Yum….my!!!

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I know this post should be titled Bianca’s Graduation. She deserves the honor as she is a very smart and extremely hard working student, not to mention a sweetheart. So yes, congrats Bianca.

However, I can’t help but share how excited I am about having timed my trip to include a party at her parent’s house as their food is always DELICIOUS. They really take the idea of dinner party to another level.

I have two friends in Sydney who were very kindly raving about my cooking. In overhearing this, my darling husband informed them that in Portuguese circles I am barely considered a woman because my cooking skills are so relatively poor. Normally I don’t take to kindly to such comments from him, but he is dead on about this one. I tried to explain to my friend Cherie that no matter what I do I will NEVER be able to throw a party like Tony & Isabel.

To illustrate this point I have taken a shot so the ladies back in OZ can see where I am coming from.

 Click here for more photos from the party. Most were taken by Lana.

4th of July

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Part of the reason I extented our holiday to include another week was so that we could be here to celebrate the 4th of July. It’s certainly a nice way to embrace being American. I also thought the kids would love to see some fireworks. Having arrived yesterday the thought of dealing with the crowds at the mall was too much to even consider.  But when we heard them start last night I threw the kids in the car & we found a spot right near Vôvô’s house to view them. It really is magical…

Well, after waking up with my two jet-lagged kids (Nuno was up at 1am & Lana at 3am) we hung around waiting for everyone to get up and get the day going. 

Arriving at Ti Ze’s house, it was as if we never left. The kids were completely at home.  Soon after we arrived, Auntie Maria & Uncle Rob showed up with the two newest members of the family, Bonnie & Clyde.

The weather was perfect and the kids played in the pool for hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But then my kids started to hit the wall of exhaustion. Nuno came over to me and I kid you not, no sooner was he in my arms then he was asleep. Not surprisingly, my brother ended up using my son as an excuse to take a nap.

 

 

Lana was next. I tried to get her to come back to Vôvô’s with me. But even though she was going to pass out, she insisted she wanted to be with the ‘family’. So there she stayed.

We’re off!!!

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On Friday morning the kids & I took off for our American holiday. No sooner did we arrive at the airport did the party get started. Since we were on Delta’s inaugural flight from Sydney to LAX they were celebrating. There were balloons and a bongo player. We were even treated to an assortment of drinks and pastries all gorgeously presented and served to us by waiters as we entered our gate. There were also television news crews. They filmed us, while we photographed them. Although it was a decent flight, I am still a bigger fan of Air New Zealand for this long haul. They just have more practice I suppose.

After hauling butt through LAX (we had 1.5 hours to make our flight) we made it to our connecting flight back to NYC. Since the kids had barely slept on the first leg, I wasn’t sure how it would go. Fortunately they both passed out and slept though most of the flight.

We were all so excited to be home & we hit the ground running. Ti Ze & Vôvô picked us up and Fabiana had made us a gorgeous meal that was waiting for us when we arrived. Carlos had made some bread. (I am happy to report that his baking is coming along. He’s really trying to get as good as his little sister at baking.)

The kids were thrilled to see Du…AND a young lady who is almost family. The kids were having such a great time that it rolled into a sleep over because that’s how we roll!

 

 

 

..and then she asked me to buy her a rubber

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On my birthday, Lana came home with a card that she had made at school. It was a very cute card with a picture of her & me inside. The thing that struck me was that on the front was written, “Happy Birthday Mum.” I could however make out that she had first written mom, but that it had been erased with MUM written over it.

Since my birthday was in February, she had only been “exposed” to Australian kids for a month. This surely was not enough time for her language to be corrupted influenced by her peers. Well, it ends up that she had made me the card and her little friend I.L. in seeing that she had misspelled ‘mom’ erased it and ‘correctly’ wrote out mum. At that moment I knew Lana & I needed to have a mother to daughter chat. I explained to her that I liked her saying ‘pardon’, rather than ‘why’ and that I could accept her calling ketchup, ‘tomatoe sauce’, but that I drew the line at mum. I told her (and her father who quickly saw this as a weak spot) that no matter where we were living, that I would always be her MOM!

A few weeks later, we were in a very cute stationery shop. As I looked around, Sophia approached me and asked me if I would buy her a rubber. My immediate response was, “Hell no! You’re six,” but as the words came to me, I saw she was holding up a cute little pig eraser.  I’ve had to capitulate and allow her to use that word as it’s difficult to explain to a six year old why that word does not sound right to this mom’s ear when spoken by a child.

Since our arrival in Sydney, all of us have had our language impacted by this experience. Just yesterday in LAX I was trying to sort out where to retrieve my pram. After being asked what a pram was I said, “You know a push chair.” It was only on my third try that I remembered that it’s called a stroller.

Our neighbor and Lana collaborated on some videos that highlight some of the differences between our languages: clothes, school words & school words 2.  (I apologize for how quickly they fly through the reading of words, but I can only load up short videos.)

I am not sure if you noticed that ‘er’ at the end of words sounds like, “ah”. For example, rubber is pronounced /rubbah/. The weekend after my friend and fellow American Jenny pointed that out to me, Lana had September as one of her spelling words. As she read them over I almost dropped the plate I was holding when she pronounced it /septembah/. When I screamed that she was turning into an Aussie she quickly responded, “Would you prefer I say SeptmebER?” It’s so interesting to see how aware she is not only of her speech, but mine as well. She is always the one who notices when I say Gar-ahge or when I offer the kids TomAtoe sauce.

Rather than fight the ‘Australianization’ of my kids English, it’s something we chuckle about. Yet once when we were discussing my hesitating to use Australian English she came backat me with something I told her in Portugal. “When you’re in another country you should respect the native language, by trying to use it.” I guess she got me there.

Sponge Bob at the Sydney Aquarium

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One of the things that we are really enjoying about Sydney is that there is so much to do. So much so, that we always seem to be exhausted by weekend’s end. Yet somehow, we have only scratched the surface of what there is to do in this city.

The last time we went to the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium they had a Sponge Bob ride that Lana loved. This was reason to head into town and check out Sponge Bob’s visit to Sydney.

There was no ride, but they had a scavenger hunt that the kids really enjoyed. As we walked through the aquarium the kids had to seek out the characters from the show within the displays (see pictures here) and answer a few questions. They loved it, but I think they were more interested in the cartoon cutouts in the tanks than the marine life.

There were however a few cool things. One was the dugong that was following Nuno as he walked along:

Another was the sleeping turtle. We thought Chelsea would have loved to see it:

Overall, it’s not my favorite aquarium, so sad really, but it’s such an easy place for us to get to and we do manage to learn something every time we are there…so we’ll be back.