I live in a dichotomy

The past week has been full of things we've grown to associate with Christmas in Australia, things that we don't do or experience when we're in Japan:

Outdoor carols events: we went to one run by our eldest son's church and have seen plenty others advertised. The one we went to was different to many Australia Christmas events: it was evangelistic, it didn't include Santa, and almost all the songs were related to the true story of Christmas.

Church family Christmas dinner: some churches in Japan may do this, but mostly Christmas is a time for outreach events like concerts

An example of Australian "ugly"
Christmas clothing :-)

Christmas everywhere we go: decorations, lights, packaging, Santa, events, and Australia's version of the "ugly sweater" (often matching shorts and t-shirts with some kind of repeating Christmas motif), it's all far more pervasive than we see in Japan.

Preparing for the "rellie tour": visiting our birth families around the state for Christmas, which requires two eight-hour drives and one 90-minute drive.

Cricket: yep, this is a summer sport and the "sound of summer" for us is cricket on the TV in the background of life. And last week we actually went to one match live, which was a great experience after a lifetime of watching it on the tellie.

Summer: of course, it's summer, even if most of the Christmas motifs deny it. It's our second descent into summer for the year. A Brisbane summer is a bit easier than a Tokyo summer, the humidity is far less oppressive, and the nights are often are not as hot. But it will be longer. We do go most places in a car, too, which makes it easier than riding a bike or walking. We also live in a house with decent insulation, and our bedroom has an air conditioner (though I really would prefer not to live in aircon all day and night).

I remember when I first when to Japan I felt like I had to reinvent myself, like I was a completely different person in Japan than I was in Australia. To some extent that's still true. I remember meeting a life-long friend here one time for a Japanese lunch, then we went to an Asian supermarket. She remarked that she was seeing a completely different side to me than she'd ever seen before (she's never seen me outside the context of Australia). 

Life in Australia is very different in many ways to life in Japan. Life in cross-cultural ministry is also different to what most people "get". And it's easy to feel sorry for myself and descend into a pity-party here. I'm glad I didn't post this when I first wrote it because I've been able to delete a couple of paragraphs of that kind of thing!

I know that I have friends who love me and try hard to understand and love the weird person that this life has made me. I am ever so grateful to them. This is a lonely life and those special friends make a huge difference. I'm trying to do my best to embrace the "Australian Wendy" for these months we're here.

I'm also grateful for the various people we meet along the way who understand. We met two just yesterday, people who we've only crossed paths with a few times, but who have a lot more in common with us than many other Aussies.

There's so much to be thankful for! Even the uncertainty about the future, because it challenges me to trust God more. What are you thankful for this week?

It’s a big week

 Moving into a new chapter in our lives isn’t without pain. I know that the changes we’re going through right now are necessary to move into the next thing, but it isn’t all joy. 

To start with, this week has been miserably hot. Cleaning, packing, and moving furniture and boxes around is an energetic exercise at the best of times, but this week we’ve hit a heat wave in Tokyo, a fairly early one. The average maximum temperature in July is usually 30, the last three days have been 36 or 37 degrees. Additionally, the house we’re moving out of had air conditioning only in the living/kitchen areas, and even that we lost on Tuesday morning as they came to uninstall the units. It’s been a case of working in spurts punctuated by breaks. Thankfully we’ve been able to housesit for friends of ours who are currently in the US on holidays. Their fully air conditioned apartment is only 300 m away from our house, so it’s been extremely easy to pop back and forth between the two. That’s meant we’ve been able to sleep in the cool too.

Sorting our goods thankfully hasn’t been too painful, we did a good portion of it in the months leading up to this move. But still, there was plenty of decisions to be made (this decision tree I shared earlier this year helps you to appreciate the extra layer of complication we have as missionaries). Some decisions are more important than others, but they add up. Just today I’ve decided which pieces of gardening equipment to keep (thankfully I don’t have much), which ice packs to keep, and whether I want to store a razor, or take it with me. Seemingly minor things, but the end of a long list of decisions.

On Sunday we watched as our two youngest sons decided what to take with them when they leave Japan next week, knowing that we don’t really have room to store stuff for them here. You see photos of kids leaving to go to college with whole cars stuffed full of things. Our guys only get a few bags. One of the harder decisions to make was regarding their winter clothes. It was hard to even touch those in the midst of this current heat.

