The thanks we are giving

Australian

American

Happy Thanksgiving Week! The Perrett clan skipped the traditional feed because I couldn't find any cranberries in these parts, and  I for one don't see the point in eating roast turkey if there isn't any tangy sauce to go with it. Instead we marked the day by pausing to reflect on our gratitude for our phenomenal good fortune. Here is a sampling of what we are thankful for:

daughter/sister says: " I'm grateful we are fortunate enough to be able to come to Australia for a year"

dad/husband says: "our healthy family"

mom/wife says: "my family, my family of friends, and that the teenage years don't last forever"

son/brother says: "I'm thankful we live 2 minutes from the beach and I can go surfing whenever I want, and I'm thankful we have been in Australia for a year"

In the last handful of years,we have spent thanksgiving in many places. At home with a crowd or a few, at Chery'ls house to bring joy following tragedy, in Denver with our cousins, in an airport in Kauai, at Abruzzi's restaurant just with Tom's mom, singing and then serving at the Arcata Veteran's hall.  When I was young we had all the family at my Aunt Evelyn's house (the kids always got our own table....we loved that)

Tom's uncle Mike and his wife Vivian from Ojai  have had a love affair with Australia longer than we have, and regularly come to this area. They arrived while I was in the outback, and came over for dinner the day after I got home. Guests also were Tom's cousin Ellen who hails from La Jolla and her friend Rob, a Sydneysider. After dinner we gathered 'round the television and I showed off all my outback photos. My camera has not been far from my hand all year.  I've taken thousands of snaps. I'm in the process of making a hardbound photo book of the entire year, which has been a huge project. Our broadband data usage is metered at our house, so thanks to the Coolum public library free wi-fi I'm able to complete my album! Soon I'll be donating most of our bookshelf to them. Tom and I have plowed through many volumes this year, but the pages the kids are staring at have been overwhelmingly online. Sigh. They do know how to read books however, as Eli recently demonstrated by starting and finishing Harry Potter 7 (again) within a week.

For some time now I have been attempting to spew gratitude whenever and wherever I can. I am brimming with it! It's filling up all my wicker baskets, cootie catchers, rain gutters, pencil cups and ant traps.  Twenty ten has been truly remarkable for our family and will be a cherished memory forever.  We have been so fortunate to reap the rewards of Tom's many years of working 60 hour  plus weeks building his business, and now being able to leave it (sort of) for a year to be run by capable managers. If not for Chris Albright in particular, we couldn't have made this happen. He has been steadfastly minding the ship as we cavort on the other side of the world. And as I have reported, we have done a fair bit of gallivanting around!

Speaking of gallivanting, we have adventures in store when we depart Oz in a few short weeks. We are Asia bound! We've known since we started planning this year we were going to be traveling during this time between continents, mostly  due to Eli's school schedule. He starts the second semester of his sophomore year at Arcata High on Jan 18, and Mel will go back to the last 6 months of  middle school at Pacific Union. How strange will that be, as she is in high school here!  For a month we'll be  in transition,  living neither on Wunnunga Crescent or on 11th street.

We fly away on Dec 11 and our first stop is Bangkok. Tom can't count how many times he's traveled the SFO-BKK route for Tomas business, but the rest of us have not had the pleasure. (OK, I did make a  brief stop on my way to India in 1993, a lifetime ago) We'll meet the folks he works with and see the haunts where he prowls for new jewelry designs, meets with suppliers, networks and problem solves for his ever growing company. After spending a few days being tourists and marveling at the wonders of this city of 10 million plus, we are off to Cambodia on Dec 15.

