April 10

It's been a long time since I've blogged. There's a couple of reasons for this, mostly I just have a hard time making myself take the time to do it! We are busy all day and often much of the weekend doing our job, so when we have free time, I don't want to do more work, and writing a blog is work, so.... I just don't do it. Sorry. Secondly, we don't have much time to do sightseeing kinds of things anymore. I know it appears that we are always out and about having fun, but in reality, we are mostly in the office and traveling about doing work related things, but they are not particularly interesting to read about, so that's another reason I post so rarely any more. It's hard to believe that we will be home in less than 3 months! It's Fall down here, so the weather is getting cooler. It's weird to think that we will leave here in July, the depth of winter here, and fly into the hot summer weather of the northern hemisphere. We originally were planning to leave Sydney and fly to Beijing for a few days and on to Taipei, Taiwan where Dave served his mission for a few days and then fly home. The more we talked to people from Beijing though the more the idea of going there in July seemed like a bad idea. Apparently, July is the worst month for heat, humidity, and air pollution. In July, the heat and humidity intensify the pollution to the point that you have to wear a mask every time you go outside. I hate heat combined with humidity, and apparently Beijing has a corner on the 'misery' department weather-wise that time of year. Spending our outside sightseeing time covered in a mask didn't sound so great either. Last week we decided to change our flight plans and move our China trip a few months forward to April of 2016. Apparently, springtime is a really nice time of the year to go, so that's our new plan. We will go straight from Sydney to Las Vegas on July 4th and get our house in Vegas put in order and then go to Idaho on the 13th as originally planned. Going home has always seemed so far off, but now it's becoming something we have to plan for in the not-so-distant future. It seems like we've been gone forever, but at the same time, the time has gone by really fast. Weird how that happens. It's kind of like when your kids grow up, it seems like they will be little forever, but then one day, they aren't little anymore and you wonder how all those years went by so quickly.

I thought I'd post at least one work picture today... this picture was taken at a meeting we went to recently. We attended a meeting for a group who work to advance the rights of New Zealand citizens living in Australia. A very common path for people of the Pacific Islands (mainly Tonga and Samoa) is for families to migrate from an island nation to New Zealand (this is the first stop, because it's so easy to get citizenship in New Zealand-- it only takes 2 years) and then once they get NZ citizenship, they move to Australia because there are more jobs here and the pay is so much better ($17 an hour minimum wage). There's a very long and somewhat complicated history involved with people from NZ migrating to Australia, but choosing not to get Australian citizenship. It used to be there was a great deal of reciprocity between the two nations and so choosing to  not become an Australian citizen was not detrimental overall to the average person. Even though they were not citizens, they still got medical benefits, housing benefits, etc. However, since the early 2001, Australia has tightened up the opportunities that used to be available because they felt that the non-citizens were becoming too much of a burden on the government welfare benefits. Now there are many NZ citizens lobbying for more benefits. One of the big pushes though, and one we support, is for NZ citizens to follow the required processes and get their Australian citizenship. Probably the biggest benefit of citizenship is the educational benefits open to Australian citizens. I've talked about it before, so I won't go into detail, but the education benefit for Australian citizens is terrific, the government loans them the money for university at 4% interest and they are not responsible to begin paying it back until they have a job earning $53,000 a year. Once they reach the $53,000 mark, the loan payment is automatically deducted from their paycheck, kind of like taxes are, so the person never misses the money because they never had it, their paycheck came with the deductions already taken out. The nice part of this system is that a person never has to have money up front to pay for school, no out-of-pocket money for tuition and books like in the US, the government makes the loan and collects at a later date, once the person has a good job. Keep in mind though, $53,000 Australian is like $43,000 US dollars, so really an income of $53,000 is on the low side compared to the US. The cost of living over here is very high compared to the US too. Right now it's about 76 cents US for $1.00 Australian on average, it varies day by day. The last time I got $300 from the ATM, when I checked my bank statement it showed my withdrawal was $263. Right now is a good time to be a US citizen in Australia:) But I digress... the meeting we attended below was for us to get information to try to help the people we work with who would like to get education, but aren't eligible for the government benefits for citizens. That's my new project, to design the 'best option' pathways for non-citizens. Really, their best option is to return to New Zealand and go to school there because NZ has the same education program that Australia does. What these people really need to do, is go through the process to become citizens, but it costs several thousand dollars for the average person to do this, so most don't. What surprised me when we got here was that, even if you are born here, if both of your parents are non-citizens (even though they may be legal Permanent Residents) you are not a citizen. You have to live here 10 years after being born without leaving the country, and then you become a citizen. The US is completely opposite, if you're born in the US, you're a citizen. I thought all countries were like that, but I was wrong. Most countries are like Australia, at least one of your parents has to be a citizen in order for you to be a citizen if you're born here. If the US had this law, a lot of the immigration problems we have now would not exist! The Chinese couple we are good friends with, the young couple who got married in November, were planning to go to the US the first of October for October Conference the first weekend, but their baby is due the end of October and apparently you have to have a visitor visa to go to the US on a Chinese passport and part of the visa includes a medical check and one month before the delivery date is considered too close to allow them to go. The US doesn't want to chance the baby being born early and becoming a US citizen by accident!! They will have to postpone their trip until after the baby is born.

