Nothing

Still nothing. We are just sitting here, bored out of our skulls.

Worked a little over the holidays as a study tour teacher. Discovered pretty quickly that it was nothing I imagined it would be...or at least the children weren't (um, how do I say this? Spoilt, pampered little pets comes to mind!) I should have realised that the students who would end up in learning English in Australia over the summer holidays would be the wealthier ones. At least I know now what NOT to teach.

On the other job front: give me strength!

We are still treading water, going nowhere. Another January, another birthday and I am still sitting here. It is enough to drive you to drink...rejection after rejection after rejection! I don't know what it is about this time of year: perhaps because it's Christmas and spending so much time with family (wanting to know what my plans are and whether I've given up on Scotland yet), or my birthday (another year older, still don't feel any closer to where I want to be)?

I did have a job lined up in China. It was in a kindergarten - not an international/expat school. This meant the pay was lower, but I thought it would balance out as the workload expectations would also be lower (which seemed to be the norm looking at similar jobs). Then the school sent me their contract outlining 40 hours + contact per a week, with additional Saturdays from time to time! Tried to negotiate. They readvertised.

I started packing boxes with things anyway, and dusted off my backpack. Nutcase...eternal optimist? I'll leave that up to you!

To balance - a good book

A long time ago, in uni, or perhaps even the end of high school, I remember a very short friend of mine (not that her height has anything to do with this...) spending a very long time (but that was neat!) reading a very thick book...

I think it may have been part of our English curriculum as my recollections of the film are all stop start and broken images which usually indicates that the film was "studied" (ie: mercilessly destroyed of any chance to be appreciated by mad English teacher with a remote). The only part I really remembered from the film (which may actually indicate that even WORSE than "stop-starting" the teacher only let us watch "segments"...god how that used to irritate me!). I can't imagine...oh, forgot to say the part. It was the beginning, where the girl is forced to marry/sleep with someone she doesn't want to and she runs away.

Anyway, I can't imagine that it was on the school reading list. I would have read it as I did not start skipping the reading of books until uni - ironically when I started my English literature degree, so outcome achieved by the uni!

Anyway, Katherine carried this book around for so long that it is forever associated in my mind, with her. A while back I found it on special for a few dollars and I bought it...but despite being a confessed bookworm/nerd/avid reader, it has sat on my shelf for well over a year. It is just so frikken THICK!

However, all this talk of teaching English overseas and possibly going to Asia reminded me of the book. Plus I am trying to cut down on my consumption of murders and crime shows, which is all that seems to be on TV at the moment (I am watching City Homicide, Bones, The Strip, Taggart, Rebus, The Bill, Midsomer Murders (which I swore I'd never watch!) and probably some others I can't even recall...sad, sad, sad!). The only show outside this genre is Shameless, which although possibly the most brilliant show ever made, is pretty much all about crime (drugs, prostitution, underage drinking, child neglect, welfare fraud...)

So I read it and it is brilliant. An amazing book - why did I not read it before? Although I am glad I did not as I may not have been as receptive to learning about Chinese culture as I am now that it is a possible home for us next year. It is so insightful into the Communist regime that I understand why it was on our English reading list (in fact I can feel the English teacher rising up inside of me shouting "YES! Put that one on the list!" and I even had a few scary moments of imaging activities to convey the lessons in the book to students...argh!)

The book was a bit of an epiphany to me. If I can speak in the language of my CHC lecturers, it produced a paradigm shift, altered my worldview. It made me feel like a lazy fat Australian slob and I admit that when I see people who have Asian features in the street or the shops (not so common in Noobah but I do get out of this town sometimes!) I can feel myself perceiving them in an entirely different way. I don't want to sound like Tamara but I really was a bit like her in terms of thinking about Asia and travel in that region. Blind, ignorant and awfully condescending. My heritage is in Europe and since travelling there my future is there also, but I that is no excuse for being ignorant of the rest of the world. I think because of the vast numbers of people living in the Asian regions, as well as (what I think is) dehumanisation of them in our media (ie: desensitising us: thousands die in an earthquake in Thailand and it is glossed over UNLESS there happens to be a 'westerner' in the rubble).

I don't want to speak too soon as I don't actually have a job lined up yet, but it is feeling like deciding to go to Asia next year was a good decision, or even the 'right road for us to be on' if you want to get all freaky like that.

Small families...

I think this is a lovely way of describing my family. "Lone/sole/single parent" sounds so bloody...lonely and pathetic. And "single mum", well, we all know the connotations of that one. No, I'm not 16. No, I did not have a child to get the Baby Bonus so I could buy a plasma telly...

As I started thinking seriously about going overseas to teach English, I of course turned to google to give me answers. My hours of internet trawling were fairly unproductive. I did uncover the Prague Blog http://alicia-prague-blog.blogspot.com/, by Alicia, which was hilarious and educational and made me incredibly jealous. I WISH that I could travel to Europe to do the Tesol training course as Alicia did, but with a child in tow the risk seemed too great. I would not be able to afford waiting around after the course for work. It's alright for me to live on toast (as I used to when backpacking the UK) but I don't think my daughter would be too appreciative.

I found a few sites that tackled sole parent travel. Many of them (understandably) are designed with only short breaks and holidays in mind, and some were more like dating services... There are also some articles and info on regular family travel sites for one-parent families. One of the most frustrating aspects I have found when looking into travelling (just for holidays) in the past, is the single supplement. Is it not enough that I am on my own in life, but I have to pay a fine for wanting to go on holiday alone??? Some of the trips and programs on these websites seem really interesting, so I thought I'd post them up anyway, for those of you who are interested:

UK: http://www.smallfamilies.co.uk/

This one is based in the US and has some really cheesy google ads (Cheap Divorce for $69!) but they've just revamped the site to make it clearer and less cluttered:

http://www.singleparenttravel.net/

The Family Travel Forum has a cute logo, "Have Kids, Still Travel" and a thread devoted to single parents: http://www.familytravelboards.com/forums/index.php

Which reminds me, there are issues regarding paperwork that parents need to carry when travelling alone with their child, but more on that in another post.

And another thing...

One of the other reasons I am determined to keep up with my blog is for others in my situation who are thinking about living and working abroad with their child. Eventually I hope some of them might start to come out of the woodwork and post comments so we can share our experiences, but I haven't even started the course yet so let's not get too excited.

Soon after my realisation that simply thinking about getting away had ceased to satisfy me, and I made plans to really escape, I went to my trusty google search to find other one parent families who had blazed a trail before me (naturally so I could copy everything they did and not have to jump off the deep end myself).

Annoyingly, there is precious little info out there for single parents with mad intentions of dragging their offspring to the ends of the earth.

The information that is out there is geared towards Stepford families with a male who has a stunningly successful role with some international corporation and a wife who's only worries are whether the local nanny will get in her way as she lounges about the house.

Even googling "single parent holidays abroad" did not produce much, except one website who condescended to have a page about one parent travelling with children but this was a much older mum with teenage kids so not much use to me.

I posted some threads on ThornTree (Lonely Planet's travel forum) and was surprised at the number of mums who wrote back about their desire to live overseas with their children, their frustration at the lack of information and their confusion about the safest and best path to take to realise their goals.

I have not even left Australia yet so I am no expert but hopefully by documenting my experience of taking a 3 year old on my OE I may be able to fill a little bit of that information black hole.

Here's the thread at Lonely Planet...
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1651298&start=0&tstart=0