Email number 5 of my updates from my teacher exchange in 2003 to Australia.
In the name of Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Our Father,
Who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come....(that's good enough - wow - it's become second nature for me - Yeah, that's right, I have 3 Catholic prayers memorized! I was planning on leading prayer with Samuel L. Jackson's thingy from Pulp Fiction, which I have memorized for some reason, but didn't think that that was appropriate))
Yep, I'm back after a long break in the emails - life is happening and it is good! I'm actually starting this email while on holidays up in the heat of the Darwin winter. I need to take breaks out of the sun, and the email centre has great air conditioning. It is hotter here in the middle of winter, than it is in Vancouver in the middle of summer!
Well, I just passed the halfway mark of this exchange year. It is amazing that it has been 6 months already. It both seems like it has gone fast, and also that it has been a long time away from home. It has been a great experience so far, a lot of learning and adapting on my part, and I would definitely do another one in the future. I'm sure the second half of the year will fly by, especially when you stay as busy as I do. Highlights of the second half will be trip to the Great Barrier Reef, Tasmania and a small bit of South-East Asia; presenting the school play; hopefully acting in a play outside of school; playing in co-ed nationals for ultimate, plus numerous other exciting adventures that will unfold.
As many of you can tell, I'm loving the "new" vocabulary. And the great thing about it is, every time I think that is it, I learn a whole bunch of new ones. It will take me years to fully integrate them all, but I'm trying. I now say "heaps", "dodgy", and "I reckon" all of the time without thinking about it, but those are so old school.
The first group of new ones that are cool are words they use when someone is good at something. A girl in my class was referring to a teacher she had last year as a "gun". Another teacher always refers to friends, athletes etc. as "little rippers" (that teacher is really annoying by the way), and all Aussies call people "champs". I like the gun one, but I can't make myself use it yet. If you are going somewhere but aren't sure if you are going to enjoy it, you are going to "suss it out" (I hear this all of the time). If someone is a bit of a loser or what we might call a poser (does anyone still say that?), they call them a "bogan". When I said to one student who was at serious risk of failing that they might study on the weekend - he said "Do you think I'm a bogan?". I wasn't sure what the appropriate reply was, so I just silently backed away...Another great one, that we use a close version of, is when I say something that they don't believe, and they could say "fair dinkum", but kids say "are you shitting me?". When I first heard it, I misheard it, and thought they had said something else, which was really gross. I'm glad they didn't say that. Everything that is not amazing or horrible is "pretty ordinary". If you lose at tennis, you were pretty ordinary; if you did nothing on Friday night, it was pretty ordinary; if you went on vacation but it rained a lot, that also would be pretty ordinary. Things that are ordinary toe a fine line with being dodgy, but fall a bit short. People are also always saying "too easy", in the same was we would, but just saying it much more often. Like if I say, "don't we have to make some plans for the weekend" - others reply "too easy".
Aussies have tons of words for when they don't feel quite right (and since they are big drinkers and play high collision sports with no padding, that makes a lot of sense). If you are tired, you are "knackered". I use this on Tuesday mornings after a late night at squash league, where I often don't get home until 12:30. And, if you happened to get a bit banged up during your sport, then you'd be a bit "crooked". One could be crooked and knackered at the same time, but they'd probably play anyway. If someone says they are sick or injured, but aren't, they are said to be "wagging". If someone is always complaining about being hurt, or just complaining that everything is happening to them, they are "whinging" (I know I am spelling that wrong). People use that all of the time. Students whinge about tests, people whinge about being crooked, I whinge that my house is too cold. The final one in this group is for people who say they are going to do something and then don't, or for people who say they will go out and then don't - they are pikers, or are said to be piking.
Finally, I've saved my favourites for last. These ones are awesome, and I try to use them as often as I can. Whenever you are really busy, something is really hard, takes a lot of work or thought, it is said to be "full on". I had a busy day - "man, that was full on". I ask someone about their test - "it was really full on". The principal had a serious talk with you - "that was full on". I love saying it. This email, being as long as it is, is pretty full on. Next, is the expression "rock up". This is like when I ask if I should call somewhere for reservations and people say "no, just rock up". Or, after a really tiring squash game, people will ask the next morning "how did you rock up today". Instead of making plans first, just "rock up".
If the weather looks bad first thing in the morning, don't worry 'cause "she'll be right". This can also apply to a car that is making lots of noise, the economy etc. etc.
