To bring you up to date:
Lee has been working (but not too hard). He has been writing (grants and papers) and has continued planning an international conference that will be held here is Sydney in June.
Anna has been working (but not too hard). She is a now a pro at processing motion capture data for several research projects from the University of Utah.
Gavin is cruising along in school. Since he is friendly and sociable and he is the one with the cool American accent, he has had no problems fitting in with his class. He is currently puzzled by the behavior of two girls in his class who get mad at each other when he talks to one of them but not the other. It was humorous to listen to Anna explain to Gavin that despite his best efforts to be nice to both of them, girls are sometimes hard to understand. Can you believe that the boy turns 11 this week!
Shelby is having a relatively easy time in school. Her Maths (that is what they call it here) teacher handed her the Year 10 book and told her that she and another student should work through the book on her own since the rest of the class was there yet. She really likes her two History classes and just changed in PE to a kayaking class. Get this--she gets to sea kayak in Sydney Harbor for PE--how cool is that!!
Ali has to work a little harder than Shelby in school and seems to be enjoying most of her classes. She really likes her Music Theory class and also PE (where she is taking Theatre Sports--I think this is acting..) She has found an Orchestra to play with and was excited by the fact that the group may get to play at the Sydney Opera House.
The kids (and the adults) are using technology to their advantage. We have become big fans of Skype and FaceTime. With no TV in the house, our big challenge as parents is to limit the screen time on their iPods. It seemed easier when it was just one big TV in one room, not a portable device that can go anywhere. This is not an uncommon view in the house:
But there are definitely some humorous exchanges that occur with friends and family. Here is a screen capture of Shelby and her cousin Chloe talking via FaceTime.
Shelby qualified for the Sydney regional school swimming championships and got to swim in the Sydney Olympic Pool. Check out the venue and whose footprints she got to size up.
If you don't like the above venue, check out the location of the pool below. Many of the beaches have salt water pools immediately adjacent. So if you get tired of the open water--just hop over and swim a few laps.
We are still adjusting to the different names of the food and the different types of food. Guess which of the 3 items below that we like and which one doesn't show up in the kids lunches:
This one of Anna's and my bedroom in our oh so spacious house. I guess life can't be all bad if you have to store surf boards in your room next to the biking jersey that has to hang dry.
The kids have Friday and Monday off of school so we are heading south of Sydney for a quiet relaxing weekend. We are going to a place near Jervis bay (they pronounce it like Jarvis) which is about a 3 hour drive south of Sydney . Supposedly it is beautiful with some brilliant white sand beaches. Check out the map and the pictures. Hopefully our pictures will look like this. We will post ours when we get back on Tuesday.
Happy Easter! We will post again on Tuesday or Wednesday when we get back from our beach trip. Hopefully we will have surfing / snorkeling / beach walking stories to tell you.
Love,
The Dibble Family
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