Happy Thanksgiving

...from our little Pilgrim family to yours!

We have just celebrated Thanksgiving '09 on a hot and sunny day here in Sydney. While the rest of the country went about its normal business on just another November Thursday, we took the kids out of school early, made our Thanksgiving crafts and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (we have to do something to homeschool them in the Thanksgiving traditions!) Rick even played some audio of American football games through the web so that we felt like granddad was watching games in the next room!

While we stuck with some of our traditional fare, like my great-grandmother's potato stuffing, we abandoned the hours of roasting a turkey in a hot oven for grilled chicken breast on the barbecue. My Aunt Sarah has been visiting for the past 2 weeks, so it was wonderful to have her with us, and her contribution of a pumpkin casserole made with canned pumpkin smuggled through customs was a treat! (I must add, it was also a pleasure just to have another family member to enjoy making the meal with.) Our neighbors Wes and Margaret, who have joined us for the past 3 years now, made the meal complete. Embracing our culture, Margaret has made a delicious, Martha Stewart-worthy apple pie for the past 2 years, even though she had never made one before.

The kids topped off the day with a post-meal swim in the pool with Rick while we cleaned up the kitchen- not quite a football game in the late autumn chill, but we have to work with what we are given!

We pause to give thanks for all of our family and friends around the world. How blessed we are to have crossed paths with you during our lives.

Much love from Anne, Rick, Erin, Claire, Lachlan (and Aunt Sarah!)

The only turkey that graced our Thanksgiving table was the

cantalope, pear, grapes, cheese and red pepper variety!

Happy Halloween '09

Another warm and sunny Halloween for the Daceys. Although there have been some movements afoot to make trick-or-treating more widespread in the neighbourhood, only random houses do it and the only focus here seems to be on the witches, ghosts, goblins and skeletons, and none of the more fun or innocent costumes that one can come up with for Halloween, like we do in the States. So we have stuck with having the kids go to the neighbours' homes on both sides- just enough excitement for all!

Superman, Crazy Girl and their bunny.

Our Watermelon Jack-O-Lantern- there are 2 or 3 token orange pumpkins for sale in every grocery store, but watermelons are in season- yum!

With love from the Daceys

The Outback

Reflecting back on "things not accomplished" in 2009, I realized that I had failed to post any pictures or reflections of our first outback trip that we took in October 2009. So, in an effort to start out 2010 strong, I thought I would put my thoughts together before my parents arrive in a few days and we start preparing for a trip to Tasmania with them!

Ask an American what they think Australia looks like, and they'll likely imagine the harsh, unforgiving territory of the outback- the desert land of scrub brush, red dirt and vast open skies. The fact that we had been here almost three years and hadn't gotten there yet seemed nearly criminal, so Rick managed to cobble together 6 days off during the kids' two-week spring holidays for a quick peek.

Getting ourselves out there, though, involved marathon driving through long stretches of desolate territory- our furthest destination, Broken Hill was a 2-day, 14-hour drive west from Sydney. Our first day's 9-hour drive took us from densely populated Sydney through the less populated but still heavily-trafficked Blue Mountains, to two-lane country roads and on into the sparsely populated edge of the outback. As we got into the outback, the roads became littered with kangaroo carcasses, the unfortunate byproduct of massive road trains (trucks with two full-sized trailers pulled behind them, and in the lesser-populated states, three) barreling through the outback during the night.

At this point, it's important to point out that our kids are fantastic travelers, and we certainly never would have attempted a trip that would require over 38 hours of driving in 6 days if they weren't. People often ask what the kids do while we are traveling, and I must confess that I have always been very "anti-screen" in the car- we have never allowed a portable DVD player or video games for our car travels (I admit that those long plane flights have been another matter entirely!). So as not to push their "fantastic traveler" status too far though, we finally broke down and bought a Nintendo DS Lite game player to help pass all those monotonous miles. However, we limited the time it was used and still spent plenty of time playing games, counting emus (we reached 64 by the end of the trip!) and singing silly Australian songs like this one here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/fr0zBwuz3LUsxjrwQsF1ew?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ2lpdy6loSbvgE&feat=directlink

One of the 64 emus we counted along the way, along with some of his outback friends!

Our most western destination was Broken Hill, an isolated mining city on the far western edge of New South Wales. Some of the places we visited were an old train museum, the GeoCentre, which explored the amazing geology of the ore deposits in the area (the BHP in BHP Billiton, the global resource company, stands for Broken Hill Propietary Co.), a tour of the base of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and a sunset visit to the desolate Mundi Mundi plains, where the Mad Max movies were filmed.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service brings emergency and essential health care to remote and rural Australia

The kids entertain themselves while waiting for sunset on the Mundi Mundi plains.

