Culture shock or cross-culture stress?

We struggle, as Australians who were born
in rural Queensland, to live in such close
quarters with our neighbours. This is our house
and our neighbours!

Living in a culture that you didn't grow up in is stressful. There's no other way to say it. I've written a little bit about some specific factors that I feel stressed about when in Japan in a post a couple of years ago here. 

It isn't just early on when you're adjusting, it is an ongoing stress. Though I have to say that the stress decreases (thankfully) as you get used to the place.

I found an interesting blog post that I think is wrongly titled. I don't think this post is about culture shock so much as it is about the mental challenges of living in a culture that is so vastly different from the one you grew up in. One way to label that is cross-culture stress. 

In any case, it is a helpful article. It's especially nice that it's written about living in Japan, but it totally applicable to other cultures. Check it out!

We suffered climate-shock when we
moved from "the Sunshine State" of 
Queensland to this. That's our blue car you can see!

Leaving for an adventure in Western Australia

We're going to Perth tomorrow, all five of us. I know, it sounds glamorous. I'm classifying it as something of a working-holiday.

But we're not going there as a holiday destination. Our purpose is work. We're visiting

This is about how old our two older boys were when
they last went to Western Australia.

about six different groups of supporters. Some are churches, others are pray-ers. We'll be working five of our nine evenings there, plus some both Sunday mornings. Each time we'll be speaking or leading a program, from the shortest at seven minutes, to over an hour at the longest.

This is the third time I've been to Western Australia on a similar kind of journey. David's been four times. We're so thankful to our faithful supporters over there. Our church is part of a small denomination that began in the west and there are more churches there than anywhere else in Australia. Though they've rarely seen us, they've been faithful in praying and giving over the last 14 years and we're going over to say thank you.

In the midst of all that we're planning to enjoy showing our boys another corner of the country they are citizens of. We'll have three whole days of no work or significant travel, and some partial days. We're hoping to get some serious tourism happening. I've even lined up a possible visit to a Western Australian wrestling club!

This is no small journey. It takes five and a half hours to fly over, and strangely, four and a half to fly back (4,365km, further than New York to Los Angeles). I remember when we first went over we had to beg OMF for funds to cover our fares.  It isn't a cheap way to do deputation, but it's been worth it.

It's become part of our family's story. I have a significant scar on my knee from my last visit there when I fell hard on a ramp down to a train platform. Our eldest son celebrated his first birthday on the flight back. Our middle son has only been there once, when he was two and our youngest has never been there (except in utero). So we want to take this opportunity to introduce our three, now older, boys to the capital in the west.

Hopefully I'll be able to blog a bit while we're over there, so I can share something of our fun and work.

Culture shock with the calendar

I'm probably stretching it a little to call this culture shock, but we did get a little bit of a jolt on Sunday-Monday and it was largely because we weren't in touch with the local calendar.

First on Sunday night we missed a big football final (National Rugby League Grand Final).

No, this wasn't our pantry shelves on
Saturday! It was filled with non-perishables.
But I have to admit that I'm loving this
walk-in lighted pantry. It's wonderful,
especially that it's filled with Australian
food (and a little bit of Japanese).

The boys would have loved to have seen it, but we simply had lost touch with the competition and when the final date was.

Second we had some grocery difficulties. On Saturday our plan was to pick up some groceries close to home after our 800km drive, but the local grocery store was shut when we got there. We missed it by 15 minutes! So I improvised and found some essentials at a nearby fruit and veg shop.

We also neglected to shop on Sunday, we were just too tired to think about it (and I prefer not to shop on Sundays anyway). So on Monday I optimistically trooped off to the store armed with my carefully constructed list. Nope, the shops were shut again. I knew it was a public holiday, the boys were home from school. But I didn't realise that most major shops shut on Labour Day. Afterall they are open most other public holidays, including weekends.

Alas, after driving to another shop at a major shopping centre and finding that shut too, I located a less well-known shop that was open. Half of the local suburb was there, it was crazy! Obviously I wasn't the only one who was caught out.

So, again, I don't know if you can put these down to culture shock. Possibly it is more  along the lines of cultural ignorance?

Hilarious Macbeth

This was our journey on Saturday. As you can
see we didn't even leave our state!

We travelled about 800km on Saturday. Earlier in the holidays we travelled about 400km on two separate days. Most of these journeys were, mercifully, on outback Australian roads. One lane of traffic each way, but other traffic was minimal. It was great to be out of the city and out of city traffic. 

It was great to even be out of expressway traffic. Mostly, in Japan, when you travel distances like that you travel on expressways. If you don't, you travel at about 60km/hr. It just isn't as enjoyable as driving in Australia.

But still, the boys got bored with the long drive. Thankfully I figured out that we can borrow eBooks from the local library. I downloaded them onto my phone and hey presto. We had hours of listening fun.

I didn't aim too high in the reading levels, because we still have a 9 y.o. That wasn't necessarily popular with our rampant reading teenager, but he read his own book. My favourite book for the trip was a clever rewrite of Macbeth for a younger audience. I studied this in high school and haven't read it since, so my understanding of the story was a bit sketchy. 

Check it out: Just Macbeth by Andy Griffiths. It is very funny in many places, it had me laughing so hard I was crying while trying to drive 110km/hr. But I'm not sure if that funniness is just an Australian thing or if a different audience would find it just odd. 

