Late Spring

Spring is almost over, and we are heading into summer here in Wollongong. Since it was summer when we arrived back in January, the warmer weather brings back memories of our first few weeks in Australia. It has also brought back the parrots – they were never really gone, but for some reason I didn’t see them as much during the winter. Now they are in my back yard just about every day (and the fact that the plums on our plum trees are ripening up probably has a little something to do with it). It’s so nice to be renting a house with fruit trees in the back yard. We have two plum trees that have the most delicious little plums on them. They remind me of the plums that I used to get from my grandmother’s backyard. They have so much more flavor than those big ones you get at the supermarket. Here’s what they look like:

Here are a couple of rainbow lorikeets that were on our back porch a few days ago:

Other types of parrots that we see at our house are cockatoos, galahs, crimson rosellas, and king parrots. Speaking of parrots…I have heard people say that human beings are the only creatures on earth that waste their resources – well those people have never seen parrots in a fruit tree. I don’t mind them eating the fruit, it’s the way they eat it. They’ll take two or three little bites and then jump to the next one on the branch, so to eat one plum worth of fruit they usually ruin about four or five plumbs! It’s really aggravating but thankfully I’m not a fruit farmer (otherwise I’d be looking for some recipes for parrot stew).

In other news, Emily’s aunt requested a closer picture of one of our blue tongue lizards. Here you go Tara:

And last but not least, Emily and the baby are still doing well. She is now at 22 weeks, so she is a little more than halfway through the pregnancy.

October Update

I didn’t realize it had been so long since I updated the blog! October has been a busy month.

We had visitors most of this month. First Alan and Donna Phillips came to visit our team for a few days (Alan works with Missions Resource Network); and then my folks came for a couple of weeks. It was good to see some people from back home.

Mom and Dad and the Phillips

Emily is now 20 weeks pregnant. We found out from our ultrasound this past week that we are going to have a boy! The interesting thing is that he is due sometime between the 16th and 19th of March (we’ve been told both days, so apparently it’s not an exact science), which is exactly when I was due (March 17) – thirty years to the day. How’s that for a thirtieth birthday gift?

Speaking of babies, our teammate Nicole had her second one in the past 15 months! When it rains it pours. Noah Kai Whaley joined us on the 27th of this month.

The day before the birth – a little bump and a big bump

Noah

In other news, my garden I planted in midwinter is still going strong, so I guess it is a spring garden now. I don’t have a scientific measurement, but I have picked 45 plastic bags so far (those kind you get at Kmart…don’t worry we reuse them) out of my little 8x1 meter garden – so I’m extremely pleased with the results. I’m going to let it go until the end of November, then it’s coming up so I can plant some summer vegetables.

I’m pleased to report that two blue tongues have taken up residence at our house. A blue tongue is an Australian Lizard that grows to about a foot and a half long and looks like a short fat snake…with a long blue tongue. They’re really cool, although if you just see their head sticking out of the leaves it can give you a bit of a fright, since it looks like the head of six foot long python. Emily is not as pleased as I am.

Other Aussie critters that we encounter at our house are skinks and huntsmen. The skinks here look similar the skinks back home (small shiny lizards). A huntsman is a large furry brown spider. They can get pretty big (I’ve seen a couple almost as big as my hand), but they are not poisonous or aggressive. They sometimes get in the house. Emily usually discovers them. She lets me know that she has found one by screaming. Usually with spiders I kill first and ask questions later, but for some reason I’ve kind of taken a liking to huntsmen…there’s just something about them. So when I find one, I just scoop him up on a newspaper and release him into our backyard. Emily’s not extremely pleased with that either.

Isn’t he cute? …I just hope he didn’t use my toothbrush.

Update

We had a dust storm last week that started in the desert center of Australia and swept all the way across the east coast. I had been in a few dust storms when I lived in Arizona, but never anything like this. For one thing, it was huge - a storm this large only happens about once every fifty years, so it was quite a sight. Also, it was wet - which added an element of weirdness to it. When we woke up early Wednesday morning, there was a strange neon orange glow over everything (the dirt at the center of Australia is redish-orange). We hadn’t heard about the storm, so we had no idea what was going on. Then it began to rain rust colored mud. It was very eerie. It’s kind of what I would imagine it would look like if you were on the outskirts of an area that had been hit with a nuclear bomb (I probably watch too many movies). Thankfully though, it didn’t really do any damage. It just left everything covered in mud – the cars, the houses, the trees. I’ve really never seen anything like it. Let’s hope we don’t have one for another fifty years, because the clean up was a real headache.

I didn’t think to get any pictures, but here are some pictures a friend posted on Facebook:

Emily is doing well with her pregnancy. She sleeps a lot (she’s sitting across from me in the living room right now…asleep). And she eats all of the time. She gets these immediate hunger pains that if she doesn’t satisfy almost immediately will turn into nausea. So she’s been keeping food stashed around the house for emergency snacks. The other night I got up to use the toilet and found a loaf of bread on the towel rack in the bathroom. Are all pregnant women this weird? (BTW – she doesn’t know that I am writing this, so don’t tell her ok?)

Next March

Next March is going to be a big month for us for three reasons:

1. Emily and I celebrate 7 years of marriage (7 is a lucky number right?)
2. I’m turning 30 (It’s always a big deal when that first digit changes)
3. To celebrate, Emily is giving me a kid! (a baby, not a goat) Happy birthday to me!

My long standing denial that I’m actually an adult now is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

Canberra

Last weekend we took a little three day vacation to Canberra, the nation’s capitol. Canberra is about a two hour and 45 minute drive inland from Wollongong. Unlike all of Australia’s other major cities which naturally developed along the coast of the continent, Canberra was planned as an inland city.

