Ian is 14!

Wow. How did that happen? He has informed us he'll be able to drive in 2 more years.

For his birthday dinner, Ian chose a favorite dish, cheese souffle. I mention that only because I'm kind of proud of how well it turned out this time, the best one yet - and actually enough to feed us all after doubling the recipe. For dessert, Elise and I made a chocolate cake with chocolate icing from scratch. Elise wasn't sure the cake was chocolaty enough and so decorated it with leftover chocolate Easter eggs just for good measure.

One family birthday tradition we have is that every member of the family gives a little speech in honor of the birthday person, remembering high points of the past year, noting personal growth, and just affirming things we like about him/her. The speeches are also a good vehicle for taking note of God's faithfulness over time. Our speeches to Ian hit upon several characteristics that make him special to us: (1) He does not complain much. (2) He has fairly broad interests: math, puzzles of any sort (math, word, 3-D, etc.), languages (he is pretty jazzed by his Japanese class here), insects, need I mention video/computer games? (3) He is not afraid of working hard; he has been putting in many extra hours outside of school to keep up with his Ann Arbor math class. (4) He is a good sport, a fun person to play games with. (5) In fact, he can make almost anything into a game. (6) He has a wonderfully goofy sense of humor.

Here's Elise's speech to him, a poem she wrote. I got permission from both Ian and Elise to share here, though I had to change one line per Ian's instructions - and then edit out 2 lines per Elise's instructions.

IAN
You are a brother of a sort I find hard to find.
Happily, God made no extras of your kind.
Sadly, you have a bit of memory loss,
Don't step on my toes! Don't ruin my cross!
But everyone makes mistakes.
Even I make some awful cakes.
But not everything you do is bad.
There are quite some experiences you've had.
You are 14 now,
You're long past Barnie and a purple cow.
You're the best at maths I've ever seen.
You make up something fun when it's time to clean.
The games you make are amazing too.
The powerful shots all come from you?
Soon, you'll be driving fast.
You might even end up in a cast.
You're 14 now. It's time to start
Helping Mom push her heavy cart.
Help me with my homework too!
I might give a treat to you.
You are a brother, you're special too,
And this is why I love you.

Why green? Ian's eyes are green! (And his shirt in the photos was green.)

Not to gloss over Easter

He is risen!

If you see my window wipers going, I'm turning.

Well, this just about sums up our initial experience driving here. It is one thing to drive on the left side of the road when you're accustomed to the right. It is still another to drive on the left side of the road in a car with the location of all the controls reverse to what you're used to. Whenever we would make a turn, we would invariably bump the windshield wiper stick rather than the turn signal. Elise apparently felt the need to make this sign and tape it in our back window, a signal to other drivers that we were clueless. We've managed to avoid any traffic accidents however, though once, David did find himself at a stoplight puzzling over why there was a car facing him directly across the intersection with the driver frantically waving her arms. Fortunately, there was not much traffic around at the time and he was able to scoot to the other side of the road. It was I, however, who ran into a left hand curb while parking and managed to put some holes in a tyre.

One interesting side effect of driving on the opposite side of the road was that for a time, David and I found ourselves switching the concepts of "left" and "right" and still completely understanding each other. If I was driving and David told me to take a right turn, I knew that he meant to take a left turn. If I told him the salt shaker was on the right of the stove, he knew I meant left. I think we've got it all sorted out now, more or less.

To augment the thrill of driving here, we also had to figure out how to read street signs in Adelaide. We've been told many times over how easy it is to navigate Adelaide; the city was planned and laid out with this ease in mind, after all. However, for all that navigational planning, somehow the concept of placing street signs at major intersections got lost. True, there is often a street sign about 100 m. before a major intersection, but it bears not only the upcoming cross street name but also the names of the neighborhoods this cross street can take you to either direction. Fresh off the plane from N. America, we didn't recognize these signs as street signs since there was so much verbage on them, they were larger than any street signs we'd ever seen, and they were not at the intersections. To lend clarity, sometimes there are street signs at an intersection - indicating streets one will encounter further down that road. It took us about 2 weeks to figure all this out; driving around Adelaide got a whole lot easier once we did.

Unexpected Houseguests

We've had a couple unexpected guests since we moved in, most notably the arachnid sort. We hadn't been here long when Hannah found a redback spider in our garage. Of course, this discovery generated much excitement for the entire family as redbacks are said to be the second most dangerous spider species in the country. After much discussion, photo-taking, and careful peering at her (we knew the spider was of the feminine sort because females have the characteristic red markings), we decided that the logical thing to do with our dangerous find was to capture her alive so we could anesthetize her and bring her back to the USA encased in glass, kind of like a spider paper weight. We did succeed in capturing her, but she died before anesthetization could take place. (Of course, she would die since we left her in captivity while we went to New Zealand for 2 weeks.) Incidentally, redbacks are related to black widow spiders.

A few weeks later, while fetching our mail, I discovered a huntsman spider - inside our mailbox! For about 3 days, he made our mailbox his abode, until the temperatures soared one day, the tin box likely got a little too toasty, and he moved on. To this day, I still carefully inspect the mailbox before I retrieve the mail. (note: I don't actually know if the huntsman was a he or a she, but for the sake of variety, I'll say he. Besides, huntsman does sound masculine.)

The third spider wasn't actually a houseguest. We almost ran into her, quite literally, while hiking in Morialta Reserve just east of Adelaide. After some web searching, no pun intended, I determined she was a golden orb weaver, female. She was a large beautiful specimen, almost as long as my hand.

photo credits: Hannah took photos of the hunstman and redback.

