As you can see, I finally figured out how to post photos to the blog. If you have special requests of things you want to see, I'm happy to go out on assignment; it's often difficult to think of what I should take pictures of.
I wish I could include sound files. The insects are so loud, they almost sound mechanical. I'd also like for you to hear the language being spoken around me.
A little sampling of Katherine marketing style:
(1) We saw the truck of a cabinetry-maker whose slogan (on both sides of the truck) was "Get hammered, screwed and glued by us".
(2) A local butcher's print ad in the weekly Katherine Times says, "Eat beef, ya bastard".
(3) A pre-Christmas ad also in the KT for a plumber features a Christmas elf sitting on (and presumably making use of) a toilet while reading the newspaper.
Did I mention there are an unsettling number of mullets here?
Really, though, everyone has been extremely nice ("noyees"), and there's still so much to explore. We just bought bicycles today, so we're looking forward to turning some of our long walks into bike rides.
By the way, it's been gorgeous for the past three days: no rain, blue skies with only a random fluffy white cloud, humidity down to 60% or less, occasional breezes (feels a lot like a summer day in California, in fact).
That's all for now!
Bittersweet
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Eyal and I always knew that it would be difficult building a family from
two different countries. It is just now, however, that we have to really
put that ...
13 years ago
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4 comments:
This is great!! I hoped I would be the first person to write a comment, but I was beaten to the punch. All that's left now is for me to be the person who writes the most comments. ;-)
Anyway, this blog is a wonderful way to keep track of what's going on down there. It's great to have the photos. Maybe there is some clever way you can attach sound files? I'd love to hear some good Aussieisms, and maybe some samples of the language(s) that you two are working on preserving.
Well, it's good to see that you are doing well, despite the recurrent sunburn problems. Now I must go see if I can subscribe to your blog via RSS, so that updates come right into my email app. Technology is a good thing, in moderation...
Life here trundles along (thanks for asking). Gianni and I are slowly planning what we intend to do once we flee the USA. S. America is a likely candidate, and I also want to see the south of Italy, where his family comes from... I am experiencing a growing interest in the Stans, AKA Central Asia; but I don't know if it's crazy to think about trying to travel through there, not speaking Spanish, and what with various states of civil unrest and all. Maybe N. Africa? E. Europe? Japan?
Be well.
(1) Don't hold your breath for sound files; I'm really, really, really not very tech-savvy.
(2) You guys speak French; you can learn a lot of Spanish in a short amount of time; don't let that stop you from traipsing around S.Am!
(3) You might enjoy this little exchange (not verbatim, but approximate) reported to me by Justin:
Aussie: So, are you Canadian?
Justin: No, I'm from the U.S. Are there a lot of Canadian tourists around here?
Aussie: Not particularly, but they get really mad if you ask if they're Americans, so I always guess "Canadian" first.
Yeah, somewhere on the web someone was selling a complete Canadian makeover kit for US tourists. Canadian flag lapel pin, patches to sew on luggage, etc. (But they'll never get the diphthongs right!!)
My version of the guess-American-first rule is when someone sounds like an Australian or NZ-er, I always guess the latter. NZ-ers hate being mistaken for Aussies. Although I have gotten better at spotting the differences in the accent; mainly the fact that Kiwi English has only one phonetic vowel: a mid-high front tense nasalized one.
I'll have to share that with the Aussies. M, our German-but-London-dwelling anglophile roommate (and coworker of Justin's), says that you have to be careful on the Kiwi vowel because South Africans often sound quite the same as Kiwis.
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