Whale Watching

We took the girls out of school last Friday for an "important family meeting." We went whale watching and it was AMAZING! We saw about 10 different pods (groups of 3 or more). First we saw blows or spouts on the horizon, but as we idled into migration area suddenly a huge humpback breeched out of the water! It was spectacular. This whale and it's companions stayed right by our boat for awhile and we were treated to a show of waving flippers, barrel rolls, fluke slaps, head slaps and more breeches. Slowly those whales moved on, but others came and dolphins, tuna, and even a few sharks. I felt like I was on an episode of animal planet. Some of the whales came so close to the boat you could see the individual barnacles. One pod circled the boat for awhile obviously curious. The group gave me a real sense of how big they are one seemed longer then the boat. We had a great time!! The girls loved it and seemed almost not to believe their eyes!


We are holding a thank you card from the captain, but the Hub took several pics that rival this one. These are just happy snaps from my phone. Hopefully someday I'll figure about a good way to post better pics, but don't hold your breath.

Brisbane Forest Park

Spent the morning skyping with friends in the US and then loaded up for an adventure. Today we headed to Brisbane Forest Park. It is part of the D'aguilar Mountain Range and sits just 30miles Northwest of Brisbane. It is an amazing forest of eucalyptus trees and bushland. We spent some time at the visitors center checking out the local flora and fauna including our favorite: a wombat. It is still so strange to me to see kangaroo just hanging around and wallaby that are tame enough they walk up to you. We went on a little nature walk through the bush and then headed on a scenic drive to Jolly's lookout. This spot is considered the oldest formal lookout point. I'm not sure what that means, but the views were stunning.





- abc

Botanical Gardens

I've decided I must be getting older. I have become one of those people I remember my parents being, the kind of person who likes walking around gardens and looking at trees and flowers. I love flower festivals, rose gardens, and what is Brisbane are called parklands. Saturday we headed to the Mt. Coothta botanical gardens and planetarium. We had a fun time watching the typical planet show on the big dome. (brought back memories of Pink Floyd laser shows). The show was narrated by Robert Redford, but the resident astronomer was from Ireland so it was a strange mix of accented English. After the show we wandered through the botanical gardens. They are beautiful, lush with trees and flowers. There was a Japanese garden, a bonsai garden, several water features and ponds, a fernhouse and bamboo forest. We even accidentally crashed 2 weddings and several family photo shoots. It was a lovely cool day. We ended it at the mountain look out watching the sunset and the city light up. Brisbane really is a beautiful city. It reminds me of Northern California full of eucalyptus trees, bird of paradise, camellias, ferns, and palm trees.

Is 49 books too many?

The girls are all home sick today. Ok really CB & J are sick so the third stayed home too just for fun. I decided it was the perfect time to take them to this used bookstore that gets all of the books discarded from the public libraries. We spent 2 hours looking through books and finally narrowed it down to the top 45. Then I had to find a few for the hub. All told we ended up with 49 books.

I admit, it does seem a bit excessive. Really it's not my fault. Excessive book buying is in my genes. To this day my dad's house is full of bags and bags and stacks and stacks of books. Almost all of them have been read, a few have been purchased twice. My dad cannot go into a store and not look at the books. As a kid my parents never said no to buying a book. My kids would probably say the same about me. Books are just a big part of my life I guess, especially living down under where friends seem harder to come by. So I guess while 49 is a bit crazy it makes sense when you think about. Oh and I only spent $85. Not bad in this land of $10 bottled water and $15 bananas.


- abc

Can I post multiple pics?

So one of the things the girls really like to do is explore all of the parks around the city.









-abc

Blogging with my Phone

This is a test to see if I can use this app to update my blog.