Following many many hours of pursuing ideas, we are booked to volunteer as a family in a school/orphanage in Siem Reap. Volunteer vacations are the latest craze and I have done extensive research to make sure we will to spending time with a reputable organization, not taking jobs away from locals,  and contributing in a meaningful way. Type 'volunteer Cambodia' and thousands of websites pop up,  promising "exciting, life changing, flexible and worthwhile" experiences. After heading down some avenues which began to look sus, (Australian for suspicious) I ramped up the research again,  talked and read and pondered for several more hours, and we have signed up with an NGO called vMAD.org (Volunteer and Make a Difference for good). While I'm not attached to the experience being described with ALL four of the above adjectives, I do think it will be interesting and certainly different from our previous travels!

How our time will be spent with vMAD is somewhat unknown, but we might be helping in the classrooms, with community building projects, in afterschool care, or who knows what. Eli has had a fabulous computer class this year, and has come away with a boatload of tech savvy, especially in terms software applications. He's hoping to contribute to the IT program, and also make a movie while we're there.  Melissa is a natural with young ones, and will easily contribute to any childcare situation. Tom and I have strong backs, the cumulative wisdom of 106 years of life, and are keen to help or at least not get in the way. Our time there is short so we plan to hit the ground running.

Following our week or so in Cambodia, we'd like to travel overland to a bordering country, either Laos or the southern end of Thailand. We might get as far a Vietnam. Unplanned. Definitely a style of travel to which we are unaccustomed! We're not wingin' it for long, as we have a flight booked  from Bangkok to Bali on New Year's Eve. We have about 10 days on the beautiful island of Bali before we head back to Oz to collect our belongings which will have been stored in Brisbane and then transferred to Sydney. Thank you Quantas Courier service.  Then, off to America. If you're in town, please come to our welcome home party at the Arcata airport on Thursday Jan 13 at 3:45!!

Dispatch from the Bush

Emus!

 I’ve just returned from a two week sojourn to the outback. Traveling over 3000 kilometers in 10 days ……you could say I saw a lot of country! I was volunteering with Outback Links, an organization that matches intrepid souls in placements helping remote families dealing with the realities of living in the back of beyond. The program is a branch of Frontier Services. I traveled with the early education RAFS (Remote Area Family Service) field service coordinator. Flick (week one) and Emma (week 2) are dedicated educators undeterred by the isolation and extensive travel requirements of their job: providing play based enrichment for children up to age 5.

Charleville races

Davida, Flick and yours truly

fancy fascinators

Before heading off to begin the scheduled loop for 7 playgroups around southwest Queensland, I arrived in Charleville (12 hours west of Brisbane by car, but I flew) the day before the Melbourne Cup. Country races have been held in Charleville for 50 years on the same day as the Melbourne Cup, and for the 3300 residents it’s a public holiday and a very big day out. Over a thousand folks turned up to watch each other, five local races, and the big one on TV. After getting some instructions from Davida and Flick, I approached one of the bookmakers to bet on my first horse race. Thinking it was entirely possible I was perhaps the only American in attendance, seems I should bet on the horse called Americain. At exactly 2 pm all two thousand eyes were glued to one of the many televisions around the place and, behold and lo, I picked a winner! Had I wagered more than 10 dollars, this would have been even more exciting. The ‘fashions on the field’ were no doubt a bit less fabulous than in Melbourne, but Charleville’s ladies frocked up with fascinators, hats, plenty of jewelry, and tottered around in the dirt and grass in fancy high heels, many of them looking tremendously uncomfortable.

Also on the agenda for my time in the bush was tagging along while my RAFS compatriots attended an early education conference in the thriving town of Goondiwindi on the border of New South Wales. Although it wasn’t large enough to boast a stoplight, the town did have a large hotel, more than one gas station, Domino's pizza …the population was in the thousands! This was by FAR the largest town I visited. On arrival we were served a camp oven dinner (chili cooked over a campfire) with billy tea, but I was told it wasn’t the real deal, as authentic bush tea is meant to be strong enough to stand up your spoon. The conference lasted a day and a half, with interesting presenters and good information…..I hadn’t been to a professional conference in many a year.

