Wow, we are getting busier and busier! We didn’t get home before 8:30 pm any day this week. A typical day for us starts at 6 a.m. when we go for our morning walk. We just switched to daylight savings last weekend, so now it’s not dark when we walk in the mornings. I like that. When we get back, we spend about an hour getting ready for the day and reading scriptures together. We leave for the office usually a little before 8. Our days at the office are varied; we have meetings Monday and Wednesday mornings. Monday’s meeting is with all the employees and missionaries working in the service center building. Wednesday’s meeting is an online meeting conducted on a program called ‘Go to Meeting’ it’s kind of like Skype or FaceTime, we can all see and hear each other even though we are located in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and Tahiti. It’s kind of cool what technology can do! That meeting usually takes about an hour and a half. On the days we get to stay in the office we are busy catching up records, setting up more meetings, and contacting people. We usually teach at least one class each day when we are in the office as well. I spend time each day editing resumes and cover letters. And I thought my editing days were over… wrong! On Mondays we have a half-hour drive to the building where we teach our class. On Tuesdays we have a class in our office building and then have an evening class in a building that is over an hour drive away from our office. This class is made up of people who were all originally from Tonga. They are so loving and giving, I love being around the Pacific Islanders, no matter what island they are from, they are all the same, always happy. They aren’t real big on being on time though! We are starting a second class in this same building this week, so instead of teaching together we will have to split up and each take a class.
Most of these people have followed the usual path of leaving the island, moving to New Zealand and living there for two years and obtaining NZ citizenship, then moving to Australia because the wages are higher and there are more jobs. NZ citizens can live in Australia without having AU citizenship and still be eligible for health coverage through the government. However, they are not eligible for education benefits, which are wonderful I might add. Citizens can attend university for no out-of-pocket money until they graduate and obtain a job that makes over $55,000 a year. Once they reach that amount, the government will start deducting the loan from their gross income, kind of like a tax. The interest rate is 6% until the money is repaid. People who make less than $52,000 a year can get education for free, like a grant. I think there’s a cap on the amount, but still, they are able to obtain various certificates for better jobs for free. Only citizens are able to access the education benefits, not those on permanent resident visas, so most of the islanders don’t try to get education, they just get a job. Since they don’t have education, the jobs they usually end up with are manual labor jobs where they work long hours in manual labor type jobs where there’s little or no chance to move up the ladder. In order to move up in any job over here, you have to have a training certificate, even to drive a forklift for example. It requires money to take the classes to attain the certification, so people just continue to work the same job and never move up because of the money involved to take the class. When we first got over here, I couldn’t understand why people just didn’t get Australian citizenship, it makes sense to just encourage people to get citizenship and then be eligible for all the wonderful education benefits. The reason most islanders don’t do this is because it costs about $3,000 per person to apply for citizenship, plus they must receive a high score on the ILETS language test I wrote about last month; this test is very hard if English is not your first language. Many of the islanders still speak their native languages of Tongan, Samoan etc. at home and struggle with advanced English reading and writing abilities. Plus, life in Australia is a huge improvement over island living conditions. They are so happy with their life here where they are able to live in a house with beds, indoor plumbing, a TV, a car, etc. compared with the poverty of island life that they don’t encourage their children to get education, just to get a job. The money required to obtain citizenship is overwhelming when you consider $3,000 per person for each family member with the only real benefit being education and lower taxes, so they are content to live as residents, not citizens. When, hopefully in another 3 or 4 months, the Perpetual Education Foundation loans are available from the church are available in AU, many of these people will be able to have access to the money needed to get certification needed to move up in their jobs, or get jobs that they couldn’t afford to get the certification for before. For example, a certificate III (no prior certification needed to take this class) in auto mechanics costs $838 for the class. Upon completing this class a person is able to obtain a job in the automotive industry as a mechanic. A certificate IV costs $985 and qualifies a person to work on more types of engines and to be a ‘head’ mechanic. Basically, for less then $2,000 a person can get all the certification they need in a job that is in high demand in Australia and they will be qualified to work their way up to a leadership position. The courses each take almost a year to complete, so there’s some time involved, but once completed the person can make a very good income and have good working hours. Another job that is in high demand right now is that of hairdresser. Certification takes a year and costs $1950, but then you’re qualified and can go to work. I think this certification is much cheaper than in the US.
