Runnin' Down the Highway

Road trip!

Budget Rental Car hooked the Michiganders up with a Ford - we're finally driving an American car!


We started off a little rocky, by forgetting to ask Mapquest to give us directions in kilometers, so we spent the 137 miles converting miles to km - running 5Ks turned out to be helpful.

When not rounding everything to the nearest 5K and missing the entrance to the freeway, I managed to take pictures as subtly as possible, without distracting the driver - who signaled every turn to the audience in the car by first turning on the wipers. Left is right and right is left.

Back seats are good for nappin' in any country.

This sign made us smile. If it's raining here, you should slow down from 100, (let's see, a 10K is 6.2 miles, so a 100km is...)

The freeway is short and sweet, then we're back to roundabouts -
look right and hope for the best. Steven reminded me that right around here in the trip, about 2 hours in, the car beeps and suggests that you take a break for a while. The iced cappuccino that the driver had suggested that we keep going for at least another 30 minutes.

We found a few more words for Molly's spelling list.
Let's start with the edge of the sidewalk next to the road:

My personal favorite is the official government document that you need to drive a car. In all my years, I've never been able to figure out if the 's' is first, or the 'c'. Here in Australia, it's so much simpler, all 'c's! Licence! Sweet.

On the way back home, we followed this rockin' bus for a while. If you cannot read the fine print, it says "Licenced for 50 party animals, 35 seated and 15 dancing" and the 15 really were.

Saturday In Nelson Bay

Nelson Bay is a small town in the Port Stevens region of New South Wales. We found a yummy Thai restaurant Friday night and asked everyone who would talk to us, how we should spend our time. We started Saturday morning climbing Mount Tomaree in Tomaree National Park. I think we were the first Americans to reach the summit, that morning.
Here's a view of Zenith beach from above and

below.
The beaches aren't real popular in the winter, except with our inappropriately dressed children. Charlie was shouting at the water, "Enough!", then running after the receding waves. Ahh, to believe you have power...

We ate well on this trip, here the kids are trying some Australian Rattle Snake, the Starburst kind. Then, off to Red Ned's for some pie.

These are award winning savory pies, mind you. This is the open gourmet steak and potato - last one left by the time we got there. Charlie had a sausage roll and I went with a creamy prawn type. teak, potato, ham and cheese

Now we're slightly better prepared for the beach - Birubi beach, which is next to huge sand dunes, so, of course, there are camel tours. We passed on those but didn't resist the urge to try sand boarding. As I type, I'm sitting on a pillow to ease the pain of a bruised tail bone, but the three kiddos LOVED it. Even the little guy who masters waves carried his board up and down, up and down setting "world records".

I'm not sure the videos convey the wackiness of the the endeavor. Molly's face plant and "save face" jump at the end are impressive and Daniel was the dragon slayer, trying the tallest, steepest slope before anyone else.

After pizza (Aussie style with egg and ham) and a shower to get sand out of every crevice, the kids slept quite well and Mike and I tried to figure out the rules of AFL (Aussie Rules Football), or maybe it was Rugby, we're not sure. I am sure the announcers are not shy about insulting plays and players the don't like. Oh, and our accommodations (a 2 bedroom place we found on stayz.com, a version of VRBO) had a clothes drier, so we brought all our laundry with us and enjoyed the luxury of not needing clothes pins to get our socks dry :-).

Friday Assembly

Every fortnight there is an assembly at the South Coogee Public School. Daniel's class ran the first one of the 3rd Term. They performed an original play they wrote called "Little Red Riding Hood Meets the Dingo." It's a public service message about not meeting up with people from chatrooms. Daniel was part of the chorus and had a minor role holding the sign letting everyone know we'd made it to Granny's house.

Also at the assembly, we heard the Australian National Anthem and the South Coogee Public School song for the first time.

Finally, the assemble is time to recognize good behavior. Many, many, many awards are handed out. Sarah received one for careful sketching, Michael received one for listening well all the time, Katie earned an award for pretty cursive, Thomas received one for trying much harder (gotta wonder how things were going before that :-)) and so on and so on. Oh, AND Daniel Conlon/lin won the following:

Daniel in his sports uniform receiving his award.

At the conclusion, a student in each class one one for behaving the best in the assembly (one teacher announced htat she was going to give it a particular unnamed student but then that student started talking). A class won an award for behaving the best of all the classes in the assembly...you get the picture. Not to take away from Daniel's very impressive award, but they do like to recognize students here!

Mixin' it up with Charlie

Charlie and I were on the town today riding the 316 and 317 to Eastgarden shopping center in search of cupcake supplies for the Cake Stall sponsored by Stage 1 (that's Molly) at South Coogee Public School. We don't know what jelly cups are, which were the other suggested contribution, so we're going with what we know. We filled our trolley with two all-in-one mixes and sprinkles for on top. Charlie wanted to go with the Harry Potter cupcake mix, but I talked him out of it - I'm no fun at all. The all in one worked well, since we don't have 3 cupboards and a drawer full of baking supplies in our Moverly RD digs. You'll notice we do have room for Coco Pops - a moment of caving to our children who are missing summer vacation for uniforms and school instead.

