February 22, 2014

Things are falling into a little bit more of a routine now, thankfully. Pretty soon I might not even have to write myself a list in order to remember what all to take to the office each day! Speaking of the office, I thought I’d include some pictures of the grounds the temple and the offices are located on. The whole area used to be an orphanage for boys back in the early 1900s. It was quite a large complex and included classrooms and dormitories; the boys lived and went to school on the grounds. When the land and buildings came up for sale, the church was required to buy the whole complex if they wanted the land. The buildings were all very old and in very poor shape, but they were all marked as historical buildings so the church had to keep the outside structures exactly as they were, but they gutted the insides of buildings and redid them into offices. The big house that I posted last time was actually the headmaster’s home and was part of the purchase. The church deeded the house back to the city so they could use it for a reception center or whatever, but the city opted to sell it; I guess they wanted the money more than the building!

The original headmaster's home

This used to be the classroom building

Our office is located in this building

These buildings were dormitories

I thought you might like to see the inside of our 'Ikea' house. All the
cabinets and furniture are from Ikea!

Our tiny living room

Bathroom

Dining room!

Kitchen 

Tuesday night we invited Sean, the single guy next door, over for dinner. When we met him last week he was very interested in the fact that we are missionaries. When he came over for dinner he told us he’d been reading up on the Mormons, he’d only heard of the religion, but knew nothing about it. He came with many questions, so we had an interesting 3-hour dinner conversation. His father was Catholic and his mother Jewish, so we all enjoyed a learning experience. He has traveled widely in his 42 years. His sister actually lives in Jerusalem, so he’s been there a couple of times for a fairly long visit each time. He’s not practicing either religion, but was very interested in learning about what we believe. I still haven’t met his cat. I’m sad about that. I need an animal to pet every once in a while.

One thing I haven’t figured out yet is the Australian (the Brits and Kiwis do this too) tendency to finish words that end in ‘a’ with an ‘r’. For example, Australia is pronounced Australir, the word area is pronounced arer, etc. I’m not sure why that is. They often finish words that end in ‘w’ with an ‘r’ too, for example, ‘saw’ is pronounced ‘sawr’. I haven’t had the courage to ask anyone why they do this though.

We met a lot of people this week and are beginning to get a feel for the layout of the city. Sydney is a melting pot of many, many cultures. Asians are coming here by the droves. Especially students. I read a study about international English students. At any given time there are more than a million international students around the world. In order of popularity are: the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The US is most popular because of its immense puling power as the world’s highest economy and its culture. Also, in Asia and North and South America the books used to teach English in most elementary and high schools introduce students to American English and the American accent. The popularity of American TV and movies also teaches the American accent. Europeans usually gravitate to Britain because of proximity and instruction in school is usually from British textbooks. French students gravitate to Canada most often. Australia and New Zealand have Asians coming more and more because of the closer proximity and the comparatively inexpensive travel costs and cost of living and tuition. The university courses in both countries are of exceptionally high standard too. Also, Australia and NZ have greatly increased the number of visas they issue to students each year.

If we can get approval we are going to start our first career workshops downtown as soon as possible. The church owns two floors in a big high-rise building downtown and there is some office space available. There are already two missionary couples serving students in this building downtown. There is an Institute and a Family History office there already. One of the couples is teaching English there also. The ability to speak, read, converse, and write English at a fairly high level is required for citizenship as well as entrance to university (they call education after high school ‘university’ or ‘uni’ here, they never say ‘college’). The couple teaching English, Elder and Sister Nolan have a big job. Elder Nolan graduated from the Air Force academy and then taught Freshman English there for four years before changing to a different department; students are lucky to have someone so well educated. I, of course, am very interested in the English proficiency test; I got a practice copy and will write more about it next week once I’ve had a chance to read through it. It looks pretty intense.

I’m going to spend most days this week putting together the content of the classes we will be teaching on career development. Every day I am thankful for the experience I gained from teaching high school. Even something as small as running the copy machine has made me reflect on skills I learned that I am now using. I never thought I’d be grateful for the background in jammed copiers I gained from working with the copier at the high school! I’m grateful for the computer skills (I’m sure Aaron is laughing at me right now) I gained from teaching. I have never used Outlook until now, but my learning curve was pretty short because of the various email programs I’ve used in the past. I’m also thankful I learned to deal with being overwhelmed and figuring out how to take a vast amount of material and fit it together to produce understandable (hopefully) units of learning. I’m most grateful for the things I learned about working with staff and students. My learning curve is much less intense than it would have been had I not learned about working with people and teaching varied types of students. Most surprising, who would've ever thought I’d say I am grateful for the years of teaching research papers and senior presentation skills? All I learned during the years at FHS will be most beneficial in the coming months. I feel blessed.

Grandkids:
I thought you might like to see my tiny washer and dryer. They fit in a little closet in our bathroom! The dryer is so small that the house builder made a clothesline outside to hang clothes on if I don’t want to wait forever for clothes to dry in our little dryer. Actually, almost all the houses around here have clotheslines. They are very popular; I guess people like to save money by hanging their clothes out to dry on a clothesline. When I was a little girl, my mom hung our clothes out on a clothesline lots of the time. Nothing smells better than clean sheets that just came off the clothesline!

Our little clothesline!

Now, about last week's language question: what does “ring up” mean?  I bet you guessed it means to call someone one on the phone. You are right!  This week’s question is, what does ‘muck up’ mean? For example, “The teacher mucked up the whole report.”

Here’s another word you might not know: nappy. Here’s a picture I took in the store (I found a Kmart over here, hooray!) yesterday. What do you think a nappy is?

If you said ‘diaper’ you are right! Around here you hear people say, “I have to go change the baby’s nappy.” That sounds kind of funny, huh?

Do you know what an aborigine is? The aborigines were the first people to live in Australia, just like the Native Americans were the first people to live on the American continent.

Aborigines have been on this continent for about 40,000 years. Archeologists think they originally came from Africa long, long ago.

The British came to Australia in the late 1700s, thanks to Captain Cook. Click this link and see how many islands he found!  http://www.ducksters.com/biography/explorers/captain_james_cook.php
Because of the Aborigines and the British settlers, lots of cities around here have names that sound like the language of the two types of people. See if you can guess which of these cities were named by British people and which ones Aborigines named:

Wallengong, Newcastle, Wagga Wagga, Parramatta, Darlinghurst, Toowoomba, Chatswood, Whyalla

The answer is:
Wallengong, Wagga Wagga, Parramatta, Whyalla, and Toowoomba are Aborigine words and
Newcastle, Darlinghurst, and Chatswood are British.

Look at a map of Australia and see if you can find other cities that sound like Aborigines named them. Sometime in the next few months Grandpa and I are going to drive out to where some Aborigines live. It’s quite a ways away from Sydney, so it will be a while before we go.
I love you and miss you all. I hope you have a happy week.