Mail, 23 Apr 2013

My mail comes in a mailbox at the end of the driveway near the street. I really have no idea if mail gets delivered every day or a few times a week. I do know the mail-person will not pick up a letter from my mailbox - I had one sitting in there for about two weeks before I finally took it to a street side drop box in my neighborhood.

At any rate, my mailbox is basically a dark cement hole. The kind of place the Scotsmen I met in my first week here warned me not to stick my hand into because of the deadly spiders that live in Australia. I think about this on the odd occasion when there's mail in the box.


We're well into autumn; it's full dark here now by 6:30pm. So it was dark when I walked home from the gym the other night at 8pm. My street is fairly well lit - neighborhood style, not I-94 through Minneapolis style. Enough light to see where I'm going generally, but not enough to read by. As I walked up to the driveway, I remembered that I'd seen mail in the box when I arrived home from work. Since I was on my bike, I hadn't stopped to get it. Now, in the dark and heedless of the Scotsmens' warning, I stuck my hand in the box and grabbed the stack of mail.

Nothing bit me. 

But the stack seemed weirdly heavy on one side. Since my mail is typically at least 50% menus from restaurants, I thought maybe one of them had gotten clever and attached a magnet to their menu. I looked and there was a round thing on the corner of the menu... not exactly magnet shaped. Maybe a crab apple from the nearby tree had gotten into the mailbox? I touched the strange thing and - SLIMY. Ok, so either a rotten crab apple or something else entirely. I took the stack of mail over to the landscape light at the side of the driveway and... it was a snail. On the menu. So I brought him (or her?) in for a photo before I took him back out to the flowerbed. Snail mail! This is the exact spot on the menu where I found him - apparently snails don't read.

I was telling this story at work the other day during afternoon tea. I started with the Scotsmen and the spiders and my mailbox. As I carried on a bit more I got that sense that I have so often here that I am not conveying what I mean to convey. And in fact, I might be unwittingly committing some kind of social faux pax. So I paused. And someone piped up, "Do you mean a post box?" (Because mail here is "post" - which actually makes sense, if you think about it. You send post at the post office.)

"Yes. Yes, I do... I bet you guys were thinking the other kind of male when I said 'mail box.'"

General laughs from the group and nods of agreement. "OK, well, this story is not going to be as exciting as you may have thought."

FYI "snail post" is definitely not as funny a punch line as "snail mail" but the story still got a good laugh.

Holy Toast, 14 April 2013

Toast has been one of my staple foods for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I would come home from school and eat at least two pieces but usually four. Typically with margarine, then cinnamon and sugar or Tang powder (sounds disgusting but was REALLY delicious, plus fends off scurvy). My mom did not believe in butter.

When I was in college, my BFF Bethni (who also loves toast but doesn't really believe in putting things on it) was living in the big city - St Paul. On one of those big city radio stations, she heard a song by someone who loved toast as much as we did. When I visited, we kept the radio on all the time just in case it came on. (This was waaaay before you could just look it up on the internet.) And then we heard it. My life was deeply enriched. To this day, it ranks up there as one of my all time favorite songs of all time, Heywood Banks: Toast! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7NqSu1Wk0Y)

Here in Australia, I began with the halcyon days of fruit toast every morning at Uni College. Since then I've been on a bit of a toast hiatus. Buying a loaf of bread never ends well when I live alone. Plus, I didn't have a toaster and I was trying to decide whether or not I needed one. My kitchen is pretty small, so I engage in the internal need/want conversation anytime I'm considering adding an appliance. After 3 months in my house, I decided I wanted toast. I want a quick piece of peanut butter toast before running off to kettlebells or vb training or a bike ride. I want toast with my scrambled eggs. So I made a Sunday plan that involved church at Joel's place and then a trip to Kmart just down the street to purchase a toaster.

I'm sitting in the pew at Joel's church, surrounded by respectable Catholic folks (alas, no super heroes this week). The Gospel reading for the second Sunday after Easter in the Catholic lectionary was John 21:1-19. In it, Jesus appears to the disciples when they are fishing after his resurrection. As soon as the tall, serious priest started reading the passage, I almost laughed out loud, but I'm sure I at least snorted. Here's what this passage reminds me of every time I hear it: Back when I was at Luther Seminary, Mary Anderson, another toast lover, was reading this very gospel and shouted, "Listen to this: 'When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.' Bread on the fire means toast! Jesus made toast! It's in the Bible!" I was grinning like an idiot through the entire reading of the gospel. Having that gospel on the day of my toaster buying expedition practically made it a holy mandate.

I did get a lovely, white, wide slot toaster, good for 6,000 slices - or so it said on the box. I thought about getting a red one, but I decided I didn't need a toaster that looked like a race car. I also got 2 kinds of bread - white and fruit toast. (It has sultanas in it.) I've had 4 pieces of toast so far today, and will have more before practice tonight.

