One night in Buenos Aires...my date with destiny.

On a winter's evening in the leafy Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano, music could be heard bubbling over the fence of a well manicured garden belonging to one of the many stately mansions that lined this particular Calle. Amongst the music, a bevy of accents and languages mingled with the sounds of clinking glassware. A garden party? In the middle of winter? Why yes, nothing's impossible in Buenos Aires. Peeking through the gate you'd expect to see fancy cocktail dresses and fine suits, but that wasn't the case. Just inside the fence, on the lush abundant lawns, were dozens of people, young and old, in all make and manner of fashion. A first impression from the footpath may have been misleading. This was not a fancy soiree. No, in fact, it seemed more like a casual barbecue amongst friends. Yes, there was a waft of sausages a sizzle about the night air. A glance at a very official sign posted just on the wall near the gate and it was obvious who was hosting this delightful gathering...a very serious looking Kangaroo and his partner, an Emu with a wry smile. This was the Australian Consulate after all, who else did you think might host such an unusual party?

It was July of 1998 and I found my twenty something self wandering through the gates and into the middle of this eclectic little cocktail party searching for a familiar face. Very much as Alice tumbled down into the strange and stunning world of Wonderland, I reluctantly traipsed through the sea of faces and into the beginning of my fairy tale. It wasn't long before an acquaintance caught my eye. An Economist of sorts and a fellow countryman, he struck up a conversation the details of which I can no longer recall. I'm sure we exchanged pleasantries and remarked about the lovely setting in which we found ourselves, but all the while I was scanning the lawns looking for someone else. Finally, I spotted her, the girl I'd come to meet. I politely excused myself and made my way over to the bar where she stood.

She had an unmistakable laugh that made you happy just to hear it. On this evening amidst all of these strange new faces, I was thrilled to hear her laughter. It was after all, the laughter of a friend. As I approached, I noticed she was holding court with a very odd couple. One was a very short and mildly handsome man with a friendly smile who spoke both English and Spanish with a very heavy Italian accent. As it turned out, he also spoke Italian with a very heavy Italian accent. The other half of this odd couple towered over both my friend and the Italian. With his dark eyes and charming good looks, he could have been a citizen of a dozen different countries, but when he spoke, his accent exposed him. Unlike his Italian mate, he didn't struggle with English, but instead spoke it confidently and softly albeit with a subtle but charming Australian accent. I wanted to hear more...

Introductions were made immediately and this mysterious Australian and I began to exchange tales of what had brought each of us here to this enchanted city, to these generous gardens, to this very moment. His was a tale of a capitalist well on his way up the corporate ladder. His firm had brought him to Argentina to work on a important project. He spoke little or no Spanish upon his arrival, but now three months in, he could get by. He'd come along this particular evening because his fellow compatriots had made a tradition out of attending these gatherings on a monthly basis. Who was he to argue? Besides, as he explained, where there are drinks, Australians will never be far away. Curious and curiouser indeed. Mine was the tale of a young student on a scholarship with a love of languages and a greater love of travel. My wanderlust had brought me to Argentina where I'd already spent 6 months absorbing the language, the culture, the food. I'd met other Expats along the way and many had become good friends, including my American roommate who had first told me about this party on this night. It was because of her and my lovely laughing British friend who'd been chatting to this Handsome Australian when I arrived that I found myself at this party. In this moment. Talking to him.

The evening slipped slowly away as we discussed a great many things. From the corner of my eye, I noticed my British friend had finally escaped the well meaning Italian and moved on to a more lively group of Germans. Yes, there were some truly fascinating people at this party, but none so fascinating to me as this Handsome Australian. There was something about him and his gentle manner that made me happy to spend my evening in conversation with him, and him alone.

In the wee hours of the morning, the drinks had stopped flowing and friends and acquaintances alike were bidding one another farewell. It was time to say goodbye to this Handsome Australian. We'd chatted effortlessly through the evening, but when it came to goodbye, we didn't quite know what to say. With an assist from an inebriated Englishman who had interrupted the final moments of our conversation, the Handsome Australian found the courage to ask for my number.