This is a picture of my office at St.Margaret's. CB fondly calls it Australian Hogwarts. The little pixie hut as it is called on campus was the school's first music room. It is like a small church inside with high wood beamed ceilings and paneling along the walls. Now it is home to Learning Support and my office. I am really liking my 2 day work week. I am having a great time getting to know the Secondary school girls I work with. My job is to boost their confidence and help them be better learners in school. Some days I am much better at it than others.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Why Easter was a 5 day holiday and other Aussie facts.

First, I just spent an hour or so browsing all of your blogs. It made me so very homesick and I must admit quite guilty that you all have made time to post interesting stories and pictures. I miss you all, but am so grateful for the small glimpse into your day to day and it made me realize that maybe it is the same for you. So many of you have asked me for pics of my house and neighborhood. I will post those. The truth is we found so much damage when we unpacked our stuff that until this weekend the house was not at all put together. Even now my couch is balanced on some books. The other reason I haven't posted pics is because the hub keeps looking at other houses and suggesting that we should move. To make a long story short: relo company entered into the lease without our consent. So I guess house pics are hard for me.

OK, it is the end of April. We just finished a 5 day holiday. Friday was of course Good Friday, which in Australia is a public holiday. Saturday and Sunday Easter weekend. BUT Monday was ANZAC day which is sort of like Veteran's day. Because ANZAC day and Easter Monday fall on the same day this year we also had today as a public holiday. Easter Monday celebrated on Tuesday. If I lost you at Good Friday you are not alone. While Australia is not an overly religious country it is part of the British Commonwealth and therefore celebrates and commemorates all of the protestant holidays. So fun we had a nice big break!! It was good fun, but also a little tricky because there were no stores or businesses open of any kind from 5:00pm on Thursday until tomorrow at 8am. That is a little crazy!! So no grocery store, etc. We spent a lot of time going to parks, playing games, and watching DVDs. It was good fun. I just should have planned a little better. Not sure what the girls are going to take for lunch tomorrow.

Besides house pics which I will post. Several of you have asked how Australia is different. I have already talked about the driving which is getting better, by the way. I still really need to work on parallel parking though. In no particular order a few things come to mind: the schools. I would say there is a much more rounded approach to education where music and math and pe all have the same weight. I have thought a lot about this and I guess in the US so many of our schools are struggling financially that we have really defined successful education as mainly math and English with a little science and history thrown in. Another big difference is grocery shopping and groceries in general. The stores are small like the size of a Walgreens and the variety is non existent you can either buy this brand or not buy it. Most Aussies shop almost every day buying small quantities of things and really mainly what is fresh. So when I go to the store and buy a weeks's worth of groceries there are always comments and the reality is I really can't buy a weeks worth of groceries the food expires. Milk for example only lasts a few days. Bread is the same and there are very few canned goods. The prices are crazy. Chicken is between 7-10$AUD per pound and the rate right now is $1.10 US to $1. Aussie. I am trying to get used to it and just go with it, but it's crazy. The flooding really drove prices up. Last difference because this post is too long and there are no pics. laundry. Most Aussie's do not have a dryer they hang everything on the line. I am not sure why this is, but ok. The problems for me are allergies and rain. Not sure what you do in that situation. I have a dryer, but it is the size of an EZ Bake Oven. No it is a little bigger, but I can't fill my washer because if I do all of the clothes will not fit in the dryer. Oh and by the way the shortest washing cycle is 2hours. I am not sure why. I have one of the most energy efficient Deluxe washers so I can't imagine how long a more basic washer would take. It's crazy. Needless to say shopping and washing take up a large part of my life here. I guess in many ways not a lot has changed. : )

Christmas (yes, I know it's March)

Almost as soon as the hub came home with the news of our impending, speedy move to Australia, Christmas became a worry. I didn't want to have Christmas in a house that was for sale and really no longer our home. I had already decided that I wouldn't put up any Christmas decorations. I knew that I did not want to be in our new rental house in Brisbane with our suitcases and sad rental furniture. We toyed with the idea of Sydney and I had thoughts of Christmas music and the famous opera house, but that also seemed like a big gamble. What is the hotel wasn't nice and navigating a new city during a holiday can be stressful. So we ended up deciding to spend an extra week in Los Angeles (we already had to fly through there) and going to Disneyland. It seemed like a really good idea to spend a week at the "happiest place on earth."