After Broken Hill, we made a 5-hour drive over dirt roads for a two-night stay in the shearer's quarters at Turlee Station, a working sheep station. It was rustic (think corrugated iron roof and plywood walls), but a step above camping, with private rooms, beds and a separate kitchen/dining room that we shared with the other guests. Rick's favorite activity at the sheep station was making campfires and gazing for hours at the amazing outback night sky, which is just beyond description in its immensity, depth and vast host of stars. The kids, on the other hand, took the greatest pleasure in seeing just how dirty they could get playing in the outback dust around the quarters. It took weeks to get the car back to normal, inside and out, after all of the dirt road driving on this trip!

The purple and cream-colored doors were ours.

We are still finding dirt in the car's cracks and crevices!

While we were at Turlee, we visited the unanimously-declared highlight of our trip, the World Heritage-listed Mungo National Park, where 40,000-year-old human remains have been found. Lake Mungo dried up about 14,000 years ago and a spectacular, giant crescent-shaped dune called the Walls of China has formed on the eastern shore of the lake. The Walls of China consist of both fragile rugged outcrops and enourmous mountains of soft sand.

What fun it was to just be able to play on the dunes for an hour!

On the last day, we drove home all the way from Turlee to Sydney- with stops, a 13-hour journey. Although we had intended to stop for a night along the way, it proved too tempting to power all the way home. But this short trip gave us a real yearning for longer trips in the less-populated and geographically harsher parts of Australia- so much to explore!

Anne

A Snow Day on Mars

Early this morning, we were awakened by the girls tiptoeing into our room to say that they HAD to show us something. Anyone who has ever had young children can relate to our initial reaction, which was that this was something that could certainly wait until the alarm went off. But they persisted, exclaiming “it’s all ORANGE outside!” They pointed out the window to show that, indeed, everything outside was glowing orange. No birds singing either- just the sound of the wind rattling the windows. It was incredibly surreal and eerie.

A dust storm had descended on Sydney overnight. This is a very unusual occurrence, as dust storms usually only occur inland. Apparently, sediment washed out of recently flooded rivers in the outback in southwest Queensland was picked up by severe winds blowing through that area, and carried almost 1500 miles to Sydney. As the sun had risen, the sky was first crimson and then orange. By 7:15 or so, once the sun was higher in the sky, it was a thick gray haze that reduced visibility so severely that they halted ferry services on the Harbour and suspended air traffic.

Rick described the feel of the morning as “a snow day on Mars”. We have often commented that the kids don’t get to experience snow days here in Sydney- there are no weather conditions that prevent school from opening that we are aware of, except, perhaps if a bushfire is nearby. But this morning had that ghostly, silent feeling of the early morning of a snow day, where you awake to find that the world outside your window has been transformed overnight. Schools were open, but school events and excursions were cancelled because of the concerns regarding air pollution levels that were nearly 1500 times their normal levels. Erin was incredibly disappointed that her ride to a neighboring city on the train with her school choir was cancelled because of the dust. The girls reported that they stayed in their classrooms all day with the doors and windows shut until the dust cleared at about 1pm, heading north to Brisbane to wreak havoc up there.

Sadly, I did not think to take pictures of the early morning glow (actually, it would be more accurate to say that I thought about it and then felt too uninspired in my pre-coffee confusion). However, news sources have posted some amazing pictures on the web, like this one of the Harbour Bridge:

More pictures can be found here: http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/environment/dust-turns-sydney-sky-red/20090923-g0tw.html?selectedImage=5.

I do wish that I had possessed the foresight to take the laundry off the line last night, and put the car in the garage. There is a fine red dust on everything! Our car looks like it has spent a week travelling through the outback, which is, ironically, something we are hoping to do in about a week and a 1/2 during the girls’ school holidays. And, perhaps, that is where you will next hear from us on this blog….


Love, Anne

June, July, Jetlag

During June and July, we made our annual visit to the States. Rick escaped Australia’s wintry chill for about 2 ½ weeks, and the kids and I got away for five. Although our previous trips have only been three weeks at a time, because we did not return to the States in January, we took the girls out of school for three weeks and added it to their two-week July holiday. This meant that we did schoolwork many mornings for an hour or two, but I think, in the final analysis, it was well worth the extra battles!

By extending our stay, we were able to spend more time with each side of the family, and Erin was able to attend her first week of overnight summer camp at Camp Calumet Lutheran in West Ossipee, New Hampshire. Rick and I attended this camp as children, served on staff as teenagers and young adults and married there. Until 2006, Rick served as the camp’s music camp director, so Erin was familiar with Calumet and couldn’t wait to go. It has remained very important to us that our children experience summer at Calumet regardless of the distance we need to travel.

