PE is just like shop

I am starting to feel a rant coming on about the PE - Physical Education - class in Frost's school.

My reference point is Gym from my school in South Africa.   At gym we did track, javelin, discus, netball, field hockey, tennis, swimming and squash (raquette-ball).  We did gymnastics with a horse and a beam and mats.  We were made to run around fields and 'warm up'.  There was a lot of moaning about it but it was about SPORT.

Today Frost told me he is the only kid he knows in APP (the accelerated academic stream) to be doing PE.  All his friends have applied for "Directed athletics" PE Waivers so they can do both a language AND music class.  To qualify, they have to show that they do 60 hours of sports.

Frost has come home with a flyer for me to sign.  It informs me that this semester in PE they will "present wellness concepts and create activities and projects that promote an active and healthy lifestyle."

He is going to be introduced to some activities (aka Sports) that will support this.  However, there is no playing field at school, just a gym.  I am not sure really sure they are going to do anything like a sport or learn to clobber their enemies and bask in individual glory.  Is that not PC?

My cousin's 7 year old daughter was doing rugby team when we visited!  

I am starting to feel that Frost should be doing Spanish instead of this oddly paternalistic form of PE which is about introducing the food pyramid, measuring how easily he can touch his toes and whether his BMI is in healthy range!

Is it like this everywhere in the USA?  Is it going to get better?   Will he every DO sport (other than Ultimate Frisbee - not that he has heard about it yet but there are rumors...) in school.   How do we have world class athletes if there is no public program for SPORT!  If sport is all about helicopter parents knowing how to sign up for teams on a purely individual basis?

Elsewhere in the world and presumably in the USA, high achieving schools have high achieving athletics programs.    It seems that PE has has much to do with that idea as home economics to advanced math.

Could someone please tell me how Frost can do track?  Where he gets to try a discus?  When he gets beyond the BMI into the world of Sport.

Travels with a Paperclip - overseas with an iPhone 4S Verizon

I know that many of you travel from time to time and also have iPhones.  Having heard the horror stories of $1000s of dollars in roaming charges, I felt dread, taking a smartphone overseas so I thought I would share my experiences of our recent Australian trip.

The facts:
1) I had an iPhone 4S with service by Verizon.
2)  I wanted to be able to use data and phone but was not concerned about maintaining my home number.
3) I was not prepared to pay a fortune.
4) I mainly expected local calls with a few international 'ET phone home' exceptions.

After researching the international plan, the international chat, the cost of international calls and the potential for roaming charges to occur unless I had roaming off and / or was in airplane mode, I decided I would buy an international SIM card when I arrived in Australia.

I chose Telstra because they have good coverage countrywide, are well supported and had good reviews from other international visitors.

Before we left I called Verizon and asked for my phone to be unlocked so I could use an International SIM.  I told them that I did not want to use their international plan.  They read me a required user agreement disclosure thing which I had to receive via email, also saying this only lasted 3 months or 10 months, I forget which.  They then gave me instructions about what to do to to activate my international SIM and asked me to power down my phone.

With the phone turned off, it took a few minutes while they unlocked it and then I could turn it on again.

While websites I had read warned me that I would have to log into iTunes to complete the unlock, I never did.  I ignored all the Verizon instructions and simply popped out the Verizon micro-sim when we were on the runway.

Note, remember to travel with a paperclip so you can pop it out when you want.  In an emergency an unravelled staple works well too.

When we arrived at Brisbane International, I found that micro-sim cards are sold in the airport concourse newsagents.  I made a note of the ID number on the SIM (KEEP THE PACKAGING as it has your phone number and the SIM ID required for activation) and tried to activate it via the wifi activation screens.

These are extremely tedious and frustrating.  At the end of various screens in which I had to input my name, passport number, a local address, the sim number, the sim ID etc.... it said that the process had failed and I should call the service number to have it done by an operator.

I couldn't do that because I didn't have a phone.  I needed the phone to call the dimwits!

Thankfully, I used Mum's cellphone to call and it took only 5 minutes to activate.

I purchased a $30 pre-paid Telstra Micro-Sim starter kit.  These kits require you to choose from various offers.  Despite patient explanation, I could not grasp what these were for.  As it turns out, they offer different lengths of time for which the prepaid credit is valid (mine expired after a month), costs for calls vs texts and data.  They also offer some credits which can be used.

