Settling always takes longer than you think

We've already been in Australia for over two weeks and it's been really hard to find time to write! The most writing I did this week was our prayer letter, but finishing off a blog post was next on the agenda.

I wrote these few paragraphs 48 hours after we landed in Australia: 

I hesitate to write in the heat of the moment. Often a bit of time between an emotional experience and writing about it is helpful. But I also know that this new-to-Australia feeling will soon slip away and I’ll miss an opportunity to capture how fragile I feel when I’m newly back in the country. 

Yes, it’s less than a year since I left, but it feels much longer. I guess in part because the cumulative time we’ve been away is getting pretty big. Certainly the majority of my adult life has been now spent in Japan. 

Stepping back into Australia is not like coming home after a short holiday. It’s both familiar and unfamiliar. It’s scary and intriguing. I feel a little like an alien trying to read the cues so I don’t mess up. I look and sound like I belong (mostly), but that’s not what it feels like on the inside. One of our early stops is always a branch of our bank. We need to double check our memory of our PIN numbers is correct, and change our contact details. 

Believe it or not, it’s all a bit scary till you get back into the groove. (I’ll come back to this later in the post.)

We’re in Cairns for a few days rest before we plunge into life in south east Queensland. I have to give a plug for the staff at Bank of Queensland in town here. They were friendly and helpful, and not at all shocked by having these vagabond Aussies who’ve been living overseas and moving to Ipswich dropping in on them in Cairns.

Wednesday August 2

We're now almost completely moved into our house now, eight days after we first walked into the house. That's a great relief, as we've been living out of suitcases since mid June. (I think this was the day that we unpacked books onto a bookshelf…we don’t own many books here, but just having them out of boxes is a big step towards feeling like we’ve settled for the time being.)

Saturday Aug 5

Back to today. I’m sitting on our front deck (yes we have one!) It’s mid-winter and I’m in a t-shirt with a light flannie (flannelette or flannel shirt for the non-Aussies). Amazing weather, but pretty usual for this place. The forecast maximum today is 23 (about average for this week), it’s not quite that warm yet, but the sky is blue with a few fluffy white clouds and I can see a lot of trees from where I sit.

This suburb (Springfield Lakes) is fairly closely packed with houses. It’s a relatively new suburb and the blocks are much smaller than the average Australian block, but it feels comfortable to us. It’s not as crowded as Japan. There are footpaths and grassy verges everywhere. It’s a convenient location: very close to shops, the train station, cinemas, post office, bank, even a free public pool. But it’s also very suburban and relatively quiet. Add to all that is a lot of parkland and footpaths through bushland and beside bodies of water.

We’re really happy with this location and with this house and so thankful that God provided us so quickly with a place to make our base for these 12 months. When we moved in last week, it was our sixth beds in July and we were very happy to stop.

Although we haven’t really stopped. We’ve stopped moving and stopped living out of suitcases and in a one-day-at-a-time mentality, but the act of settling into Australia has moved to a different level. Now we’re working on things like getting medical appointments, filling out forms for various reasons, proving our identity and our suitability for working with kids. And also working on young-adult-children type stuff like researching part-time jobs, uni Open days, getting Medicare cards for sons, etc. And gyms. Our youngest son is very keen to join a gym, and we’re doing what we can to help both of them feel settled, so this is a key piece. Up till now he’s had free access to a school gym, so paying to go to a not-so-cheap Australian gym is harder to swallow.

We also don’t have our own car yet. Thankfully our eldest son has lent us his car, but we’re actively searching for our own wheels. Car shopping is new, we haven’t done this in Australia for more than a quarter of a century. David is out this morning looking at used car lots, and yes, I decided to leave him to it and stay home!

This week also held OMF medicals, psychological debrief, driving an hour to meet my parents for lunch (they live 120 km or 1½ hrs away), and grocery shopping (which deserves another complete post). As well as dipping our toes back into ordinary church life: young adult Bible study for our son and ladies Bible study for me.

And that’s not even including the subplot of David’s work laptop simply stopping working just days before we left Japan and the saga of him trying to figure out what to do about that! Finally yesterday both his new laptop and the backup data arrived, so thankfully that distraction is nearly over.

But back to the idea that life back in Australia is a little scary at times. Not that we’re afraid, it’s just that most things take extra effort because none of it is familiar. It doesn’t take much to tip us into confusion. We’re also struggling to keep longer lists in our heads, resulting in frequent disorganized behaviour and amusement from those who are closest to us.

On Monday I went grocery shopping before I’d had my mid-morning coffee (the first coffee of the day). A bad idea at the best of times, but when I was planning to do my first big grocery shop for the household, it nearly undid me. I stood so long in one part of the huge cereal aisle that an employee asked if she could help me (and normally the employees there don’t speak to customer unless spoken to). Thankfully I managed to get enough food to last us through to yesterday, when I did a top-up shop (with coffee on board). 

It feels good to be getting back into my groove in the kitchen. This afternoon I’m planning to do my first baking in my new kitchen. I’m looking forward to that. It’s another sign that I’m starting to feel settled here.

This has turned into a long rambling post. But it’s probably fairly indicative of the sort of conversation you might have with me if you managed to pin me down anywhere for any length of time just now!

I have lots of other things I’d like to write about, but I’ll keep them for now. The debrief on Thursday with the psychologist challenged me to think about dreams I might be able to follow, or pastimes to pursue during this year when our time is more flexible. I think that writing is one. Usually my time is quite bound by editing deadlines, but I’m much more free from those these next 12 months. We’ll see what eventuates. But for the short-term, at least, I hope to be blogging more often.