Well, another busy week for us! Hopefully, now that we are settled in Sydney we will be able to establish some kind of routine. We began the week still in Auckland. We participated in a job workshop (I actually taught the resume section, just like old times!) and did some job shadowing Monday and Tuesday. In the afternoon on Tuesday, Moses took us a Maori Marae named Papakura. A marae is kind of like a shrine or temple for the Maori people of a given area. It’s mainly used as a gathering place for meetings related to tribal issues and also as a place where the body of a dead person is held for three days before being buried. Moses explained a lot of the background of the building to us along with some of the Maori history. It was interesting to hear of the oral history passed on from ancient times. The Maori believe the islands of New Zealand were populated by their ancestors, a group of people who left from a land far, far away, a place that had a narrow neck of land where the people left in boats. These people were led to the islands where they established a society and existed for many centuries with no contact from anyone outside of some of the near-by islanders. They kept their ancient traditions and beliefs and by the time Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and eventually the Mormon missionaries, came with their beliefs, the islanders joined easily because these beliefs so closely mirrored their own. They believed in a ‘Great Spirit’ who had two sons, one good and one evil. People were able to choose which spirit they wanted to follow. They believed there was a serpent etc.
Anyway, it was an interesting afternoon spent learning about Maori culture and beliefs, it was easier to understand after last weekend when we got to see the celebration for Elder Rudd with all the accompanying singing and dancing. The rituals the Maori follow when honoring an important person were explained, the calling from afar and the answering as the group progressed forward, along with the feather cape given to the honored one, etc. I am impressed with how many commonalities the islanders share with the Native Americans we are familiar with. Moses explained more about the Maori tattoos also. I wish we’d gotten pictures of the ancient leaders whose pictures were hanging at the mare. The tattoos are actually the genealogy of the person. Only important people were tattooed. It took a long time for the entire face to be tattooed because the tattoos symbolize the person’s life as well as his family history. Since originally the Maori had no written language, all family histories were memorized (like the Hawaiians) as well as tattooed. When different tribes on the islands met one another they studied each other’s facial tattoos and that is how they learned about the person. After the first missionaries came, gradually the tradition of tattooing faces disappeared, especially after a written language was developed for the Maori. There is a big push in the islands now to teach Maori in the schools so that the language isn’t lost.
We loved our time in New Zealand and were sad to leave, but leave we did, and now we are in Australia and are pretty well moved in to our house. Sydney is a huge city; once we get settled in a little more I can’t wait to get out of the city every now and then and see the surrounding country. They say there are two things you need to watch out for when driving out in the bush, one is kangaroos, apparently hitting a kangaroo is about as hard on a car as hitting a deer or a moose! It’s about as common to hit a kangaroo over here as it is to hit a moose back home. The other thing to watch out for on the road is a wombat. They are very slow moving animals, and when frightened or in danger, they hunker down and ‘wait it out’. Their outer shell is very hard which keeps animals from being able to attack them easily, but that shell is the very thing that makes hitting them with your car so hard on the car. Apparently, they just look like a rock on the road (a big rock) but hitting them at a high rate of speed it equivalent to hitting a speed bump at a high rate of speed… not good on a car! As it is right now, our only worry while driving around Sydney, is not wild animals, it’s hitting a car head-on since they drive British over here: on the wrong side of the road. It takes a bit of getting used to!
I feel very fortunate in that we got a brand new little house to live in. It’s very small, about 700 square feet, but it’s brand new, so that’s nice. The house was pretty well furnished, but was lacking a few things. We’ve already made an Ikea run, so now we’re pretty well set for life in Sydney for the next 18 months. We got here on Wednesday and we’ve pretty much spent our time so far just getting moved in and learning about the Australian way of doing things. We didn’t have a car the first two days, so we had to walk to the store and back for everything. The grocery stores here are all inside of the local malls. Not that I’m an expert yet, but we’ve driven around some and I still have yet to see a grocery store out on it’s own, they all seem to be in a mall. No grocery stores are big like in the states; they are about half the size of an average grocery story in the states. Groceries (and everything else) are really expensive over here. It’s crazy. Makes me want to go on a diet just to save money! I think that part of the reason things are so expensive is because of the benefits businesses are required to provide. By law all workers are provided a four week paid vacation.