On Sunday evening, it was almost anticlimactic to watch our loved dining table taken away by strangers. But all of a sudden, our house was definitely missing a key piece and since then it’s been feeling more and more like a familiar, but no-longer-the-same place. Then Monday morning the “large rubbish” department of the local government came and took away nine other pieces of furniture. Last night friends came and took our son’s beautiful desk. And two other friends came and took two futon sets.

Last Friday afternoon we welcomed local friends to an open house. We provided cold drinks (it was another stinking hot day), home made snacks (I found frozen bananas that either had to be used or tossed), and a bunch of stuff free for the taking. It was a great opportunity to see some people for the last time. But also we cleared out a lot of stuff too (which either got taken, or subsequently disposed of). It was like a turning point in this move. From then on things have been steadily leaving the house, destined for various places.

One of those is a space OMF rents for missionaries going on home assignment. This is a shared space, so requires quite a lot of juggling. Just in the last fortnight, several missionary units have put stuff in and taken stuff out. Thankfully it’s close to us, so we’ve been able to save a lot of money utilizing our eight-seater van and our two strong sons.

The twist, is getting stuff up and down this unattached ladder! Removalists aren’t super keen and I can understand why!

In the photo you can see a large blue tarp. That is covering the goods of a single missionary who will be coming back, we understand, in the next couple of months.

Other stuff that this last week has held includes:

• A trip to immigration to get our re-entry permit.
• A trip to do the paperwork to transfer the ownership of our car to the missionaries who’ve bought it.
• Quick trips to the store to buy lunches
• A trip to the city hall to tell them we’re leaving the country (so need to pause health insurance).
• Farewelling our youngest as he went to his final youth group camp over near the Pacific Coast. We’ll see him again on Sunday when we head that direction ourselves.

And coming up:

• Tomorrow David will make a journey into our nearest large centre to see if they can figure out why his not-old laptop won’t start.
• We also will make one or two trips to the local dump to dispose of the miscellaneous pile of stuff that we don't want to store.

Friday David will hand over the keys to the house and Sunday we’ll gather our bags once again and head to the OMF guesthouse for a couple of nights before hopping on a flight on Tuesday.

Speaking of bags…we’re pretty sure we’ve got more than the weight our tickets allow us, so today or tomorrow we’ll be weighing it all and deciding what to mail.

It’s been a big week, and hidden underneath all the busyness is an array of emotions. This is a good move, but also lots of big changes and adjustments are needed by everyone.

We have so much to be thankful for. I’m thankful for small things like a nap yesterday afternoon (I’ve been waking after only six hours of sleep each night) and no headaches for nearly two weeks! 

And we have so much to continue to trust God for. It’s pretty common these days to call someone in their life their “rock”, but I think the best rock is God, the only unchanging, reliable being that we know.

 “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I shall not be shaken. My salvation and my honour depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” (Psalm 62:5–8)

This time next week I’ll hopefully be in Cairns, Australia, recovering from an overnight flight. I’ll “see” you on the other side of this journey.

Tidbits from recent weeks

In the spirit of sharing "ordinary life," which is where this blog started out all those years ago! Here's a bit of what's been going on in our house recently (aside from camping):

School

New building and field (before it was completely finished)

School started last week for the students. David started work again full-time more than a week earlier than the kids, and had been working part-time since the start of the month. I'm trying to figure out when we last had just one boy at school—that would be when our eldest started Japanese kindergarten in April 2003, before the one who is now our only boy at school was even born.

Another exciting development at school is the new building that replaces the old cafeteria, but includes a band practise room and a multipurpose room. It overlooks a new full-sized soccer field that is covered in artificial turf. The school looks very different! The 'field" has been gravel for many decades, so this is a huge change.

COVID-19

We've also been touched by COVID-19. We had one case in the high school and that prompted online schooling for just two days at the start of this week while they assessed the situation. We're back to usual on campus classes again now.

As of yesterday all the Tokyo Marshalls are now fully vaccinated, which we're very happy about, especially considering that the country is in the midst of a spike of infections that is far bigger than we've had so far.

