AE 1427 - Pete's 2c: What Aussies Do On School Holidays

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

G'day you mob, how's it going? Welcome to this episode of Pete's Two Cents. I hope you guys are well. It has been oh a busy few weeks. We had school holidays for a while, which was fun. And I thought we would talk about some of the things that we got up to on school holidays, you know, what we do to keep the kid the kids entertained. It's one of those things. Growing up, you always look forward to school holidays. In Australia, high schools and primary schools have like four terms, usually about ten weeks in each term. I think the school would start usually around February. And then you have ten weeks, you get a break, another ten weeks. Well you'd have a break for Easter. Then the next term, you have a break in winter, and that's the one we've just finished. Then you have another term. I think the break is around gosh, September, the end of September, maybe the start of October. And then another term and you finish at the start of December for Christmas, and then you get about six weeks off. So that tends to be the pattern for primary school and high school terms and holidays. Usually there's like three holidays of two weeks throughout the year between the four different terms of ten weeks each. And then over Christmas, there's six or so weeks of holidays over the summer. And you'll notice it's probably quite different from Europe and America in the Northern Hemisphere. I think they, from memory, they have like a spring break type thing where because the nicer seasons are in the middle of the year, they have their big holiday there, whereas over Christmas it's a little shorter, and I think they would have things for um Thanksgiving and you know, whatever other holidays you guys have. But yeah, that tends to be one of the things people find interesting and different when they come to Australia, the way that the school year starts in what the end of January, start of February, and ends in December, you know, within the calendar year. So anyway, yeah, so we had holidays, and growing up, I was always looking forward to them. I used to love it when I was a kid. You know, obviously everyone loves it. You've you're sort of a bit exhausted from school, you've been learning for ten weeks, you know, doing your maths, doing your English, learning languages, doing sport, whatever it is, socializing like crazy with other kids, and then you get a bit beat, you're a bit tired, and you're sort of like, okay, I'm ready for a bit of a break. Anyway, as a parent, it's a bit of a different thing. For us, now, at least having small kids, two kids at primary school in prep and grade one, the holidays are so busy. I swear to God, guys. Like, when Kel and I first got together and we didn't have kids, we would always be planning events and stuff where it wasn't school holidays, so that you could sort of avoid the mayhem, you could avoid all of the crowds and you know how busy it is, and if you want to go to a certain tourist attraction or the beach or whatever else. If you do it during school terms, especially during the week, when the kids are at school, usually you have these places to yourself. But then come school holidays now with kids, it's like you have to try and constantly come up with things to entertain them, otherwise they're inside just tearing the house apart, getting bored. And so it just eats up all of your spare time or your workday. So I was working the whole time during um school holidays, you know, trying to do my private lessons. At the moment, we're rebuilding the website on a slightly different platform to improve things, uh, working on the podcast, other things like that. So trying to juggle this at the same time as having two kids at home was pretty full on. But we managed, we manage. My wife has one week off usually each term. So because she works at a music school, uh the terms they have mirror the terms that schools have because the kids usually come and get lessons before or after school, I think, probably just after school. And so they don't do it on school holidays, and during the holidays, therefore, my wife and the other people at work there have time off. So she gets one week off, which is really good, and then the second week is usually full on because my wife's at work and I'm at home and the kids are here the whole time, and I have to juggle doing private lessons, you know, creating content and everything with just screaming and playing and yelling in the background. And don't get me wrong, I totally love having the kids around. It's just intense. It's um yeah, you guys all know, you guys who pare who are parents with kids, you will know what it's like. So, what are some of the things that we did over the whole days? Um I think for the first week my parents were still overseas, so usually we would spend a lot of time with my family. So my sister and her family who live about 15 minutes away, we'd catch up with them. I've got a niece and a nephew, uh, and my kids love hanging out with them, so yeah, we usually chill out with those guys when we can. We go to the beach if we can. We quite often take them to the playground or just go for a bike ride. That's a pretty common thing, an easy thing to kind of entertain the kids. You know, they'll we let them watch a bit of TV, to be honest, or quite a lot of TV, and play video games. They play Minecraft a lot and Crash Bandicoot Team Racing. I think it's those two games at the moment that they are particularly enamoured with that they really love. So usually we sort of rotate between those things, especially because I have to do stuff in my office by myself, and I can't really just have them in here or interrupting me. Quite often the TV is a good thing to kind of distract them and keep them still and chill and not fighting for you know half an hour, an hour or something. And then I just have to sort of break up the day and keep trying to give them activities. So the average holiday, what when it was just me, it was kind of like, okay, get up in the morning, sit them in front of the TV, or let them do some colouring or playing outside in the backyard or ins inside the house. I would go and do an hour or two of work, and then after that, we would try and sort