Long Promised Post: Teaching in Australia pt. 3: I found work!

So, after I interviewed with a couple of agencies and got onto their databases, I spent a couple of weeks subbing at schools around the city (they don't call it subbing here, though, they call it CRT work. Casual Relief Teaching). One agency was not very encouraging at first because they said that not owning a car was going to make it difficult for them to find me work. Sorry, agency, I'm willing to spend money to make money, but I ain't got that much money!! Thankfully, though, it turned out they were just trying to lower my expectations and I ended up getting pretty steady work through them for a couple weeks before the winter break in June.

I learned from my two weeks of CRTing around the city that I just couldn't know what to expect from schools, but there were a few features that popped up more frequently than others.

1. No. Freaking. WALLS! So, apparently the open classroom design (also called a "next generation learning area") was all the rage in Victoria about 7 years ago, or someone in the state Parliament owed someone a construction contract because 90% of the schools I worked in had expanded recently and the new construction was all open concept. That means that the "classrooms" I was working in were essentially glorified corners. I was working with two full walls and two half walls or one half wall and and opening into a communal space. In one case I was teaching in a second grade classroom that was basically a hallway and the teacher had improvised walls using bookshelves or fabric curtains. 

Open classrooms can work, but it requires a concerted effort on the part of every teacher and a LOT of training on classroom management and modified instruction. None of that appeared to be a priority in the professional development in most of the schools where I worked. 

I HATED it! I need walls! 

2. Arrival time in the morning is fluid. The agencies recommended that I got to the schools at least 30 minutes before the beginning of the school day. Since I was working with public transit, I would budget a lot of extra time to make room for late trains and delays, so I usually showed up like 40 minutes before the first bell. In many cases there were kids on campus, but not an office staff member or teacher to be found. It varied from school to school, but most of the staff showed up about 15 minutes before the day began, which resulted in a very rushed and stressful morning for me. 

In one case I was covering for a second grade teacher and a prep (essentially kindergarten) teacher, both of whom were out unexpectedly with the flu, so they hadn't left lesson plans. Completely understandable and I've been there, too. However, I would have hoped to find out there were no lesson plans at least a half an hour before the kids came in. The team leader quickly showed me the classroom and said, "They're working on reading comprehension. There are some books over there. You can come up with a lesson plan, right?"

I mean...yeah...but I don't teach elementary school, so I would need more than FIVE MINUTES to wrap my head around second grade reading levels and brainstorm some age appropriate activities. Don't even get me STARTED on the prep class! God bless early childhood teachers! I only covered that class for maybe two hours between their art and PE class times, but I was EXHAUSTED! 

3. Australian school structure is weird! I used to wonder why TV and movie teachers were always coming into the classroom just as the bell was ringing, opening up a briefcase and asking the kids to, "Settle down! Settle down!" That was not my experience at any level of my education as a student and was not at all what I did in my classroom as a teacher. Well that's how they do it here.

I'm inferring that Australia is holding over a lot of British tradition in its education design. In the secondary schools (what we would call high schools. Grades 7-12 usually), teachers float, principals are not disciplinarians, and there is a large hierarchy of power among the faculty and staff. Teachers are schlepping through the hallways between classes with the kids, often arriving to the classroom after the kids and then having to spend 4 or 5 minutes setting up their personal laptops, connecting them to the projector and pulling up the attendance and whatever programs are needed for the class period. It results in a lot of wasted time at the beginning of class and a LOT of me stepping out of my teaching comfort zone.

The nice part is that I have been forced to grow as a teacher, let go of some of my control-freak tendencies and become more flexible in my instructional strategies. I have appreciated that. What has been frustrating is that the lack of structure often results in an abundance of behavior interruptions, and in most of the schools where I worked that resulted in a lack of discipline. Principals serve a different purpose in Australian schools than they do in America, so there are lead teachers called coordinators that carry out the discipline at most schools. The coordinators, however, still have a teaching load, so on top of lesson planning, grading, and reporting, they are expected to communicate with parents, dole out discipline like suspensions or detentions, and communicate expectations with the other teachers. There is a LOT of responsibility put on coordinators, and in most of the schools where I worked the coordinators just felt abused and run down, so the kids felt no consequence when sent to the coordinators.