So what did we think of it? Well, it was very different from any other Australian city we’ve been to. Besides being so far from the ocean, it was very spread out like an American city. Also, it has a very structured feel to it - the streets are nice and straight, buildings are spaced evenly, etc., which actually gives the city a bit of bland feeling. That’s not to say that the city is ugly or anything like that, it just doesn’t fit the free spirited, fun loving personality of Australia.

So what did we do? Mostly we did typical tourist stuff – museums, buildings, etc. We also just relaxed at our hotel, swam in the indoor pool, and watched the free movies on the movie channel. It was a nice relaxing weekend.

You can’t go to Canberra without visiting the two most famous buildings at the heart of the city - Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial. I was surprised at how different they are from one another. In fact, they are as opposite as two buildings could be. The Parliament house looks like a giant modern art sculpture – it’s all squares and rectangles and sharp corners. The War Memorial, on the other hand, looks like an Eastern Orthodox cathedral with towering rock walls, stained-glass windows, and a huge dome ceiling. Both were interesting, but of the two, I found the War Memorial far more impressive. But I put some pictures below, so you can judge for yourself.

Parliament House

Senate Chamber

Foyer (which reminded me of a really nice hotel lobby)


War Memorial (from the courtyard entryway)

Stained-glass windows and mosaics (the pictures really don't do it justice)

The dome

Other Pics:

Taken from the National Museum of Australia with the Parliament house in the background across the lake

Emily posing with a statue of Queen Elizabeth (I don't think she realized her hand was on the royal rump)

Everyday Life

.....We have settled into somewhat of a daily and weekly routine here. For me (Emily) this includes the usual round of daily housework and frequent walks down to the shops for groceries.

.....On most Saturdays I do volunteer ESL tutoring through an organization called The Smith Family. I am currently helping a Liberian immigrant with reading and writing. We read the book Go, Dog, Go the other day and she laughed at the pictures as we turned the pages. It was fun.

....On Mondays I work in a little shop that sells secondhand clothing and linens. The money raised from this shop helps to provide a free telephone counselling service to the area. Some Mondays are quiet with very few customers, but other days are busier with people coming in and out of the shop, many coming in to look for bargains and to "have a chat". Most of the time when people hear my accent they ask me if I'm from Canada. (not quite sure why this is - never thought I sounded Canadian) I tell them that I am from the U.S. state of Tennessee. This reply usually leads to a conversation about Elvis or country music. I have also learned a lot about Wollongong from talking to people who come in the shop. They like to tell me interesting facts about the city and the ways it has changed over the years.

.....I had my first shoplifter the other day. (First that I know of, anyway.) As I was straightening the store one day, I noticed a woman bend down to look at a pair of shoes that were on display underneath the mannikin in the window. I turned my back for a minute, and when I turned back around I noticed that she was leaving the store very quickly. I watched her hurry into a car parked out front, but didn't think anything else about it until a few minutes later I came back to the place where the shoes had been and realized they were gone. I knew I hadn't sold those shoes. Then I remembered the lady who had looked at them and then later hurried away to her car. I've often thought since then that if she ever came back into the shop, I would ask her if she was enjoying her shoes.

Update: August 18, 2009

What’s been happening with us you say? I’m glad you asked, because I have random bits of information to share with you.

My first random bit of information to share with you is a progress report on my winter garden I planted a few weeks ago. It is now full of an assortment of greens. I had read in a book on organic gardening that if you plant a variety of greens in random order it actually prevents pests from devouring your plants. Since certain bugs like certain plants, they’ll find the one they like, but won’t spread because it is surrounded by other kinds of plants. Doesn’t sound like it would work does it? Well, I tried it and now I’m a believer. I haven’t put anything on my plants, but I have had only a couple of plants eaten by bugs. In both cases, the bugs completely ate the plant but didn’t touch the plants around it.


Mixed greens: Mizuna, red mustard, wong bok, rosette pak choi, sum choi, and silver beet (with a row of beans coming up behind it)

Red mustard, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, beet root, silver beet, wong bok, and arugula

First harvest - we cooked these up and had them with ham and biscuits (American biscuits, not cookies) – deeelicious.

Other news:

About an hour and a half south of here, there is a beautiful little bay filled with marine wildlife. The bay is formed by outcroppings of rock that jut out into the sea on either side, making it the perfect sanctuary for seals, dolphins, penguins and such. Not only that, but because the rock juts out so far, humpback whales that are migrating up the coast of Australia have no choice but to pass by the mouth of the bay. Sound like a perfect place to go sight seeing? Well we thought so too, so a couple of weeks ago we drove down with the Griffith family to take a little boat tour. It was actually a three hour tour…a three hour tour… complete with a captain, and a skipper. We even met a professor (of computer technology). I’m not sure if there were any millionaires on board (aside from us of course). We saw seals, dolphins, several varieties of water fowl, and even a couple of humpbacks. And, as usual, I was unable to get a single picture of any of them (they jump out of the water faster than I can point and click). I did get a few pictures of the passengers which you can see below.

There was one casualty of the boat ride…my dear wife. Once you get out on open water those boats start rolling pretty hard. At one point, I was on the top deck with Shawn and Darian, and I went and looked down to the bottom deck to see how Emily was doing just in time to see her leaning over the side of the boat tossing her cookies (literally…we had just had tea and biscuits (cookies) a few minutes before). Unfortunately, she spent the rest of the tour curled up in the corner of the boat looking less than enthusiastic. But all in all it was fun (I know, I know – easy for me to say).

A couple of you have asked to hear from Emily - I told her so, and she plans to write you all an update sometime this week (I’m sure it will say something about how great life with me is… ;-)