Six months

Six months in Australia and what have I discovered? I really enjoy seeing my parents' joy at being around my children, I like going to my club at the MCG to watch footy and cricket, all this sunshine is pretty good, I like having a beer with my brother once in a while, Australian newspapers and television are 97.5% crap, books are incredibly expensive, until about 1960 the history of this country was based on a racist ideology that would not have been out of place in 1960's Mississippi or South Africa (I already knew that, but now I understand it in a lot more detail), Melbourne has the best coffee in the world, people here live in their backyards and therefore neighborhood communities do not exist, it's eerily quiet during the day in my street, I could not be a stay-at-home Dad for too long here and I'm looking forward to starting my Master of Teaching course at Melbourne University in February (if I get accepted), Australian radio is 100% crap, I am lactose-intolerant, it's very dry and we need a lot of rain, parents don't hang around in playgrounds after school, I am still resisting the Australian habit of shortening everybody's name and putting and "ee" on the end (I have two friends who I had not seen in 20 years. Their names are Annette and Janine - they now get called Nettie and Neenie. Sheesh), I have a barbecue - what is the big deal?, Peter Carey should win a Nobel Prize, I've had about as much as I can take of Nicole Kidman and "Australia", Kevin Rudd is a very boring man.