email number 6 from oz

This is email number 6 of 8 in my exchange year of 2003 in Australia.

G'day mates!

Just reaching the 3/4 mark of the year and nearing the last week of term 3 too - which mean, yes you guessed it, more holidays. A few of you have pointed out that it seems like all I'm doing is vacationing, and some have wondered if I'm doing any real work. The answers are yes, I am working a lot, I just choose to focus on the "fun" stuff in these emails. Having said that, I can't complain about the holiday time - it is pretty awesome. Others complained about the length of the last email - part of me wanted to make the next one even longer out of spite, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of writing them in the first place, so I've decided to write one before and one after the holidays. Next Friday afterschool I fly up to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef and I plan to explore the Daintree Rainforest and then travel down to Brisbane and do some stuff around there and then head down to coach at the Australia University Games where my ultimate team I'm coaching is competing.

I am pretty exhausted as I write this email, we just finished two long nights of parent-teacher interviews and the school play that I directed had its performances the two weeks prior to that. The weekends have also been packed full of practices and rehearsals and there haven't been too many sit back and relax evenings. I think 4th term will be more relaxed, but I already have big plans for all but 2 weekends of my remaining time away. It will all go quite quickly - which is both okay in that I do miss home and look forward to all of the people and new things I have planned for when I return, and not okay, because I have made a number of friends and gotten close to many students and their families (one student gave me a dozen eggs as a gift - I've never been given eggs before). Through the play and all of the frisbee stuff and the teaching I've made a name for myself at the school and in the community and I'll be missed and I will miss many people too. So, sort of mixed emotions at this point about the year being slowly nearing the end. A great experience so far, that's for sure. 

I hate to admit this, but...I'm a kangaroo killer. And not just any kangaroo, a baby kangaroo. I know much of what I write is meant to make people smile, but this ain't one of them. It was both sad and scary. I was driving home from squash and in a blink of an eye this kangaroo hopped right in front of my car and bounced off my fender hard - thank god it was a small one. My heart was beating SO fast. On this note, there is a new dead animal on the side of the road every few days - usually bunny rabbits or wombats (neither are considered a great loss), and occasionally koalas (which is very sad  -they are just SO CUTE). Every adult I've talked to in the countryside has hit at least one animal somewhat recently. Too bad I'm a vegetarian.

Over the course of the year, I've grown accustomed to some of the bizarre Aussie ways of doing things. Some of these still make me shake my head and still others I just can't even get used to. One of these is that in Leongatha (and all country towns) pedestrians yield to cars. In Canada, it is the opposite, and this seems to make sense as cars can cause us much more damage then the other way around. So, you'll be standing at a "crosswalk" (I don't think they call them that, since you aren't supposed to cross or walk most of the time) near one of the many busy traffic circles and you'll wait and wait and wait - it has taken me over 5 minutes to even get a chance to cross sometimes. NO ONE slows down, and they shouldn't because I am supposed to yield for them. When I'm driving, and I see a woman pushing a baby in a stroller and I stop to let them cross - they give me a strange look, and I've even had someone honk at me from behind for stopping to let some teenagers cross.

We watch some bad TV in North America, but they watch some really bad TV here too, and it seems worse for some reason. Australian soap operas are HORRIBLE and so many students, and adults are addicted to them. The two most popular are "Home And Away and "Neighbours", and they are like the American ones but to the nth degree - so bad that "Australian Soap Opera" is a TV genre on "Whose Line Is It Anyways?". There are also Aussie versions of so many TV shows - from Millionare to The Price is Right to Big Brother. Now, I never watched the crap that was Big Brother when I lived in Canada, but I did know that outside of my family, most people didn't watch it. But in OZ, it was so popular. In the staffroom, on the radio, in class everyone was talking about who said what to who and who was being voted out etc. It seems the same to me except that they show much more of the "bedroom antics". Aussie TV, on the whole, show stuff that we'd never be allowed to show during prime time. And no one is complaining, not even me...

The Australian film industry is strong. I watch a lot of movies and this year I've tried to see a number of Aussie ones. I have 3 categories that I put them in (1) ones that become huge at home (Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla, Rabbit Proof Fence, Ned Kelly), (2) the really odd and funny - these are MUST sees (The Castle, Snapper, Bad Eggs, The Dish) and (3) the down-right weird (Chopper, Mullet, Bad Boy Bubby). Special mention needs to go to my friend Colin, who had the foresight to watch Bad Boy Bubby and fully recommend it. I watched it this year and it is the most bizarre film I've ever watched. I couldn't use the word "enjoyed" to describe how I felt while watching it, but it was...yeah, I don't know how to put it.

