This is just a short post to get me started from Sydney.  Photos to follow, as I don’t have my cable to download ‘em, and I haven’t decided which package to purchase to facilitate my Internet connection: there’s no wi-fi in this expensive apartment (unless I can strike a deal with a neighbor to grab a password, probably not 100% legal), so I’ll be buying a USB-dongle modem thingie and trying to figure out what data plan to choose.  Meanwhile I make do with libraries and cafes, the latter of which get a bit expensive.

Yesterday was surreal: pretty agreeable flight (if 15 hours on a plane can be agreeable--actually I was lucky to have been put in an exit row at the jetway, which meant more legroom despite a bulkhead on the right), actually slept some, perhaps worn out by a humongous walk from the international-terminal drop-off LAX bus that’d scooted amidst the giant aircraft and seemingly endless taxiways.  Before succumbing I mostly read the novel I’d been given (The Art of Fielding, highly recommended) and then yakked with a very nice couple who run a cattle station about three hours west of Sydney and who had just spent four weeks RV’ing around the Southwest.  We arrived just after 6 AM after an extra orbit of the city so that the flight could land without violating the curfew imposed by geographically vulnerable homeowners, cleared immi and customs with no problems, and as advertised the transit system is truly impressive: mostly clear instructions, friendly people (even on a Sunday morning) and generally effective.  I even took care of the mobile-phone SIM card thing (hoping I haven’t misread the fine print in believing what the charges will be for various types of calls) at the airport, and bought my 90-day transit pass right there too.  Seems like a great deal, 5 bucks a day for unlimited trippage within Zone 1 which is seemingly the size of Rhode Island.

I grabbed the first train I could to Central Station, and then the next toward North Sydney, not too encumbered by my two rolling suitcases (“really, not all of this is mine, I swear”), although as I went north I found myself surrounded by ... spandex, lots of it.  Just the sort of hale and healthy folk that Bryson hates, but it turns out Sunday was the Sydney Running Festival, with 80,000 runners converging on the bridge area to do anything from a marathon to a half to a 10K to a fun run.  They open up public transport to anyone with a bib, so I barely needed my BART-like card.    But I decided to taxi to the rental agency in Cremorne and thence to the apartment, figuring rightly that bus service would be very spotty on a weekend.  I had the access code to the lockbox, though it was inexplicably situated low on a wall next to the office, such that I was forced to kneel in abject anxiety as the first half dozen times I tried the combo the latch would seem to register my code but then not work.  Various scenarios played themselves out in my head, but eventually I got my packet and got back in the taxi.

I’d heard from a colleague that by going for this area (we’d chosen it because an acquaintance from Berkeley had moved here, and it was closer in than the situation the agency had proposed for more money) we were renting a place in the Beverly Hills of Sydney, or what an Ozzie friend told me was “a pretty spendy part of a spendy city,” but I’d say it was more La Jolla than BH, an odd mixture of upscale British style burbs-brick, some ultra-modern gated architect-y stuff for lawyers in Beemer SUV’s, along with palm trees and exotic birdsong, with the promise of gorgeous bay at the bottom of the street.

After I’d moved my stuff and put as much away as I could, I made a pot of coffee and read on the terrace for an hour, then sallied out and explored.  Up on the ridge is a huge long strip of shops and restaurants, not exactly Rodeo Drive but with some impressive casually expensive stuff on display, as well as plenty of options for food.  I found the local library, the local school where we might try to get Alex admitted, and a couple of decent maps.  With gentle spring in the air it was hard not to be optimistic and upbeat despite my lack of sleep, and I kept thinking of other first-mornings in various other cities, the excitement and intimidation giving way to familiarity and routine, a welcome transition.  So odd not to worry about is-this-the-best-place-to-buy-dish-soap and the like, but just to run through my rudimentary list to render the apartment livable and even home-like.

Today I had my first meeting with the folks at CAPA, the international-ed outfit that will coordinate the ducklings’ internships and homestays.  I will attempt to describe that, and my enjoyable peregrinations afterward, and this apartment that’ll be home for the next three months, in my next post.  I want to head home from this cafe, maybe throw on running togs, and overcome this jet lag that is sending me into a stupor...

