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Together for Gaynor's 40th
After a time apart, we are reunited to celebrate Gaynor’s birthday at one of our preferred restaurants in California. -
So, Where Are You From?
During our trip up to Vancouver, we visited the excellent Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. There most of us joined a tour run by a volunteer with a group of a dozen or so. To break the ice a little the tour guide introduced herself and then asked where people were from. A couple from the UK, some from the US and then she got to Ariana who just went, ‘Errr …’ and looked up at me, a little lost. I said that we were Australian by way of California and that seemed sufficient. In discussing it with Ariana later, she confided that she thought about saying Australia, Germany and/or California — and while in some sense we are from each of those places — none of them were particularly accurate.
That got me to thinking a little about cultural identity and, well, what exactly is ours? At the time we were in Vancouver I posted this status update on Facebook: “Fenton thinks that a family from California who has lived longest in Canberra — watching in their motel in Vancouver — supporting Queensland beat NSW can’t possibly be confused about their cultural identity.”
I think that, for us, we are a little bit of each culture we have lived in and embraced, to the extent of those things we adopted. So, I know Gaynor[1] and I quite like lighting a candle on a Weihnachtskranz and singing a hymn each week in the four weeks leading up to Christmas. The children are fond of Halloween (though not quite as much as Karneval where the sweets come to you) and we all seem to enjoy Thanksgiving. I think these are traditions that we’ll bring back to Australia with us and enjoy for years to come.
However, more subtle and powerful are the effects on our understanding, our world view and our character. I believe that the particular ways that different cultures perceive things alters your own point of view, however minutely, to the extent that you come to understand the people. Of course, not everything you find is worth picking up but just being exposed to an alternative is usually beneficial. Perhaps one of the main benefits for us has been an increase in tolerance for different ways of doing things. Having now lived in three education systems, three health care systems and three political systems, we occasionally remind the children that sometimes some ways are better, sometimes they are worse and sometimes they are just different.
Recognising that your own eyes have been opened to an alternative way is not always apparent — can’t see the forest for the trees, I expect — but you can clearly see that recognition in someone else’s reaction when you expose them to something new, something they hadn’t previously known or considered. We’ve enjoyed doing that for people met in other cultures and I’ve enjoyed being on the receiving end, however difficult it might have been to adjust perceptions and thinking at the time.
In the end, our family’s culture derives largely from the sum of our experiences — just as for everyone — though I guess our experiences have, perhaps, included exposure to more alternative ways of doing things than might otherwise have been the case if we had stayed put. I think we are better for it, even given some of the discomfort that came along with it. And to answer the original question, I think we are from a bit of lots of places now. Now the question, ‘Where do you belong?’, well … that’s a bit trickier.
[1] Gaynor has her own whole range of culinary traditions and experiences that she has embraced, including picking up her very own raclette grill in Germany.
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Ballet Life
Hey, this is Mara. Dad told me to write a blog to update all people on my dancing. First of all, for those of you who don’t already know, I got my first pair of pointe shoes in February. Secondly, I was at the highest level at my ballet school in California. Also, that a month ago I was cast in BRAVA’s Nutcracker.
Pointe shoes are a pretty simple concept. They are ballet shoes designed so you can stand, literally, on your toes. Or, in other words, alot of pain. When you first start dancing on pointe, all you really do is go up, and come down. As you advance the more complicated the steps on pointe become. After about four months in the beginning class, I moved to the next one. And a couple of months after that, I moved on to the last level. The ultimate goal of pointe work is to be able to do 32 fuete turns en pointe. (If you don’t know what those are, google it.)
My ballet school had six levels, six being the most advanced. I started in level three and after two years, I was in level six. Mind, you that moving that quickly isn’t very common. I spent the first six months in level three, relearning the basics. After that, I was in level four for about four months. Level five is where a lot of dancers at the studio stay, or they quit. After only four months in that class, I was promoted to level 5/6. This meant that I took both classes for five and classes for six. After about four months I dropped level five, and I was on top of the world. That is where I left off.
Nutcracker is a famous ballet with music composed by Tchaikovsky. 2010 was the second year I was in it, however, it was with a new company. And by new, I mean new. New costumes, dancers, stage, choreography, and director. I was cast as a Courtier Lady and as part of the corpse de ballet for Waltz of the Flowers. In the end I had very sore feet and I was very tired. I had a total of (I think) ten people come to see me dance. It all worked out great and I got to wear an amazing costume.
