Capricornia - a new state in Australia?

This is an intriguing blog post. It reports that on Sunday Britains' Daily Mail published a story on the floods in Queensland. Trouble is, it included a map that marked Capricornia as a state of Australia! But it isn't - at least no one in Australia knows about it.

Queensland is the bright yellow state in this map. The Daily Mail split Queensland in two horizontally and made the top half into Capricornia!

Floods close to "home"

Usually we hear about bushfires at this time of year in Australia, but this time it is floods. Karen, a fellow Australian working in Cambodia, has just written a good post about the devastating floods in our home state. 

None of our family has had their homes inundated, but several of them have had difficulty getting home after visiting family or taking holidays at Christmas. My eight-month-pregnant sister was stuck in her small town without an obstetrician. In a small window of unflooded roads, she and her family made a mad dash through the night for the big smoke. Many of the roads that we travelled this time last year as we visited family for Christmas and New Year are currently cut off.

Home is indeed on our minds as we read daily reports of people losing all they own, cleaning sewage out of their homes and starting again.

Drinking upside-down

My sons are gradually discovering that one of the things Mum does on the computer is write a blog. They don't fully understand what it is, but the youngest one begged me to take this picture so I could post it.

Last week I shared with them my "cure" for hiccups: drinking upside down. They could hardly believe that their mum would do anything so cool! Or that she would allow them to do such an obviously "bad" thing.


I have to find some one of letting them see the fun loving side of me. Unfortunately whenever I stop being the "policewoman" things get out of control very quickly and it is hard to reign it all in again. 

I've just read a book that I want to tell you about soon: "How do you tuck in a superhero?" It's been coming into my conversation all the time, so it'll have to come into my blog soon. The author has five sons, so I found it very helpful as well as laugh-aloud amusing. Anyway, this woman makes me feel not so bad about being the one who has to be hauling in behaviour all the time!

One universal language - games

Today we travelled to a different part of Tokyo (1 1/2 hours on the trains) to spend the day with some Japanese friends. We met them six years ago when they were in Australia and the father was studying at our Alma mater, the University of Queensland. It has been a joy to keep up with them, seeing them every six to twelve months. They have two children whose ages are around the same as ours.They understand very well what it is to be a foreigner in the land where you are living. 

The tricky thing is that while we have some Japanese and they have quite a bit of English, our children are not quite so well equipped for playing with each other. They've lost most of their English and our boys have lost most of their Japanese. It is a pity. We're just hoping that in the future their motivation to learn the other language will pick up.

Nonetheless, we found ways to play today. Tag or onigokko is a universal language. As is 'Cops and Robbers'. The less energetic play included Monopoly and a modern form of tops that is popular in Japan with children.

Our children saw in the New Year

The last time I saw the New Year in was five years ago and my youngest was not yet crawling. It took me days and days to recover from that excess. With my kids five years older, the opportunity came our way to celebrate New Years with our missionary colleagues and we decided to try again. 

Because our eldest still talks about that night five years ago and the countdown, it has taken on epic proportions in our family-lore. There was no way that any of them were going to miss out on staying up till midnight.

We packed up and drove to the other side of the city to our mission's headquarters and settled in for a night of food and fun with 40 others. We ate a shared meal, played a couple of family-orientated games, shared the Lord's supper and then broke up to play board games (or whatever - I cross-stitched) until about quarter to twelve. At which time we spent a bit of time praying for one another and then counted down. 

I was surprised, the time went faster than I'd anticipated. Here is someone who never managed to stay up till midnight in her final year at uni in order to fulfil her lock the doors of the college (dorm) responsibilities. I always had to go to bed and set the alarm to do it! I think that in my "old" age I am becoming more of an evening person than a morning person. I have no idea why, but it just seems that way.

The photo is of one of the games. We were in small groups and given a Bible story to portray in a "freeze". We had just a few props or potential props. Can you guess our story? By the way, in the photo are 3/5ths of our family!

