March 9th Update

Our update for this week begins with words and food that are different from the US.

Drinking fountain:  bubbler (pronounced bubb-la)

Speed bump:  Hump

Bathroom:  Loo or toilet

Redheads:  Rangas

Trashcan: bin

Trash:  Rubbish

Garbage dumpster:  Skip

Non-uniform clothes:  Mufti

French-fries:  Chips

A break in or school or a snack: Recess

Flip-flops / Slippers:  Thongs (you can imagine the confusion here)

Math:  Maths

Hugs:  Cuddles

Breakfast:  Brekkie

Hike:  Bush walk

Hello:  G’Day

How are you doing:  How you going

Tasmania: Tazzie

University:  Uni

High School:  College

Something that is a mess:  A dog's breakfast

Flip turn in a pool:  Tumble turn

Gas:  Petrol

Swim team:  Swim Squad

Soccer:  Soccer

Football:  Aussie Rules Football

We can't think of any others now, but I am sure that there are more to come. I think that we have mentioned the high price of everything here.  Just to give you some perspective, we went to the movies last night--$18.50 per adult, $14.00 per kid.  The nice thing was that they had live music in the lobby and beer and wine at the snack bar.  

We finally had a sunny day on a weekend so we went in search of a good surfing beach today.  We discovered what we think will be our favorite surfing beach in Sydney.  It is north of the harbor and is called Freshwater.   Check out the pictures from the bluffs over the beach:

An interesting piece of surfing trivia:  Freshwater Beach is where Duke Kahanamoku introduced Hawaiian style surfing to Australia in 1914.  We are now in search of a few used boards that we can use on a regular basis rather than having to borrow or rent boards.  Today's waves were small and proved one thing about us:  we are not very good and need practice.

This is Shelby now. Do note, the comment about "we are not very good" does not include me. I still refuse to surf, and my shoulder injury wouldn't bode too well with it anyway. At least that's my excuse. Ah and the picture of my mom and dad looking out at the beach, that is christmas card worthy, don't you think?

I don't really know what to write, so if you get bored, my apologies. It has been really fun so far, and SOOOOO hot! We haven't encountered many scary animals like people warned us about, besides the spiders that love the trees in our "backyard" and the several B-52 bombers (cockroaches) Gavin found in our room. The school uniforms remain hideous, and I'm pretty sure I will never like them. I'm pretty sure Ali would agree with me when I say we crave the weekends when we can wear whatever we want, and no ugly black leather shoes! We had a really good time at the beach today, but Ali, being Ali, managed to get sunburn despite applying and reapplying sunscreen multiple times. School is super easy, and the other day in science, my teacher said something to the class, and then asked me if what he said was correct. I feel like that's saying things (not good things) about that teacher. That's all! WE LOVE AND MISS ALL OF YOU!! Come visit!

Hi --It's Lee back again.  As Shelby said, the kids are not feeling stressed about school.  It seems most often home work gets done at school and leaving time for hanging out after school. All the kids tried out a couple of swim squads last week.  One of them, at the University of Sydney, has a couple of Olympians / Paralympians swimming there.  The only problem is that the have predominantly morning practice times at 5 - 7 am. Needless to say, this was not a high priority for anyone.  The other pool that we checked out has afternoon practices, an outdoor pool, as well as nice exercise facilities for us non-swimmers in the group.  It sounds like we will start practices this week.   Shelby and Gavin both have competed for their schools and did well enough to advance to larger Sydney area competitions.  Gavin swam the 50 meter breaststroke at his "zone" competition last week, while Shelby goes with her team to the regional competition this week swimming the 100 fly, 200 IM, and the 200 free relay, I think.
 Gavin is playing in the band at school doing percussion.  He has been excited about it because over the past two weeks he has gotten to play the Glockenspiel and the Xylophone during some of the pieces.  There is a music camp that he gets to attend later in March.  Shelby continues to work on the aquarium that she designed in her Marine Biology class.  I think that they go to buy the fish sometime in the next week or so.  In her history class, Shelby is learning about World War I, but it is interesting to read / hear about it from an Australian perspective.  They are currently talking about Gallipoli and watching the Hollywood movie made about it.  We have all learned tons about that.  Ali is still trying to figure out her math class.  Right now it is a good review of stuff she has done previously.  She is going to go next week and talk to her counselor to see if she can switch classes.  Her two favorite classes appear to be Music Theory and Sport (where she does Theatre sport--which I guess is like acting training?)
Anna has spent the past week working hard on the data processing that she is doing for work while I have been helping the group that I am working with put the finishing touches on a grant application to their federal biomedical research funding body (NHMRC).

Last weekend, even though the weather was dreadful, we went south out of Sydney to a National Park called Royal National Park. Besides the park, we visited an animal park and got to see a ton more animals up close...some very close...see Gavin's snake picture below.

 This was the most awake I have ever seen Koalas.

I love Shelby's face in this picture..it seems like she is saying "I can't believe I am petting a Koala."

 A Rock Wallaby

 The next thing that happened is the Kangaroo tried to just eat right out of the bag.

 A Tasmanian (Tazzie) Devil.  They seem like fairly anxious animals--always moving--although being in a zoo might do that to you.  We learned that 95% of the Tazzie Devils in the wild have died mainly because of a cancer causing virus that is killing them off quickly.  There are some estimates that they will be extinct within this decade.

It doesn't get much more up close and personal than this.  We do think that it is kind of funny that an American kid had to come to Australia so that he could get his picture taken with a South American snake. 

Until our next post...hope you are well.

Love,

Lee, Anna, Ali, Shelby, and Gavin