The population we work with is one of great diversity. We have people who are looking for basic education for a reasonable price in order to obtain a good job with reasonable working hours and we have highly educated students from Asian (for the most part) countries who need help in finding jobs in the competitive white-collar community. With these students we work with resume and interview skills more than anything. I had a young man from Japan this week who I just bought a white shirt, tie, and dress pants for because he is so poor he only has farm-type work clothes, nothing nice to wear to an interview. Accessing interview clothes is a challenge for some of our students. I found a non-profit organization in Sydney who works with women; they will provide a woman with an appropriate outfit to interview in and if she gets the job, they will provide her with enough clothes for the 5 day workweek. Sadly, I have not been able to find any organization that supports men in this way.
Fall is here and the weather is getting cooler. I really like the temperature right now. It rains more now, but I’ve grown accustomed to it somewhat. It’s just humid all the time and I have learned to adapt, grudgingly, but I’ve adapted. As an example of the humidity and rain we have over here, the gardeners who maintain the temple grounds and the grounds where our office is located (they adjoin) just cleared out the summer flowers and planted pansies for the winter. First of all, I find it amazing that anyone would plant flowers with winter coming on. Pansies are cool weather plants, so I guess they plant them because they can withstand semi-cold weather. The other thing that surprises me is that you can plant something over here by just digging a hole and putting a plant in, no sprinklers or drip-lines needed! Everything just grows on its own, amazing.
The population we work with is one of great diversity. We have people who are looking for basic education for a reasonable price in order to obtain a good job with reasonable working hours and we have highly educated students from Asian (for the most part) countries who need help in finding jobs in the competitive white-collar community. With these students we work with resume and interview skills more than anything. I had a young man from Japan this week who I just bought a white shirt, tie, and dress pants for because he is so poor he only has farm-type work clothes, nothing nice to wear to an interview. Accessing interview clothes is a challenge for some of our students. I found a non-profit organization in Sydney who works with women; they will provide a woman with an appropriate outfit to interview in and if she gets the job, they will provide her with enough clothes for the 5 day workweek. Sadly, I have not been able to find any organization that supports men in this way.
Fall is here and the weather is getting cooler. I really like the temperature right now. It rains more now, but I’ve grown accustomed to it somewhat. It’s just humid all the time and I have learned to adapt, grudgingly, but I’ve adapted. As an example of the humidity and rain we have over here, the gardeners who maintain the temple grounds and the grounds where our office is located (they adjoin) just cleared out the summer flowers and planted pansies for the winter. First of all, I find it amazing that anyone would plant flowers with winter coming on. Pansies are cool weather plants, so I guess they plant them because they can withstand semi-cold weather. The other thing that surprises me is that you can plant something over here by just digging a hole and putting a plant in, no sprinklers or drip-lines needed! Everything just grows on its own, amazing.
Grandkids:
Here are two more examples of the differences in language between the English we speak in the US and Aussie English. There are lots of shops over here that fix cars when they get in a wreck:
Here’s a store you all would like to go to:
What do you think a lolly is? A lolly is a sucker. What do you think confectionary is? In the US, we call it candy!
Take a look at this fast-food restaurant. It is called Hungry Jack. Look at the picture and tell me what you think this chain is called in the US?
Yes, it is Burger King! I don’t know why it’s not called Burger King over here, but it’s not. Also, take a look at the word ‘Brekky’ on the sign. What do you think brekky is? If you said, ‘breakfast’ you are right!
This is a picture I took of a spider web on our fence. Can you see the leaf curled up in the center of the web? Guess what, the name of the spider that makes this kind of web is called a Curl Leaf Spider. The spider makes its web and then takes a leaf and curls it up tight and then crawls inside. The spider stays inside the leaf in the daytime when it’s hot and sunny or cold and rainy; it’s the spider’s house! The spider stays inside and comes out only to hunt for food. Pretty smart spider, huh?
Here’s a picture of two different kinds of wombats. I took these pictures a few weeks ago when Grandpa and I went to the animal park. I think wombats are kind of cute!
Here’s a link where you can learn more about wombats.
http://natgeotv.com.au/videos/animals/wombat-93AD3663.aspx
This is a picture of the lunch Grandpa and I had on Saturday. I had the sandwich. Grandpa had the meat pie.
This is a picture of the lunch Grandpa and I had on Saturday. I had the sandwich. Grandpa had the meat pie.
