A year later...

Enjoying winter back in Calgary, Alberta

I can't believe it's been a year back in Canada! I still talk about my experiences down under regularly much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues who have made it a game -- "How long until Jim mentions that he went to Australia?" It's definitely a weird feeling being back in your old life like nothing has changed. There are a lot of subtle and big differences, relationship changes and personal growth that happened when you were away that can make reintegrating hard.

A full year to think about my exchange has really made me appreciate all of the talk we had beforehand about mental health and culture shock. The emotional highs and lows you experience when you are there and when you come back have a real effect. The ATA (Alberta Teacher's Association) does a great job of talking about this before and after you go, but you don't think it's going to be all that real until it actually happens.

This is a graph of your mood when you leave and when you come back courtesy of the exchange handbook. (ieep.ca)

I would say that I'm finally in the adjustment phase. You don't really realize which phase you're in until after you're out of it. It's a lot easier to see how cranky and complaint-filled you were when you no longer feel that way. I've found it helpful to focus on what I will do next and create new goals for myself. I have a good imagination and I can believe that there is always a chance I might do this sort of thing again in the future. 

Speaking of creating goals for myself, I'm excited that I'm going to be speaking at the Palliser District Teachers' Convention on Thursday, February 20th. I've never done a public speaking event before, but I've decided it can't be any scarier than moving to a different country for a year. If you're interested in learning about what the exchange is like and how to apply, please come! It gives me the chance to talk about it again! 

New Zealand and Maui

 Term 4 School Holidays: New Zealand and Maui, Hawaii

This is going to be my last blog post for a while. I think I might come back and add another reflection at some point, but no promises. This last vacation was something I've looked forward to for a very long time. I'm currently back in Canada and besides suffering through some bad jet-lag, setting off my windshield wipers instead of my turn signal, and having my face hurt from cold from the first time in a year, I'm doing great!

I decided early on that our last trip would include going to New Zealand as I've always wanted to see it since watching the Lord of the Rings movies. I did some research and decided that using a camper van to get around would be the best way to go about seeing what I wanted to see and keep costs down. In New Zealand there are a whole range of free camping sites for anyone with a certified self-contained vehicle. Unfortunately, December is their peak travel period and we were able to only afford a bare minimum camper-van which we got off of 'share-a-camper.' Lucky for us it was a diesel engine as petrol (gas) was between $2 and $2.15 per litre.

As soon as we got it we picked up some groceries from the Countdown store and made our way towards the Coromandel Peninsula. We didn't make it and had a hard time finding a free site that was open. It was getting past 1 am New Zealand time so we found a spot where we parked for the night at Waitawa regional Park. I'm pretty sure we weren't really allowed to camp there, but I was too tired and we left first thing in the morning with no issues from the park rangers.

Our trip the next morning took us past the Firth of Thames up to Coromandel. It was an amazingly scenic "great ocean road" type drive on a skinny, twisty road. We stopped for lunch somewhere past Thames and got some ridiculously expensive sunscreen in Coromandel. $9.99 in Australia, but $28.99 in New Zealand!

From there we decided to head over to Hot Water beach and Cathedral Cove. Better said than done! This was along a very windy road that ended up being a gravel road and then a mud road. Along one of the curves, a young guy who was cutting corners and going much too fast (I sound so old) had to slam on his brakes and slid about 5 metres on the gravel narrowly missing my van!

Hot water beach is sort of a misnomer as the ocean water itself was cool, but there was a hot spring that ran off into the ocean. The kids loved it here and just wanted to stay floating around in the nice, warm shallow water. After about an hour we decided to check out Cathedral Cove, which is apparently where they filmed some of Prince Caspian of the Chronicles of Narnia. The beach was very nice and we watched the water taxi go by. There were beautiful limestone islands with sheer cliffs to look at as we walked around. We continued to have difficulty finding a free campsite as they were very busy. We ended up paying for this night in a rain forest campsite.

The next day we headed to Tauranga and climbed Mount Maunganui, for perhaps the best view in our entire trip. The day was nice and hot and perfect without a cloud in the sky. We walked by sheep lounging on the sloping hill, and then saw coastline as far as the eye could see. The beach looked amazingly white and we could see ships sailing slowly away into the distance. After climbing down we had some incredible ice cream (and frozen yoghurt for me) on the beach and made our way onto our next destination. We slept at a free camp site near Lake Taupo and I was worried that it was going to be party central as there were so many other campervans in the area. However, unlike Canada, everyone was relatively quiet and respectful without loud music.

Our first stop the next day was at Craters of the Moon to see some geothermal activity in the region. I called this the road to Mordor as you could see Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings in the distance). There were tons of craters with steam rising and bubbling out of mud puddles along the way.

We then drove to Lake Taupo for lunch and made our way to Tongariro National Park to see the mountains and volcano. Unfortunately as we got there a low cloud had rolled in and it looked like it was ready to rain any minute. We did the short walk (not the 6 hour alpine crossing) and left for Waitomo.

At Waitomo we went underground into their large underground caves. They are known for having glow worms in their caverns, and they did not disappoint. We got into a row boat and floated down a pitch black underground lake. Thousands of fluorescent green glow worms that looked like little laser pointers were hanging from the ceiling. It was amazing to behold and the kids thought it was the best thing we did in New Zealand. Way better than hiking stupid mountains daddy!

The next day I had an early morning appointment at The Hobbiton Movie set, which is near Metamata. As we got near, you could see why it was picked. It was just rolling green hills with filled with livestock. Our guide was hilarious and had intimate details of the sets and how they were made. For example the tree on top of Bag End was originally cut down from another location and planted on top of the hill, but Peter Jackson didn't like the way the leaves looked so he had new ones hand made out of silk and wired on. For the Hobbit movies they had to remake the entire set as it was destroyed after the Lord of the Rings, and they had to make that tree out of plaster.