As a sub, I felt like a warm body, not even like a babysitter because at least a babysitter is given some authority over the children. I felt completely unsupported as a CRT, so I hated not knowing what I was walking into every morning. At one school, I had a student, without prompting, call out an offensive and racist comment to a classmate, words that left me shaking with anger that he was able to so casually let such speech roll off his tongue. I sent him out of the "classroom" (quotation marks because it was open design, so he was essentially sent across the room in full view of everyone). He was seated at the coordinator's desk (because teachers don't have a classroom, so at this particular school they were assigned desks in the hallway) and given a ball to play with for the rest of the class period. He was later sent to apologize to ME as his consequence. He was not instructed to do anything to repair things with his classmate.

When I spoke with the coordinator about the incident at the end of the day, I was told that this particular student had autism and oppositional defiant disorder and....then she just sighed and rolled her eyes. I'm well aware of both conditions and have worked with many kids with both conditions throughout my career, but the complete lack of respect for the classmate who was a victim of this child and the fact that this kind of behavior was tolerated with no effort to correct it was unacceptable. It might take a lot more patience to work with an autistic ODD student, but a kid with both conditions can learn eventually, and letting one single incident slip deters progress, no matter how small.

Luckily I got a call over the semester break in June that a school in one of the western suburbs had had a teacher resign and they wanted to give me a try for a couple weeks as a possible replacement. At minimum I would have two solid weeks of CRT work, best case scenario I would snag a semester long contract. How could I turn down a chance like that?!

Vicariously yours,

Long promised post: Teaching in Australia pt 2: the struggle to find work

After many months of struggles with getting registered to teach in Victoria, Tyler and I were finally able to put ourselves out to the schools and beg for jobs. I wasn't even looking for a full time job since I still had a semester left in my graduate studies; I would only be available for part time work, perfect for subbing. I went about the job search the only way I knew how: Hoof it around town with a stack of my resumes and introduce myself to some schools.

Yeah, that's not how things work here.

I had absolutely no leads from those days of walking around town and sweet talking receptionists. One or two principals humored me long enough to shake my hand and take my resume, but most schools just told me that they only get their substitute teachers through such-and-such agency.

So here is where the first difference between teaching in Australia popped up. I'm still not entirely sure how it is all structured here, but the system I am familiar with from home is that public schools are zoned into districts (usually bound by county lines) and are administered through a central office (usually located at the county seat). Each district is different, but usually there is a district pool of substitute teachers that have been vetted by central office and are made available to schools. Sometimes principals at home just keep a list of dependable subs that they contact when needed and once you've made a relationship with a school or registered with a district you can get work and are paid for your day's work.

Yeah, that's not how things work here.

There are no school districts or central offices. Schools enlist the help of one of a slew of agencies that have a database of VIT registered "teachers" and call the agency once they know about a teacher absence. I'm sure it makes a lot of sense for principals: all you have to do is call a number, say, "I need x-number of subs today," and someone else has to spend the next hour on the phone seeing who is available for the day. I get it.

What sucks about the agency set up is the fees the agencies charge. Each one is different, but they all pretty much involve skimming money off the fees paid to the substitute by the school and also charging the school a fee for their services. A solid business model, but some agencies charge the teachers a one-time registration fee ($250 or more) and then also take either a percentage (10% or more) or a flat fee (up to $50 a day no matter how many hours you work) from the fee paid to the teacher each day. In Victoria, substitute teachers get paid REALLY well...IF they can contract the work without the help of an agency. As previously mentioned, schools were not interested in eliminating the middle man, so my day's pre-tax pay of $293 for a full day's work ranges from $160-189 per day after taxes depending on which of the two agencies I'm linked with found the work for me. Doesn't sound like so much, but it's at least $250 a week if I'm able to work a full five days. That's a week's worth of groceries!

