Dreaming of an Aussie Christmas

Here's what an Aussie Christmas looks like:

Yep, beach holidays.

Summer camps for kids. We helped out on this one for middle schoolers.

This is what happens when you help out on camps (this is molasses among other things).

This is an end-of-the-school-year party, which, of course becomes
a Christmas party because it is December.

BBQ

Getting together with family.

It's hot! 

Outdoor carols by candlelight.

Actually this was a huge presentation by a local church in our area.
Live camels and everything.

Followed by fireworks.

Backyard cricket, often on Christmas afternoon.

And if you're lucky enough, find some water to play in. This is
a creek on the property my brother and sister-in-law were working on at the time.

Here's a Youtube clip of Aussie Jingle Bells, which gives you a bit of a humorous glimpse at an Aussie Christmas (this one is pretty amateur, but funny).

Here are some explanations of some of the unique words in the song:

Singlet is a sleeveless t-shirt. Essential for hot, summer days.
Thongs in Australia are flip-flops.
A ute is a pick-up truck in the US. People sit in the front and the back is an open tray/tray with sides.
Swaggie, short for swagman is difficult to explain briefly because it goes back a ways in Australian history. Basically a transient worker who carries his swag/bedroll on his back. Here's Wikipedia's entry.
Esky is a cooler that you keep food/drink in.
Holden. You know this, surely? An Australian brand of car.
Kelpie is an Australian sheep dog.
Beaut is Aussie slang for amazing, great, or even beautiful.
Shoot through is to escape or depart quickly.

So, there you go. Australian Christmas. It's almost enough to make me feel homesick!

This is comes largely from a post back in 2011 (see here).

A dream fulfilled

I looked at the question: Who would you be if you could be anyone at all?

I decided to answer it.*

Actually, I didn't have a choice. All the missionary women at the small retreat in northern Japan were expected to contribute an answer. 

At the time I'd been in Japan for three years, had two young boys and were hoping for a third child soon. Neck-deep in parenting small children as well as culture-stress, it wasn't so hard to dream about what else I would like be doing.

My answer surprised people: magazine editor. 

I think it surprised me too. I wasn't a solid A student in English at high school. Nor did I study anything to do with publishing or writing at university. My degree was in the Occupational Therapy (OT).

However, in the years since I’d married, had kids, and became a missionary I'd drifted away from OT. One of my monthly pleasures was to produce our family's monthly newsletter, the one required of missionaries.

At the time this question was asked, I had no plans to become a magazine editor. I saw no avenue for that in the missionary work we were committed to. But only a couple of years later other missionaries began to ask for help with various publishing projects. Around the same time I began to work proactively on my writing skills: taking a short course, joining an online writing critique group, and seeking avenues for the publications of my articles.

Soon, to my surprise, I found myself with an invitation to work on the editorial team of a quarterly magazine in Japan for missionaries.

Now it’s been nine years since I answered that question and I’ve been the Managing Editor of Japan Harvest for nearly two years. It’s not been an easy job, but I enjoy the challenge and the satisfaction of the finished product. I’ve learned many things and it’s given me much pleasure. But probably the best thing about it is that I can look back and see how God’s taken a dream (or maybe gave the dream) and made it a reality.

Dreaming of the future can be a good thing, especially when your current situation makes you feel trapped.

 *This was a writing prompt from the blog, writetodone.com called Scene Stealers.

Going camping again today

Today's trip.

Today we go camping again. This time we go 60km north-west of here to a place with a cool name: Chichibu.

For the first time we'll take some friends with us. Friends who've not been camping before in Japan. They are also a family of five, but have two girls. It's going to be a bit different.

One thing I've learned: it takes about the same amount of time to pack for two nights of camping as it does for three weeks.

All the places we've camped thus far in Japan.

This is a map of all the places we've camped at in Japan. It totals 13 different campsites, two of which we've visited two or three times. Two years after starting this, we're starting to feel a little experienced.

So, what's our next challenge? We'd love to do a few weeks camping west of here, down in Kansai, or even down to the bottom on Honshu or even Shikoku. It will have to wait, though, because next Japan summer we'll be packing up for our 12 months home assignment in Australia. Maybe in two years time when we come back we'll see what we can do. Of course we'd love to go camping in Australia while we're there for a year.