Weather

The weather has been in the forefront of our minds, as it usually is in a Tokyo August. Oddly, we had a cooler wet patch in the middle of the month, which we were thankful for. Alas the unbearable heat and humidity soon returned and we had challenges with sleeping and close proximity. Only three of our six rooms are air conditioned, so that made for interesting times with teens who value their privacy. 

On Tuesday this week another cool change came through which dropped temperatures into the low 20s, a shock to the system, but most welcome. We've slept deeply these last couple of nights. A cool change at this time of year is unlikely to turn back into the worst of summer, though we might have one or two 30C days still to come.

Olympics and Paralympics

We've enjoyed many an hour watching these amazing events in our lounge room. The range of English commentary available to us online has been impressive, and we've often played the "guess the commentator's accent" game! It was sad that we didn't get to use the tickets we had to four different events, but a relief in some ways, as spectating in the Tokyo heat would have been very tough.

Lily pads

With holidays behind us, I've struggled a little to find "lily pads" to look forward to. We have talked about a possible camping plan for October and have booked our usual pre-Christmas holiday. But I've also made some smaller plans, which includes pulling out my sewing machine and trialling a weekly out-of-the-house work date with myself.

My work

These last weeks I've been working on the final stages of our Autumn magazine issue about Men in the Japanese church. We finished that on Tuesday afternoon. I've also been communicating with authors who have/are writing for our Winter issue about Technology in Ministry. There's a lot that's been going on in that area and it's a very timely topic to cover, alas that also makes it a challenge to fit everything into the space available!

Our social media continues onwards also. In August we covered Sports, for obvious reasons. Not as much Olympic and Paralympic news as we would have had if we hadn't been in a pandemic, but still, we managed to find plenty to share. In September we have a more challenging topic: Japanese church history. So in recent days I've been reading and trying to write summaries of various topics and eras that make sense and work for social media while at the same time keeping in mind our purpose: mobilising people to be more involved in mission. Yeah, not the easiest of tasks.

I also picked up a small writing gig: writing an article about missionaries and loneliness for our OMF US folk who are tackling that topic in September. It's a topic I've written about many times here, so it was interesting to pick it up again and try to write something fresh.

I've also just written our monthly news and prayer letter. We also have the responsibility of running a prayer night for our fellow 120+ missionaries at our online field conference in a couple of weeks. Planning needs to be done!

I tend to be easily bored, so I'm thankful to have a job that means I'm kept on my toes and have lots of different places to turn my attention, even if it can be stressful at times.

But for today, it's time to pull the plug on work and move into dinner prep and a relaxing evening. How's your August been?

Summer 2021 camping trip

This time last week we'd just driven about 45km west-north-west to camp for the second time this year. And indeed the fifth time during this pandemic! I'm so thankful we've been able to continue doing this. It's such a life-giving activity for us. I read a short article recently about seven types of rest. The author listed physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social, and spiritual. I think camping touches most of these areas for us. And it's been especially valuable to camp with the same friends each of these five times. That's given me a social opportunity that has been significantly lacking in these last 18 months. (If you're interested in the article, it's here.)

The campground's name, Seseragi, means small stream or babbling brook. Indeed, the campsite was centred around a gorgeous stream (called Iruma River), perfect for a summer camp. The water was clear, running over a rocky bed, and mostly shallow, indeed we walked several hundred metres in the stream both directions from where we were camped. The adults and kids had so much fun in it, ranging from sitting with our feet in it, to skimming rocks, building rock towers, and even jumping into places that were deeper.

Camping at this time of year can be really hot. So we worked hard to find somewhere close to water where we could cool off (and had showers). I was so relieved to find that our campsite was shaded most of the day too. So, though it was hot and humid, it was easy to cool off, and we had a great view. As you can see in the following photo, our three tents were facing the stream, and the fourth "structure" the common area/kitchen, also faced onto the stream. Gorgeous!

One small downside was this cute, but not easy-to-walk-on bridge. We had to park on the other side of the stream and carry all our gear across. We were thankful for the three strong teenage boys in our group!

