Happy New Year and a Look Back at 2012

Well, it turns out that I (KP) am as bad a consistent blogger as I am a consistent pen-pal, so at least some things never change.  :)  But perhaps I can commit--since it's New Year's Day and all--to at least quarterly updates of our lives here in OZ for 2013.  We'll see how that goes!!

In the meantime, here's what's been happening with the Leslie-Peterson family in 2012.

January.  Having just procured a new rental to move to (our first home was being sold), we spent most of our holiday break packing up for the transition, but found time over the new year period to visit Jindabyne--a town that in Aussie winters passes for their version of, say, Dillon, CO.  Higher altitude and beautiful lakes.  Mika wanted to climb Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, which stands at 2228m above sea level, just so she could say she did, so off we went.  Here we are, having scaled the summit.

Almost immediately post-house-move, Kirsten's Dad arrived from the US for his first-ever visit to Australia.   We took off for a Grand Road Trip to Melbourne to, among other things, see the Australian Open Tennis Tournament.  Dad was a great car passenger, eschewing technology such as GPSs for the old-fashioned map and providing interesting details of our trip along the way, while never once asking to take the wheel, which I know was a sacrifice for him.  :)  We were taken good care of by our friends, the Parker-Simmons family who lent us the use of their "beach shack" (their term, not mine) on the Mornington Peninsula for the duration of our stay.

Mika with styling sun protection and KP at the Open.

Mika managed to brow-beat a signature from Novak Djokovic, the eventual winner of the tournament on one of those over-sized autograph balls.  Ebay profits were discussed, but not followed-up on.  :)

After our day at the Open, Dan, KP, and Dad walked to a yonder cafe on the Yarra River.  A thoroughly enjoyable day.

Road Trip #2 was to Darling Harbor, Sydney for a long weekend.  We toured the Sydney Opera House and sailed the harbor on a tall-masted ship.

Mika and KP were allowed to climb into the rigging of the ship (for a fee, of course)...great views!

February.  The month brought Dad's departure back to the US and back to school for Mika.  Bummers, both of them.  It also brought, on the bright side, Mika's 13th birthday, which we celebrated with a Masterchef inspired cooking competition party.  

Here are the members of Mika's team enjoying a well-deserved break from their cooking duties on Mika's birthday present, a trampoline.

Note the tape across the kitchen island, separating the teams, who both performed well beyond the expectations of judges (that would be Dan and KP).  We had the foresight to including clean-up of the kitchen as part of the judging criteria and I kid you not when I say that the kitchen has never been so clean.  Got to love those Aussie girls!!

With March came the official arrival of fall--a phenomenon I just can't get used to.  I still reflexively think that March is spring and September is fall, darn it!  Work for KP was shifting into high pre-Olympic gear, while Dan was increasingly finding his footing with promotions and added responsibilities at his work.

April.  Easter brought a visit from the Parker-Simmons clan who were able to wring just about every ounce of fun there is to have in Canberra.  Susie, Jeff, KP and Dan made a point of hiking all of our local mountains/hills, we museumed, toured local nature preserves, and ate well.  Risk was also played.  :)  All freaking weekend!  

Later in the month, we took a shortish family vacation to the Sunshine Coast hamlet of Noosa, about 2 hours north of Brisbane.  After what turned out to have been one of the rainiest summers Canberra has had in recent memory (complete with significant local flooding), it was great to have some warm and sunny beach time.  Mika and KP had our first surfing lessons, which was great fun--more than I expected!  So much so that we rented boards for a second afternoon of extra training.  Speaking only for myself--Mika was much more successful at this--it took me so freakin' long to get up on the board that by the time I did, I could have waded through the surf faster than the board was travelling.  Thank god the pics are stills and not video...

May.  Fall was in full-force now.  Mika's semester school load included a class in cooking.  She'd always been interesting in cooking anything that was sweet, but has honed her skills in savory dishes as well.  Here she is showcasing a frittata which Dan and KP had to grade as part of her assignment.  Extremely delicious!