I digress.

I interview with a couple of agencies (the two I heard most frequently from schools on my days of schlepping around town) and was added to their databases. I was soon able to start subbing, and I got somewhat consistent work for two weeks...and then it was semester break and there was no school, therefore no work to be had.

ARG!

The tides turned, however, the night before term break ended when I got a call from one of the agencies that they had a lead on a school in the West that had had a resignation and needed some help. This job might lead to a potential contract....

Stay tuned for how THAT adventure in teaching in Australia got started.

Vicariously yours,

Long promised post: Teaching in Australia pt 1: the struggle to get registered

As previously mentioned, it was not cheap to get registered to teach in the state of Victoria. We had been out of work for months while trying to pay all these fees and such, but we didn't realize that was only the beginning.

There were all the background checks. The VIT requires a background check from all the countries in which you've lived for the last 10 years. Not difficult in theory, but Saudi Arabia straight up doesn't do background checks for people who have left the country. When I called the VIT about this issue, I was basically told, "Tough titties. You gotta figure something out.''

Uhh...ok?

Except not ok because the Saudi embassy in Canberra recommended that I fly to Riyadh and apply for a background check in person.

Uhh...no?

After at least two more calls to the VIT explaining the situation and offering possible solutions only to be told I would out of luck, someone finally said, "If you can't get a background check you can submit a stat deck."

"I'm sorry, what is a stat deck?" Australia LOVES its acronyms and abbreviations, so people frequently use the abbreviation assuming everyone can keep track of all the nicknames.

"A statutory declaration," she answered, offering no explanation.

"What does that mean?"

Essentially it means that I could write a note that said I solemnly swear I was up to no bad in Saudi Arabia and get it the Australian equivalent of notarized.

WHY DID HER THREE COLLEAGUES NOT TELL ME THIS FROM THE BEGINNING?!?

via GIPHY

So we got the Kuwait background check in no time and wrote up our "stat dec" in no time. It was time to wait for the FBI to come through for us.

IT TOOK THEM SIX MONTHS!

When it finally came in, I called the VIT to see if they needed the original background checks or if I could send in notarized copies because, you know, they were expensive and if for some reason the VIT turned out to be undependable and lost them I'd be pissed.

"No, you need to send in the original copies."

Remember that for later. Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

So the background checks were frustrating. Then there was the confusion surrounding our personal references. We had to have a reference from someone who had known us for more than 2 years....of which there were zero in Australia. Luckily our high school friend Matt was visiting and wrote one for Tyler and I sent our friend-from-Kuwait Austin a reference to fill out and email back to us.

Of course the VIT wouldn't process my application because the personal reference had to be the original handwritten copy rather than a scanned copy. Was there any indication of the need for the original copy anywhere on their website or mention of it in any of the phone calls I made?

Of course Austin doesn't live in Australia, he lives in China now. Thankfully he is amazing and went to the effort to mail the original copy to us. So after months of waiting, we were ready to submit Tyler's application (we submitted mine first because we couldn't afford to pay two registration fees at a time), so we walked his paperwork and Austin's reference to the VIT office to hand it in in person and have a living human look through his paperwork to make sure everything was acceptable.

1. Everything looked great in Tyler's paperwork packet. The receptionist was really confused as to why we would go to the effort of bringing it down in person. So cute.

2. While flipping through his paperwork, she separated out his background checks AND PHOTOCOPIED THEM AND HANDED BACK THE ORIGINALS! What. the. hell?! I had clarified exactly that detail with one of her colleagues a few months back! "WHY DID SHE NOT KEEP THE ORIGINALS!?" I screamed in my head but asked politely in a normal tone out loud.

"Oh we don't need the originals, just notarized copies. You might want to hold on to these for later so we leave the originals with you."

3. When we had cleared that infuriating detail up, I handed over Austin's personal reference. She looked up the status of my application to make sure there was nothing else needed and got a confused look on her face.

