Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Our camera has officially gone kaput. The lens was not retracting normally for the last week, but as of this morning, it has stopped working altogether. Canon informs me that because I purchased the camera in the US, it will not be under warranty here. So we’ll see if we need to buy a whole new camera or not. No new pictures until then. Luckily, we have a number of pictures in our cache.

We had a visit from the next-door neighbors Friday afternoon - the dad and then when they got home from school, the two kids. The kids are in year 8 (Georgia) and 11 (Josh). They both came in looking very sharp in their wool blazers with a crest on the pocket and leadership pins on the lapels. All of the kids in Warrnambool schools wear uniforms, though these two kids happen to go to a Catholic school. From what I’ve learned, about 2/3 of students attend government schools and 1/3 private schools, most often Catholic run.

Most of our conversation with the neighbors centered around sport and food. We are scheduled to see the kids play netball and footy, and the dad coaches an adult cricket team (like our softball leagues, but I don’t sense that cricket is ever coed). The kids insisted cricket was not important, to which the dad feigned shock and disappointment. He started to explain some of the terms and honestly, I was lost after about five words. I understood the individual words that were coming out of his mouth, but they were all put together to mean something I totally didn’t understand. And then there’s the difference between Australian rules football and rugby. I’ve decided that “Aussie rules” is something like a combination of rugby and soccer. We’ve been watching some sports on the TV, trying to make meaning of them. Andy is doing much better at that than I.

The first night we arrived, our landlady Maureen asked if anyone had given us a team for which to “barrack.” (The term “root” here has an entirely different meaning – it begins with f and ends with k, and it’s not fire truck…) So, anyway, Maureen suggested we should become fans of Collingwood. Everyone we have mentioned this to since then has had the same reaction of disgust: “What? No! Not Collingwood!” It’s kind of like how people in Norcal react to Dodgers and Lakers fans.

The kids were pretty knowledgeable about NBA and who was in the playoffs this year. They knew enough, anyway, to be impressed by the fact that I taught Mike Miller when he was in 6^th grade. We discussed the latest news that one of our favorite WNBA players, Australian Lauren Jackson (plays for Seattle Storm), was not going to be playing in Australia in her alternate-season this year. Andy and I hope to see the WNBL Melbourne Boomers play when the season begins in September.

We also talked about food. Georgia noted that she ate peanut butter almost every morning, but was intrigued by the idea of the American-style PB&J. I suggested she take the plunge and try one. She also told me she always wanted to have a corn dog – we bonded over that. Josh was excited that Ben & Jerry’s had just begun to market to Australia. They sell about 5 or 6 flavors where he works for $9 a pint, $4 for the single serving size. We compared candy bar preferences. They enjoy Mars bars (which when said in Australian required a few repetitions for me to understand it!). They wanted to know if we ate at McDonald’s (they call it “Maccas”) and if their food was the same here. I did notice as we walked by the drive through the other day that the Quarter Pounder is still called the Quarter Pounder and not the 113 Gram’er.

We compared school systems. Georgia’s questions were punctuated with explanations of how she came to wonder these things – through reading the whole series of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and watching Mean Girls, the Simpsons, and Family Guy. They have a lot of American TV here (and BBC) and some of the Australian shows are of American origin (e.g. X Factor, Big Brother, So You Think You Can Dance). The other day I flipped through Brady Bunch, Seinfeld (the “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” episode), and Ellen. I told Georgia I thought their public TV stations were great; her dad laughed and she essentially rolled her eyes just like many teenagers would about educational television.

Friday night was cold and stormy (as indicated by this picture of the hail on the ground) so we stayed in. The hail came in two sizes - first pea-sized, and then... bigger peas. (On Saturday night we got thunder and lightening as well!)

I had my first baking experience in our new home. I managed to find all kinds of useful items in the pantry for my morning glory muffins. And it was Friday night, so the TV channels were full of sports. My favorite shows (The Great Australian Bake-Off and Master Chef Australia) are on during the week. We flipped through the stations watching a little bit of cricket but mostly Aussie rules football. Well, Andy watched. I listened to David Sedaris on my iPad.