Just Another Brick (in the) Wall

Old school books (Photo credit: justmakeit)

So, we've been in Houston now for one month and life is slowly starting to take shape. The house thing seems to be working out and stars are pleasantly aligning. The school thing is slightly more problematic and I'm going to have to bite the bullet soon and make a commitment to home schooling. So what's my resistance? For B1, it's chemistry. Seems like a small thing huh? Nothing too dramatic, something that could be easily negotiated. But it's my sticking-point. How do I go about accessing chemicals? How do I set up a functioning lab? How do I break him into a local school for chemistry classes? And the worst part is that I'm suffering a migraine today, so it's all just that little bit too hard, little bit overwhelming.

But that's not the only thing holding me back. In the state of Texas, home schooling is an interesting adventure. There is no registration and no accreditation. Home schooling is considered in the same vein (legally) as private schooling, and in Texas that means you can pretty well do anything you like, including nothing at all. There is no monitoring, no moderating and no registration of home schoolers. If I wanted to fill the school days with making balloon animals, that would be ok by the state. Now I know what you're shouting: but you would never do that! You'd have a riot on your hands from the kids! Both you and the boys would be bored senseless in seconds!! Yes. You're right on all counts, but here's my point, that's the home school community I'm working in; unregulated, unmonitored and in the most part unqualified. The majority of people in Texas who are home schooling are doing so for religious reasons - because the school system isn't providing enough (or orthodox enough) Christian education for their children. That's not our primary reason for home schooling. It's not even waaaaaayyyy down the bottom of our list of reasons. It doesn't even make the list.

 So? I hear you ask. Well, it raises the issue of who my children would socialise with. I don't want to isolate them here. That defeats the purpose of bringing them all the way here. I want them to make friends and build a community. But if the community of other home schoolers has almost nothing in common with us, how do I effect those friendships?

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic at the moment. Perhaps that's a reflection of my own lack of community here. It's hard to make bold moves like home schooling when you have no social support systems, no clue of curriculum and little idea of where to obtain resources… and you have an impatient personality. I have always been the kind of person who has an idea and wants to effect it IMMEDIATELY. The notion of slowing the pace down is an anathema.

For now, we wait to hear … and my nails get chewed to the quick… and my migraine gets worse...

First Impressions: Food Labelling and Ingredients

It's our second day in Houston and I'm trying to be vigilant about making observations about our new home. My love for food and all things foodie is well known by now. Ok, so it borders on obsession, but hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby. So it's no surprise that one of the first points of difference I notice between Houston and Perth is the food.

Yes, it's true that food is generally cheaper in Houston; both restaurant food and fresh food/provisions. If you think about it, that's not surprising. Perth is isolated. Remote even by Australian standards. The capital city of a state that's 3.63 times the size of Texas, but containing a population of just less than 2.5 million people (with about 1.8 million of those people living in Perth and its surrounding suburbs). It's big in terms of land mass, but teeny tiny by world population statistics. And it's far far away. There's a distance of 3301km (2051mi) between Perth and Sydney. That's a long way to transport goods. Add on the comparatively high labour costs in Australia (I'm not griping about the wonderful wage structure negotiated over time by unions, or the taxation system that allows those in need to continue to subsist in something approximating adequacy, but it's a fact that it adds to the general costs of living), and you have high prices generally, with particularly high prices in Perth. But I digress. This isn't meant to be a comparison of the socio-economic structures of Houston and Perth. It's about food.

We hear media reports on a reasonably regular basis about the quantity of additives and preservatives in food in the US, and of the rates of morbid obesity. Watch Dr Oz or The Doctors for more than 5 minutes and there's bound to be some discussion on the unnaturally high levels of chemicals in food, the increasing weight of the populace and how Americans should all be turning towards whole foods or raw foods. It's easy to sit in Australia and think we have it better, our food is higher quality, with fewer additives. It's easy also to assume that if you move to the US, you will have limited (or no) choices about what kind of food you can buy. This impression is exacerbated by shows like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. And I'm certainly guilty of thinking all of those things: the US population is generally fatter, the food choices are limited and there's little or no access to good quality, organic fresh foods. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I discovered that that's simply not true... well, not true in Houston anyway.

