Happy Invasion Day

Here we are nicely tucked into the middle of the fringe of Sydney. Sydney is like a voluptuous bride that is desperately trying to fit into a dress - but reality is her flesh is spilling out the seams. And here we are in the spillage. Or as the locals like to call it: Parramatta. We have heard talk of Sydney for ages and, having been here for a couple of days now, we are going to assume that all the praise was not directed here but rather in a hipper, beachier area. But to its credit, Parrmatta is a cute little place nestled at the edge of a river, with the second largest business district in New South Wales. We're living in an old regal town that unwittingly became part of Sydney as the suburbs melted into it. The town now has an aggressive campaign of ads and construction to reinstate its image as a great city and not a sad far flung suburb.

As usual the shock of going from a small place like Cairns back to the city is noteworthy. There are people everywhere. They sit in restaurants, they walk on the sidewalks, they talk on their phones, they ride the trains. There are so many children here that to go to storytime you have to come equipped with passports to prove that you are related to the child. Yet with all these thousands of people all around me all the time, none seem to offer to help if you are trying to walk a block with a baby, a stroller, three suitcases, a car seat, and a backpack. Our house is in a little bubble of middle eastern culture. I think I was the only woman at the grocery store on Saturday night not in hijab. We are right over a popular hookah restaurant so every night is a party outside our door and our bedroom smells like barbecue. But the train to the Blue Mountains is an hour long and only costs $3.50 so things are looking pretty great.

We also got to experience Australia Day in all its splendor. The whole country slathers on sunblock and goes out to the fair, with barbie for dinner of course. We opted for a day of bushwalking in Katoomba, a pleasant outpost of the Blue Mountains and home of the aptly named Three Sisters. In the evening, the girls campaigned for an outing to Parramatta's ten minutes of fireworks - and boy, did we ever get a show! We sat expectantly behind a thick band of yellow hazard tape, when FOOM a brilliant orange explosion lit up the sky right above our heads. Everyone oohed. The fireworks intensified, things started to heat up. Roiling clouds of blue smoke blanketed the ground. Flaming cartridges came hurtling down with a thud, scattering sparks at our feet. The security guards ran around stomping out the smoldering grass. Families scurried for cover, children coughed into t-shirts, and Tova grinned fearlessly up at the inferno.

We felt like we were being bombed by a rainbow. But mixed messages, turns out, is what Australia day is all about. We now know the truth: all the gaiety was to celebrate the arrival of the First Fleet, the first ship of British prisoners to Australia! Hooray for the penal system! Hooray for criminals coming out on top! Hooray for the oppression of the original inhabitants of the country!

 

Three Sisters

This leech hitched a ride home with us hiding out in Jakob's sock - now he too is getting to know Paramatta