We spent the day marveling at all of the little details before sitting in the Green Dragon inn for some complimentary South Farthing ale and ginger beer for the kids. Afterwards I made a small "precious" purchase in the gift shop.

We quickly made our way to Auckland to hand off our camper van and as Henry remarked drive on the left hand side of the road for the last time.

In Auckland we stayed at an Airbnb in Blockhouse Bay run by a couple of friendly bachelors. We used Uber at this point to get around and visited the Auckland Tower, a very Kiwi Santa and enjoyed the local cuisine. Jenny had no idea what kumara fries were, but ordered them anyway.

We went to Devonport on our last day, which is a nice little seaside suburb of Auckland with a small town feel. It was very overcast and rainy, but we made the best of it. I made everyone hike up one last mountain to see the views of the city. We walked over to Torpedo Bay and enjoyed the naval museum there with all of its little model ships.

On our way home we stopped in Maui for a relaxing vacation from our vacation. I'm just going to include the photos, as we didn't really do much more than stay by the pool and the beach!


Well that's it! I'm done and hopefully this was an enjoyable blog of our family's journey to Australia and beyond for a year. Look below for the map of our campervan travels in New Zealand.

Cheers,
Jim

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

Jordan

Lia

Morgan and Sue

Josh

Vince, Jane, Sheryl, Sheree

Gillian

Carly

Kylie

Anja

Sophie

Catherine and Lezanne 

Emma

Kangaroo Island

Our last big adventure in Australia was to go to a huge island off the coast of the Fleurieu peninsula. I pictured it being almost uninhabited by people, but it looks just like most of the places I’ve been in South Australia with sheep farms and little towns. It is sparsely populated, however, and it is home to a huge amount of wildlife. The biggest obstacle to getting here is the cost associated. The ferry is probably the most expensive in the world and flying is even more so. Expect to pay through the nose if you bring a car. The other thing I was not fully expecting was how much driving would be involved to get from one end of the island to the other. It is a huge island and can take two hours to go from east to west. Despite all of this, I think we saw some of the most spectacular sights we have seen and the most Australian animals since getting here (alive and dead).

Oyster shop

We stayed in American River, which is named after Americans sealers who came to Kangaroo Island in the 1800s. We got a free stay at Kay Mathie's shack which was just around the corner from the Oyster Farm Shop. It had the best oysters we've had since being in Australia. Even the kids gobbled them up with some kilpatrick sauce.

American River

American River is also where there is a huge pelican conservation area. The kids loved walking right up to some gigantic pelicans and seeing them flying overhead.
One thing we noticed right away was how quiet it was here. There was very little traffic and not a lot of tourists. The silence was almost alarming as you hear every step you take.

On our first day we took the kids and visited seal bay. We sort of saw some seals with binoculars on seal rock off of Phillip island in Melbourne, but this was a whole other level of closeness with wildlife.

Seal bay is not a zoo, but a conservation area and these were wild animals that we were walking between. Our guide took us right down to the beach and warned us not to get between the bull seals and the water as she has been charged a few times. We saw mothers suckling their young and seals playing in the water. It was like being in an episode of National Geographic. Needless to say we stayed here most of the morning before heading back for some oysters for lunch.

We then took a drive out to Vivonne bay, which was spectacular. The colour of the water here is just so blue that it is amazing. We were the only people here and walked around just in awe of the beauty of it all.

Henry and Miles are probably thinking beaches are normal now, so I'm curious to see how they react when we go back to Alberta.

Our next day we went on an epic adventure around the entire island. We started off driving to Stokes Bay which was recommended to us by our other Canadian friends here as well as the locals. (Thanks John, Sheryl, Libby and Brad). Stokes Bay is like going through the wardrobe into Narnia. It starts off looking like a rocky beach, but you can make your way between some giant rocks and a cave-like area to emerge onto an almost untouched beach with some very interesting creatures in the rock pools.

Drive to Stokes Bay

Some other tourists finally showed up

Really big orange crab!

Our next stop, and believe me when I say my car deserves an award, was Flinders Chase National Park where we had lunch and saw even more spectacular sights. We stopped first at the platypus swimming holes and were really hoping to catch a glimpse of one as we had been lucky earlier finding several echidnas and goannas on the side of the road. We stayed for a while, but apparently platypuses are the most elusive of Australian fauna.

We continued on and saw the real sights to behold -- The Admiral's arch and the Remarkable rocks. (These are famous icons in South Australia. I realized afterwards that Cathy has pictures in her kitchen of these two places.

The Admiral's arch was more amazing than any of the stops on the Great Ocean Road. It is a huge limestone cavern carved out by sea and wind, but it also had (at least when we were there) heaps of seals frolicking about in the water and on the rocks. We stayed and watched them swim around and fight with each other.

The Admiral's arch

This was probably the highlight of Kangaroo island for me!

Our next stop was on to the Remarkable Rocks which are large granite rocks that have been slowly weathered over 500 million years of erosion. We had a fantastic day of weather so these were a nice end of the day photo and climbing opportunity. They boys loved hiding in the little caves and holes in the rocks.

Our next day was our last and we promised the boys we would take them back to Vivonne Bay so we could do something we definitely can't do in Canada -- sand tobogganing! We went to Little Sahara, which is a large sand dune area where you can take sleds and slide them down! We needed to put wax on the bottom to make them slippery, but it was very similar to sliding down snow without the cold. Lots of sand in your shoes at the end though and Henry took a header and face-planted at one point.

I have one week of school left and then my exchange is over! I'm currently packing up for New Zealand... lots of thoughts and emotions. Not sure whether I'm dealing with them overly well, but we'll see how things go next week.