I'm dreaming of a more balanced school calendar

I'm feeling tired and more than ready to step off this constant roundabout of school for a time.


Over the weekend I realised that we're in the 16th week of school, without any decent break. We've had several long weekends, but nothing more than three and a half days (for teachers and hence, teacher's families). Where I come from people grumble when there is a school "term" longer than 12 weeks! I think I'm legitimately tired.


CAJ has a long summer break, longer than any Australian school. And then their school year is only broken by Christmas (2 1/2-3 week holiday) and Spring break (1 week holiday). That makes it a bit of a marathon. 


The first "term" is the longest. Then Christmas to Spring break is 10 weeks, with one four day long weekend. Spring break to the end of the school year is also 10 weeks, with two long weekends (3 or 3 1/2 days). And then about 10 1/2 weeks summer holiday!


This is the sixth year we've been at CAJ and we're getting used to it, but still, my Aussie soul longs for four short terms and regular decent breaks (10 days-two weeks)! But I do understand something of the reasoning behind leaving it as it is. A number of teachers and other CAJ families dash home during the long summer break and that is their only Home Assignment time.  We're planning to take advantage of that ourselves in 2012. But sometimes, just sometimes (especially at the end of this long first "term" and at the end of the long summer holidays), I just wish for a more balanced calendar.

What do you do to make it seem like Christmas?

Tiny bit homesick today. Been baking my Mum's Christmas cake while listening to my husband talk to his Dad on Skype (with his broad country Queensland accent). My dad-in-law was watching the cricket at the time and they discussed their beloved sport. Actually, one of the things I miss most about an Australia Christmas is kicking back and watching (and listening to) the cricket.


Today we had an American ask us about what we feel like doing as Aussies, to make it feel like Christmas. One is that yearning to listen to cricket. it was possible for a few years, via broadband, but now they've put in place all these regional restrictions, which means that unless you're in Australia or a couple of other countries in the world, you cannot listen to it via the internet. :-(


We might take the cricket bat down to the local park and play some "backyard" cricket. It isn't quite the same, however, without the grass and the heat.


No, we don't particularly feel like going for a swim. Both of us spent have spent all our lives in inland places at Christmas time, so we don't really personally associate the beach with Christmas Day. Neither of our families have pools, so neither of us really have swimming as a personal association. Running through the sprinkler, maybe. But that has been taboo in recent years due to water restrictions in Australia.


I don't really miss the long distances of travel that I've done routinely, especially since I started hanging out with David all those long years ago. Instead we're currently arranging "Skype" appointments and will stay home to talk to family. Thankfully this time most of them will be in only two spots. This year Christmas is a Sunday, so we'll be at church in the morning too, which will delay the present unwrapping frenzy somewhat! 


Food we miss includes Mum's plum pudding, hot-weather food like pavlova (Australian meringue dessert), jelly (US=jello), fruit mince pies, punch, potato salad etc. Oh and the boys always miss Weetbix, no matter the season!


I don't miss the Boxing Day sales (for non-Commonwealth citzens, that is the day after Christmas, explanation here, the sales are somewhat similar to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that the US "celebrates"). I've rarely gotten involved in these. Often on Boxing Day we've been driving from Central Queensland to Toowoomba on lonely country roads or the reverse, a whole day's drive. No time for shopping when you have family so distantly situated. Not that I enjoy shopping in frantic crowds. Never mind the sales, I find sales at other times of year!


Nor do I miss watching the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Cricket is much more interesting!


But truly, we've developed this bi-cultural, bi-hemispherical Christmas in our family. When we're in Australia, we do the "Australian" version of Christmas. It mostly involves visiting family and driving. In Japan we have just us, no family to run around and visit. So we have a very simple day (after frantic present unwrapping, with David saying, "take your time") with a hot midday meal, and Skyping with family. And some Australian Christmas fruitcake. Which reminds me, I'd better go and check the cake in the oven.

One week to holidays

 One week today we're headed for our annual winter week in the mountains. We're hoping for snow. I just looked at their weather forecast. Today is currently 4 degrees Celsius, but the forecast was "much warmer" than yesterday. Wonder what yesterday was?

Yakiniku — cooking your own meat.

For several years (does three count as several?) we went sledding during this holiday. Last year the sledding place had closed down, so we went ice skating. This year we're wondering about trying out a day of skiing. 


