All quiet on the western front

Early this morning, we bid a very sad farewell to Adrian, Rachel and Max, who caught a plane back home to Melbourne, via Adelaide at 9:00am. Our home, upon return, was unnervingly silent and only contained traces of our little nephew...we discovered two toy cars under the couch and an assortment of other toys awaiting his return sometime in the future. Max managed to endear himself forever to his uncle, as he learned to say "dooj-truk" (Dodge Truck) while he was here and then said it as often as possible ever after! If Andrew is ever down in the dumps, I'll know what magical words will put the smile right back on his face!

Anyway, some final photos now of the fun times we all had together...

Max had a ride in Uncle Andrew's tractor at Wongan Hills. At first he looked a little uncertain but soon seemed to be enjoying himself.

Playing on the big red tractor in town!

And the little gray tractor in town too!

Sharing a quiet moment with mum on our block

And life goes on...

On Friday night, we managed to cram 12 friends into our house to share with them some of the photos from our recent travels. Most of them were Baha'is from our local area and as we are currently observing the fasting month in the Baha'i calendar, everyone brought with them loads of delicious food so that we could all break the fast together. We started with a few photos of the Lotus Temple in New Delhi and then some of the Baha'i Holy Places we visited in Istanbul and Edirne, before we worked our way through a very-edited chronological tour of our pilgrimage. It was great to share with our friends some of the stories and feelings that we had experienced not so long ago, not to mention the sharing of so much mouth-watering food!

Here is a last set of photos from Haifa, before we get started on posting some very belated photos and stories from India. Incidentally, our friend Astrid, with whom we shared some very memorable moments in India, is down to the last few days of her stay...she left Indore yesterday, where she has been volunteering at a Baha'i-inspired Institute that trains and educates hundreds of women from rural areas and empowers them with the skills and knowledge needed to support themselves and their families. She heads now for the Ajanta caves (containing Buddhist sculptures dating from around 200 BC to AD 650) in northern Maharashtra, then flys to New Delhi where she will also visit the Baha'i House of Worship, before departing for the UK where she will meet up with her sister and dad and have a well-earned rest as well as a nice, hot shower (something she has been deprived of for the last 3 months)!

The Shrine of the Bab, approached from one of the gardens to the east

A view of the magnificent Universal House of Justice building from the steps beneath

A beautiful skylight in the entrance hall of the International Teaching Centre

An ornamental peacock adorning the cactus gardens adjacent to the Shrine of the Bab

View of the Shrine from the terrace directly above

And another view...

Ornamental planter on the terraces

And the Terraces once more...

Since having arrived back at home almost two months ago, we haven't had a chance to travel anywhere outside the city-limits together and we are both craving a change of scenery. This change of scenery is likely to come in the form of some visitors from the east...We are keenly anticipating the arrival of Rachel, Adrian and our little nephew Max, from Melbourne around mid-April. It has been about a year since we last saw them all - far too long - so we are hoping to have plenty of time just to catch up, re-aquaint Max with his long-distance aunt & uncle and make a trip to Wongan Hills (where we have a 140 acres of land and hopefully a caravan soon as well)!

What else is happening? Well, Lorraine is busy at school with her all-boy class and a pair of identical twins that give her plenty of cause for amusement by the end of the day (especially when they show definite signs of confused identity!). Andrew has just been back to Wongan Hills for another clearing sale and has started cleaning out the caravan in anticipation of towing it up on his next trip to Wongan. There are an additional eight chicks new to the backyard, a multi-coloured lot with a bantam mother. Another five chicks arrived yesterday - crosses between a Rhode Island Red & Isa Brown. If they turn out to be particularly good egg-layers, Shanks is planning on naming them Wongan Browns and starting his own breed of chook! Beside that, life is going on as normal...we are looking forward to the end of daylight-saving next weekend and following the action from the cricket World Cup (where we can enjoy barracking for the minnows against the heavyweights of world cricket...go Ireland and Bangladesh!).

Well, until we have more news, that's it for now!

Life at home

The last 4 weeks have seen a number of changes start to creep into our lives...many stemming from our recent travels...

One of the first changes made was to our 'spare rooms' at the back of the house. The room on the left, the most recent occupant of which was Max, has now been transformed into Andrew's Music Studio. This is where he goes whenever he feels the need to make some noise (very frequently)...you can see his recent purchases from Istanbul in the photos below.

The rather cramped music room, with famous cymbals now incorporated into the medley!

Close-up of the largest cymbal, bashed into shape by no less that seven burly Turkish men!

This is also where any unsuspecting young 'uns end up when they come over for a visit...Max was the first one to get a drumming lesson from Uncle Shanks (aka Uncle Duck), but we have also had other friends' children experience the joy of noise-making on a grand scale since then. So much so, that I am almost tempted to place a sign at the front of the house offering toddler's percussion classes at $30 a pop as a nice little earner on the side!

Our visitors last weekend were friends Ivan & Nur, with their very gorgeous children, Nicholas (pictured) and newborn baby Nathan. Nicholas enjoyed his drumming lesson with Shanks as much as he enjoyed chasing the chooks around the backyard! Coincedentally, we discovered that Ivan & Nur were married the day after us in 2004!