And finally, the best, and most versatile - take almost any describing word like sweet, poor, hot, scary, or Aussie (somehow that becomes a describing word down here) and put the word "as" at the end of it. So, if something is REALLY awesome, it is "sweet as". If something is stereotypically Australian - it is "Aussie as". If I saw a kangaroo on the road in the middle of a stormy night - that situation was "scary as". Darwin in the summer is "hot as". Some of you Frisbee players may recall that in Hawaii last year there was a NZ co-ed team called Sweet As (and I thought they had left an 's' of their name by accident). And I think you get the idea, I hope (if not, you are dumb as)
I know that people are expecting me to have mastered an Aussie accent by the end of this year, and those people will be sadly disappointed. The students this year ask me once a day to try one, but I refuse - it is pathetic. I've been told that at the year end assembly, I'll be expected to do it, but instead I plan to prepare a speech using every single expression I've learned. And maybe my friend Danny's band will perform Fight For Your Right, and I'll sing - man that would be cool. One neat thing about the whole accent thing, is I can now "hear" my own accent, because I am surrounded by, and really accustomed to, theirs. One more really strange thing is, whenever people meet me they want to guess where I am from - my favourite, fairly common, comment I get is "no offence, but it is so annoying when people from the States do..." and I cut them off, of course "actually, I am Canadian". I've been told, not asked, but told by at least 4 different travellers that the two places were basically one - the continent is called "America" I guess, as one of the year 7 socials teachers told his class. And, it had been guessed a lot of times that I was Irish!?!??! I mean I may have the colouring of some Irish people, but do I sound Irish? Are these people insane?
On a serious note for a moment, I'd like to make a couple of political/social observations. First off, politics is as boring as home. The fact that the Aussie were very gung ho about the war and sent troops in really early was cause for lots of debate. The Prime Minister (John Howard) has come out of the war with a much higher approval rating. He seems like an okay guy, who is just really bland, no one I talk to claims to like him, or admits to voting for him (indirectly, of course, as they have the same system of electing leaders as Canadians do). News about the next election is slowly starting to heat up, but no one really seems to care. The most interesting thing about election here is voting is MANDATORY, and you get fined if you don't vote! So, they get a very high voter turnout. Even people living way out in the outback will get fined.
If it was possible, Australians treatment of their native aboriginals is even worse than North Americans. I've gone to a number of museums and learned a lot, and on top of the massacring, forced movement, lose of land, and only being treated as citizens in the last 30 years, the worst was this project "stolen children". This occurred, I believe, over much of the first half of the 20th century, where the government walked into reservations and just took all of the children and many of them have never seen their parents again .The whole idea was to send them to "white" schools ("boot camps") so they could better integrate into society. This is often referred to as the "lost generation". My first real encounter with aboriginals has been up here in the Northern Territory. You see them sleeping in parks and hanging out in the downtown. They are not allowed to purchase alcohol, as they have a low tolerance for it, as they do for sweets. Not that I am scared, but a number of times I've walked past a bunch of them with either a bag of food, or something, and they've either tried to stop me, or will follow me, or just yell after me - it is odd - I don't feel threatened, but it just doesn't make you feel all to good. There seems to be a MUCH bigger divide here between aboriginals and "white" society. There is also a big push to eliminate that, but there is more racism here than at home - but this could also be that I have been sheltered from it by living in a nice area of a big city - it would probably be different if I lived up in Northern BC.
I've been harassed by many of you for complaining that my house is cold. And I put a note in the school newsletter asking for more heaters - and everyone was laughing at me. "You're Canadian." they would all say, meaning that this should be nothing for me. But, here is the big difference - in Canada, we build houses in anticipation of the really cold, while in Australia, if they did that, the houses would be ridiculously hot in the summers. So most people here have fireplaces, or lots of floor heaters and use them all day long in the winter. No one seems to have "invented" central heating, or double-glazed windows. My house is a summer shack, and the walls are paper thin, and it is freakin' cold. I think I am setting some world speed records with my dash from bed to the shower in the morning. Also there is a much bigger range in temperatures here - at home it might be 8 degrees in the morning and then 3 in the evening during winter, while here it goes from 20 to 2, and up in Alice Springs it went from 25 degrees to zero. The body, or at least my body, is having to adapt. I've ridiculed friends, or past girlfriends who come to my apartment and curl up on the couch with a million blankets on pleading with me to turn the heat on (which I never need to do at home in Vancouver), and now, I've become that person - I even wore my fleece to bed one night. I am a wuss. And yes, this is considered whinging. For those who somehow missed the main point, my house is cold as. (I love that expression, because you don't need to finish the sentence, it is just cold as anything that is really cold - use your imagination!)