Despite a week that was so desperately rainy and cold that she only managed to get in the lake for her initial swim screen, she had an absolutely wonderful time. Summer camp at Calumet is perfect for Erin- so much activity to fill her need for constant action, while at the same time surrounded by the love and affirmation of so many counsellors and staff. She cannot wait until she gets to attend for two weeks!

The rest of us also spent a few very rainy days at Calumet’s conference center along with my parents. We also stayed a week in the Boston area with Rick’s parents, where three of his four siblings and some of their family were able to join us for too short a time. I enjoyed two rainy days with my best friends from high school, celebrating our 40th birthdays on the New Hampshire seacoast. The rest of the time was spent with my family in Mt. Gretna, PA, where my parents and other members of my mother’s extended family have summer cottages. This meant that we spent lots of time with my aunts, uncles and cousins, just playing, going to the lake beach and eating as much ice cream as possible at the local ice cream parlour, the Jigger Shop. My sister’s family was able to join us for two weeks. It was so much fun for the kids to be able to spend time bonding with their two-year old and four-month old cousins, both of whom have been born since we moved to Australia in 2007.

It is hard to put into words what these visits home mean for me. We all love our life here in Australia- we feel very comfortable in the culture, have wonderful friends who we love like family and an extremely supportive church environment. I feel like I have reached a deep comfort level here. Sometimes, I even fear that because I love my life in Australia, I will no longer be comfortable in the States when we return. I wonder if I will be able to tolerate winters with snow and ice, the full on noise of American commercialism, politics and media, and schools without uniforms. But on this return trip, I really felt a deep sense of belonging, one that went beyond fitting in and gave me a profound sense of feeling my roots reaching into the soil. It was a wonderfully nurturing feeling, one that fed on connectedness with familiar experiences, places and people.

I must admit that it was wrenching to leave this warm embrace, but the kids and I were eager to be reunited with Rick and our life in Australia. The flights these days are a bit of a non-event, as we’ve done them so often and the kids know what to expect. We luxuriate in the quality service and on-demand entertainment system on Qantas. This time around, the new Qantas A380 was pretty spectacular- our favourite features were the serve-yourself open snack bar, the amazingly upgraded entertainment system and the video camera set in the tail of the plane so that you could have a forward view of the entire flight, from takeoff to landing, at the screen at your seat. When we fly over the US, we cringe with embarrassment at the generally poorer service and less well-appointed cabins of the American airlines. This time around, we discovered that our family is no longer being assigned seats together, apparently because of the new policies charging extra for window and aisle seats. This means that everyone is held up while new seats are being sought for us once we have boarded the plane, a process made all the more difficult by the fact that people HAVE paid extra for window and aisle and are not keen to give up their seats. What poetic justice for Erin to get airsick all over the floor right next to the man who would not move to allow us to sit three in row!

For me, jetlag and re-entry are always a bigger challenge than the flight itself. Not only is my sleeping thrown off, but for days, when I am awake, I feel as if I am trying to think through a haze of cotton. We arrived home on a Saturday, just a few days before Claire’s 7th birthday on July 29th, so I was challenged to make a plan for celebrating her birthday on less than my full faculties. Come Tuesday, I put my plan into action, baking the birthday cake before the kids even left for their first day back at school, leaving early to purchase lollies (candy) at the store to share with classmates, going to the shops to purchase gifts, dashing home to get the cake decorated in time to pick up Lachlan at preschool (I was late), making an early family dinner of the requested spaghetti and rushing Erin home from soccer practice so that we could dig into the cake and ice cream. As I was putting the candles in the cake, Erin asked “Why are we celebrating Claire’s birthday on the 28th?” Indeed, the calendar confirmed that it was the 28th. When I had determined the day of the week for her birthday, I had counted forward from the date we landed. I never actually looked at the calendar. My simple math was wrong.

And so ends another epic journey in our Australian adventure. Thank you to everyone who follows our family adventures on this blog and offers us encouragement and prayers. We enjoy having you along on the journey!

Love, Anne et al.

For those who are interested in a full summer picture album, click here- http://picasaweb.google.com/annedacey/USASummer2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCIyup_yUz7vBPg#

For a few select pictures, see below!

Amusement parks were part of our summer fun- Sesame Place with the Kinneys, and Canobie Lake Park with Grandma and Grandad Dacey. Grandma was a great sport!

Picking Erin up from her week at Camp Calumet Lutheran in Girl's Cabin 1.

The drive from northern New Hampshire to Pennsylvania is LONG!

My parents, our family (minus Rick) and my sister's family pose for the annual Mt. Gretna cottage steps photo.