Despite having lived in Sapporo, the "snow capital" of Japan, for four years, only David went skiing and only once. In between pregnancies, tiny babies, and challenging preschoolers, I never ended up going. I've grass skiied (once) and water skiied (a number of times), but snow would be a new medium. We'll see. For people who aren't used to spending that much money, the prices are scary!

Beautiful rock walls of Karuizawa look fabulous with a 

coating of snow.

We'll definitely have to go back to the Yakiniku place we found during our summer week there. That was fun!


Most of all I'm looking forward to not having to make the boys do school stuff. Lack of concentration on the task has been the rule of the day in the last couple of weeks. Just concentrating enough to get toothpaste onto one's brush and to do a decent job of cleaning them, seems too much, let alone completing homework for school and piano practice!


For today it is back to trying to finish one pair of tracksuit pants (US=sweat pants), wrapping presents for Australian family, piano practice with a boys, and maybe, just maybe, some more biscuit baking (US=cookie)!

An Australian Christmas

Yesterday I spent over half an hour with the first graders at CAJ. I thought some of you might be interested in what we did. 


Firstly I asked them to be detectives while watching a short slideshow of photos from our own Australian Christmases, to discover some differences. They did a great job. Here are some of the photos I showed them:

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! This got some gasps, because men don't usually
go shirtless in Japan.

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.

The photos were fun. I haven't shown you the best ones, because they are of our kids, who were recognised by the Grade Ones, to their amusement.


Then I read and explained the book, Aussie Jingle Bells, to them. Here's a Youtube clip by the author. I showed this to them after I explained words like singlet, thongs, ute, swaggie (that one was hard), and "shoot through".

Do you want explanations too?


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.


After all that information gathering, I asked them to design a stamp. Australia Post releases special Christmas stamps every year (I'd forgotten this). So I set the kids loose to design their own and many did a great job. I think one of my favourites was Santa in a t-shirt and shorts with burnt arms. This activity was so easy, because it required no extra preparation on my part, love that kind of activity!


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

Not feeling so bad today

Some follow-up on yesterday's emotional post.


It is funny, the twists that life takes with kids. As I said yesterday, I set up separate accounts for our boys on our Mac. I didn't tell them why (David did tell our oldest later privately). But they were so excited. To have your own password, be able to organise your desktop etc. – to them it seemed almost like they'd been given their own private computer! I guess they do this at school (the passwords, etc.), so it seemed familiar. A few kinks to work out, especially for our older son, but it seems to be okay at this point.


On Facebook Jean pointed out how important it was not to just rely on filters, but to teach our kids about self-control, internet safety etc. And she is so right, especially as they get older and need to use the internet more and more. She pointed us to this website, which seems to be a very helpful place to spend some time browsing.


During our usual individual Bible time with the kids, David spent some time talking privately to our son about what I'd discovered. Our son was speechless with embarrassment for a time. It turns out he was curious, had some questions. And what do you do these days when you have a question? You Google. Unfortunately when you Google things about women's bodies you find yourself in some very bad places. We've been teaching him, so he knew that what he'd been looking at wasn't great. 


It was interesting to me that after they'd had a chat (and my husband revealed that he would be teaching our son and the rest of the boys in his class in Sex Ed early next year!), our son was very happy, buoyant even. Like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. David answered some questions he had and will continue to keep that door open. He also pointed out that the internet isn't a good place to find out this kind of information, that people who make websites about these things aren't thinking about doing things that please God.


So now I'm left to sort out the kinks in the filter that prevents our boys from doing things that they  need to do for school. And to keep educating my self and being more proactive about educating our boys about these things.


Why I felt embarrassed to admit this yesterday, was because this has been coming, we knew it. I'm just sorry we didn't do something about it earlier. And I felt sick because it reminded me, yet again, of how heavy this burden of parenting really is, praise the Lord that we share it with him in our house! It has been good to get it out in the open, though, because we all face it. And all of us parents are dealing with new stuff, it just wasn't like this when we were kids. Let's face it, video stores and the internet didn't even exist when I was in Primary School (US=elementary)! 


But for now I need to focus myself on some editing, some Bible study preparation, and the Australian Christmas presentation I'm doing for the Grade 1s this afternoon.

I'm feeling a bit sick to my stomach

This morning I discovered my 12 1/2 y.o. son had accessed Youtube videos, while I was upstairs cleaning, that were very unsuitable. And I feel a bit sick. This responsibility of raising children keeps getting heavier.