God and Beer

(My best unnamed critic here informed me that I took the blog title a little too seriously with my last post. It was a bit too meandering. Therefore, I do endeavor to keep this post to a reasonable length.)

Our church sponsored this event last week as an outreach tool. This is one thing we like about our Adelaide church, Holy Trinity Anglican; it is serious about the spread of the gospel, not just in word but in deed as well. David attended the event and had a nice time. He got to try 5 different kinds of Cooper beer and chatted with men from our small group as well as a couple of workmates one had brought with him. We liked the event because it was upfront about its spiritual content yet also socially palatable to non-believers. David's co-worker wanted to go, but unfortunately had a prior commitment. The brewer himself shared about why he loves God and beer - or was it beer and God? He is a committed Christian brewer of beer. That's not an oxymoron - cultural norms need to be taken into consideration here.

In an odd way, it is refreshing to be in a more post-Christian culture. Christians here seem to be free of some of the "Christian culture" baggage we've sensed in the USA. There doesn't seem to be as much worry about sending inadvertent messages about Christianity here, likely because (1) the Christian culture is not in the spotlight as much as in the US and (2) it is overshadowed by a huge and clearly secular culture. Thus, the church is not as worried about making a statement about the value of drinking beer when it combines a Christian talk with a beer tasting event. Instead, the tack is that people drink beer at the pubs. That's what they do. So, lets come alongside them, responsibly enjoying the good food and drink God has given us, and bring the good news to those who need it.

However, "the Christian brewer" is a concept I need to chew on in light of the negative impact beer can have on people's lives regardless of which society they live in. I do find a tension here that brings up many questions, but I'll save them for another blog.

Busy Weekends

Well, one really needs to define busy. By our new Aussie-rules lifestyle, the last 2 weekends have been busy, filled with social get-togethers, beach excursions, and a short road trip. Yes, yes, busy with fun stuff! I'm not going to get any sympathy from those of you back in the USA, I know.

Let me start with March 1-2 since I have managed to post a little slideshow from that weekend, thanks to the help of Bob and my dear (well, usually. . . ) husband David. Saturday, I actually cleaned the house! That doesn't happen too terribly often, so it was somewhat of an accomplishment. After a trip to the grocery store, I was ready to help David with the cooking. The menu: chicken curry, aloo beans, and roti as we had learned to make them at an Indian cooking class last summer. Steve, Helena, and their 2 boys arrived in good time, bringing some really scrumptious homemade desserts and a bottle of shiraz. (You didn't really think I was cleaning just for fun, did you?) The adults had a very pleasant evening eating, chatting, and playing De Grote Dalmuti. The kids supplemented those activities with badminton, hide and seek, and video games; they did join in the Dalmuti games and sometimes even beat us adults. After they left, Elise quickly whipped up some rice bubbles (krispies) treats for our next get-together. Sunday morning was church, as usual. We then followed home friends from church with quadruplets Elise's age for a BBQ and an outing to Grange beach, just 5 blocks walk from their home. At the beach, the girls got into collecting these odd, clear, small, jelly-like balls, creating a good-sized pile. You can sort of see this in the slideshow. A passing man told us they were little jellyfish. I'm a bit skeptical as I didn't see a single tentacle, but I'm certainly no marine life expert. Whatever they were, the girls were thrilled with them and carried the whole pile back to the house carefully wrapped in a towel. I'm not sure if any of them ended up going home with us. I haven't seen any stray jelly balls in our house recently.



Saturday, March 8, we went on a little road trip down to Victor Harbor, about 110 km. south of us. After a late start, we enjoyed a few hours on a beach on Horseshoe Bay. That's Horseshoe Bay in the photo above. David had bought 2 boogie boards that morning, and the kids had fun playing around on them. Well, I'll admit that David and I had fun playing on them too. We then found a funky beachfront restaurant for pizzas and Indian food. After dinner, we headed over to the jetty and walked the 800m. to Granite Island, home to a colony of Blue Penguins. When the sun had set, we went on a penguin tour. It was not the best time of year to see penguins. In fact, it was just about the worst possible time to see penguins. Many in this colony were still moulting, meaning they were not going out to sea until their waterproof feathers had completely grown back. Plus, their chicks were grown up so numbers were not as high as they could have been. Still, we saw about 5 penguins, a few returning to their burrows after a day of fishing, and we learned a lot from our very knowledgeable guide. The highlight was witnessing the enthusiastic reunion of 2 penguins, one of which was moulting and so staying at home while the other had just returned from the ocean. They literally hugged each other, flapping their little wings on each other's backs and rubbing their beaks together as if kissing. They were still entwined when we finally left them. Maybe they were newlyweds?? We got home about 11:15 pm, making for a long but enjoyable day in the sunny Australian outdoors.

A Broken Record

The big news in Adelaide this week is that the record for the number of days in a row with temperatures >35C was broken yesterday. The previous record was 9 days; we're at 11 days and still counting. Though we truly are enjoying a break from the snow, slushy ice, and gray skies we usually experience this time of year, we are getting a bit tired of the constant heat and intense sunshine. --Gee, that almost smacks of treason to my Michigander sensibilities. -- The high tomorrow is predicted to be 40C; that's about 104 F. Accompanying the heat wave, we're also in the midst of a drought, maybe 5 years long, that has resulted in mild water restrictions; we're allowed to use the outdoor hose only on Sundays between 7 - 10 a.m. and 6 - 9 p.m. I can't remember the last time it rained here. However, after living in Austin, TX for 8 years, I am heartily glad for the dryness; heat and humidity make for miserable companions.