Happy Easter

Unbelievably, it is our third Easter Downunder. I thought I would just post a picture of our annual Easter Garden to show what a beautiful variety of flowers and greens are blooming even in the middle of autumn!

We wish you all a very blessed Easter!

Love, Anne

Our Friendly Neighbours

A few weeks ago, a teenager was bitten by a shark while surfing just past dawn with his father at North Avalon Beach, on Sydney’s northern beaches. In the past two months, there have been two other shark attacks in the Sydney area- one at the famed Bondi Beach and another in the Harbour. Needless to say, people have been a tad unnerved. They even cancelled the swimming portion of an annual swimming and canoeing race across the Harbour because of the shark risks.

I have to admit that I haven’t worried too much about sharks in our time here. We are not big ocean swimmers, and are not out swimming and surfing at the beach at dawn and dusk—the times that people are warned not to be in the water because sharks are feeding. I even found it fairly amusing to watch people immediately clear the water when a shark warning was broadcast over loudspeakers when I was at one of the City’s crowded beaches two years ago. But this latest attack is just a few miles south of a beach that we have been to several times, and that gave me pause. When we went to the beach two weeks ago, I was somewhat relieved to see helicopters swooping over the water, and the iconic Aussie life savers in their brightly-coloured caps zipping around the water in their boats.

It’s gotten me to thinking about all of the deadly creatures that surround my vulnerable family in our very own neighbourhood.

Two deadly spiders can be found all around the Sydney suburbs- the red-back and the funnel-web. While I haven’t seen the funnel-web, I have seen the red-back- it makes very sticky webs that are low to the ground around our bushes, potted plants, etc. Our neighbour likes to save the ones he finds in glass jars to show off to the kids, and one time even set down a jar in the middle of the table during a lovely afternoon tea that his wife was serving on the veranda. He enjoys telling stories of how his son used to trap them when he was young by putting ants in their webs and then waiting to pounce when the spider came for lunch. I guess you need to develop a somewhat cavalier attitude towards these creatures if you live amongst them.

The other lethal creatures that we live amongst are snakes. As my Animal Planet-obsessed father-in-law likes to always remind us, Australia has the highest percentage of deadly snakes of anywhere in the world. Although some have names that make it pretty obvious that one should steer clear (the common death adder comes to mind), some have innocuous, almost friendly-sounding names, like the common brown snake, the second most venomous snake in the world, one of which was recently reported to have bitten a dog in the neighbourhood.

The other day, when Erin was riding her bike home from school, she was stopped in her tracks by a snake slithering across the road. When she got home, I took down our Australian Geographic “Venomous Snakes of Australia” chart tucked away in the back of a kitchen cabinet and found that it was a venomous red-bellied black snake. Later that afternoon, I discovered that Rick had blu-tacked the poster-sized snake chart to the study wall so that we could all “get to know” these lethal creatures. I vetoed that and immediately returned them to their hiding spot. While we have chosen to live amongst them, and are bound to occasionally come into contact with them, I cannot live with them peering over my shoulder as I work in my own home!

For the benefit of my dear friend Lynn, who thus far has refused to tackle her life-long fear of snakes so that she can have the adventure of a lifetime and come visit me, it is important to note that perhaps the reason that Australians have a more cavalier attitude towards these deadly animals is because bites from the spiders and snakes are rare. And deaths from these bites are exceptionally rare, given that emergency medical providers are well-stocked with anti-venom.

So, c’mon Lynn, the guest room is waiting!

Erin's friend, the red-bellied black snake

Anne

The Victoria Bushfires

In the past few days, we have received a number of emails asking about our proximity to the bushfires (in Australia,“bush” refers to rural, undeveloped land or country areas) that are ravaging the state of Victoria and receiving lots of press coverage worldwide. Fortunately, we do not live too close to these areas- they are closer to Melbourne than Sydney. However, in January, during the school holidays, we took a 12-day roadtrip out of the state of New South Wales and into Victoria (I’ve been trying to find time to share this trip on the blog- stay tuned!), and it took us directly through some of these areas.

These places have been struggling with drought for years, and the local communities, which rely heavily on agriculture, have been “doing it tough” already. In the past few weeks, they have been having a horrible heat wave that has taken temperatures over 115 degrees. Although we were travelling there just before the heat wave, we experienced over 100 degree heat which was incredibly oppressive. Our impression of the landscape was that it was completely parched and devastated.

Although bushfires are common in the summertime here (one came alarmingly close to our house a few years before we moved here), the current fires are Australia’s worst natural disaster. Sadly, they are now reporting that 108 people have been killed by the fires, and at least 750 homes destroyed, and the fires are still raging (see http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/many-good-people-lie-dead/2009/02/09/1234027889048.html)

Anne