of break it up and go for a bike ride or go to the beach or go to the playground or go for a kick-a-footie at the local oval. That's another thing they love doing. Um what else? Well, we've we've been taking them to there's a a place near the oval nearby where they've got like all these basketball and netball courts in a row, and you can ride your bikes on it really nicely. And the kids, probably about a month ago, uh, got some remote control race cars, like electric cars that they can drive around. And so we were taking those to this area with all these basketball courts, you know, bitumen concrete, really flat areas, and letting them ride or drive them around, and then they could ride their bikes and scooters and stuff between that. And then on the other side of the fence is a playground, so we we were rotating around through those three things, which was really cool. And it was interesting, I kept seeing the same people showing up at the same time on the same days each week to that location, and so I got to new I got to know one guy called Hugo, who was a French guy, and he had his kids there, and it was kind of cool. You know, he was speaking French with his kids, I could sort of understand bits and pieces, we would have a chat, I'd be talking in Portuguese to my kids, and then sort of English all over the place, and the kids played together with his kids, it was really cool. It was just enjoyable, yeah, doing that. So we did that quite a bit on the holidays, and then as usual, as you guys who've been listening for a while will know, I think we did exactly the same thing last year at the same time. We went to the farm. So my grandparents have a farm near Bendigo on a large property, um, probably I think it's about a hundred hectares, maybe give or take. And we spent three days there. So we drove up to Bendigo on a Friday night, because my wife was back at work at this time and got there probably what time would we have gotten there? Maybe seven o'clock at night. So it would have been dark. I think we did a Maccas run on the way up. So we went to McDonald's, got the kids some food, went to the toilet, you know. We did this, I think, in Bacchus Marsh. If you drive from Geelong to Bendigo, you typically go through Bacchus Marsh and then Gisbon, and then you pretty much go all the way to um to Bendigo. They're really nice country towns. I really like them a lot. And Bacchus Marsh has this area where there's this big roundabout in the middle of the town. You've got supermarkets and everything there on one side, and then on the other side you have this like Apco petrol station with McDonald's and I think Hungry Jacks or KFC or whatever there as well. So we typically get there, you know, that's sort of the halfway point. It's about an hour and a half into the journey. So we usually stop there and um get some food. And I forgot to mention mm, Joanna, my daughter, the poor thing, uh what have we done? We I'd bought them some colouring books before the trip so that they had something to do in the car. And when we left, she spent, I think, probably the first hour just looking down at the book in the car. And we're obviously driving around, and I don't think my daughter's ever been motion sick before, you know, like seasickness. You're moving around a lot, your body's moving around, but you're not looking at the horizon, and you get nauseous. Anyway, so she we were sort of talking to the kids, my wife's in the front seat, we're all chatting away, and then Joey just suddenly goes quiet. She she suddenly stops talking, and all the colour just drains from her face. Her lips were like green, her face was very pale, and my wife's like, this isn't good, this is not good. Joey's gonna chuck, she's gonna vomit, she's gonna chunder in the car, and I was like, No, she surely not. She's been fine all day. You know, I was thinking, what is it, gastro? No, she she hasn't complained about anything in terms of like, you know, stomach bugs or anything like that. She's been fine all day, and then out of nowhere, she just vomits everywhere. So we're in the middle of nowhere, and we had to pull over on the side of the road and change her clothes. And fortunately, she hadn't really been eating much, she just had some water, I think, to drink and stuff, and so it was pretty easy to clean up and it didn't smell didn't stink the car out. Um, but the poor thing, she wasn't feeling very good, she was feeling a little crook at that time. And my biggest fear was it was gonna be gastro. Uh, but when we got back in the car, immediately I realized I can't it doesn't smell bad. Joey seems to be fine. She bounced back really quickly and had colour in her face again and was like, Oh yeah, no, I'm all good. And I we kept just saying, just don't stop looking down, Joanna, look at the horizon, look up, you know, you're gonna get sick. And this is something my wife gets a lot, so obviously there's some genetic component that she's passed on to my daughter. Uh so anyway, yeah, we had that first crisis. And then initially, Joey was like, I'm not hungry, I don't want anything to eat. And we thought, oh, okay, well, we'll probably just do the full drive all the way to um Bendigo and not stop. But then within half an hour, she was like, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I want something to eat. And if you guys know, my my daughter is insanely picky when it comes to food. So we stopped off at Macca's. She'll she'll eat Macca's chips and she'll have one of the shakes. She won't touch anything else there. None of the burgers, none of the the chicken, the fish, none of the ice creams, but she'll have the chips and she'll have the chocolate shake and she'll play in the playground there. So we also have to make sure every time we go to a Macca's, it's one that has a large playground, otherwise the kids lose it. Talk about spoilt. We went to one on the way home from the farm and they lost their nana. I think it was the one in Gisbon, and it didn't have an indoor playground, or at least not a big one. And they were not happy. They were not happy. Anyway, so we did that. We drove up, we got there in the evening, it was dark. Um, as you guys may know, the property doesn't have electricity. It's a log cabin, it's got water, it's got gas, so there's a gas