June brought the start of KP's summer (as in European summer, that is) travels with sports.  She spent two weeks with the Australian Olympic Rowing team in Lucerne, Switzerland.  Befriended by the lone female coach for the team (who happens to be Canadian and thus we bonded over mutual issues of family transitions to a different country), KP had a wonderful time both personally and professionally, getting to know the team and enjoying touring the area on off-time.

On the heels of one of KP's trips, she was able to swing a day in Shanghai before heading back to Canberra to visit with Toni Barton, a friend of ours from Colorado Springs.  Toni's family had spent the previous year living in Shanghai, so it was a great way to see the city through the eyes of a pseudo native.  We walked a lot and booked in for some wonderful and cheap massages!

July-August.  Big trip for Mika and Dan to Borneo for a friendly soccer tournament featuring Mika's soccer team.  See the earlier blog entry written by Mika for more details of this exciting trip.  Dan enjoyed the trip as well, since the girls all entertained themselves almost constantly, he had lots of good adult time with other parents along for the trip.

July also heralded KP's pre-Olympic and Olympic trip to Italy and London with the Australian Women's Water Polo Team and Rowing Team.  The Australian Institute of Sport has built their own European Training Center in the northern Italian town of Varese.  Both teams conveniently (for KP) staged their pre-Olympic training camps there, so she was able to spend time with both teams at the same time.  It was busy, but in a beautiful setting complete with nightly runs to yonder gelato shop, not much to complain about!  :)  The picture below is from a cable car going up the side of the mountain overlooking the town of Porto Ceresio.

After two weeks in Italy, we headed to London.  The Australian Olympic Committee issued standard gear for all to wear upon their arrival to London, and I must say that it was pretty awe inspiring to arrive as part of the Australian Rowing Team, who number over 50 in total.

KP spent the first week of the Olympics with the Rowing Team, housed in a satellite village about 30 miles from London, since their venue was the Eton rowing course.  Since their competition commenced the day after Opening Ceremonies, the rowing team elected not to travel to London for the Big Show, but staged our own mini-Opening Ceremony in our own digs.  Here is KP dressed to the nines in the team's official opening ceremony gear.  With her was the other American on the team, the coach of the men's eight.

Once we finished marching around, the team's alternates staged what has become a tradition, creating the team's own opening ceremonies entertainment segment.  In this picture, they are enacting what I can only describe as an above water synchronized swimming routine.  And let me just say that other countries were really jealous of their ingenuity!!

KP's first Olympics with a non-US team was a bit surreal.  Once in the main Olympic Village, she actually knew more people on the US team than on the Australian team!  Here, I run into the US Women's Wrestling coach and one of the US athletes, Clarissa Chun, who would go on to win bronze.

The second week of the OIympics was with the women's water polo team, who went on to win bronze after a heart-stopping series of games that added years to my life.  Here is the team in the locker room, celebrating their victory before ascending the medal podium.  Australians know how to celebrate a win...they had enough booze to also cheerfully share some with the US team who had won the gold medal!

And finally, for those Wallace and Gromit fans out there...one of the cheese selections in the Village cafeteria (look sharp at label on the right).

September.  After a short post-Olympic respite, we enjoyed the early spring with the annual Floriade festival in Canberra (if you recall from previous blogs, the annual fest-o-flowers held yearly here) and local wildlife viewing.  In the other notable sports news of the year, Mika enjoyed a successful second season with her Majura Football Club team, and was elected "Players' Player" by her teammates at the conclusion of the season.

October brought the annual migration of KP and Mika back to the US.  This time, Mika detoured on her own to Colorado to catch up with the Putz family AND act as a ringer foreign player on Grace Putz's soccer team for a tournament in Vail, CO.  Here is a picture of Grace and Mika...

Meanwhile, KP was attending a professional conference in Atlanta, GA, then both KP and Mika flew to NJ to join up with the rest of the Peterson-Ward clan for a week of family vacation.  We took the train into NYC for a few days with Aunt Laura Larson and Uncle Jack Cage, visiting Times Square (several times for both night and day viewing), the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial,  and buying literally pounds of US-unique candy to keep Mika in sugared-up heaven for, well, a few weeks at least.

