The Plunge Down Under

Notes from the Last First Day of School

There was a moment yesterday when the tension became almost unbearable in our house.  Our eldest was pacing back and forth across the dining room, heading up the stairs and back down again and checking facebook every two minutes or so.  She hadn't yet found out what form she would be in this year.  Meanwhile two of her closest friends already knew their fate.

Never mind that the senior school had refused to post the lists until the first day of classes.  Little by little the lists began to leak out, and fortunately for my own sanity, by late afternoon someone posted K's information online.  

Her younger sister was more fortunate.  After begging and pleading with me to drive her to the school to check the class lists  posted outside the classrooms, she decided to walk to school herself to find out. She couldn't understand why I wouldn't allow that.  My friend Jeannie came to the rescue to texting us her class list early int he day.  Happily our girls are once again in the same class with many of their friends and a teacher they adore.

Meanwhile the youngest had already started his second day of school.  Unlike his sisters, he would never admit to being excited to return to school, but the fact that he didn't complain once spoke volumes to me.  After his first day, I asked him how he liked his new teacher.

"Not too bad," he decided after a moment of deliberation.  Translation: "She's great!  I really like her."

He was also surprisingly upbeat about being seated in a group containing himself and three girls.  This marks a change from last year when he and his best friend were disgusted at having to sit next to girls on their first day.  It was so bad for his friend in fact that he couldn't even bear to pronounce his seatmate's name:

"Mum," he moaned at the end of the day. "I am sitting next to h-o-double l-y."

C has not said too much about starting back to school this year.  To my relief, he arrived home happy after a four hour day.  He had met up with a friend on the way to the tram stop, getting the day off to a good start, and he is pretty sure that once again he has an excellent form teacher.  

The excitement continued this afternoon when the girls returned from their first day.  Fortunately neither boy was home at the time.  As it was, I was hard pressed to absorb all they were telling me, each one speaking into a different ear.  I needed to divide myself into two people.

What I did take away was that both girls were very happy.  K chattered away about her commerce class and wondered when she would begin calculus.  She regretted that tomorrow is Saturday.  S discussed the tears of one of her friends, and quickly corrected her sister when she wondered why there was so much drama amongst ten year-olds over who plays with whom at lunch time.

"We don't play," she insisted.  "We hang."  I can't believe these are the same two girls from two years ago:

First day of school, 2013

Then came the inevitable regrets that they will be leaving partway through the year.  I began to sympathize with them, but quickly stopped when I realized that this time they didn't need my coaching.

K was the first to find the silver lining.  "I hate it when they talk about stuff happening at the end of the year, but I'm really glad that I'll be here for house concerts," she said as she polished off her peach and headed upstairs.  Sophie followed her sister's example.  "I'm really disappointed to miss camp, but at least I get to be in the Year 5 play."

It's good to see that they are growing up in more ways than one.

 

A Burns Supper: Surprisingly Edible Fare and Embarrassment Aplenty

What parent doesn't occasionally delight in embarrassing a teen-age son or daughter?  The ways to go about this are numerous, but our friend David discovered a particularly effective method last Saturday night when he donned full highland dress, marched around the room holding a pudding up high, and then performed the poem Address to a haggis with a thick Scottish accent.

The occasion was the recent birthday of Scotland's national poet, Robby Burns.  To mark the day, David, lover of all things Scottish, suggested a Burns supper.  Why not? we thought, especially since he was volunteering to do all of the preparations.

I remember reading about Burns suppers in our guidebook the two times that Ross and I visited Scotland.  We were both intrigued and repelled by the description of the key food component, haggis:  

a Scottish dish consisting of a sheep's or calf's offal (the heart, liver and lungs) mixed with suet, oatmeal, and seasoning and boiled in a bag, traditionally one made from the animal's stomach.  

Hmmm.  We briefly considered attending one back then, but after thinking about the haggis, decided to spend our tourist dollars in other ways.  This time a personal invitation made all the difference.  We only hoped we would be able to choke it down politely.

It was nice timing that the kids and I had just returned from a visit to Dunedin, New Zealand, a city settled by Scots.  In fact it boasts a statue of Robby Burns in the center of the city (as does Ross's hometown, Fredericton, New Brunswick).

Relief with a Side of Grief

R and I went for an afternoon drive along Port Phillip bay a couple of days ago, further than we have ever driven before.  Outside the air was chilly, but inside the car the sun felt warm, and the water reflected bouncing shades of turquoise, green and teal. With my parents capably in charge at home, we savored a few quiet moments of enjoying a landscape we have come to love.  

Afterward I felt what will no doubt become a familiar confluence of emotions.  I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief even as a grief began to surface from down below where it has been lurking for a good while now.

Postcards from Queenstown: Relishing the Beauty

Very few words in this post.  Instead just a handful of my favorite photos from our four days in Queenstown, New Zealand. I hope you enjoy them. If you like, feel free to nominate your favorite one in the comments section below.

Post Cards from New Zealand

I have already told our primary story about New Zealand--the one about my dad breaking three bones fifteen hours before our plane was scheduled to take off for Queenstown (if you missed the story, you can read it here).  He insisted that we go ahead as planned with our trip, and since we are a family that looks for silver linings, it wasn't long before my dad found one.

Down and Out Down Under

I can't think of a good time for a broken bone, or for three broken bones for that matter.  How about one hour after you have landed on the other side of the world?  Or how about just twelve short hours before you are scheduled to board a plane for New Zealand?

"Mum, I'm not American Anymore. I'm Australian!"

Today I have the privilege to send you to the blog Communicating.Across.Boundaries for an article that I have written about identity confusion for kids growing up overseas.  The author of Communicating Across Boundaries is Marilyn Gardner, a third culture kid herself who has raised five TCKs of her own.  She writes thoughtfully and beautifully about "life, faith, travel, third culture kid peculiarities, cross-cultural communication, Pakistan, the Middle East and more."  I have enjoyed everything I have read on her site, and I am excited that she has agreed to host me as a guest writer. 

I have included an excerpt of my article for you below, but you will have to click on the link to read it in its entirety:

Road Trip, 2nd in the Series: Balmuttum to Bush Capital

The first post in the road trip series left us at the Balmuttum rest area.  It was a memorable stop, albeit not in a positive way.  Swarms of flies bombarded us from the moment we opened the door.  Australian flies are like no other flies that we have experienced, and given that Ross is from Canada, that's saying a lot.  Canadian flies are giant things that take a fair size lump out of your skin if you don't manage to swat them away in time.  But I think I prefer them to the down under version.  Pesky doesn't quite describe them.  Persistent is a bit closer to the mark, but still not quite there.  

Road Trip: Driving North on the Hume Highway

Following are a series of notes I have taken during our recent road trips.  I hope you will come along for the journey:  to see what we have seen from our car window as we have driven first to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, and then further north to the spectacular Sunshine Coast.  Today’s notes begin with some thoughts from our more recent trip, followed by a description of the first few hours driving north from Melbourne along the Hume Highway.  I have often heard the Hume Highway referred to as deadly dull.  That was not our experience last November.  Ross and I were both struck by the beauty of the landscape.

Conversations with a Seven-Year-Old TCK: Money Matters

The term TCK was unknown to me until six months ago when I picked up a copy of David Pollock's Third Culture Kids:  Growing Up Among Worlds, a book he co-wrote with Ruth E. Van Reken.  In the book he describes a third culture kid (TCK) in the following way:

[A] person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of the same background.