Yeah, Toast! Holy Toast!

Summer is Coming (for those in the Northern Hemisphere), 13 April 2013

Pretty much every post on facebook from the Midwest over the past week or so is about the snow that doesn't seem to let up. I remember one year getting a blizzard on April 25 in South Dakota with about 3 feet of snow... really fun for 4 wheeling. Crap for shovelling.

I started collecting these pictures for my aunt JoAnn who is a gardener extraordinare, just like her mom, Marcella. It seems like now is the time to share them, and see  if I can brighten my northern readers' outlook with a few photos of flowers and greenery.









Most of these are from my treks around the city while house hunting in November and December. Now, every time I bike with Lucienne, I'm the one who navigates us through the city neighborhoods. A side benefit of the quest I thought would never end!

And one random act of crafting found in Brunswick!

Hope that eases the winter blues for you northerners. You can return the favor (or "favour" in Aussie) when I've had three months of dark and damp with no snow. Just looking at these photos, I'm amazed by how much the quality of the light has changed here over the past month. Even the sunny days are not so bright - but they're still pretty glorious. Just short and getting shorter. We're off daylight savings and it's dark by 6:30. Winter is coming!

Macca's: The Linguistic Benchmark, 10 April 2013

So sometime in the first few months I was here, there was this McDonald's ad on TV. I did not understand a word of it, no matter how many times I watched it. It happened to come on once when Steve and I were watching TV at his place. Here's the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILh3lFJiWU

When the ad finished, I looked at Steve and said, "I didn't understand a word of that."
"What?"
"That McDonald's commercial."
"What do you mean?"
"None of the words in that made any sense to me. The only reason I know it was for McDonald's was the big yellow M at the end."
"None of the words?"
"Nope. Not a one."
"Not even Macca's? You don't call it that in America?"
"Nope."

Yesterday, I had lunch with a colleague I met in Canada at the American Evaluation Association Annual Conference. She and I worked together for a few years on a Topical Interest Group for that organization - me in the US, her here in Australia. She's Australian born and raised. Over lunch, she asked how I'm adapting to life here. We talked about different things like the landscape, culture, language, and I told her about that McDonald's commercial. Being evaluators, we realized it could be a good test of how much language I have assimilated in my five months here. This morning I got an email from her with the YouTube version of the commercial so I could use it as my Aussie benchmark. I can understand about half. So if you want help with chokkers, ute, nan, mum, or pav mcflurry, I'm your gal.

Settled in, 2 April 2013

However weird it is to have such a huge holiday break on account of Jesus getting up, I am quite grateful to have had it. It's been a brutal start to the school year and 5 days off means I...

• unpacked all my boxes - I had a few leftovers that accidentally ended up at the university
• found a place to live (mostly) for all the stuff the movers unpacked
• installed the "heirloom" family dining table has become my desk after a) the moving company cracked the leg; b) I waited for the insurance to get sorted; c) I decided I would glue it myself; d) I carefully prepped it an laid down a drop cloth underneath; e) I sprayed glue all over the walls and floor, but not on the drop cloth (never assume the glue has a foil seal under the nozzle, even if it's new);  f) I broke the leg completely in half trying to brace it; g) profanity; h) successful gluing and bracing using duct tape; i) carrying it up the narrow stairway by myself without putting any part of it through the wall; and  j) victory dance!
• set up my office (with internet!) so I can work at home and NOT on the real dining room table
• started the customer service battle with my internet provider (now that the technical battle is resolved),
• listed my place listed on airbnb so I can get some guests to help me cover rent
• generally feel more personally sorted than I have since I got to Australia in November.

It's amazing what a bit of organization in my living space does for my overall outlook!

Pics below are the progression of my from living out of my office before I moved into my place, to present day. The moving guys had a slick system to get my stuff from the giant shipping container back through the narrow driveway to my place - it involved a second truck. Pretty smart - my 1.5 year old neighbor and his grandma thought it was fascinating!

All my goods living in my office...

All my goods on move in day

My stuff arrived!

The rest of the pictures are from last weekend. You'll recognize my usual state of tidy in the office. The desk has a bit of a list, but, fortunately, I accidentally brought some shims along in the shipping container, which worked handily to level it out. The rest of the pictures demonstrate how I'm learning to keep things tidy for random strangers who come to stay with me, I hope, now that I've got my place listed on airbnb.

The bedroom pic is the guest/airbnb room. Let me know when you're planning your visit. :)

Upstairs loft/office

Downstairs bathroom - great tub!

Downstairs living/dining area (Doesn't that TV cabinet look fabulous?)