Once back in NJ, we had some great family visiting time with Mika's grandfather, cousins Tucker and Cooper as well as her Aunt Zoe and Uncle Todd.  We got in our autumn season "fix" with a visit to the local corn maze which KP had thought would be a bit of hokey country fun, but ended up taking almost an hour of bewildering twists and turns to extricate ourselves from!!

November brought real signs of spring to Canberra, and some beautiful flowers to our yard.  We also heralded the long-awaited arrival of chickens to our backyard coop!  It is all the rage in Australia to have your own "chooks" as they are called here, along with the nutritional value of locally sourced eggs. 

Below, Mika "welcomes" the chickens into the newly refurbished chook house in our backyard.  

Within our first few weeks of chook ownership, I was happy to find our first actual egg!  All were shocked and stunned.  :)

December.  The end of the year brought on high summer, KP's long awaited hires to complete her AIS staff team, KP's father's second trip Down Under, and the start of our Family Holiday Vacation (with Zoe, Todd and their family) to Tasmania and Torquay/Great Ocean Road area of south Australia.

Our trip started with a reprise of Dad's first road trip with us, from Canberra to Melbourne to catch the car ferry to Devonport, Tasmania.  Not before, however, KP left her purse in a rest stop in Gundagai (home of the aforementioned Dog on a Tuckerbox statue, but alas, I digress).  Grandpa and Dan were efficiently installed in the bucolic town of Beechworth (our intended overnight stay) while KP and Mika sped back the 120K to try to reclaim KP's purse, phone, and wallet.  The holiday spirit did not disappoint, and the purse was recovered.  Whew!!  Below, we sit at the (I kid you not) Best Bakery in Australia, the Beechworth Bakery.

After a night in Beechworth, we continued our trek to the ferry, Spirit of Tasmamia, for our overnight voyage to Tassie.

From Devonport, we traversed the length of the state just in time to meet up with the Ward family at the Hobart airport who had jetted in from their arrival point of Melbourne.  We then set up housekeeping at our Clifton Beach holiday digs, about 20 minutes outside Hobart.  The house had, on one side, a lagoon, and on the other, the ocean--a beautiful location.  We did our fair share of touring: Port Arthur (preserved compound that illustrates the convict past of the area), beautiful ocean vistas, surf lessons, sea-kayaking around Coles Bay, browsing the famous Salamanca Markets in Hobart, as well as the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) which had something for everyone...or not, depending on your taste for in-your-face modern art.  Wonderful family meals rounded out the end of each day as well as lots of board games and hikes through the local bushland.  We procured a Christmas tree and decorated it with seashells, and had a low-key celebration on the day, capped with a family-produced dinner (kids outdid themselves with both fudge and mud pie for dessert!).

Kids on Clifton Beach

Kids in leg irons at Port Arthur

Zoe doing the "pose" at the head of the Remarkable Falls

Kids being appropriately "arty" outside the MONA museum

Dan with one of our guides, Matt, during our sea kayaking adventure

The tree.  And Zoe.

Boxing Day had us transitioning back to the Australian mainland, some by sea, some by air.  We reconvened in the town of Torquay, the beginning of the 200+km Great Ocean Road.  On the day we "did the road" or about 120K which was as much of the curves as we could collectively stomach, we found a stretch full of koalas in the trees--a rarer sight than you might think in Australia.  It was our family's first in-the-wild sighting of these cool creatures.  In one memorable interlude, we were all treated to the sight of one koala descending from the tree in front of us and bounding into the forest.  Amazing.

And what a fitting way to end this missive!  Dan thinks it's pretty narcissistic to have included so much, but KP's feeling is that there was a lot of ground to make up on.  You be the judge.  Happy New Year and we look forward to catching up with you all in the new year!

Cheers, Dan, Kirsten, and Mika

Borneo!