Here was my charge basis in Australia:

These are the main charges used to calculate your usage
in Australia.
Telstra Pre-Paid Cap Encore™
• Standard calls 39¢ call connection fee and
89¢ per 60 seconds or part
• Standard SMS 29¢ per message sent per recipient
• MessageBank®
39¢ call connection fee and
retrieval 89¢ per 60 seconds or part


A week before I left, I had used my 'free credit' 400 MB of data and had to buy a recharge "$10 Data Plus Pack" for a further 200 MB.  

I checked my account and found I had used none of my "recharge amount" on calls (but wasn't really chatting, just calling for short periods and texting to find someone.

So, for full data and phone and txt for my month in Australia I spent $40.

On the runway in LAX I popped in the US Verizon SIM and was back on my US network.

All in all, despite some confusion about the Telstra offers, my iPhone use in Australia was  successful.   My concern was actually that it was so cheap that I was secretly being charged somewhere else.  This would have been difficult as I paid cash for the SIM but it felt extremely affordable and easy.

My only difficulty was that since my number was new, only people I was seeing called me!

I will definitely try this again when travelling abroad.

Middle School

Frost is starting Middle School next week.  Today we had our first school tour where he received his class assignment, schedule and locker.

In the US middle school stretches from 6th-8th Grade.  In many areas it is a separate school building.  Frost's school has 1000 students in three grades.

During elementary years, kids have most of their lessons in one classroom and only go out for special classes like art, PE and library work.  During middle school you don't have a desk, instead you have a locker and carry the supplies you need to each period.

Their are 6 periods in the day and for each period a child has an assigned course.  Classes do not move together from class to class but each child follows their individual schedule based on their electives and assignments.  In this way it is much like a university or high-school class when I was in school with kids moving along on their own.

As he and his friends from last year compared schedules, Frost will not see any of his 'best' familiar friends more than once a day.  The classes they share are things like PE or band.

That said, Frost is happy with his schedule.  His greatest complaint is the lockers.  There are about 1200 lockers in the school.  Each child is assigned a locker and the code to a combination lock and a sheet of instructions on how to enter them.    The instructions are tedious and exacting - rotate right to the number exactly, rotate left PAST the number and then around again to reach it, rotate RIGHT to the number.  Even getting them right, none of the parents or kids could open the lockers.  Then, with persistance and assistance we learned you have to continue rotating and pulling FIRMLY on the dial, without releasing pressure.  At some point you encountered a resistance and then the door opened.

At this point, if a wicked friend clicked your dial around, the locker door LOCKS in the open position.  This requires the whole sequence to be repeated to enable you to open the lock so as to relock the locker with the door closed.

Apparently, last year this pranking caused such delays and trauma to children who were already stressed by the locker technology that it became a punishable offense called "flicking" or "clicking".  I forget the correct term.

Frost and Nelson discussed never putting anything in their locker.  They decided they would carry everything around all the time to avoid the risk of not being able to get stuff from the locker at a crucial time.  At 10pm tonight Frost was still interested in the way he could reduce the number of times he was forced to access his locker per day.

Clearly, his drum will not fit in the locker so we are going to have to figure out a way to deal with that.

Pavlova with Caitlin

Caitlin is showing me how to make pavlova.

Here is the recipe:

Recipe for 1 pavlova

4 egg whites

Lemon Juice 1 T

1 T Corn flour

1/4 C granulated sugar

1 Cup Caster sugar

Set oven to 140 C fan forced

First, get the bowls and put the egg whites in them.

We are using 8 eggs because we are making
two pavs for a dinner party tonight.

 

Whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.  Gradually add castor sugar beating until lite and white peaks form.  This takes a long time.

Fold combined granulated sugar and cornflower into meringue with lemon juice gradually over 8 minutes.

Pile into a baking paper lined tray.

Bake for 40 minutes on 140 C.  Turn off oven and leave to cool for 3 hours or more.

Remove from the oven.

Whip cream - sweeten if desired.

Assemble with sliced fruit, berries, bananas, kiwi and passionfruit.

Wren Prefers Australia a Bit

This morning Wren looked out the window thoughtfully, while sucking kumquats from Granny's tree.

"Mum, I am sorry.  I think I might like Australia more than America because it has different animals and things."