It was in that moment, that my life's trajectory was irrevocably changed. Although it was impossible to appreciate at the time, my path had been completely reset.

And that my friends, is how *this* Alice came to live in the Wonderland of Australia.

A bit of luck...

A few weeks ago, our children spent the day with their grandparents and the Handsome Australian and I managed to duck out for a lovely lunch together. We hadn't planned on going to lunch necessarily, but when we realised our day's errands would take us past Carrington Road, Box Hill we couldn't resist. We both love a bit of Vietnamese food and Box Hill is one of a few Melbourne hot spots for Vietnamese cuisine. Carrington Road is home to quite a few tasty Vietnamese restaurants. Our favourite amongst the bunch is Indochine, but on this particular day, we thought we'd try something new. So we took at table upstairs at Tien Dat.

We spent the next little while in the sunlit dining room amongst families of all different sizes and cultures enjoying a lovely Sunday lunch. There were mixed spring rolls to start. A warm pot of tea to take off the chill of a winter's day. Then we stuffed ourselves with a lovely Chicken salad and Bun with Lemongrass Beef. With our tummies contented, we made our way downstairs to pay the bill and continue on our merry way.

As I stepped outside the doors of Tien Dat and began to make my way down the footpath along Carrington Rd, I looked down and saw this:

A coin lying on the footpath. I didn't think too much about it, but then I looked again.

To my surprise, on the ground in front of me lay not just any coin, but an American penny (1 cent piece). Immediately, my mind was transported back to my childhood and this little rhyme began playing in my head, "See a penny, pick it up. Then all day you'll have good luck." So I reached down and picked up this little penny and gleefully showed it to the Handsome Australian. "Look! Look what I've found here. It's an American penny! A real American penny! That's amazing! What is an American penny doing lying on the footpath in the middle of Box Hill?" Then I proceeded to sing the rhyme to the Handsome Australian. After which, I deemed this penny my "lucky penny". I read the date on the penny--1988. "Was 1988 a good year?" I asked the Handsome Australian. He seemed to think '88 was a decent year. Honestly, I thought to myself, what are the chances of me, an American, walking along this particular footpath at this particular time and finding this particular coin? It definitely seemed like destiny to me.

I tucked the penny in my pocket and when we picked our children up later in the day, I told them all about Mommy's new lucky penny. They were very impressed and wanted lucky pennies of their own. I told them sagely, "One day, your lucky penny will find you somewhere when you least expect it." After all, that's exactly what happened to me.

Happy 4th of July

There were no fireworks in Melbourne for the 4th of July today. There was no parade or barbecue, or watermelon or children running around waving bright sparklers in the setting sun. In fact, it was hard to tell it was 4th of July at all. So the little people and I decided to whip up a little something patriotic to mark the day in our own quiet way...

Happy 4th of July to all the Americans out there...wherever you may be.

*BTW, you're looking at AUD$9.00 worth of blueberries there. This is what happens when you celebrate a Summer holiday in the middle of Winter. Yikes!

The Expat issues a: Please Explain

Wow what a day in Australian history. Last night we went to bed wondering if Australia would be in or out of the World Cup and whether Kevin Rudd would be in or out of Australia's top job. Turns out both scenarios ended disappointingly for the players in question. The Socceroos fought the good fight and came away with a hard earned win, but alas it wasn't enough to keep them in the tournament. The end of Kevin Rudd's term as Australia's Prime Minister became fait acompli in the wee small hours of the morning and he gracefully stepped aside in the caucus room later in the day, handing the reigns to his deputy, Julia Gillard.

In a sporting mad country like Australia, you would have expected such a valiant effort by the national soccer team to have been all over the media. It would have been if it weren't for the political upheaval that was happening simultaneously. So needless to say, soccer took the back seat to politics and all day the media ran around telling us about Australia's first female Prime Minister. An exciting story, certainly, but curiously, the biggest thing I took from today's proceedings was this: there is some stigma attached to being a Redhead in Australia. As an expat, my understanding of Aussie culture is constantly evolving and even after 10 years of living in the thick of it, quirky little things like this pop us and make me question if I even know go from whoa.