"Sorry, why did you need to bring this in?" she asked.

"Because one of your colleagues told me I needed to submit it so my application could be approved."

"Huh. Well your application was approved two weeks ago so we don't really need it."

What. the. hell?!? WHY DID WE PAY SO MUCH MONEY FOR THE APPLICATION FEE IF NO ONE IN THAT DING DANG OFFICE SEEMS TO KNOW HOW THE APPLICATION PROCESS WORKS?!?! Also if my application had been approved two weeks ago, why hadn't I been notified?

"That is strange. You should get a notice in the mail soon," she said with a smile. 

Thanks. You're just. The best. 

But whatever. I was finally registered. No need to rage on the woman. Now it was time to get out there and convince schools that I was the teacher they needed. 

Stay tuned for how THAT went. 

Vicariously yours, 

PS. Remember those original copies of the background check I told you about? Fast forward to a month ago when we find out we need to get - you guessed it- background checks for our immigration visas for Korea. So I contact the VIT and say, "hey guys, remember those background checks? Can I have those back now please? You only need photocopies, right?"

They responded: WE DESTROYED THEM!

WHAT. THE. FREAKING. HELL!?!?

Needless to say I am not a huge fan of the VIT. 

The Big Reveal(s)

In this age of viral pregnancy reveals and gender reveal parties and such, some folks have been asking if we had any cutesy ways to tell our family that we are pregnant. By the time I popped positive on the at-home test, even I was convinced (and, to be honest, hoping) that we would never have children, so no one was expecting us to be expecting. We knew this would be a fun opportunity to surprise everyone, and holidays were landing right around that crucial 12 week mark. We were especially careful about not dropping the baby bomb too early after losing our first pregnancy. All of our family knows at this point, but I have to admit that it was fun to have a little secret between the two of us for about 12 weeks. 

It was equally fun, though, to reveal the news over the course of the Christmas holiday. My parents were visiting us (a trip that was planned months before I got pregnant), and their trip was perfectly timed for my 12 week ultrasound, so we told them we were going to the mall to get me a swimsuit before our jaunt to the Great Barrier Reef. We actually took them to the OBYN's office, and while they were surprised, they had had their suspicions. The sonographer was very nice about 3 people crowding into the exam room with me so my parents could see our first look at all the fingers and toes. My dad is not going to be able to meet the kid until its first birthday, so I'm glad he got to share in this special moment. 

They then had to keep the secret for a week and a half until Christmas when the news was revealed to my sister and brother, who were with my sister's family for Christmas morning. We FaceTimed them as my niece opened her gift from Tyler and me: A puzzle made out of this photo:

Tyler's reading a parenting book and I'm trying to put a pacifier in Kitty's mouth. She was NOT a willing participant in this little project. 

The funny part is that our niece had zero interest in the puzzle, which we predicted. Hard to get excited about a blank white box (the company packaged it that way to aid in the surprise) when you're surrounded by Santa's haul. Thankfully, as predicted, the white box piqued my brother-in-law's interest and he put the puzzle together real quick. I screenshotted some of my sister's reaction when she was called over to see the finished product. 

So that was my family covered. 

The next day, while we were on a train in New Zealand, it was Tyler's family's turn to learn the big news. I should pause at this point to tell you that Tyler went home for a quick visit in October, right after we found out I was pregnant. I love my husband dearly, but he is REALLY bad at keeping secrets, and with just the slightest bit of nudging from a bottle of wine, he let slip to his brother that I was With Child. I wasn't upset, in fact it came in handy because we had co-conspirators in our little plot to tell his family. 

I will pause again to say that Tyler's brother and sister-in-law had just had a baby, the first grandchild, so everyone was out at their house for Christmas and all the talk was about The New Baby. We knew that any of the typical, "The best parents get promoted to grandparents" t-shirts/photo frames or baby booties in a box with a note like, "hold on to this until I come visit" type of gifts would be assumed to be about The New Baby, so we had to get creative. 