A meat pie is a very small chicken pot pie. They put mashed potatoes on top along with… smashed peas!! Then they put gravy all over the top. Look closely, you can see the pie on the bottom, then a layer of mashed potatoes, then a layer of smashed peas, then gravy. Grandpa said it was very good. I wasn’t sure I could eat smashed peas, I like regular peas, but smashed peas look a lot like guacamole and I think I’d rather have guacamole than smashed peas. The place where we ate lunch is called ‘Harry’s de Wheels’. It is in Parramatta, a city very close to where we live. It’s a walkup outdoor kind of restaurant. It looks like an old time caboose or circus car. It has been famous in Sydney since the 1930s. The city council back in the 1930s made a rule that mobile food caravans (like Harry’s) had to move at least 12 inches a day, so the owner, Harry, had wheels put on it and renamed it Hary’s de Wheels. Harry’s is so famous that important people who visit Sydney come here to eat all the time. Clear back in 1974, Colonel Sanders (the man who started Kentuckey Fried Chicken) came and liked the meat pies so much that he ate three ‘pies and peas’. The singer, Elton John, goes to Harry’s every time he comes to Australia, he even held a press conference from inside Harry’s in the 1970s. Other famous people who have eaten here are Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchem, Sir Richard Branson, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Brook Shields, Pat Rafter, Jerry Lewis, and Billy Crystal. Do you think you would like to eat a meat pie with smashed peas for dinner?
After we ate lunch, we went to the rugby game with some friends. The game was between the Parramatta Eels and the Bondi Roosters, (remember the beach I sent pictures of a couple of weeks ago? The Roosters are from Bondi). We like to go to the games where the Parramatta Eels play for two reasons: Parramatta is so close it only takes about 10 minutes to drive to the stadium, and we like the Eels because Will Hopawate, the recently returned missionary I wrote about a few weeks ago, plays for them. He is a very nice young man and is the only professional rugby player we know personally, so we are fans for his team, the Eels. Last night, after the game, when we were walking back to our car we started talking to a man who is from Parramatta. He told us the story behind how the team got to be called the Eels. He said, Parramatta is an aborigine word that means, ‘where the eels lie’. Parramatta is located next to a big river and the river has eels in it. The aborigines used to eat the eels, they would pull them out of the water and cook them over a fire. Once the white people came though, the aborigines moved away. The town of Parramatta was created soon after the first convicts and settlers landed in Australia. They chose the area because the land by the harbor is surrounded by salt water because of the ocean and farther inland the water was still brackish (a mix of the salt water and fresh water) and people need to have fresh clean water to drink and to water their crops with, so the people drove the aborigines off the land around Parramatta and took it over. The city is located on the Parramatta River and is one of the closest areas to Sydney harbor that had clean fresh water. Even though the British people made the aborigines leave, they kept the name of the area the same, Parramatta. The city was small for a long time and surrounded by big orchards, but gradually, as the city grew, the orchards were taken out. Eventually, the city of Parramatta got very big. The first Parramatta rugby team formed in the 1930s. They chose the name of the Eels because of the meaning of the word Parramatta.
I'm posting a video of a recent game the Eels played. Will Hopawate scores in this video too, but I would like you to pay attention to the other player who is featured. His name is Semi Radradra. He is from Fiji and is also, like Will, a very young player. He has an interesting story I would like to share with you. Semi has only been in Australia for a short time, not quite a year. He came to Australia to play rugby for the Parramatta Eels. He grew up in Fiji in a little island village called Somosomo, it is so far from the main island that it takes one and a half days on a ferry to get to the capital city, Suva, from his island. Here is a map so you can find the islands of Fiji.
After we ate lunch, we went to the rugby game with some friends. The game was between the Parramatta Eels and the Bondi Roosters, (remember the beach I sent pictures of a couple of weeks ago? The Roosters are from Bondi). We like to go to the games where the Parramatta Eels play for two reasons: Parramatta is so close it only takes about 10 minutes to drive to the stadium, and we like the Eels because Will Hopawate, the recently returned missionary I wrote about a few weeks ago, plays for them. He is a very nice young man and is the only professional rugby player we know personally, so we are fans for his team, the Eels. Last night, after the game, when we were walking back to our car we started talking to a man who is from Parramatta. He told us the story behind how the team got to be called the Eels. He said, Parramatta is an aborigine word that means, ‘where the eels lie’. Parramatta is located next to a big river and the river has eels in it. The aborigines used to eat the eels, they would pull them out of the water and cook them over a fire. Once the white people came though, the aborigines moved away. The town of Parramatta was created soon after the first convicts and settlers landed in Australia. They chose the area because the land by the harbor is surrounded by salt water because of the ocean and farther inland the water was still brackish (a mix of the salt water and fresh water) and people need to have fresh clean water to drink and to water their crops with, so the people drove the aborigines off the land around Parramatta and took it over. The city is located on the Parramatta River and is one of the closest areas to Sydney harbor that had clean fresh water. Even though the British people made the aborigines leave, they kept the name of the area the same, Parramatta. The city was small for a long time and surrounded by big orchards, but gradually, as the city grew, the orchards were taken out. Eventually, the city of Parramatta got very big. The first Parramatta rugby team formed in the 1930s. They chose the name of the Eels because of the meaning of the word Parramatta.