The mall by our house has a Target in it. It’s the US Target chain, but the store is not like in the US. The store is about a fourth the size of a regular Target in the states. They have a very small selection of many things at about double the price of home. I never thought I’d say it, but I actually really miss WalMart. There aren’t any over here and there’s no store set-up like WalMart at all. There are no stores that contain groceries, a pharmacy, and all the other departments like WalMart. There is a Kmart here, it’s also about a fourth the size of a normal Kmart at home though. We haven’t been in there yet, but I’m guessing it’s not going to have much of a selection either. Oh well, it will be easier not to spend money since there’s less to choose from.
There are literally thousands of Asians, mostly Chinese, over here. Today we went to church in a Chinese ward. Dave really wanted to try out his Chinese once again. Sadly, he found out that they all talk way faster than he can understand! I, of course, couldn’t understand anything. Actually, everyone was really good to speak English when they talked to us and someone always translated the meetings for us. There were two sets of Sister missionaries (all from Taiwan) and one set of Elders (from America) in the ward. I’m attaching a picture of the lady who taught the Sunday school class, I managed to stop her before she erased all the notes she’s written on the board. I thought it was cool her notes were in Chinese. Many of the Chinese here in Sydney are from Mainland China. This lady was interesting to talk to; her family got out of China in the 1960s before the country was locked down. She was from a village outside of Beijing. Her family moved to Hong Kong during the Mao Zedong era, but before citizens weren’t allowed to leave. She is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, her village language, and English. Wow, I don’t even know all the rules of English and she can speak four languages!
We met our neighbors over the weekend. Both are really nice. The neighbor on the north was born in South Africa and spent his first fifteen years there, then moved to Liverpool, England where he lived for many years. He immigrated to Australia about ten years ago and has Australian citizenship now. I love his accent; it’s very British. I think I like British accents better than Australian accents, but Australians are definitely easier to understand than the Brits.
This week our goal is to get our office set up and learn the Australian education and government systems. It should be an interesting week!
Grandkids
Here is a picture of our car. It is an American car, a Chevy Cruz, but it’s not exactly like an American car. People over here call gas 'petrol'. It sounds funny to me when they say, "I have to put more petrol in my car." Look at the inside of the car closely and see if you can tell how it’s different from an American car.
If you guessed it’s different because the steering wheel is on the wrong side, you are right! It’s kind of confusing to drive over here in Australia because they drive on the opposite side of the road from the way we drive in the United States and the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car from the United States cars. Every time we drive we have to think really hard about which side of the road to drive on. It’s especially confusing to turn corners because we have to look the opposite way for oncoming cars from what we’re used to. We bought a GPS to help us find our way around this big city. I’m thankful that the GPS knows the way because if we had to read maps I think we would get lost a lot!
This is a picture of Australian money. It’s like New Zealand money because it is many colors, not just green and white like US money. Another interesting thing about the bills is that they are made of plastic, not fiber like the US dollar. Australia doesn’t have one-dollar bills either; they have a one and a two-dollar coin and a five cent, ten cent, twenty cent and fifty-cent piece. Also, they don’t have any one-cent coins like the American penny. Their money starts at five cents.
Outside our house we have kookaburras. They are birds, not animals like I always thought. You can hear them chattering to each other. They sound like monkeys. Have you heard the song, "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree"? When they talk to each other it does kind of sound like they are laughing.
Here are pictures of our neighbor’s houses. I like how they look. I like our house too. It is very small, but nice. I feel like I live in the forest because our house is surrounded by trees. We have lots of bamboo around our house too. That’s how I know I live in Australia now; my house in Idaho did not have bamboo growing around it! Our neighbor has a cat; his name is Robby. I haven’t gotten to hold him yet; Sean (our neighbor) said he is a crabby cat and doesn’t like people. I hope he likes me though. I miss Jack and I hope that maybe the cat will help me not miss him so much. I haven’t met Robby yet; he mostly stays inside his house, so I think I will have to wait to meet him when we visit Sean.
The answer to last week’s language question, “I’ll flick that to you straight away” means “I’ll send that to you right away.” This week’s question is, what does 'ring up' mean?
People in Australia are nice. I think we will like it here. I miss all of you though. I hope you all had a happy Valentines Day!
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