Well...we didn't get all that creative. We found a seller on etsy who does the pregnancy reveal wine labels that are so popular, but she let me customize it a little bit. 

I thought the koala was a solid hint that this baby was going to be in Australia and the whole summer baby part should be a tip off that it wasn't The New Baby we were talking about, but a Whole Other Baby.

As predicted, though, the grandparents didn't get it. Seriously, NO ONE was expecting us to ever get pregnant. 

What I love about this whole reveal is how sweet my in-laws are. Even though they totally don't get a). why we would send them wine all the way from Australia when they were in the middle of California's wine country and b). what the wine label is all about, they are polite and fake it with their signature, "That is so sweet!" and "This is great!" lines they give when they don't want to seem ungrateful but they also just want to move on so they can stop being the center of attention. 

As predicted, Tyler's sister puts all the clues together and gets it first. A few minutes after this video was taken we got a tearful FaceTime call from Tyler's mom who apparently cried for the rest of the afternoon because she was so surprised and happy for us. 

Shout out to my sister-in-law's sister (my sister-in-law-in-law?) for filming the whole thing and coming in clutch with the Croatian explanation of what was going on to someone off camera so as not to ruin the surprise. You're awesome, Val! 

Once all the parents and siblings were informed, we sent a quick message to my aunt who was at my grandparents' house with the rest of my extended family celebrating my grandfather's birthday and all those branches were taken care of. 

While most people take that as the signal to put some big reveal on facebook, we didn't feel any rush to call attention to our little secret at all. Even though the average age for a first child in America is climbing, we feel like we are late to this little party since our facebook feeds have been filled with big pregnancy reveals for years. We also have several friends who are struggling with infertility, so we want to be sensitive to their feelings because we know it is not easy to see all the ultrasound photos when all you want in the world is to have some of your own. 

So we will keep all the baby talk on this blog. If you want to hear the news and see the photos, be sure to follow us. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated. I remind you, though, the purpose of this blog is to give readers a vicarious international experience, so I will be focusing on our vacations, new adventures and every now and then my struggles with becoming a mom in a foreign country. With all that is going on in America right now, I can't promise that I won't get a little political. I can promise, however, that I am not going to be a Mom Blogger who reviews products or chronicles her kids' every moves. I know every mom will roll her eyes when I make the sweeping declaration that I will not be the kind of mom whose entire world becomes centered around her children, but those moms also don't know me and my stubbornness very well. When I set a goal I meet it, and I intend not to lose myself by gaining an extra person in my house. I will talk about being a parent, but I will talk about being a parent in Korea, or China, or Mozambique...or where ever we end up. 

Go ahead, put in your bets for how long it'll take me to become completely obsessed with this little parasite growing inside me, just keep those kinds of predictions and comments to yourself. They only fuel my intent to stick to my Sweeping Declaration. 

In the meantime, enjoy this ride with us folks. We're so excited to try this whole parenting thing while overseas. We have-no exaggeration- talked about raising globally-minded well-travelled kids overseas since our first days of dating all the way back in high school. Let's see how these dreams shape up.

Vicariously yours,

"We need to tell the internet so many things"

It seems like this once somewhat looked-after blog is becoming a semi-annual affair where I give a quick check in and make lots of promises for future posts that never come. Sorry about that, likely-only-reader-that-is-left. I won't promise to do better because we've all seen how well I keep my blog promises.

With the obligatory niceties out of the way, I'll go ahead and blurt out the Big News:

We're pregnant!

Yep! I am almost 20 weeks along at this point, and here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions so far:

1. We don't know the gender and will not find out the gender until the kid pops out mid-year. It's one of the last few remaining true surprises in life, and it's fun not to put gender expectations on a fetus. The conversations surrounding how we will raise our child have just been centered around making him or her a good person, not about what sports he/she will be signed up for or which scout troop to join. Plus, not knowing the gender means that any gifts we get before the kid is born will have to be gender neutral and practical, a must for people like us who are moving every couple of years and plan to have another kid eventually. I'm not packing up and moving stuff that might not be usable for the second kid! 