The picture below is of us and the ladies who are spearheading the movement to try to get the Australian citizenship laws changed. Our boss, Johnny, is on the end. He was just sustained as an Area Authority Seventy in Conference last week. He will be wonderful in that calling. We have been so blessed to have him as our boss. He is so kind and caring. He is a very great man and I have a great deal of respect for him. We will miss him when we go home:(

Last weekend we went with some friends, the Finches (relatives of our friends the Finches from Fruitland) up north to the top area of our mission area. The town, McLean, originally was made up of people from Scotland, so the town has continued the tradition of having Highland Games once a year. It was fun to go, especially because the trip up was so beautiful. We stopped at many beaches and at several lighthouses. We stayed at a wonderful Bed and Breakfast on our trip also. It was nice to have a couple of days to just relax. I've only included a few pictures. You are probably tired of seeing all my pictures of beaches!

It's funny, as we walked through this area of sea grass, all I could think of was 'ticks, I bet there's ticks on these things'. I guess I was an Idaho girl for too many years. This type of grass reminds me of the sagebrush back home and I was immediately on the lookout for ticks.

The walk down was nicer than the walk up!

Look at the roots on this tree! We stopped to take pictures and the rancher was out clearing out his ditches. This is a fig tree, non-edible figs, he said he figures this tree is about 150 years old!

The first day was full of bagpipe competitions, both individual and groups.

My husband's middle name is 'Gordon' his relatives from Scotland were from the clan Gordon.

Watching the pipers in the rain!

Another beautiful beach and the surrounding rocks.

Grandkids: 

I thought you might like to see some of the interesting little things we saw on our trip.

This is the Bed and Breakfast house we stayed at. The man who owned it was very nice. He had some cool plants and trees around his house. We got to pick grapefruit off his trees for breakfast! He gave us some to take home and also some limes he picked off his tree just for us.  We made guacamole with the limes and some avocados we got. 

This little frog was sitting on the porch when we went to go into our room. The owner of the house picked him up to move him off the porch and into the bushes. He had to get his hands wet before he could touch the frog because if you touch the frog with your dry hands it will injure the frog's skin and it will die.  I had to take a quick picture because the frog was really scared and kept trying to escape and jump out of the man's hands. He was a very strong frog. 

I'm sorry that this picture is sideways, I forgot to turn it before I uploaded it. If you turn it and look at it correctly, I think it looks kind of like a little puppet with two yellow eyes. What do you think? This is a ginger plant, not the kind of ginger we eat, but it's still called a ginger plant. 

This plant is called dragon fruit. You can eat the red fruit that you see on this plant. It's pretty good. We eat it in fruit salads.

This little girl was getting ready to compete in a Scottish dance contest. She was dancing a Highland dance where she had to dance over crossed swords.  I took her picture because she is wearing the Gordon tartan. We are from the clan Gordon, so if you were to dress in the clan of your Scottish ancestors, you would be dressed in this same plaid.

I took these guys pictures because I thought you would like to see what an Australian lifeguard looks like. I'm not sure why, but the lifeguards have to wear these suits and those funny hats. I thought they looked silly, but apparently the Australians think they look just fine. 

You can tell this tree growing at the edge of the ocean has spent a lot of its life in the wind. It is growing pretty much sideways. The kids playing in it really liked the way it grows, it was just their size!

I love you all very much and miss you. I will get to see you pretty soon, summer is coming!