The game the our boys enjoyed most of all was the Bingo swap. A "white elephant" type game. Though I'm not sure if we have that label in Australia or if it that is an American label. Everyone who wanted to play brought a wrapped present of a certain value and they were pooled. Then the leader called out bingo numbers. When you got a "bingo" you got to select a present from the pile or "steal" one from another person - who then got to go and get another one of their own or "steal" one from someone else. It all got a bit messy, but at the end everyone had something. After it was all over, we opened our presents. A nice object lesson along the don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover lines!

It was lovely to see the boys participate in the evening with almost no corrections required from us. I was astonished to see our three playing some kind of ping pong game that also involved jan-ken-poi (Japanese for rock-paper-scissors) - it must have been about 10.30 or 11 and they were happily playing together. Most astonishing.

We did have some fairly grumpy kids yesterday, but that is to be expected. I haven't felt bad at all, I guess it must have been the sleep-in: after midnight we retired to our rooms at the next-door mission guest home and I slept till 10.45. A very rare event indeed.

Looking forward to 2011

Having just looked back at my "looking forward to 2010" list and found it to be pretty accurate, I'm not sure that I'll be able to match that this time around. We're at the end of two years of transition that has actually gone relatively as planned, at least in the bigger details, even if it felt as hard, at times, as this rock climbing looks. It is therefore a little strange to be looking at a new year that doesn't have big things planned for it (you know, like moving countries).

So, in looking forward to 2011, here are some things that are planned or I'd like to happen:

• After a good start with developing a new Occupational Therapy service here, I'm hoping to get more established and contribute more to CAJ in this area.
• Getting more into the editorial side of the magazine Japan Harvest, including regular meetings with the editor.
•  Continuing my freelance writing, I'm hoping to have something else published for which I'll be paid.
• I'd like to play the piano at home more, but there are so many other things to do. I even have a standing invitation to play a friend's baby grand that I am yet to take up.
• Friends, with their two children, from Australia are planning to visit for two weeks mid-year. We're all looking forward to this.
• The pastor and his wife who married us are in Japan for a year and we're hoping to get together with them soon.
• We're hoping my parents will visit this year. It would be great to have them for Christmas, but we'll have to wait and see. 
• We're thinking about getting an seasonal pass to a local amusement/water park - particularly for the long, hot Tokyo summer that is coming our way.
• Striking out on a new level of adventure, we'd like to get some camping action (tents) happening. 
• Two women's retreats plus our annual regional mission conference.
• And maybe more, only God knows!

Is that enough to keep me out of mischief? We'll see. I'm planning to keep on blogging too. So you can join me on the journey on the edge of ordinary in 2011.

Looking back on 2010

On New Year's Day this year I blogged about what the 2010 probably contained for us. Strange to look back. Everything on that list has happened in one form or other!


Here are some things that have happened that weren't on that list:

• I went to Hong Kong for a Writer's workshop for a week.
• David's father had a hip replacement and then was diagnosed with cancer.
• We spent a weekend in Canberra and Easter holidays travelling to and from family in central Queensland.
• I have one new nephew and another niece or nephew due in the next month.
• We found a house to move into before we even left Australia's shores and the move back to Japan was the easiest yet.
• So we are now living very close to the school where four out of our five members spend their weeks. Very convenient and better than what we imagined might happen.
• We went our first family camping trip and had our first go at ice skating (though David and I had been before many years earlier).
• We drove through a barbed wire fence. See that story here.
• Two of my sons had a go at learning a musical instrument.
• My eldest son broke his left pinkie twice.
• He also represented his school in both cross-country and basketball - with joy.
• I lost a few cms from here and there.
• With medical help I overcame two long-term recurrent health issues.
• For the first time I was paid for a piece of writing I did.

I've enjoyed the last four months with my days free from children. My perceived "freedom" has resulted in way too many invitations to be involved in various tasks, choosing and saying "no" has been difficult and something I didn't anticipate dealing with upon our return to Japan.

Looking at the above list, however, much good has happened in 2010. Compared to the challenges I see in many lives around me, we've had a great year! I wonder what is in store for us in 2011?