Sunset from the first night. We were in a valley, as you usually are when you camp near a stream in the mountains of Japan. So we could only catch small glimpses.

The below photo was just a little downstream from our tents where I went to sit on a boulder on my own and read on Friday afternoon. You can vaguely see our tents on the left of the photo.

Earlier in the afternoon David brought a chair down into the stream for me (the bank between our tents and the stream was steep and a bit slippery). It was especially lovely to sit with my feet in running water. Which says a lot about the temperature and humidity. Most of the year in Tokyo I am trying to keep my feet warm!

My view of my feet while reading on my Kindle.

This solitary tree was across from our campsite. Lovely shape!

We knew a typhoon was forecast for Saturday night and that we might not be able to stay for our planned three nights (they hadn't let us pay for three nights when we arrived). So we packed a lot into Friday. It was definitely "seize the day" time. 

Mid afternoon we drove to a local dam (Arima Dam) that is often seen by the school's year 11 students when they do their "Wilderness Trek". It was so hot, though, so we didn't stay long. But long enough to take some photos from the dam wall. This is just such a typical "rural Japan" photo! Mountains occupy over 80% of this nation.

We were in for a surprise at the dam, courtesy of social media and a good friend. I'd posted a photo of our campsite on Facebook the day before, and unusually, had included the name of the campsite. Hazel, a Scottish friend (middle of photo below), saw it and as she was in the area visiting family she decided to see if she could seek us out. She arrived at the campsite just after we'd left for the dam, but it so happened that the lady who runs the campsite had seen us leaving and asked us where we were going (she has discount vouchers for a local hot spring and wanted to make sure we weren't going there without the vouchers). So when Hazel arrived, the campsite lady was able to tell Hazel where we'd gone. Amazing! 

I usually see Hazel several times a year at missionary women's gatherings, but that hasn't been happening in the last 18 months. The last time I saw her was in March in a Zoom meeting with about 70 other people. To see her in person was so special. She also knows Renee (left in the photo) and Mark, our camping buddies, from their first stint in Japan when they were stationed here with the US military. 

This is the other direction from the dam wall.

Mark brought two of his bikes to camp and he and one of the teenagers, who's also a biking fanatic, rode to and from the dam. Here we waited, on our way home, at a very long red light!

To give you an idea of our location, the campsite occupied this "triangle" of land. The parking area was where the green "pin" is at the top of the map and we camped about where the "a"of "Iruma" is. All the land was more than a metre above the river, with fairly steep banks, but obviously the forecast of a typhoon coming through was a concern. These typhoons can deliver large amounts of rain in a short period (it's not unusual to hear forecasts of 80-100mm an hr). So this wasn't a smart place to be if the typhoon did hit. Not to mention the possibility of tree branches breaking, nor the idea of packing up in heavy rain and carting everything over a slippery bridge. So, we negotiated a deal to stay till after lunch on Saturday and then went home 20 hrs early. 

Our "Plan B" kept the camping vibe going just a little longer. The BBQ we'd planned for that evening, we had at our friends' house and then we enjoyed a movie night (something we wouldn't have done camping). Then the two friends of our youngest, who'd been camping with us, slept the night at our house. 

It's only the second time we've been "evicted" from a campsite by a typhoon in ten years. Though we did leave another campsite very early after being dumped on by a storm at 3.30 a.m.. And only one camping plan has been cancelled in 10 years. That wasn't due to a typhoon, but merely cold, rainy weather in spring, plus it had been a bold, audacious plan with several families and lots of kids. That's not to say we haven't had rain at other times while camping, just not to the point of needing to abandon the trip.

Last week I wrote here about how this is 10 years of camping for us in Japan. I've just now looked at the map and determined we've now camped in 30 different campsites! Some of them more than once, so probably we've set up at a campsite about 40 times. Here's the map where I've been keeping track of the campsites. What an adventure! And it's not over yet. Clearly we've got some work to do in northern and western Honshu, not to mention Kyushu and Shikoku (the other two of Japan's four main islands).

Seizing the day in the park

On Wednesday we finished the Autumn issue of Japan Harvest magazine, several days before September, the theoretical start of Autumn (according to some). I saw in my Facebook memories today that five years ago we were packing the Spring issue this week—wow, we've made progress in efficiency in those intervening years! (Five years ago we were still recovering from me taking a year off managing the magazine to go on home assignment, and had a designer who was trying to fit the magazine around a full-time job.)