fridge, there's heated water because of the gas. We have candles, gas lamps, electric lamps as well, like uh I guess you would say rechargeable lamps with batteries that we can use, but the light tends to be pretty harsh. It's not warm, it's kind of very blue and bright. So typically I try and get everyone to turn them off at night and instead use candles. The light's a little nicer. And the best part is we have this big open fireplace that is just phenomenal. You know, I love it. I get to sleep in front of it, so I'm always so happy when we go to the farm and it's just nighttime, it's dark there. You know, you go outside, there's no light pollution from the city nearby or anything like that. You're in the middle of nowhere, and it's just bliss, you know. You could see the stars really well, the Milky Way is out, it was just beautiful, super quiet. Um, so yeah, you s we chill out inside, we hung out for a few hours, I think, chatted to Nana and Grandpa, so my parents, they came up, and then we just hit the sack, we went to bed, and then when we got up in the morning, usually it's a Saturday and that's the full day that we spend there. And what did we do? We go for a walk quite often around the farms, check out everything that's going on. I love lifting up rocks. There's all these like volcanic rocks everywhere that you can lift up to look underneath, and sometimes there's frogs, lizards, scorpions, centipedes, sometimes snakes, but but they that tends to be pretty rare. And just bugs, and the kids love doing it as well. We go to the different dams. There's three dams on the property that collect water and skimp rocks. We skip rocks or skim rocks on the dam, which is quite fun. The kids love doing that. It's it's really funny, isn't it? Like they the kids love the fire, they love getting a stick and burning the end of it in the fire and just watching what happens. And then when they're awake, it's daytime, we go for a walk, just like I used to do as a kid. They're like lifting up rocks to see what's under there. They're like chucking rocks in the water or skimming rocks in the pool, in the um the dams. And they love looking for bones, you know, because there's quite often animals that have died on the farm, whether it's foxes, rabbits, sometimes sheep, sometimes kangaroos. Quite often, as you're walking around, you'll just see these white, sun-bleached bones on the hills or in the grass, and I don't know what it is. You guys might think it's weird, I don't know. This is what this is what I grew up doing. When I was a kid, my parents took me to the same farm, my grandparents had sheep on the farm at the time, and that was what we used to do. We just walked around looking for bones, lifting up rocks, looking for animals and um seeing what was going on. And uh it's just relaxing. It's really funny. When whenever we go up, the kids typically don't ask for TV, they don't ask for video games, they just want to go out and explore and see what's going on. And this year we've had heaps of rain, and so everything was so green, so lush, and all the dams were like chocolate block full of water. In fact, they were overflowing with water. Uh it was interesting because you yeah, there's this cyclical kind of like La Nina El Nino cycle in Australia, and so it's never the same each year. Quite often, it's it's quite different depending on the rain patterns in these areas of Australia. So we did that, and then we took the kids, me and my wife, Kel and I, we took the kids into Bendigo to meet one of my students from the academy, Beruse. Um, so Beruse and his wife Megan, and he had two daughters, and forgive me, Beruse, I've forgotten their names, but we had uh a lunch with them at an Italian cafe, which was absolutely awesome. It was so cool to meet him. He'd originally been in Geelong working there, and I never got a chance to see him, and then his uh I think it was his his wife got a job near Bendigo, and he moved up there obviously with her and the kids, and it was just yeah, it was really awesome to catch up with him. So thanks again, Beruse, for lunch. It was amazing. So we did that and then I can't remember what else happened. I guess we just chilled for the rest of the weekend, went back home, hung out, and just enjoyed being at the farm. And then when we came back the next day, so we would have come back Sunday morning-ish, late morning, drove back, went to the Maccas that the kids didn't enjoy because there was no large playground, and then got home and uh I got back to work. I had a whole bunch of lessons to do, private lessons with students. So that was pretty much the school holidays with the kids, guys. But yeah, hopefully you've enjoyed this episode. I thought I would come on here and talk about it a bit to give you guys vocab, you know, conversational expressions and and words and slang and everything related to being on school holidays with kids, and also share a bit about my life and my family's life and and what we get up to down under on school holidays. But I would love to know from you. So you guys send me messages on Instagram or Facebook or send me an email and let me know what you guys do on school holidays usually, you know. I'd love to have a chat. So, anyway, thanks for joining me. And I guess shameless plug. I'm about to open up positions for private lessons with new students. So if you are looking to level up your English, develop a really strong study plan to improve quickly, to work on your business English, I pretty much tackle all this stuff with all of my students. Everyone's different, but I work with people who are professionals, you know, doctors, lawyers, engineers, all the way to people working in trades, people working in cafes who just want to speak more clearly and be understood and connect. I do everything. So if you guys are looking to speak clearly, communicate well with Aussies, sound more Australian, just understand Aussies better, then shoot me a message, shoot me an email, pete at aussienglish.com.au. I'll probably email everyone out as well. But just again, my email is Pete P-E-T-E at OzzyEnglish.com.au. You can send me a message on Instagram too, that's also easy. So thanks for joining me, guys. I hope you're well. I hope you had a really good holidays with your family, and I'll see you next time.