The week leading up to our departure flew by. The girls were still in school. I was still teaching, grading papers, and giving finals. The hub was doing the work for 2 jobs. The house was for sale. And the amount of arrangements seemed overwhelming at best. The movers came. A crew of 8 packed our house. And even though everything was labeled and separated into: air, ocean, and storage. I knew then that there would be problems. They loaded the truck the next day. I remember walking through my empty house feeling sad. We bought that house to raise our kids in. We planted a garden, painted walls, remodeled, built a pool, and put down roots. It was tough to leave. Friday night our friends hosted a goodbye open house. It was a great night. We all felt so loved, but it was also so sad. We drove back to the hotel in the rain and I remember thinking how lucky we were to be so loved in Texas and to have so many people love and care about our children. I prayed then and continue to do so that those friends will still love us and ours when we come back to Cypress.

We turned in rental cars, ate one more time at our favorite restaurant and flew to LA. We made quite a scene walking through the airport and catching the shuttle to the hotel with our 11 suitcases and 5 carry-ons. I found myself apologising to random strangers. "So sorry, we have so much stuff. We are moving to Australia." We arrived in the middle of a record rain storm. It rained and rained and rained some more. But we just bought plastic Disney ponchos and baseball hats and tried to make the best of it. My dad met us on Christmas Eve as a big surprise for the girls. We ate a fun dinner in the park with him and dried our clothes in the hotel laundry that night. It was a silly Christmas Eve. In spite of the disruption though we continued to do our Christmas advent. The girls opened pajamas and we read our traditional stories. The next morning we opened presents. (A big thank you to T for getting me organized and helping me create the Christmas suitcase. My dear friend helped me think of small flat gifts I could pack and activities we could do to make Christmas in a hotel between homes feel like Christmas.) We had Christmas breakfast at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street in Disney. It was a great day. It was a Christmas that we will all remember.

The next day was spent in the Qantas lounge in LAX waiting for our flight to Brisbane.

Meet Jim

This is Jim, my new car. It is a Mitsubishi Pajero. Not sure why it can't be called a Montero here, but basically that's what it would be in the US. The hub decided that we needed to get an SUV to fit the family. (Really he wanted it so that we could do a bunch of sand driving and off roading.) It is a great car. We named it Jim after the salesman. Who was this old Australian oyster farmer with a lisp and a once broken nose. The car is fine. The problem is that I have to drive it. Driving here is a bit tricky. You drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the car. It is really an odd feeling. Backing up and parallel parking is next to impossible. My US friends have this advice, "Just remember back to when you were 16 in driver's ed what they taught you about parallel parking and then flip it all and do the reverse." I can't even begin to tell you all of the things that are wrong with that statement. Beginning with the fact that I can't remember yesterday or what month it is let alone when I was 16. So basically, I don't parallel park which is a pain because we essentially live in the city. It is full of small roads and on street parking. I never thought I would say this, but I miss Texas and all of its parking lots. Sometimes I take 10 trips around the block just to find a spot I can just pull into. The other problem is that I am fairly unsure where the right side of the car is. Just to be safe I pretty much drive down the middle of the road. So far that has worked pretty well. I just hold my breath when a car passes me headed the other direction. The biggest adjustment has been getting in to the right side of the car to drive. I am embarrassed to admit the amount of times that I gotten in on the passenger side. If there are people around. I feel like I have to do a fake look through the glove compartment as a cover. I am sure that I will get used to it. I am sure that one day I will stop turing on the wipers instead of the turn signal. I am sure I will get to the point that I can parallel park and actually back up with confidence. But I am also sure that when that happens the hub will say to me, time to go back to the US. . .maybe then I can just get a driver. Wouldn't that be nice?