In the same aisle as the cupcake mix, we couldn't resist the pancake mix, where you just fill the bottle up to the line. The Cadbury chocolate chips we bought as accessories don't come in the quantity sized bag we're used to, but that might be just fine.
Charlie did his part in the baking. I'm sorry to report that he lost his chance to lick the icing beater after attempting to take a bite out of his sister.


This is a plant in our backyard. Could they be poinsettias? They look like them from our balcony. Our landlords live downstairs, but they haven't been here since we've arrived, so we're not sure about what our access to the back yard is. On the walk to the park this afternoon, I saw two irises blooming. Yes, we're in the "dead" of winter.

A neighborhood stroll

It's warmed and sunnied up here in Sydney, so we took an evening stroll. It gets dark by 5:30 still, but you still know the Ocean is waving along side of you. We took the lights off our bikes as makeshift flashlights in case it was too dark.


Ollie the dog is barely visible in this photo, wearing a light up collar. He listened to his owner the way Charlie listens to us when we want him to come, which is how we know Ollie's name.

Charlie is still in the midst of an allergic reaction that blotches up his face whenever he goes outside so he hung out with Mike and me today. I took him to a cafe on campus where I had a $2.20 can of Coke (I've cut back since arriving to the prices of pop/soda here - it's $17 for a 30 pack) and he had $0.85 Cadbury's chocolate chip :-) . There, we had the option of watching The View on the big screen tvs - yep, Whoopi and Barbara. Somehow, that didn't take the sting out of our expensive guilty pleasures!


School news...I'm not sure how school funding works around here overall, but it is the case that there are a lot of extras. Every excursion (field trip) and incursion (speaker/presenter that comes to school, next week is Insektus - the bug man) requires a permission slip and money. Daniel will be doing tennis on Fridays during sports and that required dollars too. Molly's teacher asked her if we could send the slips and $ in in envelopes from now on - I guess Mrs. Monkhouse is tired of my makeshift folded up slips of paper (if only she could see our flashlights) with firm instructions not to drop it and to give it right to your teacher. We don't really have spare office supplies lying around, I'm not very good at origami and we don't even have any junk mail envelopes to recycle - although we have received 2 pieces of snail mail in our 3 weeks' time!

Just one more peculiar difference between US and Australian public schools...at the risk of violating the copyright of Carl's Cafe by Dianne Bates, Molly was reading to me tonight from her 1st grade home reader and we came across this passage:

"Two, four, six, eight, bog in, don't wait!" Rodney and Jeffrey chorused as Carl ladled out the food.

"You've got to say your prayers first." Kelli-Ann said.

Rodney was just about to shovel a forkful of food into his mouth.

"Its called grace and it's like prayers. If we don't say it before we eat, then we'll get dead and we won't go to heaven, " Kelli- Ann insisted.

"All right then" we chorused, just to keep her quiet.

Kelli-Ann recited a very long story about starving children.

"Hurry up, Kelli-Ann, or I'll starve to death, " Rodney interupted.

"Amen."

I'm not quite sure what to say about this. Perhaps it speaks for itself? G'night mates!

Just like home...or not

Familiar:

• Today started with the decision to take Charlie to the doctor for a cough gone bad. It started innocently enough, but just like it does on the other side of the world, it turned on us. In addition, he had some nice rashes showing up on his face and legs. Of course, they come and go and they went when Mike got him to the doctor. However, we're in business with drugs so we'll all be better soon!
• Ruby C's (yes, there are 2 Ruby's) mum at the kiddos' school asked me to help with a fundraiser. Our cake stall will be Friday after school, if you'd like to contribute a cake or buy a treat to help with something I didn't understand. If you've got any suggestions about how to bake without pans, I'll take those too.
• The kitchen table is covered with papers of things we're supposed to remember to fill in, pay for, put on calendar, email teacher about...
• I rode my bike to and from work.
  

Not so familiar:

• The first word on Molly's spelling list is pram. 1/5 Dickert-Conlins knew what a pram was.
  
• Molly wears a hat to school.
• The libraries here have self-checkout - very cool!! Why don't we?!
• The sunrise during my run this morning caused me to walk just a bit.
• The hills on the bike ride are brutal, and I'm only carrying my laptop, not a 45 lb preschooler: Mike's mountain stage of the Tour de France.
  

Taronga - Zoo with a View

Using our favorite Sunday public transportation pass, we head off for the Taronga Zoo. Bus, ferry, bus and we've arrived.

Seriously, you cannot believe the view from here - the giraffes have multimillion dollar views of the Sydney Harbor.

We got our first sighting of a kangaroo, koala and wallaby in the zoo. While not exactly in their natural environment, it marked a milestone.

Oh, we also saw a Tasmanian Devil, who didn't look even remotely like the Looney Tunes one I remember. , although he did run around and around and around while we watched him. The Devils are in trouble because of a nasty cancer that is attacking them - because each one is so genetically similar to all the others, their body doesn't know to fight the cancer when it encounters it.


We were not so lucky to catch the shy platypus in action. However, lots of excitement at the bird show when a parrot took a coin from a woman and returned an engagement ring instead of the coin. Romance at the zoo!

Daniel, or "you there in the blue jumper" (and cool shades), was picked to assist in getting a seal to jump and touch a ball at the seal show. Then our star needed a break from fame so settled in with the casual reading he smuggled on the trip.


We rode the Sky Safari a few times - a round trip ride to and from the top of the zoo:


Finally, we fed the giraffes - even Mr. Charlie.