We enjoyed it so much that I checked out the paper copy yesterday from the library for people to re-read. However I suspect that the audio version is better than the paper version. The narrator's part was hilarious. I'm hearing bits of the story quoted around the house. I suspect they might be around for a while yet.

Actually, I just checked and though I got the book off the shelf at the library and put it in the bag, it hasn't come home. Someone must have put it back. Oh well, I'll have to get it next time.

Frustrated

I'm feeling frustrated. We've just been away for two weeks and on Saturday will be away for another eight days, then only five days later I'll be going away again for a weekend. It's all planned, so not a surprise. 

But I'm not happy to be so unsettled. I crave a settled base and though the trips away are exciting (Perth and Melbourne, in this case), it is challenging too. 

This was my first home after graduating from uni. My
two-bedroom unit is the middle two window/glass door here.
Though I get bored if I'm at home for too long, it is
important to me to spend regular time there and for it to be
fairly orderly.

I particularly felt this at church yesterday morning. There were announcements about various events that I'd like to be involved in, but can't. There were many conversations that were interrupted by, "Oh, but we're going away again on Saturday." 

In fact I won't be back at our home church until the second Sunday of November. I'm thankful that I've been able to go to the Friday morning ladies Bible study, that is less affected by all this travel.

Sigh. At this rate I'll be desperate to get back to Japan next June, just to get a more settled life. It is conundrum, though, because I'm really enjoying being with family and friends. Not to mention the wonderful freedom we relish here.

The irony of "home assignment" is that we're spending less time "at home" than we do when we're in Japan.

Photographic glimpses of a holiday

We got back from our holidays yesterday and I've been going through the photos. There aren't as many as there could have been, particularly for the time outside of Springsure with David's sister and her family. I got lazy and a little bit sick. It a was wonderfully relaxing two weeks! Here are some photographic glimpses. Sorry, they're not in chronological order.

This is Cania Dam, near Monto. I'd never heard of it before.

Breakfast at camp. It was a beautiful sight, the grass was dewy
and David set brekkie up in the shade.

Just loving all the gum trees! This was in
Cania Gorge National Park.

Bottle brush flower. So Aussie! We used to have
one of these bushes in our front yard when I was
growing up.

Peering out from a cave in Cania Gorge National Park

Up above Cania Dam on a walk.

We found this outdoor, free "gym" in a riverside park in Munduberra.

Nice to have boys old enough to take a photo occasionally of
us!

Higher up over Cania Dam.

Back in Toowoomba at their annual Carnival of Flowers, we visited the
Grand Champion Garden. These trees reminded me of our other "home".

Wisteria in the same garden as above. Again a reminder of Japan.

Same champion garden. Love this Australian shaped garden. 

Where we lunched on our way to Cania Dam, a small town with a great park!

Holiday in the country

We’ve spent the last 12 days out of Brisbane in smaller places.

This was our camping spot.
Not my best photo, but I haven't downloaded the rest yet.

We spent time with my family in Toowoomba, but left on Thursday of last week and have really been “in the country” since then. We camped ½ hr away from a town of 1,200 people for four nights, several hours away from Brisbane. We had no near neighbours there. Wow! It was great to be back under canvas. I could have stayed there longer.

With heaps of free timber, we had campfires every night except the first. On the first night we were rushing to get the tent up and airbeds pumped before the sun went down. Thankfully we didn’t try for a campfire because not long into our sausage sizzle (courtesy of a portable gas BBQ) we caught the side of a thunderstorm.

I’m also thankful that, though we were a bit isolated, we were camped next to a fully equipped cabin (but vacant). Equipped with solar electricity as well as all that might be necessary to feed a crowd. I have to admit we borrowed a few items from the kitchen! The electricity meant that the boys ended up doing more screen-time than I really wanted, but as the main screen in use was a brand new one bought with saved-up money, I tried not to be too grumpy about it.

My sister-in-law's alpacas.
See her website here: http://www.rosegumalpacas.com.au 

On Sunday we went to the church in the town and did the travelling Marshall deputation circus. David and I spoke in church and we stayed afterwards to the “basket lunch” (bring and share lunch).

On Monday we packed up camp drove west to visit David’s family. Most of them are in or around a town of about 600 people. We’ve been staying with David’s sister on the property they work on, about 20 minutes out of town on a dirt road. The boys have enjoyed time with their five-year old cousin and his Mario Racing game. Oh, and they’ve also fed the alpacas, ridden a quad bike, gone fishing, ridden in a harvester (their uncle is harvesting wheat just now), and collected eggs from the vast hen run. Our eldest has also had his first driving lessons (three different instructors so far, none of them me) and driven the harvester!

I’ve not been doing a lot. I did get in a doctor’s visit (I always seem to end up needing some sort of medical care when I’m out here). I also had a go at spinning alpaca wool and put in some hours with my cross-stitch. But generally I always feel terribly inadequate when we’re visiting my in-laws. Their lives are very different and my usual place of efficiency is hundreds of kilometres away. But they've made us feel very welcome and it has been a relaxing week.

Alas we have to return to our busy lives this weekend. The boys aren't looking forward to driving about 10 hours back to Brisbane tomorrow. But it really is a fact of life for many Australians. And certainly our family has had their fair share of road trips. Our romance included a trip up to this area in our early days. Driving hours in a car is a great way to have lots of conversation, an experience that probably did a lot to cement our relationship. So we really don't mind these long trips.

I'm just so thankful for the opportunity to get away from our usual busyness and relax. Transitioning to Australia was tiring, this was a much needed break.