In Australia, especially in the countryside where I'm living, much seems a little backwards or behind what I'm used to - BUT, they have adopted something which I've been complaining about for years. They have NO PENNIES! Is that brilliant or what? Everything gets automatically rounded up and down to the nearest 5 cents. Way to go! On another coin related topic - I made up a probability worksheet for my year 9s and no one could do question 1, and I got a bit frustrated because we had been working on questions like it for 2 classes - and then I realized what their problem was - they don't have quarters in Australia. Oops. (5, 10, 20, 50 cent pieces for those wondering).
"Do you want to go rogaining?" I was asked one day about a month ago. And I answered, fluffing my ever expanding mop of hair "Do what now?" I wasn't aware that I needed that sort of help - I haven't had a hair cut in 9 months. I quickly learned that rogaining is an awesome sport that combined cross-country running with orienteering. You and your team get a contour map and a compass and 6 hours to find as many check points as possible. Your map has roads and check points mapped, but you need to run through the bush to find them and this requires taking bearings, and being able to read hills and valleys. My team did well - it was fun and tiring, and I'll definitely do that again. This was part of my full on weekend, where I drove up to Melbourne after school (2 hours + in rush hour), coached ultimate Saturday morning, drove back to school on Saturday to rehearse, went to sleep woke up at 5am, went back to school and then went up to the rogaining thing which was a 3 1/2 hour drive each way! Got home at 10pm. That was FULL-ON! And fun. And they have rogaines that are 12h and 24h as well. The world championships were actually near Calgary last year. Rogaine is actually formed from the three first names of the inventors (I think they were Rowan, Gail, and Neil).
Students here claim that my accent has changed. But I think it is more that they have just gotten used to it. As I have with theirs. I don't even notice the accent anymore, and when I hear someone speak who is from North America, it takes me a few moments to "hear" where they are from. It is odd being surrounded with an accent all day long. I thought that I might grow tired of the Aussie accent, but it has been quite the opposite - I love it. As they love mine. They are always getting me to say words that I "mispronounce". They love when I say "bananas in pyjamas", for example. There are also a lot of word changes in teaching math (or maths) that I have had to get used to. Exponents are indices, variables are pronumerals, factoring is factorising, and the best one is, that roots are surds. I found this out the funny way in my first lesson of the year with my year 9s, when I was asking them to "find the root" in a Pythagorus type question, and most of the class laughed (they are a pretty immature group at the best of times, I must add). I was pretty confused - the question wasn't supposed to be that funny. I then had it explained to me what the slang word "root" means. "Root", for those who haven't figured it out, is another word for having sex or the male sexual organ. The weekend after the Matrix came out I heard a student saying to another that they were shocked that they showed Keanu "rooting" that girl in the movie. Ahhhh another great slang word! I no longer "root" for my favourite sports teams (at least until I get back to Canada - and by the way, no one older than 15 would even find that slightly funny).
Something really odd about travellers (I stay in a lot of backpackers places on my short holidays) is that a really high percentage smoke. I mean over 50%. That blows me away! Travellers are usually young, and doing heaps of active things, and are always looking for anyway to save money. You always here someone brag about a hostel they stayed in that was $18 instead of $20, or a tour that they saved $20 on and they smoke all day long (the excuse that they only smoke when they drink is as ridiculous as me saving I only snore when I sleep). I want to turn to these people when they claim some trivial amount of money they saved, and say that I saved $50 this week by not smoking, and the upside is also that I won't get lung cancer, but hey, I hope your cheap room was nice. Things you never say... And another funny thing amongst backpackers is there seems to be some sort of competition going - who can stay away from home the longest without missing it, who can "do" the most number of places, who can have the most number of hangovers on consecutive nights, who can name the most number of backpacker/tour company employees by name, etc etc...I am not winning this competition, however, I am winning the "who can eat the most number of peanut butter and jam sandwiches" - which is a combination that Aussie kids find repulsive?!?! And they like Vegemite - for those who haven't tried this - it is a really strong yeast extract. It is powerful and absolutely a taste you have to grow up eating. It is gross, for me, but, I'm told, very good for you. Well, that is just great.
I spent a long weekend in Adelaide about a month ago. Adelaide itself was nice, but not tremendously exciting. The highlight of the trip was a tour to the nearby Kangaroo Island. We went on beautiful bush walks, saw these awesome eroded rock formations and heaps of cool wildlife: seals, sea otters, wallabies, koalas and a few possums, but...NO KANGAROOS!!!!! What is up with that!?!?! A very beautiful island, and a nice small your group. These groups are excellent ways to meet people - I travelled that day with two girls from Japan, a guy from Germany and a girl from France.
