and now, for something completely different...

When I found out we were coming here, I started finding out about the Aboriginal people here. It's not easy.
I still have the tourist's viewpoint which is very thin. Our closest connection so far has been to have two young girls (14 and 10) ask us to call the police for them one night when Tom and I were sitting on the front porch. "A woman" had terrorized the younger girl at home with a knife and they had not been able to find any other relative's home to go to. The older girl said the woman had never acted like this before. Usually, when she got drunk, she would go to sleep. They sat on our porch until the police came, talked to the officer, then walked away.
The South Pacific Islander party I talked about in an earlier post was for Father Raass who is being sent from our parish to another. He has been among the indigenous people here for six years and tells a bit more:
http://www.centralianadvocate.com.au/article/2009/10/13/4845_news.html

Odd Bits

This will be a running list of things we find...let's say interesting, here.
The eggs are sold by how the chickens are kept: cage eggs, free-range, barn-laid. The price goes up by how well the hens are treated. Now, the same company will sell both cage and barn eggs. So, isn't that kind of extortion? "Pay $5 a dozen or the hen gets caged."
Ants. You can see more ants here in one day than you've seen in your WHOLE LIFE (if you're an American say, between 18 and 35). And they're FAST, so very, very fast. What's the hurry?
In a restaurant, even a pretty nice one, you sit and look at the menu, then go up to the counter, order and pay. Go to the glass cooler and take your bottle of tap water- usually in a decanter or clean wine bottle- and however many glasses you want. They will bring your food and drink and you'll never see them again. Obviously, no tipping. Almost everything comes with roasted pumpkin and/or beetroot (pickled beets).
Schnitzel is VERY popular.
Deluxe pizza has prawns and pineapple.
The language differences would fill a book; and has. My current favorites are:
thongs = flip-flops. I met a gal who couldn't figure out why "thongs" weren't allowed in restaurants - and how they knew!
whipper-snip = string trimmer
Stanley = razor knife
concessions available = discounts available for seniors, students, etc. (NOT hot dogs and drinks)
TEA is dinner.
Supper is a snack. I wondered why they asked who wanted to bring supper to the next Naturalists Club meeting and why Thomas's teacher said I brought him tea - it was a casserole for gosh sake!
The toilets give you a choice of a half flush or a whole flush.
Prostitutes advertise in the classifieds. "Minnie - Stay for a while, leave with a smile," seems to be a regular. The rest come and go ;)

People celebrate and happily share their cultural differences. At church, there's the African group, the Philipino group, the Islanders group. The South Pacific Islanders (i.e. Fiji, Bali) invited the whole congregation to a party. They dug a pit and made a fire in the bottom, when it turned to coals, they filled the pit with chickens, pork, curry casseroles, spinach, pumpkin and taro, buried it and let it cook all day. They dug it all up and boy, was it good!
There was traditional islander dancing after dinner, but it got late quickly and we had to get Thomas home. We did have some entertainment while waiting for the food to arrive. If you can't tell, that's one of the Missionaries of Charity nuns (Mother Teresa's gals) wailing on the drum.

There is a didgeridoo shop downtown where they give free lessons twice a day. They're beautiful and heavy. You play a didge by blowing raspberries into it; then, trying to make words with your raspberries. MUCH harder than it sounds. Look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g592I-p-dc&NR=1 I'm told women are not supposed to play them, which is good because I could never carry off those horizontal stripes.
I joined the Alice Spring Field Naturalists' Club. We're birdwatching at the sewage ponds next Saturday.
I joined an aqua-aerobics class; about 5 other dugongs and me.
Tom is dabbling in aikido.

School Days

Thomas started Transition (Australian kindergarten) Tuesday, Oct. 6th; the day after Spring Break. We had all visited the school the week before and Tom and I were both overwhelmed how great it sounded: the kids spend a lot of time outside, they spend almost as much time on social skills as academics, they learn art, music and Japanese. Before sitting down to a reading or math lesson, they might do some jumping jacks or have a run around the oval.
The federal government just gave Living Waters 2.4 million dollars with which they are building a new library and computer lab. Another federal grant supplied all the classrooms with interactive white boards last year. This is a Lutheran School. Can you imagine the heads exploding should such a thing happen in the US?
Thomas's prior predictions that he would, "Never, ever, ever go to school, EVER!" were slightly off. I got him up and in his uniform. His socks itched, his shoes were too tight, he tore at the neckline of the shirt like it was a boa constrictor. Still, with granola bar in hand, he kind of happily buckled into the car.
Nrrrrrr.. nrrr....rrr....r. Dead battery.
Back out of the car, back in the house. I called the only 2 people I thought might be home and might have jumper cables. No answer.
Well, for 2 weeks we had no car and used cabs. No money.
Well, he could stay home one more day. No way.
I called the cab. They take plastic and were here in minutes. We enjoyed our first day very much.
The teacher, "Mr. M" (Misinskus), is a great bear of a man with bushy grey-black hair and beard to match. He spent his most recent years teaching out bush in schools with up to 4 grades in one room. Watching this big guy surrounded by 5 and 6 year-olds, you can see he loves his work.
Our first day of school had to be cut short right after skipping rope lessons inP.E., just so I could work on getting the car fixed.
No worries, Mate. The first repair shop I called came over, jumped the battery and led me back to the shop for a test. The battery was fine. Go up the road to another place and have the alternator checked. The alternator was fine. Good news is, they've seen this before. Everything in Alice is within a few miles, so there are lots of short trips. You run to the store, the school, the library. Turn the car off and on and off and on. You need a nice, long drive to recharge the battery. We weren't driving our car enough!
The whole time of the car repair and subsequent scenic tour, Thomas kept asking to put his uniform back on and go see if anyone was still at school. I told him he could go again tomorrow, if he was good. He's gone very happily every day since. Yay!
He's working on sight words, greater-than/less-than, counting by 2's and 5's and the finches in the classroom have laid 2 eggs.