and happy.

Since last weekend, we've all gotten back into our Newcastle routine. We are all battling colds and sore throats but nothing too traumatic. Dean left and we were sad to see him go. It was wonderful to spend such good time with such a good friend.


























That's all for now!