Report cards at my school are SO much work! I mean I do a thorough responsible job at home, but this was a whole other ball game. First off, each student gets 11 marks in math, instead of the two we give at home (a letter grade and a work habit), and on top of that each student gets a 5-7 sentence long personalized comment. This took 10-12 hours to do for my five classes. But, we are just getting started with the process. Then all of the teachers met after school with printouts of their comments in the library and we proofread and edited each others comments, looking for grammatical errors (some people are VERY picky), spelling mistakes etc. And you'd think that would be enough, but after people make those corrections, the department heads then read them again, finding more mistakes and errors (I personally found it funny that a teacher who isn't an english teacher was critiquing my grammar - "you shouldn't use semicolons, because no one knows how to use them" - "um, I do"). Finally, after those corrections are made, everything is printed out and then we have to fill them ourselves in each student's file folder (this took me 45 minutes), and then staple and then put in sealed envelope. Wow!
Another really "fun" thing about school this year are "extras". You rock up in the morning, thinking about all of the things you are going to get done (or in my case, all of the emails I plan to respond to) and there is this scary sheet that gets posted outside the staff lunch room every morning about 8:45 which says who is covering extra classes for the day. The school is too cheap to bring in substitute teachers unless many people are away (like at a three day camp), so we cover each others classes. This is a silly system because you aren't supposed to leave a "real" lesson to be taught, as everyone complains if they actually have to do more then babysitting. So, I"ve been asked to show videos a number of times, or just supervise quite study in the library, and I just wonder if this is educationally sound. Shouldn't they have a qualified substitute who can actually teach lessons? And it is so annoying to have to cover a year 8 religious education class, or a year 7 music class, or a year nine french class when you weren't expecting it. I'm getting good at predicting when I'm going to get one - whenever I really have something I have to do during my prep period, I get one (I guess that is Murhpy's Law).
My squash team ended up finishing second in the league and we got nice little trophies. I won 16 of my 20 matches, with three losses being to the same annoying guy. But, I beat him badly in the finals - unfortunately, my team lost the rest of their matches and we lost. The courts, for those who play, are crazy! During the quarters the walls were literally wet with condensation. So wet that any ball that hit the wall did something unpredictable. There were a million strokes and it was just plain silly. Then during the semifinals, the opposite happened - the ball and walls got really tacky and sticky. And when I first got here in January it was like a virtual sauna in there. Fun, but crazy.
I'm staying busy as ever: rehearsing Monday nights, going to Melbourne to coach Frisbee nearly every Saturday, playing squash twice a week, working out at the gym twice a week and trying to write my own play (I have made starts on three separate short ideas). I also have to work hard at keeping up with North American sports. And I try to see as many movies as I can, and I'm also reading heaps (I've finished 8 books since I left - which is very good for me). A couple of recommendations: for books you must read First They Killed My Father (memoirs of a Khmer Rouge survivor), and anything by Bill Bryson; and for movies, I loved Whale Rider and Nowhere in Africa.
Yes, you heard correctly - I was training with the local Aussie Rules football team for about two months. But, in the end it just wasn't for me. Way too rough. I decided that I really didn't want to get injured badly in my year away. It is fun, but with lots of contact. Let me say though, that the game is awesome! I love the professional league here (the AFL), and I will desperately be trying to follow it when I come home again. I truly believe that, if given the chance, it would be more popular than the NFL and CFL, at least to play. And everyone here is crazy about it! Everyone has a team that they barrack for (the same as rooting for a team - but once again, NO ONE would ever say that in Australia). I mean everyone - little kids, old women, everyone. And they really care! I've gone to a few games and it is like a huge party - everyone stands and cheers and yells at players etc. It is awesome. Everyone is a weekly betting pool, everyone owns numerous team apparel items and everyone (especially boys) grows up "having a kick". My kicking was an "absolute shocker". The funny thing is Aussie Rules is really only popular in parts of the country, because the traditional game in other areas is rugby. And there are two types of rugby - league and union. We play union in Canada, and that game is pretty good, but league is boring. But, don't just go to Sydney and yell that out - people are great defenders of "their game", and no one likes the other two (that's not true - many like more then one, but everyone has their game). Footy, or Aussie Rules, is, in my mind, the most dynamic, involving the most number of great athletic plays, and doesn't just rely on brute strength. But, yes, you are allowed to hit each other, and you aren't a good player if you don't. As friends say, a country that loves ice hockey, would love footy. And we would.