A few days ago me and my dad got back from a soccer tour in Borneo. It was an amazing experience. We left on July 6, the last day of school for me, which I got to miss. From Dickson College we picked up a bus, and rode with the rest of the team to Sydney, which took about 2 and a half hours I think. For most of that bus ride my fellow team mates had music blasting out of their ipods, as we lounged across the 6 or 7 rows of seats in the back of the bus. I have no idea what the parents were doing. Probably sitting, possibly talking politely, in their little seats up the front of the bus. When we got to the Sydney airport, we got through security and customs and all of the other airport lines fairly quickly. Then we waited in a lounge thing for an hour or so, where I discovered that I had accidently left my ipad on in my backpack, and frantically plugged it in, hoping I could at least get it above 11% power for the next 8 hour flight. By the time we left, it was at 19%. woo hoo. Just for the record, I did not even take the ipad out of my bag for the next 8 hours (I think it might have actually been 10 hours…). That plane was AWESOME!!!! It was one of those planes with the little televisions in front of everyone’s seat, and it also had a little remote in the armrest for everyone. With this remote you could choose to watch movies, television shows, listen to music, and play games! I watched the Hunger Games, The Lorax, The Big Bang Theory (Awesome show), The Simpsons, and played games. It was very entertaining. It was made better by the fact that I was surrounded by 40 people I knew, most of which were my friends. Plane flights can be sooo entertaining if you’ve got 14 other friends your age to talk to. Once we got to Kuala Lumpur, we had another long wait, in a much less modern airport. We spent most of the time playing cards in the little gate on the side of a long hallway. The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu was 2 hours, and most of us slept for the whole time. I did. We did get very excited when we started descending, because it meant we were in Borneo, and that this long awaited holiday had finally begun. When we touched down, everything was a blur from getting out of the airport with our luggage, and going to the hotel. I for one, was very excited when we got our room keys, and were able to go up to see our rooms. We stayed in the Pacific Sutera Hotel, a part of the larger Sutera Harbour Resort (5 star). Unfortunately, most of our rooms were very far apart. We were room 752, and some of the other girls had rooms on floor 3. It was still very fun. Our room consisted of 2 single beds, and a small portable bed. There was a large bathroom, a small fridge, and a desk with a TV. I stayed with two of the other girls, Eilis and Grace. The next day, there was nothing that we had to do, so we spent almost the entire day at the pool. There were at least three pools that we discovered, although most of us only went in two of them. The first was a shallow pool, just next to our hotel. It was next to a pool bar, which had stools in the water where you could order drinks, which was very cool.

We spent ages in that pool, and no one seemed to care what we did, so we played around a lot in ways that would probably be against the rules in Australia. The other pool we went to had slides, although they were quite slow, and there were lots of rules preventing anything very fun from happening. There was also a little waterfall in the corner that you could swim under.





 The next day we had futsal, and it was very hot. We played in three different teams, just against each other, and it was pretty fun. Still, it was really hot.

After we finished we went into the changerooms, and the showers were disgusting. we all went in though, just to wash off. After that, we went to lunch at a restaurant called Little Italy, which everyone decided was their favourite restaurant.






We went to a wildlife reserve after lunch, which turned out to be more like a zoo. And the orangtan exhibit was closed, so we didn’t get to see any orangutans in Borneo. We did get to see lot’s of other interesting animals though, like the Proboscis Monkey.

When we finished with that, we went to the beach for a dinner party thing. We spent a few hours on the beach, which was very pretty, before we had dinner.

We stayed until 7:30 or so, before heading back to the hotel. When we got back, almost everyone changed into swimmers and jumped in the pool. We did that almost every night we could.

The next three days were basically the same, with leisure (pool) time in the morning, and a soccer game in the afternoon. We played two different Malaysian teams the first two days. It was interesting playing with them, and we did beat them. The first day it was really hot, and the girls change rooms at that place didn’t even have showers, so we had to use the boys change rooms. Apparently the parents had to stop quite a few men walking in while we were in there. 

The next day, we played in this huge stadium, which was really cool, and the change rooms were huge, and really nice. We played a team there, but we had to stop before the game was supposed to end because it had started to lightning. It was nice playing in the rain though. We all gathered in the tunnel, and ended up spending at least half an hour talking to the other team. It turns out they were actually 15-16s, not 13s. That was pretty cool, because they were shorter than us. They spoke quite good english, and they kept asking us what we ate. 


The third soccer day, we played the same team we played first, but we mixed up the teams. It was cool playing with Malaysian girls, although they had so many players, we had to spend a long time on the bench because there were so many subs. 

