Australian Cove: Term 4 Reflection

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going outside your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. —Frodo quoting Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings

My life changing year has come to to a close. What do you do or say to people now that you are going back to a life of normalcy? I feel like Frodo or Bilbo coming back from an unexpected adventure and going back to life in the Shire where everything is safe and easy.* I have friends and family to go back to, and they are excited to see me. I’m sure everyone will ask something along the lines of, “How was your trip?” “Did you have fun?” “How does it feel to be back?” The problem is that I don’t have any answers to these most mundane of questions, and I don’t think I will for a while.

I suppose I could say “good” or if I’m being especially generous, “really good.” That answer is likely what most people want to hear along with some amusing anecdotes and some shared pictures of my travels. Another problem is that this will all likely fade after a while, and people will move on with their lives and I will have to as well. However, I won’t really have moved on because I know more than I should.

I really enjoy the book Flowers for Algernon because it brilliantly describes the problem of too much knowledge. The character in the story undergoes a procedure which increases his intelligence. He goes from being a simple low IQ man to a man of extreme intelligence overnight. He grows to hate it and wants everything back the way it was. Just like in Plato’s allegory of the cave, once you have seen what is outside you can never really go back and live a normal life. I expect this is a similar feeling for all travelers who have embedded themselves in a culture. It is difficult to go back to your own culture and see it for what it is with new eyes.

When I first got to Australia I had a lot of complaints. Why do people park on the side of main roads? How am I supposed to teach in such a small classroom? Why does everyone say ‘I reckon’ after every sentence? I expected to survive my job grumbling about too many meetings and crazy outdated assessments and make up for it by going on some great vacations.

While it is certainly the case that I went on some great vacations (and still am, New Zealand blog coming up next), I started to enjoy going to work much more and spending time with people who were changing my life. I grew to meet the Wednesday coffees and the Friday get togethers with anticipation so I could see the people who were now my friends more and more. I now find the idea that I will never see most of these people in my life again very difficult.

I have made lifelong friendships like the couple from Ottawa (Sheryl and John) that are also on exchange. Their boys became friends with ours and we will now live 3,300km away from while in the same country. John drove us to the airport. (I promise not to make fun of your Japan stories anymore, because I am now going to be that guy).

There is the former Australian exchangee couple from Adelaide (Brad and Libby) who met us at the airport to wish us goodbye. Their kids also got to know ours and they made a deep bond. They were amazing babysitters in a pinch this year and I’m hopeful they’ll visit us in Canada someday soon.

There is Sera from work who has had us over to her house, taken us to her family’s place in Moonta and met us in Nairne for Strawberry season. Her kids want to be PenPals with Henry and Miles.

There is my Year 1 team of Jan, Gillian, Sue and Morgan who helped me out so much this year and made sure we could all laugh at my lack of knowledge regarding ‘data.’

On my last day Vanessa from work threw me a going away party that rivals my Sarah Thompson going away party as the best I have ever had. I danced and sang the John Farnham song, “You’re the Voice” as loud as everyone else and felt like I belonged with this group of strangers from a year ago.

I got a huge number of going away presents from the parents of the kids here and I guess I underestimated the impact I had teaching all of my uniformed Australian kids. I also taught them Mele Kalikimaka as a final Christmas song on the last day so that I could impart a little bit of ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ in their lives as it is not as well known here.

There are so many things I’ve learned I take for granted and so many things I kept learning all year. It was a year my brain had to always be on so that I could process what people were saying as well as just go about everyday things like shopping for food or clothes.

I’m sure when I get home I will be good, but there are no happy endings in real life. Just bitter sweet ones because you can never unlearn and never let go completely of what you had. I hope everyone understands that I can’t name everyone who affected and helped me out this year, but everyone did and I’m grateful for everything.

I’m off to Hawaii again tomorrow for Christmas for a real Mele Kalikimaka! See you all soon, and anyone that wants to come visit me in Canada has an open invite.

Jim

*I am in New Zealand and just visited Hobbiton so I have hobbits on the brain.

Some of my new friends:

Christiana