Mind the Gap

Daddy got to go to Sydney and Canberra for a week, so Thomas and I had our own adventures. We filled a magical Sunday with magical stuff. First: church, and promised a dollar, Thomas was good. Considering early martyrs paid with their lives, a buck isn't so bad. Plus, the exchange rate is currently 92 cents.
The plan was swimming in the backyard next, but since we were finally graced with a cooler day (temps had hit 110 the past week), we skipped that and Thomas found one of those ridiculous airplane tragedy movies on the telly. Written 20-odd years ago, it had become a comedy with flare guns shooting down fighter jets and flight attendants in mini-skirts climbing ladders - often.
By 2 p.m., we were ready for real-life and headed to Emily and Jesse Gaps.
No one living knows who Emily and Jesse were. Rumors they were daughters of an explorer have been proven untrue, but they have nice gaps. Local "Gaps," BTW, are not places to find deals on sportswear, but natural openings in the McDonnell Range which runs along the south side of this area.
They are about 10-15 minutes' drive away, but since I forgot to look at which road they were on, it took about an hour. When you visit, remind me to take Ross Highway.
Emily is first and very pretty. It is a registered sacred site and one of the most important in the "Dreaming Trail" of the aboriginal people who believe the caterpillar beings, who created the topography of this area, came to the surface here and spread out across the Simpson Desert. There was a major battle here between the caterpillar beings and the stinky beetle beings with great losses especially to the caterpillar side. Their guts dried and formed the rocks on which Thomas now climbs.
I can't seem to find out how old the rock paintings are, but they were there when Europeans came in 1871 and up to 13,000 years before that. They are maintained by generations of people who inherit the responsibility. Local mineral clays are used, mixed with animal fat.
The paintings are roped off and there is a barbed-wire fence a short way into the gorge. Like many places here, there are implied rules, but no way to enforce them. So, it is up to the individual. This individual chose to not cross the barbed wire even though there were about as many footprints in the sand beyond it as before it.
Hey, sacred is sacred and no one should have to pay me a dollar to be good.
Next stop: Jesse's place about 5 minutes down the road.
Our fly nets were very handy on this day as the other few tourists we saw spent a lot of energy constantly shooing.
I can't stop thinking of Jesse as the Jan Brady of the gaps. She's not quite as pretty... her paintings are ok, but she's no Marcia, er... Emily. Emily gets the exciting Caterpillar - Stinky Beetle battle. Jesse gets compared to Emu fat. There are some important ceremonial objects buried there. Both sacred sites are only for "initiated" men. If "initiated" calls to mind scary scenes from Roots and articles from National Geographic, you've pretty-much nailed it.
Same barbed wire a short distance in, same easy way around it if you want.
Next: back to visit our old friends, the wallabies at Heavitree Gap. This time, we were early but found them already waiting. This time, they were almost scary-friendly, climbing onto laps and digging into the food bag like crazy goats at a petting zoo. Thomas spent his time "training" them to sit up for food and follow a rock he had rubbed the smell of pellets into. We sat with the wallabies and watched the sun set on our really fun day.

NEW-BORN BABY TURNS SIX!!

Ah, 'tis true. Thomas Alexander is six years old. He's a lot more fun now. I see more and more glimmers of a sentient human being in there. He makes jokes that actually make sense (sometimes). He is reading more and more every time we turn around and continues to astound with Yoda questions like, "Can you count to one by infinities?" Maybe he's still so awful in church because he's a buddhist.
He officially passed his grade one advancement assessment with flying colors (!!), so he will proceed to grade 1 with his class in late January. I must point out, this is NOT skipping ahead. Although he has done terrific accomplishing so much in one quarter, he should be going on to grade 1 here, for his age. In August of 2011, when we come back to the US, he will be 3/4 through grade 2, but just starting start second grade in the states... we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. I am just thrilled he is doing so well and loves school!
BTW, one question was: Which coin could buy the most lollies? Most kids pick the biggest coin. The Aussie 2-dollar coin is about the size of a nickel. He should get extra points for knowing what lollies are.
The festivities marking the turning of the six were many and varied. There were cupcakes for the class. I thought those balloon blowers were cute to stick in each, but didn't realize they honked. Can you imagine 21 kids with honking balloons? Cacophony is the only word for it. Good thing Mr. M has an unfailing sense of humor. He even tried to give Thomas 6 spanks "and one to grow on." Thomas escaped, but when was the last time a teacher could even playfully spank? 1970?
That evening, we had a few friends to Sammy's Pizza - sort-of the Chuck-e-Cheese of Alice Springs. They have an indoor play area with a slide and a network of soft, climby stuff. That's it.I must say, they're pizza is better than Chuck-e's and kids from 2 to 13 were happily playing and enjoyed their balloons and lollie-bags.
Thomas picked a Wall-E cake from Wendy's, which is Baskin Robbins. He has never seen nor heard of Wall-E to my knowledge. HOW does Disney DO that??
He had a wonderfully memorable and happy birthday. Now, I just have to deal with all the kids who want to come home with him to see his new toys. They're CRAZY!
(and I love it)

