Encountering The Friendly Elderly Men of Melbourne

I like to plan things, sometimes admittedly I’m a bit too thorough. However, for me the only type of good spontaneity is planned spontaneity (which totally is possible, I promise.) Therefore I was a bit thrown when I was offered a ride into the city the other day and I went without a plan. After being dropped off I somehow managed to walk in the wrong direction... which is impressive since I was trying to walk towards a city with skyscrapers. That’s skill. (See why spontaneous doesn’t normally work for me?) After about thirty minutes of walking in the wrong direction I finally glanced over my shoulder and realized that clearly I was not going the right way.

Should have been hard to miss...

 

Upon turning around it started to pour. My sentiments were described perfectly by an elderly gentleman who walked up to me and said, "lovely weather we’re having." He was walking in the same direction and upon hearing that I had no plans invited me along on his. Ian, who is 90 years old, is a World War II veteran who was thrilled to learn my grandfather had been in Australia during the war. He was going to the Shrine of the Remembrance. It’s really a nice place. Located on the outside of Melbourne, it is situated on a hill in the botanical gardens. Inside is a beautiful memorial and books that contain the names of every fallen Australian. Ian said he had looked up each one of his friends in them. In the center is a marble slab engraved with, "Greater love hath no man." On their version of Memorial Day, "Remembrance Day" on November 11^th at 11 am a beam of light naturally shines down and illuminates the world "love." Ian and I went and had coffee at a nearby coffee shop before he went home. He told me the story of how he met his wife a total of 7 times but the way in which he told it made it worth hearing again and again.

 

"Shrine of Rememberence" by Adam Carr at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Ausxan using CommonsHelper. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shrine_of_Rememberence.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shrine_of_Rememberence.jpg

 

I went back and took a tour they were having. I really enjoy the symbolism that goes into memorials, and the Shrine had plenty. The entrances for the lower levels had you go through outside gardens in the shape of trenches. Each of the gardens had different themed plants (the one I went through was entirely Japanese plants.) My elderly tour guide enthusiastically pointed out every image of American soldiers he could find, it was very sweet. He talked my ear off after, and even gave me a hug.

 

Source: http://www.shrine.org.au

This wasn’t the first time I’ve met very nice elderly gentlemen in Australia. Doug took me into the city one day last week and we stopped by a guitar store. I was just wandering when another older gentleman came up and told me, "You know, the bagpipe store is across the street." I still have no idea what he was talking about, but Neil told me all about life and his plans ect. Doug was a bit surprised this had happened. I had told him people came up to me all the time, but he said that wasn’t normal. Must be my happy disposition-- I had someone tell me the other day that I was "disturbingly happy every time they had seen me."

 

Back at my host home I’ve finally adjusted to living with much chattier people than I am used to. There seems to never be a time when at least one person isn’t talking quite loudly (normally there are about three people talking all at the same time.) They’re just a friendly, loud, chatty family. I joked with my host father (Phil) that he and my host mom (Patrice) have a perfect set up for people they meet. Phil corners them and takes them down then Patrice goes in for the kill. The trick for me is to not listen to everything being said. It was getting exhausting... but I’ve now figured out the art of thinking about something entirely different while giving the correct affirmation. Half of what I say (when I get a word in edgewise) is a combination of "umhm, yes, oh that’s lovely, ect." (I feel I should add that Patrice read this and very much enjoyed my description.)

A neat tree.

It’s been really nice having someone about my age staying here, especially someone as nice as Doug (Phil’s middle son.) He’s taken me to dinner at his friends, out into wine country, to a eucalyptus forest, to the botanical gardens, a glass store (woohoo!), the symphony and yesterday I got to see him perform with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. It was a fabulous concert in one of the most unique performance spaces I’ve ever seen. Even though he leaves tomorrow he won’t get rid of me yet as he’s letting me stay with him when I go to Tasmania in a couple of weeks. I’m bracing myself for overwhelming joy of seeing my favourite animals, wallabies. Unfortunately, so far though I’ve seen an impressive amount of native wildlife it’s almost been exclusively post-mortem... which I didn’t really want to take pictures of. The weirdest animal I’ve seen was a wombat. They’re tanks of nature, medium-sized but sturdy.

A wombat (pre-mortem)

 

"Vombatus ursinus -Maria Island National Park" by JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vombatus_ursinus_-Maria_Island_National_Park.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Vombatus_ursinus_-Maria_Island_National_Park.jpg

I’ve had multiple skype sessions this week with friends and family and the lovely Alison showed me how to imessage people in the US. It only works with Iphones, but if you want to text, you can text me at mattie.theobald.1@gmail.com and I’ll get it on my ipad.

Miss & love you all!

 

 

Possums & My Weekend

Recently I had a conversation about catching sharks take a nasty turn to detail all of the incredibly scary creatures Australia has to offer. For instance there are more deadly snakes here than any other country in the world. However as always there are exceptions. Australia also seems to have an incredible number of adorable creatures made even cuter by bouncing.

When I moved in I was told to let them know if I heard scratching in the walls at night. They had recently had the "possum whisperer" (that's actually what this man calls himself) come to remove "Percy the possum." Here, there are possums everywhere (much to the disapproval of the greyhounds.) When they told me about Percy I was envisioning the American version, so was a bit confused by the loving way in which they were talked about. In the same way Australians do financing higher education, they just do possums better than us. The proof is in the picture.

American opossum

Australian possum

Sadly, since possums are nocturnal, and normally would run away, the possum I saw (in the picture) was quite sick.

I spent most of my last week also under the weather doing nothing more than sleeping. Though I'm sure detailing those days would be riveting reading, I'll spare you.

The weekend brought clear sinuses and skies as well as one of Phil's sons, Doug. All of Phil's children seem to be gifted musicians. Doug is a professional violist in Tasmania.

You can hear his quartet play here:

http://www.abc.net.au/classic/content/2014/07/13/4027916.htm

I spent the Saturday with the family-- cooking and going to Tim's (Phil's composer son) soccer game.

The game was where I found I could only understand Australians about half the time when they were yelling. When a player on the field got hurt they would lie there until the medic ran over. Once he got there he would throw some water on them and run off the field. This was referred to as the "magic water." It reminded me of how I used to use hand sanitizer if my 6 yo campers asked to go to the nurse too many times for bug bites... Except this was with men in their late 20s and early 30s. Tim had a hat trick and the team celebrated their victory by singing a little song, jumping around and throwing even more water on each other.

On Sunday I cooked with Patrice and was solidly the other chef in the kitchen. Extra chefs were needed, however, as Tim was hosting a 30 some person party for everyone to meet his girlfriend. I ended up talking to a few of Tim's housemates and got the rundown on Australian politics. I didn't mind, but somehow that always seems to happen to me. I always seem to have a busman's holiday at parties. We rounded out the day by attending the church where I had a conversation with a 20 year old electrician who was very enthusiastically smiling while telling me basically if my views didn't exactly align with his I was going to hell. (Spoiler: I now know where I'm headed...way to ruin that surprise.) Somehow the smile made it all the more creepy.

I'm told that he's just a "bit intense." I guess that's one way to put it. On Wednesday I got my first phone call at the house-- it was the electrician's brother asking me if I wanted a ride to a bible thing that night. Somehow I became immediately busy. However, now know who to call if I ever wish to be "en-light-ened." Though what he has to say might "shock me." But maybe I'd see the light.