I'm posting a video of a recent game the Eels played. Will Hopawate scores in this video too, but I would like you to pay attention to the other player who is featured. His name is Semi Radradra. He is from Fiji and is also, like Will, a very young player. He has an interesting story I would like to share with you. Semi has only been in Australia for a short time, not quite a year. He came to Australia to play rugby for the Parramatta Eels. He grew up in Fiji in a little island village called Somosomo, it is so far from the main island that it takes one and a half days on a ferry to get to the capital city, Suva, from his island. Here is a map so you can find the islands of Fiji.
There are a lot of islands that make up Fiji. Semi came from a very, very poor family; he has had to earn most of the money to support his family because his father has a lung disease and hasn’t been able to work for several years. Semi was a very good rugby player, but he had to help run his family’s farm and make enough money for their family to be able to live, he also worked in the mines because their farm didn’t make enough money. He worked these jobs and supported his family while he was just a teenager. However, he was a very good rugby player in school and ended up getting to play rugby for the Fiji national team when he was 16. He was so good that he got noticed by rugby scouts and in 2013 when he was 18, the Parramatta Eels asked him to come play rugby for them. In order to do this, he would have to learn to play rugby differently from the way he’d learned to play in Fiji though. There are actually several types of rugby; each type has its own set of rules. Semi had been playing rugby union, but the Parramatta Eels play NRL (National Rugby League, kind of like in the US we have NFL, National Football League) rules. Rugby league rules are different from rugby union rules. Even though Semi had never played rugby league, he came to Australia to learn the rules and play NRL with the Parramatta Eels. When he first came, he didn’t have a contract yet, in other words, the team wasn’t paying him very much money at first; they wanted to wait and make sure he was able to learn how to play rugby using the NRL rules and could play as well as they thought he could. Now, here’s the part I want you to think about, this next part of his story is important… remember last week when I asked you to be kind to someone who needed a friend? Semi is a good example of someone who is a good friend to his family. When he first came to Australia to play rugby, he would not sleep in a bed, he slept only on the floor. He said his family back home in Fiji did not have beds, they were so poor they had to sleep on the floor because they could not afford beds, so he would not sleep in a bed because his family back home had to sleep on the floor.
Because he is such a good rugby player and he was smart enough to learn the rules of league rugby, he turned out to be a very good player and the Parramatta Eels gave him a contract for quite a bit of money. As soon as he got his money he bought his family back in Fiji beds to sleep on and has helped them to have a nicer house. Now he sleeps on a bed too, but he didn’t want to have the comfort of a bed before his family also had the blessing of sleeping in a bed. Do you think you could love your family as much as he has? Now he doesn’t have to work on the farm or in the mines anymore, he is able to help his family have a better life because he is such a good rugby player. He plays rugby for his family, not just for himself. Watch him run, he is very powerful! ! In the short video you can see both Semi and Will score for the Eels. It takes a minute to load and you have to watch a commercial, but you can make the screen big and see the highlights of the game pretty well. Something funny about rugby is that when you get the ball over the line (in football it would be called a touchdown) and score, they call it a 'try'. A try is a score and it's worth four points.
http://media.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-league/eels-stun-warriors-5246267.html
If you have trouble getting the short video to work, here is a longer version of the same game. I like the shorter one better, but use this if the short one won't work.
I hope you have a good week and remember to be kind to others, especially people in your family! Grandpa and I love you very much
If you have trouble getting the short video to work, here is a longer version of the same game. I like the shorter one better, but use this if the short one won't work.
I hope you have a good week and remember to be kind to others, especially people in your family! Grandpa and I love you very much
More editing!! May you be greatly blessed for your service :)
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