Dreams and plans! One of the things I love about camping.

Meanwhile, I'm going to enjoy these two days, our last warm-weather camping trip this year. And boy it is warm, 34/35 is forecast. We'll be a little up in the mountains, hopefully it will be a bit cooler at night at least.

Wrap-up on the first Tohoku Writer's Workshop

I'm on such a high. Writer's workshop went really well and everyone was so encouraging.

I didn't make any serious blunders, though I'm still wondering how we managed to pick a restaurant for Thursday night dinner that was 11km away from our lodging and in the middle of city of Sendai. Nonetheless it was a pleasant restaurant and not too expensive.

View from the window of the meeting room we used.

What most encouraged me was the general feeling of participants that these workshops are a good thing and that we should continue to hold them. Also the notion that we're building momentum here, that this "baby" of mine is going to get bigger and more popular!

It is a strange thing starting up something like this—an event that isn't a one-time thing. I've done it mostly on my own, with sideline support from my editing boss. And I've wondered, at times, if it is worth the effort. It certainly has stretched me in numerous ways.

Other encouraging things:

1. God provided great travel companions for my journey and someone to share the driving. We were together for 10 hours, and we rarely lacked for good conversation.
2. One of my travelling companions is an editing team member and a friend. I've only just begun to realise how good a friendship has developed between us. Knowing that is even more precious to me than the great working relationship that we have.
3. That same friend/colleague and I worked well together (she was unofficially helping teach). She enjoyed the workshop and is keen to help out as she can in the future with workshops.
4. Seeing one of the participants who didn't classify himself as a writer join us and soak up the teaching on basic good writing principles. He begged me for more as often as he could.
5. The weather, though cold, didn't present us with snow to drive through. Thank you God!
6. My premise in organising these workshops is to keep them simple and affordable. In this case, it was hard work to do the latter, especially as I had no one local to help. However in the end I managed to put together a workshop that cost under 6,000 yen (about AUD$60) for two nights and two days, including a restaurant meal (participants supplied a couple of their own meals). That is pretty amazing for the expensive land of Japan, and fairly important when your target audience is missionaries.

Things I learnt:

1. I can teach about writing. I can.
2. I can lead. I can.
3. Next time I should ask one of the participants to take care of hot water, coffee and snacks.
4. Don't always believe the nice Information lady at the express rest stop who tells you that snow chains will be necessary up ahead.
5. I can organise events, even if it stresses me out.
6. Future events shouldn't be held up north in the winter.

We drove left the workshop at 4pm and didn't get home until 9.30pm. It was a long drive, though thankfully the roads weren't congested. To help with weariness I drank a rare coffee at dinner time, knowing it would probably keep me up late. I didn't anticipate that my mind would still be racing at 3.30am! I did manage to sleep for a few hours before that, but woke up before 3. I eventually drifted off again, but I awoke feeling as though I could have had a better sleep.

I'm not totally convinced it was the caffeine, I think the high of the workshop, the great conversation on the road home, and several ideas for future workshops can share some of the blame. Nonetheless, no caffeine has crossed my lips today and I'm hoping for a good long sleep tonight.

How's it going?*

Here are six interesting things from my today:

1. I have a new team member helping me edit Japan Harvest from next month. That's exciting! It isn't always easy to find volunteers for new jobs. She's an answer to prayer . . . and an Australian too. They're even rarer here than new volunteers!

We're in the process of spitting up the job of editing the magazine into smaller parts so that its easier for a bunch of volunteers, who have lots of other things going on in their lives, to achieve. One of the positions has been filled and another has someone considering it. That leaves the News Editor position to fill. Any one know someone who might be interested in gathering news throughout Japan that is relevant to missionaries in Japan?

2. This afternoon I met my best Japanese friend and she helped me buy Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets that will get me to the Writer's Workshop that in leading in Kansai (down near Osaka) in a couple of weeks.

3. Then we went and had hair cuts, an interesting activity to do together. After which we had a leisurely coffee together. I had a lot of things weighing on my mind and in my To Do list, but it was wonderful to take a step back and spend time with a friend. We even talked about some of our dreams for the future. It's not every friend who will volunteer their dreams. And certainly not many cross-cultural friendships!