The next day was one of the best, when we went to an island resort and did a bunch of activities. Well, we were supposed to do a bunch, but most of us ended up only doing banana boating. I went with the first group, and it was really fun. The banana boat was a huge inflatable thing that got pulled around behind a speed boat. We asked to capsize, so he took us around so many turns where we could barely hold on, before the banana boat finally tipped. It was really fun! 

When we got back to the island we learned that it had got too windy for anyone else to go parasailing, which was another of the activities we were all very excited to do, and only one of us got to do it. Apparently there was another call to go banana boating, which I missed, and they went out again later that day. I really wish I could have gone, because most of them got to go another 3 or 4 times, and their driver was crazy, so he let them do all sorts of fun stuff on it. 

The next day we had to get up very early to go into the mountains. First we went to a war memorial, and then to a hike. The hike was really cool, because part of it was a canopy walk. The canopy walk was a plank of wood, supported by nets, way up high in the trees. You couldn’t even see the ground!

It was so fun. It was pretty short though. We were supposed to go to the hot springs after that, but they smelled gross, and we were all hot anyway, so we all decided not to.  We did go in the pool when we got back to the hotel though. 

My favourite day, was the next day when we went white water rafting. Unlike most of my team mates I had been before, but this trip was definitely my favourite. It was only grade two or something, so not very hard rapids, but the drivers were awesome. I was in one of the two ‘Extreme boats’, meaning we wanted to capsize in the river. It was soooo fun. We hit so many rocks.  We would be speeding down, and then realize that we were heading straight for the rock wall on the side of the stream, then BAM, we would hit it and all fall off of our seats into the middle of the boat. I’m sure the instructor did it on purpose, and it was really fun. (You could never do that anywhere else).  Once again though, I was on the wrong boat. The other extreme boat got a guy named Buster, and they did so much stuff. They hit all the rocks too, but their guy was actually successful at capsizing them… 3 times. Our instructor was only able to capsize us by getting us all to sit on the same side, and pulling the boat over. It was still really fun. And we saw a water buffalo on the bank at one point. When the water was calm, we all would jump out into the water and swim around. At the end, there was like 5 minutes of calm water, and we made the most of it. Our instructor took our oars, and we had a wrestling competition to throw each other off the boat. It was really fun. The other extreme boat capsized one last time, and they sat on the upside down boat until the end. It was reallly fun!!!!!!!!!!!

My dad’s boat was one of the boring ones, and they didn’t run into anything.That night, we went to a soccer game. It was Sabah FC vs another Malaysian team. They played in one of the stadiums we played at earlier in the week, and it was really cool seeing pro’s playing on the same field as us. Me and some of the other girls bought these horns for about $1.50, and they were really cool. I still have mine. The game was really good, and Sabah had their first win for ages, 3-0. 

The last day, we finally got to go parasailing, and it was AMAZING!!!! I went up with Rhian, another one of the girls. There were two other pairs on our boat and we went last. It costed $30. One thing I found funny, and kind of scary, is that when we went up to go, all they told us was to bend our legs when they started letting out the rope, and we took off. Zero safety instructions. It was cool, but scary. It felt like we were just sitting on the strap, and I’m not sure what would’ve happened if I leaned forward of backward. I didn’t want to test it. It was amazing. We got so high, and then we would drop down and skim the water. SOOOOOO FUN!!!! I want to do it again… 

After that adventure, we took the bus into the city, and went shopping. Most of the girls went to the mall, but I went to the markets. It was cool. I bought quite a few things, since my dad took out way too much money from the ATM. After that, we went for lunch at Little Italy again, went back to the hotel to get our things, and left. :(   It was very sad. I was awake for the first flight, but on the second one, the really cool one with all the movies, I felt sick, and slept most of the flight. When we got to Sydney, we had to wait ages in the foreign passport line. When we finally got through we saw a few of the other people. There were only 4 girls catching the bus back to Canberra, as all the others were either flying home, or had gone somewhere else from Borneo for a longer holiday. Us girls didn’t even get to sit together on the 2 hour bus ride, because we were among the last people to get on, so we had to find any spare seats we could. I was very sad. And cold. It was very warm in Borneo for the entire time. I’m still cold. 

It was the best trip ever!!!

For pictures, you can check out my facebook page. I got facebook :)