He winced at the sourness.

"Mum, did you write in the emus in my diary.  I want to write all of the animals in my diary."

The Animals Wren likes:
Koala
Emu
Cassowary
Pademelon
Kangaroo
Potoroo and bandicoot
Bilbies and hopping mice

Frost is silent because he has started reading Wilbur Price and is alternatively laughing as the boys self-incise their wounds to remove maggots and frowning as they nearly die again.  He says "This series is awesome because it could never happen!"

Bitten by a Scorpion

Wren has been bitten by a very small scorpion.

Wren:  "I was sitting on the floor and playing Lego when it felt like I got a splinter and it got owier and owier and I got up to tell Mom and I saw a tiny scorpion on the ground!"

Meanwhile, I was drinking tea and trying to figure out iCloud and photostream when Wren started crying and shouting loudly that he had been bitten by a scorpion.  I looked over and sure enough there was a small scorpion a bit over an inch long walking across the carpet.

Wren was shrieking and crying that he was bitten.  Mum put a bag of iced peas on it and rushed to google stings.  I shouted for Mervyn that there was a scorpion.  He walked in and squashed it.

He said "lets incinerate the scorpion remains" and put it in the potbelly

My mother was also bitten by a scorpion when she was little and living in East Africa.  It was a much larger scorpion.  Here is her story:

"It was 1950 living in Same (pronounced Sah-may) in Northern Tanzania.  I was about 2 years old.  I was with my aiah (we always had aiahs around because it was dangerous with hyenas, leopards, snakes and even elephants within sight of the house).   I was digging in the sand under a tree under the house.  My father was District Commissioner of a vast area.  The nearest hospital was 3 hours away but there was a local indian doctor. 

I was bitten on the hand by a big scorpion.  I have a memory that it was very big and black.   I am not sure if that was a real memory.  We had been warned about Scorpions.  At night when you went ot the loo you had to know out your shoes.  We wore gum boots everywhere.   

I screamed and screamed.  My mother rushed over and she was cross with the aiah because she had let me get bitten.  We also had snakes of course, there were snakes under the house, snakes in the playing pool, snakes in the water tank. 

I think she went to the Indian Doctor who said do nothing. 

I was in extreme pain it was very sore. 

The next day I went paralyzed down the whole side of the body.  The poison was spreading.  It totally alarmed my mother.  They probably had no medical dictionaries in those days.  They didn't know if it was going to stay or not. "

My granny Audrey and my mother Anne in Same,
Tanganyika early 1950s.

The children's swimming pool at Same had snakes in it.

The view from the house at Same

Mervyn also recalls a story about a scorpion bite.  This one relates from his Uncle Beville while he was in the Eastern Transvaal.  Apparently he climbed into his car one day and sat on a scorpion which bit him on the arse.  This did not earn him the sympathy he deserved.  To this day the story cannot be told without a smile!

Wren is doing fine.  He had a sore foot for an hour but says it is now fine and he can walk okay and that he was mainly crying so loud because he was afraid he was going to get sick because scorpions are poisonous.

Incidents with Koala

Every morning we wake up and play "spot the koala" in the trees around Mum's house.  They are nocturnal but move in the day sometimes and seem to mysteriously hop from trees in the dawn and dusk.  We see one and then 10 minutes later it has vanished but I have never seen one on the ground.

Frost with a Koala in Mum's Garden

The Closest Koala to the house

A little Zoom goes a long way

On the second day we were in Adelaide, Mum found a dead koala on the road during her morning walk.  She said it was too big for her to move off the road.   She reported it to the council and it was taken away.

Despite signs to warn drivers to go slowly to avoid hitting koala's, especially at night, there are many koala killed on the roads.

At Cleland Wildlife Sanctuary we lined up for 20 minutes in the rain to have a chance to stroke a koala.  The fur is surprisingly soft and warm - not coarse as I had expected.  Whether or not you have them in the garden, they are iconic animals and tourists love to see and be seen with them.

The Cleland koala monument

Wren at Cleland with the captive koala whom he stroked.

Driving down from Cleland through the mist Mum spotted another wild koala in the top of a gum tree.  The tree was growing on a steep slope below the road so the koala was swaying the mist, not too high above eye level.  Mum is the master koala spotter and sees them all over the place.