So to the Aussies out there, can someone please explain to me why terms such as "Ranga" (short for orangutan as I understand it), "Ginga Ninja", and "Bloodnut" are being tossed around to describe the newly minted Aussie PM. Why is it such a crime to be a redhead in Australia? Isn't it just a hair colour?

The Big USA Pilgrimage: Traveling with Preschoolers

I recently wrote a post about traveling between the USA and Australia with an infant in tow. As I said then and will repeat now, making these transpacific journeys with children adds a whole other dimension and as children age, their requirements change. So in this post, I'd like to talk a little bit about making the journey with preschool aged children.

The good news is, I think as my children have aged, the journey has gotten a bit easier. Firstly, the hard work I've put in in the past has started to pay off. The journeys I made with them as babies gave them an introduction to the trip itself and to the goodness that waits for them on the other side: grandparents, cousins, Chick-fil-a...you get the idea. My kids never complain about the length of the journey to the USA as they've been enough times to understand that the pain is worth the gain in the long run. Of course they get bored and sometimes frustrated during the trip, but the fact that they've been so many times now means that they well and truly have an understanding of how long it will take and as such have reasonable expectations as to what will happen and when. This understanding of the journey itself is priceless. So put that in the column of reasons to take them and take them often.

Once my kids were beyond the baby stage, I had to transition my thinking from how will I keep them fed, changed and well rested on the flight to how will I keep them entertained (and fed, and well rested and worst case scenario...changed)? So I began researching ideas on how to entertain young children on such a long journey. I spoke to other Expats about it, I read articles online and I tried to take away ideas that I thought would work the best for my kids.

The first thing I did was decide that the children were going to have to share the load a little bit. My children were still young enough to require some nappies and a few changes of clothes, add to that snacks, travel documents, cameras, wipes, medicines, and on and on and on and my carry on luggage was well and truly full. So I got each of them their own little backpacks. They both have a special blanket and a small stuffed animal they sleep with. I packed their blankets and stuffed animals in their bags so they would have those special comforts on the plane.

Then for about a month or so before the flight, I scoured the $2 shops for things to entertain them on the plane. Something I read online said you should take a mix of old and new things for the kids. A few old and loved toys that you know they will enjoy having along, but then something new to surprise them and distract them once their old favourites have lost their luster (ie the remaining 13.5 hours of the flight). Here's a few ideas of the sorts of things I've included in their backpacks over the last several trips (I've got a girl and a boy, so hopefully the list covers ideas for both genders):

*Small notebooks or drawing paper
*Coloured pencils/pens/crayons/textas (or markers)
*Stickers (pages of stickers)
*Colouring/Activity books
*Crayola Recoloritz (reusable themed pages that can be wiped clean and coloured in again and again)
*Stencils
*Story books (paperback is the way to go, even though board books are sturdier--they are heavy)
*Paper dolls
*Play doh w/a few small cookie cutter shapes
*Polly Pocket dolls & accessories or similar (small, light weight, but easily lost so beware)
*Hot wheels cars (or in my son's case the cars from the Disney Pixar Cars movie)
*Fold up play mat for the cars
*Small plastic animals
*Barbie dolls with a few accessories (again, accessories can go missing so beware)
*Magnetic Dress Up Dolls/Robots/Pirates
*Magnetic Playbooks by Tiger Tribe
*Playing cards
*Flash cards
*Figurines (choose your poison: Batman, Superman, the Wiggles, Ben 10, etc, etc)