This means significant changes in computer usage around here. It was always coming, but this is the big wake-up call. I just feel sick that it took this to wake us up! 


Really, the whole computer use by the kids in our house has taken off in the last 15 months, ever since we came back to Japan. At that point our eldest got his own school email address. And the younger boys were expected to do homework using the computer (various educational websites like IXL and Typing Pal and their classes have their own blogs too). Now our eldest is in the school wrestling team and they've been encouraged to watch Youtube videos about wrestling. It is really only a very small step sideways from that to the most undesirable. Our computer is in a common room, but as was demonstrated this morning, I cannot be always looking over my sons' shoulders.


The other problem is that I am a multi-tasker. And the way I got a lot of computer stuff done when the boys were toddlers was to have the computer on and between other things will be dashing off an email or checking something on the internet. That habit remains with me, unfortunately. I'm looking at the various options to change our current status. Probably everyone is way ahead of us, I feel like we've had our heads in the sand. 


The easiest thing to implement today (in the midst of busy week) is that everyone has now their own "account" on our Mac and there are parental controls there that block the sorts of things our son was looking at this morning. That means that I have to log-out from everything I've been doing to let someone else use the computer (though really, I hardly use the computer between 4 and 8 p.m. these days, it is too busy with boys doing homework and such).


My husband will talk with our son this evening. In a way there is good that can come out of this. We've mostly met with disinterest when raising this whole topic with him before. Now, he's obviously changing and interested, so this is an opening to talk.


I'm really am a bit embarrassed to admit all this. But I figure if there are others out there who can learn from this, then I want to help you avoid this in your own family.

Joys, challenges, to-do lists, and nerves — all part of my current events

Here are ten "current events" in my life:

How can this little boy be my "size"?

1. I'm taking some time to digest the fact that I'm sharing clothes with my 12 y.o. son at the moment. He's almost the same height as me. But I saw him last night in his Wrestling "Singlet" and we are certainly not the same size . . . except in loose tracksuit pants (US=sweatsuit pants). He's wearing a pair of mine long designated to my winter PJ drawer. He's run out of PJs and these are working fine for him. I want all my boys to be taller than me (short men have issues!), but is still a bit of an adjustment in my head to have it actually happening to me.


2. I had the pleasure of a lady I was exercising next to at Curves today compliment the school on Saturday's Christmas presentation. I wasn't present, as it is more like torture keeping our boys quiet throughout. They can do it, but it just isn't any fun. Anyway, she couldn't hold back from telling me how wonderful it was, several times. But she did have one problem: why weren't they allowed to clap? I did explain a couple of times, in my poor Japanese and she seemed to understand, but said it felt very strange. The whole conversation left me feeling bad, though, as in the end her questions got to be too difficult for me to understand and I couldn't fudge it any longer. Her demeanor changed instantly and I was essentially dismissed, I guess she felt embarrassed and guessed that perhaps many of her words weren't understood after all. I felt so disappointed with myself.


3. I have an editor's challenge sitting on my desk. An article by someone who complained about how much I edited his article last time...unfortunately his style is wordy and academic and needs editing, so I have to grit my teeth and go at it. My next question about his article is whether it is the "how-to" article that he claims it to me. Do you think that outlining one's personal ministry plan that consists of a whole lot of definitions, a "how to" article?


4. My second editor's challenge is my boss. He seems to be drowning in other things and the deadline he set us for this issue to go to print — next Friday — is not going to happen. I'm struggling between feeling frustrated at him and trying to resign myself to that being his problem.


5. My editing joy for today is that we're working toward a new column in the magazine. One written by missionaries who've been on the field less than five years. I put out a request to just OMF missionaries today and already have one interested party. Again, the possibilities are exciting!


6. I've a bit of preparation to do. A 3rd grade Christmas party to plan (15th), a prayer meeting to prepare to lead (16th), an English Bible study (for language learners) to prepare (9th), and the Grade 1 Christmas in Australia presentation (8th).


7. Only eleven sleeps till we go away for our winter holidays for a week. Yay!


8. Almost all the Christmas presents are bought or made and we're almost ready to post our Australian present off.


9. I'm feeling rather nervous about our change of email address.


10. I'm reading a good book at the moment by John and Stasi Eldredge called "Captivating", definitely blog material when I'm done.