Koalas and Vegemite

You must admit that when you hear Australia you think Koalas and Vegemite. Both of those things are very Aussie. There are actually Koala signs along some of the roads that are similar to the deer signs in the US. I have not seen Kolas in the eucalyptus trees around the city, but supposedly they are there. Instead we went to the Koala Sanctuary to see them. I really had no idea what to expect. I have been to lots of zoos in lots of places, but this was a little different. The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is like walking around a series of tree planters. Each tree has a koala hanging in it. They are literally 6 inches from you and there is no glass, no fence, nothing. The girls held koalas and pet kangaroos. There is a big open field with kangaroos hanging out and you just walk up to them and pet them. Honestly, I expected at any minute for the whole thing to turn into one of those crazy youtube videos of the animals attacking the tourists. The girls had a good time though and reported that koalas are actually quite heavy and their fur is woolly and thick. Not quite as cuddly as they look. So in terms of Australian experiences, hold a koala. . .CHECK!! As for the Vegemite, it is everywhere, but none of can get past the green color or the salty smell.

Happy Valentine's Day

Love and greetings from down under. It has been a crazy 6 weeks, but things are calming so let the blogging begin. I haven't been able to blog because my computer just made it to me. Yes, Australia really is on the other side of the world. We received a notice that our air shipment had arrived into the country, but that it was evacuated because the shipping station where it was being held for inspection and quarantine flooded. The flooding combined with the Christmas back log delayed and delayed and delayed our air shipment. I won't even comment on the delays of the sea shipment. Did you know it will change ships 3 times mid ocean, which is apparently tricky when there is a cyclone. Details. So anyway, got the computer and then the computer decided not to read the photo card. Blah, blah. So the few pics that I do have are from my phone, but some is better than none.

The girls started school a month ago today and so far so good. It is a private Anglican all girl's school called St.Margaret's. Bailey calls it Australian Hogwarts and it definitely has that feel to it. The school sits on a beautiful sprawling hilltop overlooking the city. It is a series of buildings connected by passages and staircases. No they do not move and as of yet none of the photos talk, but you never know. One of the biggest adjustments has been that all of the schools in AU have compulsory uniforms. So every morning the girls dress head to toe in school required clothing. The rules are fairly rigid and specific. For example there: is a correct placement for the collar pins, hair must be back and tied with a ribbon either white, brown or navy. Socks must be folded, not scrunched. Panama or straw hat is to worn to and from school and between classes in Year 7 and up. Play hat to be worn for PE and recess. (Hats are a big deal here.) There are several pluses to the uniform as well. For example you are always dressed right and there is no debate over what to wear. The negatives are it is hot and the skirts are long and made of thick material. I also really have to stay on top of the laundry. There is no, "just wear something else." But the big plus is don't they look spiffy. Can you hear Julie Andrews singing in the background or is it me?

Our house is close enough to school that we walk in mornings. There are just 2 problems with that: the amount of stuff we have to carry and the HILL. The girls are required to dress for HPE (they add a health to the traditional PE and then for fun say with this a really hard "ch" so it sounds like Haych PE). I am not really sure where that came from either. Anyway, the girls have to carry gym clothes and right now they are swimming so that means swim suit, goggles, cap, rash guard, and towel PLUS the required sunscreen and brush. So they load all of this in their school issue sports bag and then add to it their backpacks aka rucksack loaded with typical and not so typical school gear. It takes us several few minutes to pick the bags up and get balanced. I am learning that before we are halfway to school I will be carrying at least 3 bags. So once loaded we head off to school which is straight up the hill. You Texans remember what those look like, right? Picture climbing up beltway 8, it is steep. But we make it, slowly, but surely we get there and the girls taught me that if you walk backward up the hill you get an amazing view of the city and river. Not a bad way to start off the day. . .