Just got back from my holidays to the Northern Territory (yes, I am writing this email over a few different days). It was hot up there, and it is cold down here. I started by flying to Alice Springs (smack in the middle of the country) and went on tours of the local mountains, and then down to Ayer's Rock - the largest monolith (one rock) in the world. It is 350m high and they estimate that it continues for 3km underground. It changes colours during the day - we saw it at sunrise, during the middle of the day, and at sunset - very different. The best was early in the morning - the rock is an awesome red. Not nearly as smooth as it looks in the postcards. A big issue is the climbing of the rock - we visited (actually every does) the cultural centre before going to the rock and the centre focuses on the serious cultural/spiritual significance that the rock has for the local aboriginals and how they REALLY don't want people to climb on it. But, still 100s of people climb it everyday!?!? This is the equivalent to climbing a church or a totem pole (probably much more significant than that). I was shocked that so many people had such a disrespectful attitude about the beliefs and wishes. I wasn't going to climb it in the first place, because I am afraid of heights, but I still wouldn't have.
Next I flew up to Darwin - everyday I woke up at 7am - it is already over 27 degrees at that time and I have a hard time sleeping in a dorm sometimes. I was off and up out exploring the town everyday, but the funny thing is that usually around 2pm, I was so tired that I fell asleep under a tree in a park, or on the beach - people were probably walking past seeing this guy with crazy messed up hair, who was unshaven and passed out, and probably thought I was a wino. I didn't want to fall asleep, but it was beyond my control. Also, I got bitten to death up there - if it wasn't the mozzies (mosquitoes - I'll go into the Aussies love for inane abbreviations in the next instalment), then it was the sand flies, who could penetrate any type of clothes and who weren't affected by insect repellent (at least I was told) - and I got bitten so many times and it was so itchy. I was told that they bite you the most if you lie down near the beach - damn!
Darwin was really relaxed - lots of fun outdoor restaurants, many backpacker places, a beautiful set of unswimmable beaches (they look fine upon first inspection, but they pull 150 of the scary variety of crocs out of those beaches every year), some awesome outdoor markets and the most incredible sunsets. About 85000 - it was a pretty cool place.
The highlight of the whole trip was my full on, 5 day tour of Kakudu Park (plus a few other areas near by). The largest national park in OZ - we went hiking everyday, swimming in safe natural water holes near waterfalls, camping in the bush, 4W driving, canoing and motor boating. It was all cool, but the boating was the best as it took us up close and personal with heaps of birds (pelicans being one) and crocs (2 metres away) - these crocs were freshwater ones, and they are the nice ones, but still far from being petable (they only eat you, if you act aggressively towards it, while the salties just eat you with no provocation - salties eat freshies too - in fact, the saltwater croc has no predator on earth and they have basically gone under no evolutionary changes since the time of the dinosaurs). We also saw some amazing rock art done by aboriginals, much of which has been dated to be 10000-7000 years old! Wow! It was cool. We also learned that only 25% of the aboriginal cultures and languages that once existed still remain (they estimate that pre-Euro there were 300 languages amongst the many groups around OZ, and now there are 60-70). It was a busy 5 days - up at 6:30am and asleep due to exhaustion at 10:30. Awesome meals, great weather, cool new animals and birds, really aggressive flies (they just won't leave you alone - wherever I go in this country, and it is over 30, there are flies there - if I was to sit still, I would always have a minimum of 8 and sometimes many more flies on me) and a nice small group of 8 of us, plus the most gung ho Kiwi guide.
My trip back home was met with a 13 hour delay, a cancelled flight, a forced and unexpected lay-over in Brisbane and missing the first day of school for the term - it is a long boring story, that made me quite frustrated, but on the upside they didn't lose my bags and are giving me a few free flights to make up for it. Could be worse.
Finally - Congratulations to this year's Grade 12s at Killarney! I'll be back at Killarney next January and I hope a number of you will drop by and say hi.
Bye bye for now, and please send some replies when you have time! It is lots of fun to hear what people are up to, or when people ask for more details (yes, I am leaving things out - these emails are abridged)
Tommy
PS I have been taking heaps of photos, and a few people have asked to see some. I plan to scan and email some photos out, but not to everyone. If you are interested in seeing some photos (and of course everyone can see them when I return), email me by August 1st, and I will make a new list and send out photos in the first week of August.
PPS Excellent news about the Olympics!
PPPS I have to include this quote from a book I'm reading where the author is making a point about stupidity and he quotes Miss Alabama's answer in the Miss Universe competition when she was asked if she would choose to live for ever "I would not live for ever, because we should not live for ever, because if we were supposed to live for ever then we would live for ever, but we cannot live for ever, which is why I would not live for ever." - Amen, sister!
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