2. I don't care what gender the kid is, we still have to take it home with us no matter what is between the legs. Tyler is pulling for a boy, but of course will be happy with anything as long as the baby is healthy and loved. 

3. The baby will be born in Australia. We have insurance here, and there is no way we could afford a birth in America. I guess technically that means the kid could be an Australian citizen, but in my cursory google search, it looks like it can only be a citizen if at least one parent is an Australian citizen or permanent resident at the time of birth. Sorry, kid, that's proof enough for me that we don't have to do more paperwork than what is already going to be required to make you an American. 

4. We have some names in mind, but for some reason we're guarding them. A couple years ago before I miscarried we had made a list of names and talked about them with family. That list has stayed the same, but we so far we haven't been telling anyone else the names we have in mind. Hey, guys, it's a big deal that we are telling the internet about this kid in the first place! We seriously considered just posting a photo of a goopy newborn in a few months with the caption, "Surprise!" 

And now I'll go ahead and blurt out the Other Big News: 

Bonus points if you can identify the country flag without having to google it. 

Yep! The Mister (aka the Baby Daddy) snagged a contract with a school in South Korea, so we're moving in July!

Yes. I said July. 

Yes. I am also having a baby in July. 

Here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions so far:

1. Tyler has to report for work in late July, so hopefully the kid will arrive on time (I'm due June 30/July 1) so he can have about 3 weeks with us before taking the cat and most of our worldly possessions and flying to our new home. 

2. I will stay behind to wait for the kid's American passport to come through and wade through the mess of getting a Korean visa for a newborn. Plus I want to get some vaccines into the kid before we get onto a disease tube that'll hurtle us through the air to meet up with Baby Daddy in late August. I have to be out of Australia by August 31 when my visa expires. I probably could get a visa extension because...you know...brand new baby, but I have the sneaking suspicion I will be DONE with filing government paperwork by the time this kid arrives and will just want to be reunited with my husband (and, let's me honest, my cat) as soon as possible.

3. I will not be here all by my lonesome for the month that Tyler will be in South Korea. I have an adopted Australian family that I'm sure will make sure that I'm not sitting in the apartment alone with a newborn. My mom has generously offered to come stay for a couple weeks after Tyler leaves, then my sister-in-law will come to help me navigate my first international flight postpartum. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law will be in Korea with Baby Daddy to help him set up a nursery and help me with finding a pediatrician after the Baby Train arrives in its new home. 

4. I will not be teaching for the 2017-2018 school year. Thankfully the school in Korea agreed with me that trying to deal with a brand new baby, new country, and new job all at the same time would not be a smart idea, so I'm taking a year to wrap my head around keeping a human alive. They have agreed to let me come in the second semester as a sub, which is really awesome because I'm sure by the 6 month mark I will be desperate for some classroom time. 

5. The school is in a semi-rural area in the southern part of South Korea, not Seoul, which Tyler and I think will be really helpful to our transition into parenthood. There are a lot of young families on staff, and I think the lack of hustle and bustle will be good for us not feeling like we are missing out on happy hour or fun times with new childless friends. One major draw to this school is the fact that some former colleagues from Kuwait, including Tyler's old teaching partner, are already at this school and have just had a new baby themselves. We are really looking forward to learning about this whole expat parenting thing alongside them.

Now that the word is Internet official, I'm hoping to be a better blogger since I have all kinds of things I have learned about prenatal care in a foreign country. Until then, I remain

Vicariously yours,

A long overdue update

I apologize to all those who keep up with us through this blog. I have been woefully neglectful of this little project of ours and I wish I could say we have a good excuse like fabulous globe trotting or a ridiculously packed social life to keep us away from our writing.

Nope. We've pretty much been living a regular life here in Australia. We've been really focused on paying the rent and keeping ourselves fed. Australia has proven to be an interesting challenge for us and not quite the fun-in-the-sun time we had dreamed of.