Most Glorious Storms

Today we have been hunkered down with cake.  For breakfast I had a walk in the morning mist followed by chocolate raspberry muffin and french toast.  At lunch, we went down to the Adelaide Central Markets.  The Market on Gouger Street is one of my favorite places in all the world.  It is a combination of a farmers market, a European street market and a street of deli's, cafes and food specialists.  There is a mushroom store, a french baker, chocolatiers and an old fashioned candy store selling sour boiled sweets.

We ate in the Asian food court - I had some of the best Yum Cha (aka Dim sim) EVER... the softest dumplings, the most delicious green onion pancake and some other unknown food wrapped in fried tofu wrappers.  I was so enamored that I dunked them all in the chilli oil and loved the heat.  The stall was called Seng Kee Yum Cha... oh my goddess... I hope to try it again before we leave.

We had sweets - honeycomb and boiled sours - from the candy shop.  Frost, who had been feeling a bit unwell today, perked up considerably and asked to return before we leave Adelaide. 

Wren chose these fish

"This is my favorite place EVER"

The Blackebys Candy Shoppe

Sherbert Bombs

Turkish delight - my favorite

Later in the afternoon we had tea at Ruth, a friend of Mum's.  She and her husband Jim have a library of over 8000 books.  They use binoculars to read the titles on some on the high shelves.  The house is wonderful - exactly what I would like if I were a single woman.   A dream of antique cabinets, wide windows, high bookshelves and kilims.

And cake.

We were served 4 types of cake and sampled 3 of them.  Plus strawberries.

High tea at Ruth's with wattle blossom and strawberries.

We staggered home in time for dinner.  I made soup.  We ate that followed by blue cheese from the market and some quince jelly made by Mum and Mervyn.

The gale and clatters of hail now bluster against the house and I am going to have some rooibos, black, and plan a day of healthy food tomorrow.  Minus cake.

Haircuts

Now that we are home from the tropics we are doing our chores.  Today we did another walk removing feral plants with the pickaxe, draw a picture of a puffball and took the boys for haircuts.

Both were less than enthusiastic at the prospect but endured with grace.

Both said they would rather the stylist not cut the back much, the front much or the top much.  This did not leave a lot of room open for styling.  The stylist said "Well, I have to cut some off at the top or it will look like a big mushroom."

Wren insisted on keeping his bangs on the left side.

"You can have an asymmetrical style," said his stylist.

The haircuts were in a real true salon but cost only $20 each.  They took about half an hour.

Frost in Hazelwood Park on the way home

The Hunt for Clover and Crystals

From time to time the boys are captivated by something and hunt, seek and accumulate it with  ferocious urgency.  I think this has a neurological basis and has to do with survival.

Today, they became obsessed with yellow oxalis aka soursop (to Mum) or yellow shamrock or yellow sorrel or Oxalis Stricta in the scientific venacular.

It started on the walk from the house to the post-box when Mum mentioned that the stalks of the clover flowers were edible and tasted sour.  Wren loves to forage for plants and eats things that have not been sanctioned so he leapt upon the clover flowers and started sucking them and proclaiming on their sour squinty taste.  Frost followed.  They started competing to find 'soursop' flowers.  (I do not think these are soursop but Mum calls them that).

They wanted to climb down hills and not walk further in their increasingly urgent need to find more soursop flowers.

Frost thought they might juice them.

Mum showed them a large patch of clover near the house and they sat in it with a bucket and picked the yellow blossomed stalks.

I googled the plant and the leaves are edible with the caution not to eat too many dried as they contain lots of oxalic acid (which makes them taste sour) which can interfere with digestion.

Frost is waiting to juice the flowers in the kitchen shortly.

Mining Crystal
Another source of excitement has been Granny's pickaxe.  Since the advent of Minecraft, Frost and Wren are compelled by the idea of mining for things and when Mum came on a walk with a small pickaxe (which she uses to uproot seedlings of invasive olives and other feral plants) the boys have been keen on the idea of mining the seams of quartz (aka "CRYSTALS!") found in the banks above the road and path to the crest of the hill.

We hope to take them mining for fossils next week!

The boys chop out a chunk of crystal (quartz) in the path.

Frost helps by mining out an olive seedling with the pickaxe.
The large olive specimen behind him shows what happens if you
do not get them young.