Starting From Down Under

It’s an interesting feeling as I sit in an unexpectedly quiet part of SFO, starting up this blog I fitfully kept in previous years, usually when I was traveling and thought family and friends might be interested in updates.  All the doubts come back--why bother, don’t take yourself seriously, don’t waste your own or others’ time, etc.  I don’t follow many blogs myself (still reading new on dead-trees, at least occasionally), though I have noted some patterns that I want to avoid and some I’d love to cultivate (at least occasionally I have laughed out loud reading some of the funny people out in the blogosphere, but there sure is a lot of drivel, too)--more on that anon. 

Enough navel gazing.  Time for me to take my own writing-teacher medicine, “don’t get it right, get it written”--though perhaps without enough of the concomitant “and then revise like crazy.”

Ideas as I sit here at SFO in strangely quiet corner: I struggle with texting on new-old phone, never that good at it anyway--but I’m struck at how strange it is, this contrast between constant connectivity (and the expectations both ways--of connecting and being connected to) versus the old way (snailmail, expensive landline calls, long gaps where no one actually knows where you are in your journey, etc).

I’d like to put in something on the aerie, our temporary home for a few weeks because we sublet our regular house.  Strange transition, not home but just up the street, far less traffic noise, far more nature noise (and yappy dog noise), someone else’s choices of layout / furnishing / books etc, living out of a suitcase in effect, but all of it also making me realize how much STUFF I don’t actually need--hence more trips to Goodwill are in my future. 

Here're some pix, no time or energy to format 'em:

 

Fears and anxieties in response to all the people who’re saying “Oh you must be so excited” and all I can think about is being petrified... about unfinished business from the previous year, about logistical details still unsettled, about the courses I’ll be teaching, about possible idiocies / idiots to deal with amongst the students--hell, after my experience in Summer 2011, about the students themselves, about Alex and whether we can get into a regular school here or whether we’ll be having home-school struggles in an alien environment--will this be a nightmare of arguments and teenage sit-down strikes, as part of our Europe time has been of late. 

But hey--this is the adventure and I am on it.  I can do anything if it's only 90 days long... 

Well that was really fun

Both of you who read this blog, you know the haps in broad outline. The last two weeks of the course were a true challenge on a whole lot of levels. I'm typing this in the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, waiting here instead of having taken a later bus from Oxford becaus, well, you don't want to leave a damned thing to chance or traffic or any of the nine million minor f-ups that could occur and will occur if you count on people to do the right thing. Alex is temporarily engrossed in his iPod, and I should be marking papes, but I wanted to at least get a placeholder up before embarking for the European finish of this tour.

All the halflings checked out of college, and there were only a few little curveballs in the process. Nothing like the stuff that started two weeks ago as I started hearing about mutinous rumblings and then had a horrendous encounter with modern-era Mean Boy Syndrome, lots of wishing I could go back in time and clarify my expectations and accommodate he un-satisfiable, all in all a strange and sad revisitation of high school or middle school, tapping into all that old geeky stuff as you realize people are smiling to your face and stabbing you behind your back.

I am pretty confident I made a good save of the last week of the course, with a hastily but competently written explanation / exhortation of my methods and my concerns. No one really fessed up to being part of the Complaining Group (according to a mole there was a petition being readied about my running of the academic side of the course (discussion / papers at end rather than lecture-and-quiz) and the lack of organized activities (expecting them to take charge of sightseeing and college visits according to their own interests rather than follow-the-umbrella tours). The fact that the previous syllabus (such as it was) was still posted made it clear that my rendition fo the course would be different, but it provided a template for complaints. One student went to me--and to this day I do not know confidently whether she overdramatized the unrest, or whether she was the true mole who rescued the program by her courageous ratting out of her fellows. In the event: had three or four sleepless nights and complete bunker mentality before I could put this horrific episode behind me. I will try to put this into words another time.

Meanwhile, we're off to Paris, Alex and I are, to join up and send a couple of nights there before heading to see the bro and family.... More soon, as you-know-who is pissing and moaning about how much he has to wait....