So here is what we've been up to for the past few months:

1. I graduated from the University of Melbourne. Yay! I'm done with my masters and can now call myself an alum of the University of Melbourne. I didn't attend my graduation ceremony because I was working, so the whole thing was a little anticlimactic. It's an appropriate way to end my lackluster experience with the University. I'll get into the whole story of my experience as an international graduate student in another post.

2. I got a full time teaching job. Yay! I did a few weeks of subbing at various schools around the city and I am not a fan of subbing in Melbourne! (I'll get into the whole story of why subbing here has not been a great experience in another blog post) Thankfully, I got hired to teach English full time at a college in one of the western suburbs, which means I have an hour and a half commute to and from work each day. The school is really great, the students are WAY more respectful that most of the other students I have worked with here so far, and the other teachers at the school are friendly and helpful so I am happy to make the trek. The contract is only until December, since that is when the school year ends here, so I'll have to go back into the trenches of subbing in the new year, but that's a problem for Future Amber.

3. The Mister got a part time teaching job. Yay! Once we were both finally registered to teach, the subbing jobs poured in and one of them has led to a part time gig for Tyler. His job is at one of the magnet schools in the eastern suburbs, so his commute is dramatically shorter than mine. It comes as no surprise to anyone that has met him that he is getting along with his new colleagues and students swimmingly. They love him and he loves the school. So much so, in fact, that he is going to be doing his counseling placement (sort of like student teaching for guidance counselors) at the school on the days that he is not working. Yay!

4. Our friend Austin came to visit back in June. Yay! It was sooo wonderful to have Austin in town for 10 days before he headed home to the States for his summer break. We love our friends here in Australia, but there's nothing quite like having family-you-choose in town. We were in major withdrawals because we had gone from seeing Austin almost every day in Kuwait to moving thousands of miles away from him. I love that we have the kind of friendship that just picks right back up where it left off, no matter how long it has been since we last saw him. We hadn't started our fancy new teaching jobs by the time he'd come to visit, so money was really tight and thankfully Austin was happy to come all the way to Australia for a staycation with us. I'll post more about our adventures with him another time.

5. We kept working all our other jobs. ...Yay? Other than Austin's visit and our getting hired for new teaching jobs, we just focused on keeping our heads above water. I continue to work a waitressing job and occasionally do the cater-waitering job. The Mister worked his small side jobs as much as possible while on his break from school, and now that classes have started back up for him, his teaching job has been clutch for helping us keep the lights on.

We are now turning our focus to finding new jobs overseas. It's surreal to think that we are well into our second year in Australia and will be packing up and leaving in 10-ish months. We enjoy living in Australia fine, and if we didn't have any other options or just really didn't like America we would probably stay here, but we find that our quality of life here is pretty much the same as it was when we were living in Nashville: making ends meet, travelling only after months of scraping together some money, and going out for dinner as a special treat. Tyler made the point the other day that if we are going to just be living paycheck-to-paycheck, we should go do that in America and at least be close to family. We can be poor in America, no reason to be poor in Australia, especially if it means that we can't really explore this awesome country.

If I had never known our awesome jetset international life, I would be satisfied with doing what we're doing now, but I miss the traveling, the salary, and the security that international teaching gives us. Plus, there's a whole lot more world out there to see and I am ready to go explore.

Vicariously yours,

Funny language barriers

I expected the obvious English language differences when I moved to Australia. There are literally hundreds of results to a "How to Speak Australian" search on YouTube, so I had expected there to be quite a few slang terms that I was unfamiliar with.






These two break down a lot of the Aussie English vs. EVERY OTHER English differences pretty well, but I still haven't heard a lot of those words used. I'm sure there are parts of the country where the shortened version of "derelict" is probably used as the first video cites...though I feel like if you're going to be that sophisticated you should show it off and use the whole word!

TLDR: Essentially, to speak Australian, you want to cut a word in half and either add an -o or an -ie/-ey at the end of it.

