Letter to Students 03 September 2009

Dear Reader

On route to Sydney

Thursday morning

I have my computer on my knee as I travel by bus to Sydney.  I struck up a conversation a Singaporean Phd student who has been in Sydney for ten years, and it was a coincidence that he was visiting a Jordanian friend who worked in the same department as the people I saw yesterday!  I actually saw him say goodbye to his friend before entering the bus, and I had assumed the friend was Arab.  I love such serendipitous meetings!

I just reread my last letter, and should clarify a few things.  The groaning I heard yesterday morning from my bed in the hotel was nothing more than the pigeons which land on the small balconies, and they do make a throaty noise uncannily like someone groaning!  Talking of things which are not as they seem, I had another experience where expectation did not meet reality. This morning, I went to the so called gym at the hotel to find it was no more than a large shed with windows and four pieces of old exercise equipment, one of them broken.  I still stretched my muscles, but it was not done in a salubrious environment, and I smiled to myself as I looked out at the covered outdoor pool which was not open as it was not summer! 

Last night, after dinner, I was taken back to my hotel by car after a very nice dinner with my two hosts from Jordan.  With Ramadan, my hosts had not eaten all day, and we talked about this special time in the Muslim calendar, and they talked of the fasting as a time to reflect on God.  I remarked how one of our Saudi home stay students, who stayed with us two years ago, had put on weight during this time, as he insisted on cooking two huge meals during the night, and really didn’t suffer at all during this time.  He even accused Han of putting bacon into a special soup Han made, when Han had cooked this special soup without any meat.  The potato had caught on the bottle of the pan, and maybe this gave the soup a smoky taste. Some people are unnecessarily distrustful of others, and this is such a shame when one if bending over backwards to be accommodating!  I can totally understand why Han almost tore his hair out over this particular guest, and never wanted to have any other students in our home.  This was often a source of conflict between us, as Han loved to have our home to just the family, which I totally understood.  However, I love having other guests to stay, and sometimes we needed to accommodate people when home stay families were not available.  I saw this as something I had to do for the school, but Han didn’t agree.  I respect his view entirely, but obviously see it differently.  Hence, why we are no longer together.

After leaving the botanic garden yesterday, I didn’t get a taxi as planned, but managed to navigate my way back to the hotel through the Australian National University campus.  It is a spacious campus with lots of trees, and buildings made of brown brick.  There were not many people around late in the afternoon and it was restful to walk through the grounds.  There were no buildings I saw of any great architectural merit, as we have at the University of Otago, but it certainly was nice to be in the parklike environment.  By walking back to the hotel, I missed out on another encounter with an interesting foreign taxi driver, and today, I was able to walk to the bus station to catch this Greyhound bus.  It is raining as we travel though stands of blue gums, having passed though farmland where the tussock predominated and there seemed little grass for the cattle.  The mist hung over the low hills, and the sun was filtered through the thin line of mist.  It has now become a colourless sky which drops heavy rain through which we travel in the hope of breaking out into sunshine as we approach Sydney.  I was so blessed with the sunshine yesterday, light reprieve in what was apparently a cold, bleak spell.  I like to think the gods were smiling, but not arrogant enough to think they were smiling just for me!  I always seem to arrive in a city when it is raining, and I remember that Hu Chen says that, in China, this is a very good sign that luck is on my side!

Every morning I read Ronda Byrne’s book, the Secret, and it gives me the boost I need for the day.  Yesterday, the reading was about being truly happy as you set out on your day and feeling that this day is special.  Whatever has happened in the past has prepared us for this day, but we must not carry the burden of the past with us.  We must leave it where it belongs, in the past; learn from it and move on.  I still need to learn that lesson, and approach relationships in the present time, and not laden with memories of the past.  This is sometimes not easy to do, but I am going to work on it while here, so that I can return to Dunedin in a calmer state of mind.  Before leaving for Australia, although I functioned as normally as I could, I sensed my exterior beginning to crack as outside pressures began to overwhelm me.  I have thought a lot about these and am feeling much more in control now.  I am determined to do lots of walking as I did yesterday, and I realise that I had stopped doing any physical exercise except for the gardening I did the weekend before last.  For my mental wellbeing, I need to get out and walk, and stretch my tightened muscles so that they last me well into old age, if I am privileged to get there!

The scenery has changed, now that we are half way through our three and a half hour journey, or so I thought.  I saw some paddocks of grass, but that was for a fleeting moment, and we are back to the rough tussock and acacia trees.  The sky up ahead is lighter in colour, with a pinky hue, and there is the promise of fine weather ahead!

As always happens when I talk with people, I mention my family, and I feel so close to these special people who make my life worth living.

Love

Sharron