mess o' bees

So we’re off to do the playgroups, with our 4WD vehicle packed up to and including the roof rack with blocks and dress up clothes, paint and glitter, soap bubbles, a train set, a water slide and a wading pool. We’d set up at the town park/hall on the grass, and the mums and tots poured in from the surrounding properties, which may have been up to two hours away. On several occasions I was able to lend suggestions and a listening ear to mum’s who voiced speech and language concerns about their little ones. Three hours later when everyone was thoroughly soaked and inevitably someone was crying, we packed up. The temperature was usually near 100 by now. We grabbed a cold drink and sandwich at the pub/grocery store/gas station/ restaurant/post office/bank….all of these housed in either one or two nearby buildings. Off we roared down the one lane road to the next town. Sometimes we encountered a vehicle or two and sometimes not. Once, for about a kilometer,  there was a dotted white line down the middle of the road: it was there in case the road needed to be used as an emergency landing strip.

river near Thagomindah

Between two and six hours later, we arrived in the next spot, spent the night, and got up the next day to do it all again. In between towns was…….nothing. Well, not nothing: rocks, red dirt, brush, trees, occasional small hills, more red dirt, cattle, sheep, goats, emus, snakes, lizards and goannas, kangaroos, wallaroos. The farther west we drove the more barren the landscape. Bird life was abundant; we saw apostle birds, budgies,butcher birds pelicans, one pair of brolgas and one pair of major mitchell's cockatoos, gallahs, among others. On the last day we saw wedge tailed eagles, which are one of the largest birds of prey: they can carry off lambs!I didn’t see any dingos as they usually don’t come near the road, but we did see a few wild pigs and foxes that were road kill. Happily the three venomous snakes I saw were dead, but I heard stories of very alive deadly snakes that almost everyone has encountered in one way or another.We crossed several streams ,which when flooded (as often happened this year) makes the road inaccessible. The streams/waterholes were all the same color: mocha. Due to all the rain recently, we saw  heaps of wildflowers and much more brush and plant life than is normally present.

wearing my fly veil

one of my companions in the loo

Outback folks were welcoming and friendly, always hospitable and happy to see us. The towns with schools (only primary, older kids were sent to boarding school) had enrollments of between 5 and 20. ‘Town’ is relative term, two of the ‘towns’ we came through had a population of less than 5. There was a pub/hotel/restaurant, and gas pump. One such place we stayed was Naccunda, and our accommodations were decidedly one star… Emma and I each had our own room, which thankfully boasted air-con unit, a 4 by 7 inch mirror, a disassembled smoke alarm, two twin beds with 15 inches between them, and a Gideon bible. The amenities across the cement step featured cute little frogs gripping the helicopter and airplane themed shower curtain, as well as emerging from the sink drain. Non-potable river water ran in the taps; identifiable by the brown tinge. Unfortunately the next morning after we unloaded and set up for playgroup, no one showed up. So we spent the morning flicking off the three inch grasshoppers that landed on us, shooing flies, hoping for a breeze, and applying DEET.

emu track

In Eromanga (pop.40), a town with a petroleum refinery, and the point in Australia that is furthest from the sea, I had an unusual experience. I went for my usual evening walk, enjoying the quiet and admiring the wing span of the kite hawks circling above. Soon there were more, now about 7 or 8 of them. They seemed to be following me……they came a little lower if I stopped walking, which I couldn’t do for long as the flies were fierce. It was evident the birds were keyed into my status as slow moving solitary mammal. If there was any chance I was going to die soon, they were ready to make a meal of me.

Chris and the blue tongue

Only four more weeks in Oz!!! We plan to enjoy every minute of it, swimming in the pool, catching waves, and glorying in the warm but not too hot time of year. While I was away, the fam managed just dandy of course....Chris from Tomas was over, and he and Tom encountered a blue tongue lizard  in the foyer.... Eli finishes up school in two weeks with a trip to dreamworld theme park with his school mates, and Melissa's dance concert is the following day. We're going to start packing any minute now.......