Anyway, those kinds of language differences have been fun to learn. I'm certainly not adopting them in my every day vernacular, but I feel really accomplished when an Australian friend uses one of those slang words and it doesn't cause me to miss a beat in the conversation.

There are  a few language differences, however, that I find really intriguing and unexpected. For example, Australians use a lot of the same idioms that we do in America, but they are ever so slightly different.

When Americans don't want to jinx something, they'll say, "knock on wood." Australians, however, will say, "touch wood." It holds the same meaning, just phrased slightly differently.

Some of the differences stem from British-ism and I've heard them in my travels, but they still trip me up. I call them "cultural homophonyms." Words that sound the same and are spelled the same in both countries, but do not mean the same thing.

1. Jelly. In America, jelly is what goes with peanut butter. It's a sweet fruit preserve that is generally made from the fruit juice and thus won't have chunks of the fruit mucking up the spread-it-on-the-bread process. In Australia and other British speaking countries, jelly is the stuff hospital patients get after surgery when they can't have solid foods yet:

Jello. Why is hospital jello always green!?

I still get confused when people talk about eating jelly with a spoon.

2. Biscuits. What Australians and Brits call a biscuit is what Americans would call a disappointing cookie. In Australia, a biscuit is generally not sweet, is something you'll dip in your hot tea, and is often called a "digestive biscuit" because it's chock full of fiber and will help...er...clear things out. Here, cookies are cookies and are something you have with dessert, but they're still disappointing because for some reason Australian bakeries are incapable of making a soft cookie! ...but I digress. "Biscuit" is a widely known British-ism, and being from the South I frequently have to correct people when they say, "a biscuit in America is what we call a scone." Nope. Scones are disappointing cousins of the biscuit. Scones are typically bland, dry, not-buttery-at-all chunks of dough that only serve as a vessel with which to eat jam. They don't sop. They don't flake. They're typically served cold or at room temperature. Ick.

I do love seeing Australians' reactions to my love for biscuits and gravy. And then further blow their minds by telling them it is a breakfast food! Cultural differences are fun.

3. Australians put milk in their coffee, NEVER cream. If we're honest, it's frequently milk that Americans put in their coffee, too, but we just call it cream or creamer because we want to sound fancy and not admit that we forgot to pick up half-and-half at the store. Here, however, cream is not a liquid. It's like whipped cream, but just before it becomes light and fluffy. Anyone who has ever whipped cream by hand knows the stage I'm talking about. I have had to politely laugh when customers have made fun of me for asking if they take their coffee with cream and sugar. For an Australian, cream is what you put on your scones because you're disappointed with how bland it tastes and you don't yet realize that what you actually want is a biscuit.

4. Tomato sauce! Working in a restaurant, this one has tripped me up so much! Tomato sauce is ketchup, not what you put on pasta or in recipes. It's what you dip your fries in. The other day at work it took me like 3 minutes to finally figure out that the chef was envisioning me asking for a plate of pasta with ketchup on top and why would anyone want to eat that?! Instead of asking for pasta with tomato sauce I should have asked for pasta with bolognese. I feel like that is just a lot of effort and makes me sound way more snobby than I actually am. Plus, in my mind, bolognese is a specific kind of tomato sauce and I didn't care what kind of sauce he put on the pasta as long as it was hot and tomato-based!

5. I don't know if it is a British-ism, but here instead of calling it lay-away, stores call it lay-by which I just find to be a waste of a perfectly good rhyming opportunity.

6. I think this one is exclusively Australian, but the place in the wall where you plug in your vacuum cleaner is called a "power point." Not to be confused (though I frequently get it confused) with PowerPoint, the presentation software from Microsoft.

I knew there would be some small differences in the English spoken here, but I have been surprised by just how different our languages can be. I love that in this age of globalization where the world can feel so small, we still find unique cultural differences that remind us that the world is a big, diverse, and fascinating place. And that you still have to go out and experience some things for yourself to fully understand just how connected -and disconnected- we all are.

Vicariously yours,