There are plenty of good food alternatives. There are large (warehouse sized) stores that house fresh food markets - Central Markets, Whole Foods Markets, HEB and Trader Joe's for a start. There are also plenty of what we in Australia would consider supermarkets - Kroger's and Randall's come to mind. Yesterday I stopped in at a Kroger's for some ingredients for dinner. This is a store that's about the size of a Woolies or a Coles, but it's the Houston equivalent of a small suburban IGA. Even here, the choices were astonishing. There must have been 25 different varieties of plain/all purpose flour on the shelf. And here's the important part. Each one of those packets of flour was clearly labelled with the ingredients and processing of that flour. You know immediately what grain the flour is made from, what other ingredients have been added to the flour and whether or not the flour has been bleached. You know from the labelling on the packet. That's not so in Australia. Some packages have labelling, others don't. Most have labelling that requires you to spend 40 minutes reading packages before making a choice and some require a higher degree in chemistry to decipher the baffling ingredients.

So, this is what I've found. Yes, there's a lot of talk in the US about the ingredients in food. Yes, there's a problem with increasing weight and morbidity as a result. Yes, we all need to be more attentive to what we're shovelling in our mouths. No, things are not better in Australia; food labelling is not clearer (actually it's more obfuscated and confusing) and choices are actually more limited. If carbon miles are something you consider when buying food (as I do), then you're more able to make informed decisions in Houston than in Perth. Not all supermarkets in Perth label where food is sourced from, or whether it's organic (as confusing as that term is - I mean really, the debate that rages over what constitutes organic is migraine-inducing).

Perhaps there is more to be concerned about in the US. Or perhaps there's more concern because there's more information already available from which to make a comparison. I'm not sure yet, but it does bring another perspective to the argument.

First Encounters

So here we are on our orientation trip to Houston, preparing for the big move over at the end of the year. We have a one week orientation to the city and surrounds and it's our opportunity to see if this is really something we could do.

We had always talked about living outside of Australia at some point in our lives, preferably while the children were still young and able to make the transition relatively easily. Over the last 10 years or so, we have considered and rejected many possibilities for overseas postings. LomL works in the petroleum industry and that pretty much limits the number of fun places we're ever likely to live in the world through his work.

A few job offers have come up for Mauritania. Ones we did seriously consider for a minute, but the thought of living 24/7 in a gated, barbed-wire, electric-fenced community and taking the kids to school with an armed driver, really did very little for my peace of mind.

There were job offers for Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Both involved living in gated compounds and, for me, living a very restricted life. Singapore came up once or twice, but we couldn't see that the life would be better for us than what we had.

Eventually, we got to the point where we began to resign ourselves to a life lived in the same place. This may not seem a big deal to most people, in fact, I can see how it would be a comforting thought to many. The familiarity and comfort of all you know, all you have ever known surrounding you. The problem for us, however, is that we're essentially restless and adventurous souls. LomL came to the realisation the other day that this is the longest we've ever lived in one place since we've been married; 9 years. Recently, I had a very dear friend tell me I'd done a lot of brave things in my life. It has never felt like that. We've always just faced the challenges and lived our lives without consideration for how hard things were - without ever really considering that things were hard. I think that because of that, we've managed to have fun and make wonderful friends in some of the most unlikely places.

Still, after 9 years in the same place, doing pretty much the same things (with a little overseas travel thrown in), one does tend to become rooted to the spot. I don't know whether familiarity breeds contempt, but in my case, it has certainly bred complacency. One does tend to give greater importance to petty worries and irritations than they deserve, because life is overwhelmingly carefree. What that parent said at the last school event suddenly gains far more importance and weighting than it should in my mind. I worry over what this person thinks, how that one was affected by my words or actions, I worry about whether I'm advocating enough or too much for the children at school. I worry about minor, silly things that deserve no time or space in my consciousness, because, frankly there are no big worries. We are surrounded by family, by friends, by support systems and by unnervingly familiar ways of working and living. I find myself growing roots out of my toes to the place we live, the places we shop, the places we visit. I appreciate less what's around me, and take for granted more all the advantages we have. I complain more. I become more scared of doing things and going places. And I become lazy about fighting those parts of my personality that I don't particularly like. There's no need. I have family that love me. I am surrounded by a wonderful network of friends that love me. Why change? Why even be pleasant or make an effort?

While my initial reaction to the prospect of moving permanently to another country was fright and anxiety, it really didn't take much thinking to know it was the right thing to do for us. The children are both young enough not to be adversely affected by the change and old enough to be excited by the prospects of a new adventure. LomL is going to a new, more exciting job that has effectively been created with him in mind. And I, I am going to a new place. A new house, a new community, a new way of living. I don't have to worry about learning a new language or be super cautious of cultural sensitivities. I do have to learn a new way of thinking about distances and temperatures and other measurements. All in all, there's some new stuff to learn, but quite a lot of what awaits is familiar. But the best bit of all? It's a huge opportunity to reawaken my adventurous spirit, dust off some cobwebs and push myself to be less introverted and more social. That excites me.