Student: "Hey, Mr. Paley, what do you think of Australian chocolate? Pretty good, hey?"

Paley: "Um, what chocolate is that?"

Student: "Cadbury"

Paley: sigh..."no, it's not"

Student: "But it says 'made in Australia'"

Paley: SIGH

Kids think lots of things are Australian that aren't. From food to magazines to tv shows. My favourite things are ones that ARE truly Australian. I was, and continue to be, disappointed over how many American things there are here. I thought with the distance, it wouldn't be like that, but it is. Whenever I see a young Aussie with a Snoop Dogg shirt on I feel like smacking myself. Having said that, there are a lot of very popular Aussie music groups, some are way too "pop" for my taste. Have Delta Goodrum and Holly Valance become popular in Canada?

I continue to have great success in sport for the year. I continue to train hard and am really fit. I won my event in the Melbourne Open squash tournament. I didn't just win, I dominated. It was really cool and I got a really nice trophy. Then this past weekend, I won my third ultimate frisbee tournament of the year. I will say that the tourneys have been smaller than home, but a win is a win, and it is lots of fun. All I had to do was leave Canada. I plan to play in a few more ulti tourneys, including the co-ed nationals which are in Melbourne in late October. My team WON'T be winning that one.

For those that weren't sure, Australians don't all sound like the Crocodile Hunter. The accents are there, but not nearly as strong as I thought before I got here. And on the topic of the Croc Hunter, Aussies laugh at him as much as we do, if not more. But, they also respect him and he is one of the more popular "stars" here. I'd say that the kids love football players the most, Ian Thorpe is up there, Cathy Freeman and Jana Pittman, and some of the cricket players (they are hugely popular). Everyone loves Nicole Kidman, most hate Russell Crowe (who was born in NZ, but calls himself Australian), and they all like Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce. Kylie Minogue was not popular for years, but is really big the past 3 or 4 years.

Just one new expression for you, that I love saying a lot. Whenever people, in my case students, aren't behaving or are doing something that I just don't want them to do, I say "that is just not on". Pretty self-explanatory and pretty fun to say. If it starts to rain, someone will say (to God, maybe) "Oh, that is not on." I love it!

My school has livestock. When you drive in, there are cows and pigs walking around their fenced area. Not much more to say about that, except that you never forget for a second that you are teaching in the country.

I am a "man about town". I have been in the local newspapers 6 times in the past 8 months - this includes squash stuff, stuff about my play and about the frisbee clinic I was running. It is cool. Everyone seems to know that I'm the exchange teacher (the accent gives it away - yes, I still sound "Canadian"). I even had my picture in the Catholic Life newsletter, and there was mention of my play on the local tv and radio news. If you reduce the population from a few million to 5000, you increase your chances of being noticed.

The play is over! Four months of rehearsals and 5 tremendous performances! It was a lot of hard work and more stress then I'm used to - the actors were lazy and quite inexperienced, but very enthusiastic. Over the last month of rehearsals they worked really hard and the play really came together. We transformed part of the school into a studio with a great stage and set. The teachers really helped me put in all together and the school really got excited about the play. We had over 500 audience members over our 5 shows, which is a lot of you consider that the school only has 370 students. And it was the first play that they've had in years. It went really well. It wasn't the best play that I've done, but considering where the actors were when we started and how troubled it all seemed halfway through, this was quite an accomplishment. The parents and teachers and students just loved it - I get told so many times a day how great it was and the praise after the shows was incredible! What an amazing feeling to be told continually what a great job you have done. It is sort of overwhelming, but it just makes me feel quite proud of myself and my ability to organize and direct a huge school production and very proud of the actors. I didn't become as close to them as my actors at home, but then again I've only known them for 8 months, compared to 3-5 years for the students at Killarney. It gives me a great group to remember and hopefully stay in tough with (a few are definites). It wasn't all great along the way, and I'm so exhausted still, but it was a great way to make a name for myself in my one year at the school. If my goal was to not be forgotten and to make an impact, which it was by the way, then I absolutely accomplished that. It was great bringing fun drama to a school that had none. They loved the play.

Well, I'm off on holidays to Queensland and to Newcastle. It should be great! I'm taking lots of photos, but the scanner is too damn slow, so people will have to wait to see photos until I get home.

Take care and I hope to hear from you soon.

Ta,

Tommy