Finishing each magazine is a milestone worth celebrating, and it frequently means I get a tiny bit of breathing space before the next thing begins. This week I really needed that. School started on-campus for our boys for the first time in nearly six-months last Thursday, but due to COVID-19, they've had a slow start (only half days till Sept 7). There have been sudden announcements and changes in what we expected of the school-start as we've progressed through the week, including more distance learning for one. So, I've been cooling my heels as I long to get my family-free office hours back.

That all came at the end of a stressful month. The first eight working days after coming back from holidays on August 3rd were frenetic as I caught up on the previous two weeks. 

It's been the usual August weather—crazy hot and humid—so our sleep hasn't been the best and for the first time in six months we've been getting up at 6am to get David to work on time, so we've been extra tired. 

Additionally, I've had interactions with several people I usually work with that have been more fraught than usual. I put it down to the stress of living in the midst of a slow-moving, and not-yet-ended disaster. 

Then I've had email problems that have come to a head on the weekend when my magazine email address stopped working. (The problem with email is that you don't know if it has arrived.)

So, on Wednesday afternoon, as I looked at what I needed to get done in the next few days, I realised that I had time to take a morning at the park. Unfortunately it didn't cool down as much this week as I'd hoped (we had a cooler day on Sunday and I hoped that would continue, but it hasn't). So instead of riding to the usual park, I took a couple of trains (only 15 mins on trains) to a different park for the morning.

I've never been to this park on my own, and I've not been there for a couple of years at least. We went there many times with the boys when they were younger, as well as with smaller and larger groups of people. There is a big playground that was great for getting rid of energy. It also has an aeroplane museum that was a great place to go when the boys were younger and we needed "out" on an inclement day. I even lost a child in this park one time...he's now at uni in Australia, so he was found, eventually!

It's called Kōkūkoen or Tokorozawa Aviation Memorial Park. Wikipedia says, "The park is built on the former site of Tokorozawa Airfield, Japan's first airfield, which was opened on April 1, 1911. Japan's first plane, the Kaishiki biplane No.1, made its first flight at Tokorozawa on October 13, 1911."

Though only 30/32C, the humidity was high (in the 70% range), so I quickly found a spot to sit. This was part of my view. Disconcertingly, it was close to a running track (you can see it in the photos). So I watched people actually running in the hot, humid conditions!

Below was my view from my seat above. Beautiful mowed lawns.

This small lake is quite pretty in spring and autumn, not so much in late summer.

The park has two or three long, straight roads like this (no external traffic on them). I'm guessing they are former runways.

No idea what this is, but they were pretty much the only flowers in the whole park.

Wisteria in the summer is a wonderful shade plant. These have amazing, twisted trunks, revealing they aren't youngsters. (In the background is part of the museum.)

One of the things I did while sitting, was read a recent book by Larry Crabb. It's given me much food for thought that will probably make its way into another blog post soon.

I'm thankful for a job that is flexible and with low accountability. I have no one closely looking over my shoulder. This suits me very well. It means I can run into difficulty if I'm slack, but generally it works out okay as I'm one of those people who repeatedly had "conscientious" on my report cards at school. I've learned to "seize the day" when slower periods like the latter half of this week happen along. If I don't they will slip away, and I might not get another chance for several weeks!

Do you get free-er moments sometimes in your week/month? How do you deal with them? Do you have a go-to activity?

Our July holidays

We went away for two weeks in the latter half of July and I jumped back into work on August 3, only to be swamped. I'm only just in the last couple of days starting to come up for some air! 

However, I want to tell you a little bit about our holidays before they get too far in the distant past. Because other prefectures are nervous about Tokyo-ites visiting them at the moment (many more cases of COVID-19 in Tokyo than in other places), we decided to have a very quiet holiday. We mostly stayed at the holiday home, or only went to places where there were virtually no other people close by.

