Eastern hat parade

My son made a beautiful robot hat for the yearly Eastern hat parade at school from a big carton box with a big hole for his face. He asked me if it was suitable for the Eastern hat parade because it had nothing to do with Eastern. I told him that the children would wear all kinds of hats with different themes and that it did not have to be about Eastern. How wrong could I be?

When I arrived at school this morning all children wore hats with Eastern bunnies, Eastern eggs, chickens and many other Eastern related items. Sebastiaan was the only one wearing a carton box over his head looking like a robot. I felt weak in my stomach and felt really, really bad about myself and sorry for my son. Of course, he refused to wear his 'Eastern hat'. His teacher was so nice to give him her pink bunny ears and he quickly forgot about his Robot hat.

I guess I still have a lot to learn about Australian traditions.

Off road again

Today we went off road again with our Prado driving through a nature reserve, the Watagan Moutains, about one hour north of Sydney. It was fun but I saw too many trees. There were just too many of them and they blocked the views which was a bit of a shame but we had fun anyway. This is a picture of my six year old running around in the forrest.

Another Saturday in Sydney

I just finished another round of clearing out the garage where it is still a mess. After two days work, I achieved that it's possible to enter the garage without worrying that I break a leg or worse. It's a small step but an important one!

This morning in the shopping mall, after chatting with an Indian cleaner, my six year old asked me why only Indians do the cleaning in Australia. Mmm. Good question. I guess it is the same anywhere in the western world. In Sydney you see lot's of Indian working as cabies, supermarket staff, and cleaners. All low paid jobs.

This afternoon we go to the beach. We bought body boards for the kids and now we need to wait and see how long it will take them to 'ride' their boards the Aussie way. I saw an ad for a one day course for adults. It will be fun to do this but also very exhausting.

Last but not least, tonight we will turn off the lights for the Earth Hour event. I look forward to that. Tomorrow we 'celebrate' another Australian invention: 'Neighbour Day'. On neighbour day everyone needs to be extremely nice to their neighbours. Perhaps we will even say hello to them.

Marcel just came back from shopping with some new garden goodies. He bought for me a 'schoffel' for the weeding. I noticed on the label that the Australians call this a 'Dutch hoe'. Ha, ha.

Missing Mumbai

I miss Mumbai. Most people will say I'm crazy because I have been lucky enough to move to a beautiful country like Australia. I especially feel homesick when I browse through my phone directory. 90% of all the names and numbers are from people we know from Mumbai and these names sound so familiar. In Mumbai, I knew exactly where to go. Of course, it's a lot easier here. I can go to the Woolworths and buy everything I like in dozens of varieties. In Sydney, I don't have to look for places where I can buy meat or where I can get dough for a quiche.

Last night I went to the Woolworths for some late night grocery shopping and I felt at home. Really. At night, there are mostly Indians at work. They speak Hindi and they use the familiar words. They must wonder why this tall western woman was looking at them the whole time.

This morning I was very happy because I could send Julia to school wearing her Indian outfit instead of her Aussie school uniform. Today it was 'Harmony day' at school to celebrate the different cultures in Australia. Except for some beautiful Japanese and Chinese costumes, most children didn't look any different than usual. I guess that's the reason why I miss India.

School fees

Today I received the invoice for semester one 2010 of my kids -public- school. A public school in Australia does not mean children get free schooling. While the state provides for the building and the teachers salaries, the parents pay the rest. Mmmm. The invoice includes items such as a art levy, computer levy and a paper/photocopy levy. This is a big difference with the system in Holland where parents hardly pay anything for public schooling and private schools are almost non existent.

It's only a small amount (aud 142 for two kids) so luckily we don't have to stop sending the kids to school. I'll just prepare yet another envelope with money for the school. In addition to the school fees, parents organize a lot of fundraising events throughout the year to pay for school supplies. Tomorrow the parents of year three kids will sell all types of afterschool snacks and drinks on the school grounds to raise money. I wonder what the school will do with the money. Buy new toilet paper?

My first trip to the IKEA

It took me a few weeks to build up enough courage to get into the car and drive to the IKEA. The IKEA is about a half an hour drive from where we live which is not too far. However, it's not in our area and that's a big worry for me. I just don't understand the structure of this city. To me it seems to be a very chaotic place. There are so many cars and the traffic lights drive me crazy. Australians seem to love them because they are everywhere!

Fortunately we have a TomTom in our car. Without the TomTom, I'm sure me and Battlestar Gallactica would end up somewhere in the outback instead of IKEA.

Heavy traffic in the city on Sunday afternoon

Back to nature in Sydney

You find lot's of nature very close to our home. A great escape! I made these two pictures this afternoon when I went for a walk to see if I could get to the water front which is the case. I'm not sure if it possible to swim here. I heard that some parts of the harbour are a breeding ground for a number of sharks. I don't expect to see a great white shark at Sugarloaf but I guess other sharks can get quite big and hungry too.

Start of Rugby season

This is a very important week for Australian sport because it is the start of the Rugby season. Apparently this is when people start shaving their heads and do other crazy things to support their teams like taking hugh tattoos.

I have never been very enthousiastic about Rugby but now with a six year old I changed my mind. My very basic understanding of Rugby is that it involves a lot of running without too many rules. Perfect for my son! The past few weeks the local rugby teams advertised a lot to find players for their youngest teams. This afternoon I take Sebastiaan for a try out training of 1.5 hours. I hope he likes it. If he does I will get him a tattoo and shave his hair.

I don't have to be worry to much about injuries. Young children will play 'Walla Rugby' which does not involve tackling. What about hugging? This is something Sebastiaan is extremely good at as some people know.

Back on the black

This weekend we left town for a 4-wheel drive course about three hours south of Sydney. It's a funny that the car I usually only use to take the kids to school (a very boring 10 minute drive) suddenly turned into this very cool off road vehicle. We got stuck on a big rock going up a hill, we drove through a river and the car got very, very dirty. The kids loved it happily bouncing up and down on the back seat.

It was a beginner course so the exercises were not too difficult. Everyone had walkie talkies in the car. Our course leader had a good sense for drama and he managed to create some stress by shouting through the walkie talkie things like: 'you are in a mess!!' (when we got stuck on a rock), "keep going otherwise we get floating here!!" ( when it started to rain very heavily) and "Keep talking to me!!!" (to make sure we had not fallen from a cliff or worse).

The language of off road drivers is interesting. I especially like this one: "We are back on the black". This is what the course leader said when we got back on the main road and the course was finished. I'm sure our very cool car (nickname=Battlestar Gallactica) will stay on the black for the next few weeks.