Bjorn and Mary ten years ago.

4. We heard that a friend, Bjorn Gustafsson, died. I blogged here about him and his wife, when his wife died last year. They visited us in our second year in Japan. Beautiful people. Mission minded. Full of love for God and others.

We saw Bjorn in August just after our Uluru trip. He was lively of mind, but his body was riddled with cancer. The boys remember him because he allowed all of them to drive his scooter. The on-road scooter with a fake car muffler he'd welded onto it. That plus his leather jacket made him a pretty cool dude, even in his 70s! Typical Bjorn humour! Living life to its fullest, but still looking forward to being in heaven (and not because his wife was there waiting for him, either, as he told us quite plainly, he was looking forward to being with his Heavenly Father). What a wonderful example of a life well lived.

5. My son starting his own blog today. Or at least he's exploring what a blog might look like for him. He's been interested in computer programming for some time, so I suggested a blog might be a good place to try out some of the things he's learnt.

Also one of his favourite blogs (the only blog he ever reads?) is shutting down this month. It's a Lego challenge blog that used to put out a Lego challenge every month and kids could send in photos of their creations for that topic for example "maze".

So I suggested he could do something of his own Lego challenge blog for other missionary kids. So two blog suggestions in one week tipped him over the edge and he's been playing around this afternoon with Blogger. I'm not sure what the end result will be, but it is fun to see him trying out different ideas.

6. We've started a new tradition with the boys. Each night we're sharing up to three highlights and one low light of the day. It has produced some interesting results.

• Listening challenge. It has been a challenge for the boys to listen to other people's highlights. A good challenge, I'm thinking!
• I've received some "pats on the back" for my cooking. Pats that no one would usually give me. It's pretty cool when someone says that the food they are eating, that you've prepared, is a highlight of their day!

So how was your day?

* For an explanation of this common Aussie greeting, check out this post.

Dreaming of escape in a tent

One of the things that helps me in the midst of a tough time or extra busy time is to have something to plan or dream of for the future. I noted this last year in the midst of the craziness after the earthquake/tsunami disasters in March — it helped us in the midst of stress if we could dream about something like camping (see here).

This is the first time we camped last year, we'll be
back at the same campsite in under two weeks.

Yesterday I had a lunch date with my husband. It was tough to pull away from work, or even to pull away from discussing work at that time (I find that easier at night). But one thing we could talk and dream about was camping. Especially our vague plans for camping around Hokkaido next year in June/July. That is going to be a bigger undertaking than the short two-night jaunts we did last year fairly close to home (under two hours away). But we're looking forward to the challenge (and seeing Hokkaido countryside again).

We're also going camping again in under two weeks, back to the same place we first camped at last July.

It's been nearly seven months since we froze while camping down near Mt Fuji. It's been a long time in coming, we've been waiting for the weather to warm up and our schedule to be freed up. For this Queenslander, the winters, even in Tokyo, are long. I'm excited.

This time we're upping the bar and going for three nights, though for two of the nights we'll have two boys, not three. Our two older sons are each going to summer camps (a bit like SU camps, for my Aussie readers) in the same district. Their camps are separated by one day only, so our first night we'll camp with our eldest and youngest boys, then second day pick up our middle son and on our third day drop off our eldest son and on our fourth day go home. Confused yet?

This is a gorgeous part of Tokyo!

But now I need to figure out a menu. With no electricity on site and no gas fridge, it is a bit limited. Here are my thoughts:

Monday
Arrive after lunch
Tea: BBQ chicken wraps with salad. Dessert: brownies.

Tuesday (can do some shopping this day, get some more ice etc )
B: Sausages and toast
L: Sandwiches and fruit
T: Yakisoba (Japanese fried pork and noodle stir fry) with damper on sticks for dessert


Wednesday 
B: Bacon and Eggs and toast
L: Two minute noodles and fruit.
T: Nanna's Sausage and tomato soup spaghetti. Dessert? Marshmallows over campfire or banana with melted chocolate.

Thursday
B: Pancakes then pack up and head home.
L: Packed sandwiches (on the way home).


What do you dream about when you are under stress? Or do you have a different way of coping?