We did lots of sleeping, reading, game-playing, and movie-watching. That probably sums up our fortnight away very well. It was at the same place as we went this time last year (and also at Christmas), a delightful Swiss-chalet house that OMF Japan owns and rents to its members at a low rate. We appreciate the views, the green-all-around, the peace, and a place without Wi-Fi.

As I did last year, I organised myself to not do any work during those two weeks, that included not looking at email at all. Our daily routine was simple and refreshing. To get even more sleep I also took time-out from caffeine. Not without a challenge (my body is very sensitive to caffeine), but in the end I manage to stay off caffeine totally for a week and have been on reduced caffeine in the two weeks since then (instead of 2 ½ cups of fully caffeinated coffee a day, I've had two half-strength cups a day, decaf coffee is a very handy thing, even if the coffee snobs turn their noses up at it). As I result I got 9 or 10 hours sleep every night for a couple of weeks, which was very nice indeed! During July I also stopped doing my daily Japanese review. The sum total of all that was lots of read and many books read. 

So, even though today I feel pretty blurry and am having difficulty thinking clearly, I know that I did have a good rest in July, so I'm hopeful that that will be a good thing for whatever lies ahead for the rest of the year. For starters, we've got our second son beginning year 12 next week. That in itself will potentially mean stress for the family, if it is anything like his big brother's senior year! Not to mention that we're by no means free of the wide-reaching consequences COVID-19 pandemic.

But back to our holidays in the mountains. Staying "home" made things very simple and we slipped into a gentle routine. Dinner and an evening movie we did together, sometimes late afternoon included games. Watching a movie each night was something we did last year also and it seems to be a helpful way to enjoy the holiday as a family, as well as provide fodder for conversation around the table. We watched The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series, then several other older movies like Back to the Future, Forest Gump, and Jonny English. 

All these latter movies were borrowed from a local DVD rental store—yes, Japan still has them! But let me tell you that it's not easy to find movies in a Japanese store if you're an English speaker. Have you ever thought about learning "alphabetical order" in another language? Japanese has its own order! And even if that is fine, and your Japanese reading is up to scratch, many English movies have completely different titles to their original versions.

Things are ramping up again now in our house with both David and I have worked full-time this week and school starts (I say YAY) next Thursday. But we think back fondly to our July holiday with great thanks that we could take the time off and had a place to go, and look forward to next time we can recharge like this!

Here are some photos from from our time away:

We caught the last two weeks of the rainy season and everything was very
green. This was one of the trees in the local park where we played Park Golf.

Park Golf. I am appalling at it, but it's a fun activity (if you don't record your score).

This lily's flower was bigger than my hand!

A cute frog posing on our youngest son's hand.

We had many rainy days and only saw two sunsets. This is the view that we could see from the dining
room and lounge area.

David and I went on a couple of local walks. Beautiful!

Wild boar trap along one of the roads we walked on.

Reading my Kindle at the dining table...with a view.

We took one 1,000-piece puzzle loaned to us by friends, it was fiendishly difficult. An overall picture of Yoda,
but made up of 1,000s of micro pictures.

Wet = fungi. I had my eyes open for some photogenic mushrooms in the park.

One of the two sunsets we saw from our living area.

Inside our holiday apartment. Our middle son loves this loft. He set up
his bed and recreation area up there. Our bedroom door is on the right of the photo,
the other side of the ladder is the entrance to the bathroom and far left of photo
is the kitchen. It's pretty compact, but the lofty ceiling with exposed beams
makes it feel spacious.

In the last couple of days the volcano we were perched on showed its peak.
This is taken from the verandah.

My holiday reading

This morning I made a single pile of all my summer reading books and took a photo. It looked good and I posted the photo on social media. Then two friends asked for recommendations. I like that. It wasn't even so much about boasting about how much I've read, rather sharing some of my favourite books from the summer.

The reason why I've got all the books from the last nine weeks of reading is that the school allows us to borrow 20 books over the summer, including parents. I didn't quite manage 20 books read, but I did get quite a lot read, about half were read during our two-weeks away. With no work or wifi, I spent a lot of time lying on my bed reading (my by-far favourite place to devour a book).

Two of the books I borrowed I didn't get far with for various reasons, I haven't pictured them. One of the books pictured I got most of the way through, then it got repetitive and rather boring (Other Einstein). I'm currently part-way through Crazy Love by Francis Chan. 