With something of a penchant for technology, as soon as he saw me whip out the camera, Nicholas was up and racing towards me!

Opposite the music room, the other spare room has been transformed into something of a quiet zone, where our Turkish rug now takes pride of place. We now use this room whenever we need a peaceful place to say prayers or re-connect with the feelings of reflectiveness and tranquility that we experienced so often on pilgrimage.

The end result of a process of great deliberation and some haggling in a carpet shop in Istanbul!

What else is new? Well, as expected, there were new additions to the farmyard while we were away. Eight chicks hatched shortly after we left, with four more arriving about a week ago. If that wasn't bad enough, Andrew also decided that six ducks weren't nearly enough and bought 4 more Welsh Harlequins last week to add to the menagerie, which recently led a passer-by to politely enquire whether they were being fattened up for Easter lunch!

One of the new chicks...

...and the four new ducks. There'll be plenty to spare for anyone who doesn't mind wielding the axe!

Andrew has been busy indoors, cleaning out the study (at last!) and outdoors, today putting a towbar on his ute (ready to hit Wongan Hills early in March for a clearing sale). He made a day-trip to York last week for another clearing sale where he bought a roll-cage for the tractor. I have been busy every day at school, getting to know my new kids and sorting out my classroom after we moved classes at the end of last year.

The newly-installed towbar!

On one of the first few days after we arrived back home, we spotted our friendly native quenda again, but since then haven't seen it. We are hoping this has nothing to do with recent sightings of cats around the yard or the small falcon that was happily perched on the garden shed eyeing off the chooks last week!

Quenda, quenda, where art thou?

Finally, Andrew has also been busy tending his garden. This meal below - a delicious frittata - was made entirely from garden produce as well as freshly-laid eggs from our spoiled chooks! Our shopping habits have also changed, once we finally braved our local Coles again that is! After our time in India witnessing the daily lives of hardship lived by countless millions, we are pleased to be able to say that our resolution at the time to re-consider what we spend our money on and to cut out unnecessary items has been adhered to (however, for our purposes, as a direct product of the cacao tree, chocolate has been placed in the "fruit and vegetable" category)!

The delicious frittata made from the fruits (well, the vegetables) of Andrew's labours in his garden!

All in all, we feel much more settled, focused and happier and have been discussing the possibilities of another international adventure with friends to South America in a couple of years time (Chile, Bolivia and Peru are high on the list of attractions)! This year I suppose will be largely focused on preparing for the big move to Wongan Hills and looking forward to having some visitors from the east soon (the spare rooms will be re-transformed into pleasant accommodation just as quickly)!

Adios!

Twelve days to go...

The Intrepid Adventurers + 1

Well, seeing as there are no major developments on the travel front to announce, I thought I might just take a moment to fill you in a little bit on the main protagonists of this blog...Astrid, Christian, Shanks (Andrew) and me (Lorraine)!

Hmmmm...who can I start with...perhaps Christian...Christian Holyoak...sometimes known as Holy Smoke (he's the redhead on the left in the photo above). Christian and I met when we were both studying (well, okay, perhaps not really studying) at university in 1995. For some reason we both seemed to gravitate towards the front left hand side of the lecture theatre and at some stage we must have struck up a conversation and so the story goes. Christian, was and still is, a fairly lackadaisical, likeable chap, and our friendship has remained firm throughout the past 11 years. Christian is a psychologist (almost at the end of his Masters) and a keen traveller, having spent a lot of time in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala to name but a few countries. This will be his first trip to India and the first time he has travelled with any of us...I wonder if he has any idea what he is in for...

A Scene from the Pilbara

On to Astrid. I met Astrid in 1997 at another friend's house. We connected immediately and have continued to be very close despite having lived far, far away from each other for most of the time since we met. Both of us have lived and worked out of the metropolis for a few years, I in Tom Price, in Western Australia's spectacular Pilbara region, and Astrid in Alice Springs, where she worked both in the town itself as well as at a remote Aboriginal community called Ltyente Apurte (pronounced Jenja Porta). Astrid is another eager adventurer and some of the countries she has visited and worked in are Kenya, Guyana, Spain, Portugal and North India with me in 2001 (by the way, she used to eat all my share of the Indian sweets that we used to take back to our hotel each night)! After Christian, Shanks and I head off to our various destinations early in January 2007, Astrid will be staying on to do some volunteer work at the Bahai-inspired Barli Vocational Institute for Rural Women in Indore for a further 3 months, before heading to Turkey, then Israel for her Baha'i pilgrimage.

Well, that leaves us with Shanks...someone else may have to write about me! Shanks and I first met in Tom Price in 2001. We got married 3 years later and now live in Perth with our menagerie (plus quenda)! Shanks is a farmer...we have a beautiful 140 acres of land in a town called Wongan Hills in Western Australia's wheatbelt (north-east of Perth). We will be moving there at the end of next year so that he can finally get started growing things...it's what he does best!

Well, until tomorrow, good night!

Our Block in Wongan Hills