Well the weekend slipped away from me and I never did get back here. Our Saturday mornings are generally taken up with wrestling training (and getting to and from that, which is about half an hour away).
Saturday afternoon, though, was a lot quieter than the previous weekend. We were at home, though our youngest had a friend over to play for a couple of hours. Yet another friend who doesn't have brothers (we tend to attract these types of boys, it seems). But other than that we stayed here.
I indulged in some more baking and David did some gardening with a couple of the boys. They're working on a veggie garden up the back. Hopefully we'll have some homegrown produce in a month or two to supplement to weekly grocery shopping.
Sunday
On Sunday morning we worshipped at our former home church, which is now a new denomination, with a new name and "new" building. Thankfully there were a few people there we knew. Even one person from the church I attended during the early '90s when I was a uni, but haven't see for 20 years.
After church we were warmly welcomed by many in conversation and actually had trouble getting away to our next destination: Open Day at our Alma Mater, the University of Queensland (UQ). On the way there we ate onigiri (Japanese rice balls) that I'd made. I have to admit that this is the first time I've attempted making these in a loooong time. They are staple fair in Japan (think what a sandwich is to a Westerner and that's what onigiri are to Japanese). But because they are so readily available at convenience stores (and so yummy), I just never bother to make them myself.
However, because wrestling training butts into meal times twice a week (dinner on Monday and lunch on Saturdays), I'm finding I need to find healthy portable meals. Onigiri is a great choice, if I can get it so as my fussy "Japanese" boys like it.
The Open Day was great, at least the part we saw of it. UQ is huge, 114 hectares of it! To our Tokyo eyes it looked like you'd be going to uni in a park! It also has more than 45,000 students.
We only saw the engineering/science part because that's what our 15 y.o. is interested in studying. It's great how these explorations of tertiary education over the last few weeks have sharpened his focus for the future. He seems to be pretty clear on what he wants to do and where now. I didn't expect such fast decisions, and of course that could change, but for now it's great to see him matured enough to think ahead like this.
I do have to say that the science and engineering folk did a pretty good job of providing entertainment for even those who aren't looking at studying there in the near future. While David did a tour with our eldest, I wandered around various displays with our 9 & 11 year olds and we found plenty to keep us interested. From patting a crocodile and wombat to learning about soil, having fun with balloons to learning about a new form of energy that could be used to fuel cars in the future, we had a great time.
Though we did poke some fun at dinner time last night about some of the representatives there who didn't seem to be able to talk in language that the layman speaks, or be able to interact with two younger boys in a meaningful way (doctors don't have the field to themselves in complicated terminology). Many did a wonderful job, however, and just treated us as people who were interested to hear what they had to say.
We finished off the day by wandering through the famous Great Court, seeing a bit of an Asian drumming performance and the UQ Sports department suiting people up in sumo wrestling suits to have a go (we were short of time and so didn't try it out). We also dropped by the UQ Bookstore and bought David a t-shirt and hoodie with the UQ logo on them.
And that was pretty much the end of the weekend. Not too bad. Almost no shopping (unfortunately a feature of re-settling in a new place), not too much "work", and a bit of rest too.
Alas it marks the end of our settling-in period. From here on we will have more and more meetings and opportunities to talk to groups about mission. We still have a lot of preparation to do, but the tempo is going to ramp up.
How was your weekend? Anything unusual or interesting?
No comments:
Post a Comment