I've taken four more photos, this time, split into categories.

The first photo is of fiction. Of these, my favourite was in broken places, though The Janson Directive by Ludlum was also an excellent read if you're into thrillers. in broken places is about a new teacher at an international school in Germany, so there was a lot I could relate to. However, it had a dark side, with the deep shadow of past child abuse.

These are historical fiction. Both the lower two are great, but I think my favourite was The Librarian of Auschwitz. It truly is astounding how much a human can put up, but also how small things, like a handful of books, can make a big difference in dire circumstances.

These biographies/autobiographies were also great. I loved Shoe Dog, written by the founder of Nike. Great writing style! Unexpected story. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus was hard to get into but soon became an excellent read. It doesn't strictly fit into biographical, it is also apologetics. I learned more about Islam than I've ever known before.

It's hard to choose a favourite from these three non-fiction Christian books. Possibly Sabbath, though it is not written strictly for a Christian audience and there were elements I had to discard, it had great suggestions for ways to build restorative rest into your life.

I hate writing book reviews. But the above is definitely a more fun way to do it. Perhaps I should try more of this comparative way of doing it in the future? (Though it's harder when books I've read have gone back to the library . . . perhaps I can make a collection of spine-photos?) I do read a lot, so maybe I could help others by sharing a bit more?

Start of school 2017

Ordinary life today meant the start of a new school year, which was different for almost everyone.

Yummy satay chicken by our eldest son.

David: taught two classes (his lowest class-load ever) and did other various tasks that his new role of Director of Teaching and Learning entails.

Middle son: started high school (for the second time, due to a quirk of timing, he actually did six months high school in Australia, where grade seven is now high school). School was only half a day, then he did cross-country training (in 35C weather).

Youngest son: started grade seven (middle grade of middle school at CAJ). He also joined the cross-country training.

Eldest son: worked at the school all day doing various maintenance-department things including monitoring the electricity usage gauge (complex story, but to do with keeping costs down on this very hot day).

Which leaves me. I attended the school community prayer meeting from 8.30-10.00, which included catching up with friends I haven't seen since school broke up three months ago. 

Then I worked as hard as I could on editing at home in the silence of no-kids-at-home until 12.30. After that I had boys coming home for lunch over the next two hours, they all came home at different times. In the middle of all that I tried to continue working on formatting some of the 60 or so blog posts that need my attention on the new blog. 

Then, after the weather cooled down a little, I rode out for a quick trip for groceries to get us through the weekend. Since I got back after 5 I've been mostly on social media or playing a card game on my phone while answering periodic questions about the new satay chicken recipe that our eldest is making.

I have no first-day-of-school photos. Our middle son, never fond of photo posing, quietly slipped out before I could snap one this morning. So I compensate with a photo of the dinner we've just enjoyed.

Short update post

I'm out of time to blog decently today. But I have to report that my blog post from Tuesday had an immediate response. I got a message from a teacher friend who I haven't been out to coffee with for a long time. We ended up having a lengthy lunch today and it was fabulous.

Yesterday we took our boys and another family with three boys on an outing to a large park (the one I took my parents to in May). It was fun, but of course we weren't looking at pretty sights, we were hanging out at the play areas (though most of our boys are too old for that now they still had fun). Here are some photos from our day: 

This cute building housed two picnic tables upstairs. No one was using them, so we ate our picnic there. 

I love moss...can you tell?

Love the green!

The rainbow hammock. Our boys played here for a bit. It was supposed to only be for 12 year olds and younger, which cut out four of the six boys with us, but they played until they got kicked off.

The mist! 

Seems as though it is supposed to drift over to these hills, but it never made it before the mist-creation stopped (it only creates it for a minute or so).

And the curious mosaic dragons!

Closeup of one of the dragon eyes.

The day was full of adventures, as four of the boys rode their bikes 20km or so to the park. One fell on the trip in and they needed to stop for first aid supplies to patch up his knee and two hand-heels. Another got a flat on the way home and they had to stop for bike repair supplies! Both these boys were Marshalls. One of them got badly burnt, despite the fact that they were riding in a light rain a good portion of the time.