All in all, my dancing experience in California has been great. I would like to thanks my parents for all the time and effort they put in to get me there, back, and fed. And I would like for all of you to have the opportunity to see me dance, sometime.
Love Mara
Got to dance, even (especially!) around the house, though not always in full gear. -
Go Further West!
If you haven’t heard already, we are planning on moving the family further west, back to Canberra. This will complete our first[1] round-the-world odyssey, begun in February 2005 with the move to Germany and continued in August 2007 with the shift to southern California. I’ve been offered a position within the Research School of Physics and Engineering at the Australian National University, working on plasma diagnostics in the same lab in which I performed my thesis work.
In many ways it is a mixed bag of feelings. To be leaving the wonderful friends we have made here is, of course, difficult but we are excited to be moving closer to family and to renew old friendships. Naturally, we expect the culture to be very familiar but even if it hasn’t changed much, we have. It should make for an interesting mix of old and new.
Sorting out the children’s formal education, especially that of the oldest four, will also add interest to the move. Since we are shifting hemispheres — and thus back to an academic year of February to December — some children who went back six months in the move to the northern hemisphere should be going forward and vice versa. So, Joshua should be starting Year 12, even though he has just finished the first half of Year 11 here. To complicate matters, we’d like Elijah to start Year 11 (six months ahead of where he is now and a year ahead of where he would be if we’d stayed in Australia) and Mara has been doing Year 10, same as Elijah, after skipping Year 9 here. I guess we’ll have her start Year 10 again and have Ariana start high school. I think this puts them both a year ahead of their same-aged Australian friends[2]. Of course, the actual schools they end up at largely depends on where we end up living exactly.
And that brings me to the cost of housing in Canberra. Either to rent[3] or to buy[4], I mean, what the?! Gaynor is keen to buy a place and I expect we’ll look for something small and old to improve or some land to build our own. Of course, we’ll see how it goes and, at the very least, we are moving to a place where we mostly know the infrastructure, have good friends and family and will be back in a culture we (hopefully, possibly) understand.
Essentially, it comes down to this: After eighteen years of marriage and six children we are feeling like settling down — for a little while at least.
[1] Who knows if it will be our only?
[2] Ariana has a friend who has also gone ahead a year so she’ll, at least, have someone familiar.
[3] As at the March quarter of 2009 the median rent in Canberra was $420 per week, the third highest in the country.
[4] The median house price in Canberra as of September 2009 was $511,820, lower than only Sydney among capital cities of more than 100,000 people. -
Christmas 2010
Though the card is a little late this year, here it is nevertheless, wishing you had an enjoyable Christmas and all the best for the coming year.
A rare, recent photo of us altogether, slouching it at Bryce Canyon in Utah. -
Vancouver
Even though the trip was a little while ago now, I still want to post about it, if nothing else to keep up the facade that we travel a lot. The trip up itself was fairly uneventful, stopping overnight in Redding, northern California before pressing on to visit, and stay overnight with, some friends outside of Seattle. Portland, Oregon became our least favourite city due to a horrendous traffic back-up through the city. We even ended up getting off the highway for a bite to eat just to let it die down a bit. We were going about as fast as the restaurant anyway.
The next day saw the border crossing into Canada — relatively trouble free except for some errant apples. Gaynor seems to take it a little personally when she has offending food. To be fair, there wasn’t much warning fruit would be a problem. The weather driving into Vancouver was lovely — the city itself is set in a spectacular locale — and would prove to be one of the few sunny spots of our stay. Since we only really had one shot at the interview at the consulate we went to check things beforehand.
Near the US Consulate and, despite being pressed for time, we still managed to stop and pretend we were in a movie. The interview at the consulate went fairly well the next day, especially since I did not have a complete set of paperwork. I have to say, the US Department of State is one of the more efficient, helpful and reasonable vestiges of US bureaucracy. They gave me time to organise what couldn’t be done before the trip, due to another less efficient US government department, with no need to schedule another appointment or to bring everyone back in. We hit the Vancouver Public Library so I could have some internet access back to my work to try and sort it out and everyone made the most of the unexpected delay.