Dining/Kitchen

Guest bedroom

Easter Down Under, End O' March 2013

So, Good Friday is a holiday here. All the stores are closed, including grocery stores. I was glad I checked that out Thursday morning. That way I knew I had to leave the university right after teaching my class (around 9) hop the tram and ride to the grocery store to get there in time to pick up a few things before it closed at 10pm. I thought I'd be the only shopper, but it turns out it's just like the US. Apparently having the store closed for the day means it's like shopping in the US before a blizzard hits. Busy, busy.

Easter is also a big school holiday weekend - it reminds me a bit of Thanksgiving. Schools close Friday, Monday and Tuesday. The university was closed those same days and it was a non-teaching week all this past week, so no classes. Lots of businesses close for at least 4 of the 5 days. Everyone leaves town. Several colleagues asked me, "Are you traveling for the holiday?" "Nope." "Good. The traffic will be awful!"  

The whole Easter holiday thing seems a bit weird for several reasons: a) because Australia hasn't struck me as an overtly religious or Christian country, b) we've only been in session one month of the fall semester - so we aren't really due for a break, c) it's autumn, and therefore NOT Easter, and d) the university doesn't really believe in holidays - we didn't even get Australian Labor Day off.

I went to Joel's church for Good Friday mass and my favorite kid was dressed as Batman. The choral Easter service at Canterbury Fellowship was good, too. We sang the version of  "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" I know (yay!). No trumpets or alleluia bells (boo.).  But the organ was fantastic and so was the choir.

Christ is risen!!

Traditions. 26 March 2013

Tradition 1. Since I've been in Melbourne, I've traveled to Manila twice for an evaluation capacity building project. During our first visit, I asked what we needed to do differently during our second visit. One of the staff members sparked up immediately with "pasalubong" and the rest of the group voiced their agreement. It took me a bit to sort out what they were saying (Australian + Filipino accents are extra difficult on my internal translator) and then a bit more to figure out what it meant. Pasalubong (as I've come to understand it) is a Filipino tradition that a person who is visiting from a foreign place brings something along to share that is traditional in their country. (This works for Filipinos who travel to a foreign place, too, except they have to bring something from where they visited back for their friends at home.) The folks we were working with suggested we bring Australian treats for our pasalubong. When we asked the Australians on the Centre for Program Evaluation (CPE) staff what we should bring along, the message was clear: TimTams (cookies) and Freddo Frogs chocolates.We brought those along on trip #2 and they were such a hit that the Manila group thought we should name their newly created evaluation action team E.A.T. TimTams.

Tradition 2. 18 years ago in March, I was engaged to be married. Target had just come out with their electronic gift registry. The fiance and I went to register at Target, and they gave us a hand-held scanner that we were supposed to use to get the bar codes of gifts we wanted onto our registry list. We'd know the scanner had picked up the bar code for something when it beeped. The fiance thought the scanner thing was super cool, and proceeded to beep-beep-beep-beep-beep the first thing he saw, which happened to be marshmallow Easter peeps. For the record, neither of us particularly liked peeps.

That fall, we got peeps as wedding gifts. For the next 6+ years, we got peeps at every holiday. We got them from friends. We got them from extended family members. My mom bought peeps and froze them so we could have them when we were in Michigan for visits. There were a lot of peeps.

The husband has been history for more than 10 years now, but the peeps tradition lives on. In fact, my friend Lindean sent me yellow marshmallow peeps in my Easter box, which arrived a couple weeks ago. (Thanks Lindean! :)

Tradition 3&4. The week before Easter, we had afternoon tea (tradition 3) with everyone from CPE. This involved warming up hot cross buns (tradition 4), which are clearly the big Easter tradition here. All kinds of varieties are available at every bakery and grocery store. There are secret family recipes and generally a high level of intensity. Several folks from work brought hot cross buns for the tea. Sultanas (previously known to me only through fruit toast) made an appearance, as well as buns with "peel" (I assume this was orange or lemon peel), buns without peel, and buns with chocolate. They smelled delicious. And tasted way better than the ones I remember trying in the US. My contribution to afternoon tea: Peeps. Apparently, there are no marshmallow peeps in Oz. They were quite a hit.
"They're so cute!"
"What are they made of?"
"I am NOT eating that."
"These are delicious."
"How is that they're yellow?"

Synthesis. Thus, peeps, a tradition leftover from a long dead relationship, carried on courtesy of one of my best pals, became the American's pasalubong at the Australian Easter tea. To top it off, after trying a peep, one of my Aussie colleagues sent me the photo below, so I could use it as my facebook profile picture (thanks to whoever took the picture). Lots of folks were changing their facebook profile pictures to a pink equal sign on a red background to encourage the US Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Basically, the photo symbolizes peeps for marriage equality. Who knew it was possible to cram so much tradition and cross-cultural activity into a cute marshmallow treat?