Desert Park

Now this a field trip. No going to visit the fire station. No seeing how the mail gets sorted.


This is an Aussie Field Trip, so bring water and watch for snakes!

First, Mr. M and Mrs. Mac gather everyone and their recess (that means snack) onto the bus. Mr. M is the teacher and drives the bus.
Off we go, kids! Here we are, kids!- about 200 meters up the road at the Alice Springs Desert Park. http://www.alicespringsdesertpark.com.au/
Since I was a helper-mommy, I drove Thomas straight there and he didn't get his school hat. He's the one in the tan with the attached fly net. All the kids thought that was way cool. Ah, to be six.

The park is a beautiful representation of various desert habitats - whether actual or created. There is also a Nocturnal House with bilbys, bandicoots, quolls, hopping mice and other really cute freaks scurrying about. Mid-way through our walk, we got to see the raptor show. These are the best-trained owls, kites and other birds I've ever seen.

They are PROS. Unfortunately, my camera skills are not nearly as refined and I mostly have pics of some guy standing in khaki shorts. The birds fly up at exactly the right time, show whatever behavior the guide is talking about, then disappear.

I promise, anyone who comes to visit us will see the Desert Park.



I think this is a black kite. Yes, they know it's brown.



They made some lush, tropical areas, too with flight cages of cockatoos, bush turkeys and

Look! A Kookaburra sits in an old... oh, nevermind.


We didn't make it to the kangaroo enclosure, the salt pans or the emus, but Mr. M says we'll go back before the school year ends in December. Wow, I hope grade 1 is this much fun. Ummm, for Thomas. Yeah.

Thomas: Geared-up and Gettin' Hot

So much to tell you about! I'm going to break it into several posts. Let's start with... Thomas! He spoke his first Australian word on Halloween. We were done trick-or-treating and were driving out of town to a star-gazing thing. We passed a really halloweened-up house and he said, "We should go back home and collect my pumpkin bag." Collect! They've gotten to his brain.

They've gotten to his body, too. His class and every elementary class in the school has had swimming lessons every day for the past 2 weeks. In nine classes, he's gone from a kid who screamed for a dry towel while getting his hair washed to swimming under water and retrieving toys from the bottom of the pool! I can't do that! Miss Taryn Nottle, the P.E. teacher at Living Waters school, gets all the credit. She spent her time with the kids who had the least experience and our Thomas bloomed like a waterlilly. Let him re-phrase that to, "I'm just like a boat now."

My aqua-aerobics classes are at this same town pool.
We set up one of those inflated-ring-topped waterbag pools in the backyard and we've all been enjoying it. Temps have already hit 105, but they hide the truth by saying it's, "42."

I think we'll spend a lot of time wet or indoors in the up-coming months.

It kind of messes with me to have people talking about spring horse race season and summer vacation coming up and Thanksgiving is around the corner and the stores have Christmas trees up.


Speaking of Halloween (I did up at the top, remember?), this is my friend, Renee.
How often do you think she gets to wear THAT vest?
Renee comes with Chloe, too cute in her handmade rainbow pony costume; also Ty, a Big Boy Thomas really likes and two teen girls who make great sitters.

Since this post is about Thomas, I guess I put them in to show we ARE making friends and even some little boy friends at school. No pics of them yet.
Oh, wait! Yes, on the field trip...

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.