Gaynor likes to keep her reading current. Eventually, the paperwork was sorted and I returned the next day to finalise everything. One of the aspects to renewing a visa out of the country is that it must be approved before you can re-enter. So if you are on some kind of schedule, there is always a bit of angst over whether it will be approved and delivered in a timely fashion. In our case, the member of staff was very helpful even suggesting they could complete the visa in shorter time if needed. Indeed, the visas were ready for pick-up on time on the Friday.
So with the business of visas out of the way, we had time to spend relaxing in Vancouver. We took in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, a walk through gorgeous scenery, a ferry trip out to Bowen Island, a visit to the medal ceremony area for the Vancouver Winter Olympics and lunch in Stanley Park.
Of course, sometimes travelling coincides with birthdays — Elijah’s in this case — and we do the best we can with what is at hand. He picked the restaurant and the birthday ‘cake’ and his ever-helpful sisters provided the finger candles. He’s the kind of young man who patiently learns new things at museums so he can experience the sporting thrill of something like the Olympic staging area.
And then, with visas in hand, we headed south. The border crossing back into the US was more arduous with quite a long wait to be seen and then an hour of processing time. Seven people (Micah had a free pass), including fingerprinting of the older ones, just takes some time I guess. We stopped in central Oregon overnight and took the opportunity the next day to experience some of the famed Oregon outdoors with a hike to some natural hot springs. Incredibly scenic, wonderfully peaceful and deservedly relaxing.
Finally, we pressed on to visit our good friends in San Jose for a day or so, including Memorial Day. A trip to one of their favourite parks was a highlight for the younger children, especially the miniature steam train for Micah and the carousel for Bryna.
Micah had a great time waving good bye to people and hearing the train blow its whistle. 
Bryna always seems to know where the camera is. So we counted the trip as successful — a long drive but some new things to seen and done. We can highly recommend Vancouver as a destination — clean, interesting and a fabulous natural location — even if you don’t need to visit the US Consulate (which was at least one of those things).
You can check out all the photos of the trip on our Flickr page.
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The Pitfalls of History
Despite a broken arm from playing tag in World History class, Mara remains upbeatedly nonchalant. -
Micah's Morning Ritual
Like all civilized gentlemen Micah prefers to take the morning paper with his breakfast. -
Micah Makes Two
The call to arms (or at least cutlery). This past weekend we celebrated, with a couple of friends, Micah’s achievement on making it to the two year mark. Despite the fairly hot weather, a barbeque was in order with Gaynor once again directing the menu and doing most of the food preparation. Needless to say, the food was excellent. We also supplemented Gaynor’s food with a 3 foot long burrito we picked up from a local restaurant. We were wondering how best to eat such a thing but it soon became obvious (disappointingly, we merely cut it up).
Micah — despite cutting his back molars at the moment — had a great time. Many of the children stayed to play a bit longer, helping to make up for his two big brothers who were unable to make it. I know he’s missing them but they both seem to be having a great time where they are at the moment.
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Leaving the Country … a Bit
Though the length of our stay here in the US is as yet unknown we don’t want the children to lose touch with the other cultures they have been growing up in. So to that end, we are sending Elijah back to Canberra for his summer holidays and Joshua back to Germany for most of his. Elijah is specifically going back to play rugby with his old club since the coaching and opportunities here are lower and fewer[1]. Joshua is largely going because we are awesome parents.
Of course, for us it isn’t as simple as ponying up a pile of cash for the airline tickets. Our entry visas to the US have expired and — though our immigration status is perfectly legal — must be renewed before the boys will be allowed to re-enter the US after departure. Somewhat inconveniently, one must leave the country and re-apply for the visas at a US Consulate. Even though Mexico is only a couple of hours away, we’ve decided to head the opposite direction and will visit the consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia. The decision is primarily for processing time — Tijuana typically takes nine days and Vancouver two — since one must stay out of the country until the visa is processed. Though we certainly would like to visit Mexico at some time in the future, it just doesn’t work at this stage.
So we are treating the 4400km (2700 miles) round-trip — roughly Port Macquarie to Cairns and back again[2] — as this year’s family summer holiday. If all goes to plan, we should have a few days in Vancouver with little to do but enjoy it. In addition, we’ll also get to stop in and see a few friends on the way up and back.
Now all I have to do it make sure the van is up to the task …
[1] I should know, having just finished as Head Coach of the boys’ club.
[2] Or for our European friends, Amsterdam to Lisbon and back again.