There you go. A few ideas of the kinds of things we've packed during our past several trips. It sounds like a lot of items to fit into small backpacks, but we don't take very many of any one thing and we don't necessarily take everything on the list. For instance, this year my son was very heavily into the cars from the Cars movie. He has a small collection here at home so I got him to choose 5 that he wanted to take with him and we put them into a zippered pencil case to keep them together in his backpack. (A Ziploc would do the same trick, but a pencil case is sturdy and will last the whole trip.) Then before we departed, I got him 2 new cars for his collection which I put in his backpack. So when we are on the plane, he opens it to find the cars he packed and loves plus a surprise two new ones. He's happy. I'm happy. We're all happy and these cars keep him busy for ages. With my daughter, she was very keen on her Barbies. So I got her to choose two Barbies and a few changes of clothes that she wanted to take along. She stored her things in a pencil case inside her backpack as well. Then I found some mini-Barbie figures that were tiny and could be used as siblings or babies of the bigger Barbies and I put them in her backpack. On the plane she opens her pack to find her old Barbies plus a couple of new mini ones. She's happy. I'm happy. We're all happy.

At some stage, I began to question the number of things I was purchasing to put in their backpacks for these trips. Between the few new toys and the crayons, colouring books, etc. I was spending anywhere between $30-$60. Then in the middle of one of our trips, I realised something. These items in their backpacks weren't just for the plane. They were for the car rides once we got there. They were for the days at people's homes who don't have children or toys. They were for the fun of sharing with their cousins and the knowledge that even though my children were away from their homes, they still had a few things with them that were truly theirs. These items weren't just for 14 hours of entertainment, they were for 6-8 weeks of entertainment. When I thought of it that way, it seemed like money well spent.

What we don't take is a portable DVD player or DVDs of any kind. I often see people lugging these on the flights and I'm not sure why. Qantas has on demand movies and TV shows on individual screens in each seat. My kids can watch their choice of shows and I don't have to carry the DVD player. When we get to the USA, there is so much to do and so many people to visit that we don't usually have time to watch DVDs. So what would be the point of having it? Others might find it necessary or useful, but we've survived without it.

Hopefully this post is useful to those of you making this long haul journey with your preschool aged children. Do you have any useful tips of your own? Please feel free to add them in the comments section as we can all learn from one another.

An Accidental Accent

When my children were very young, they spoke with the Aussiest of accents. The fact that they had an American mother who was their primary care giver never seemed to rub off on them. Their accents were so Aussie that their American grandparents had difficulty understanding them over the telephone (It was heartbreaking, but predictable. Americans aren't known for their ability to understand other English dialects). I never put much thought into how they pronounced their words or what vocabulary they used when they spoke. To me, they were just my children and their voices were their voices.

When my daughter was 4, we traveled to the USA for our annual holiday to visit my family. During our time there I noticed a difference in the way she was speaking and the things she was saying. She was slowly but surely picking up the the American accent. Not just a subtle accent though, a very obvious American accent. When we came back to Australia after being in the USA for 8 weeks, EVERYONE commented on how her accent had changed. That she was speaking like an "American" now. At one stage, she asked me, "Mom how long will I speak American for?" Hmmm, I thought, "Well, really as long as you like." She liked to speak like an American, so this accent continued for quite awhile. Slowly though, it began to fade and the Australian accent came back.

My son, who is younger, had a similar experience when we returned to visit the USA this year. He picked up lots of American words and came home speaking with a slight American accent. It was nowhere near as profound as the one my daughter came home with last year, but it was certainly noticable.

Several weeks after our return home, we had a birthday party at a local Gymnastics school for our daughter. My son, the flirt, had one of the gymnastics instructors eating out of the palm of his hand. The girl spent so much time with him during the party. He loved the attention and she seemed very taken by him. At the end of the party he told me, "Mom, the Gymnastics teacher at the party asked me if I had an American 'accident'." To which I replied, "Oh, you mean, 'accent' right?" But he insisted, "No, I don't mean 'accent' I mean 'accident'. She asked me if I had an American 'accident' and I said 'No' because Mom I don't speak American."

So it seems while my daughter's American accent was intentional, I have a charming yet stubborn 3 year old with an accidental accent.

A slide by any other name...

Would be called, "a slippery dip". If you lived in Australia that is. I've lived in Australia for 10 years and this is news to me. See what you can learn on ABC Kids?

The view from the top is still very much the same as it was when I knew it as "a slide", but the potential for fun seems to have increased exponentially.




That's the key to the Aussie spirit...same stuff, funnier names.