December 26, 2004

WOW! I had no idea...

I come from what you might term an international family. My father was born and raised in British India (of British descent), attending boarding school in the Himalayas. My mother was born and raised in a small town in Durham County (Northern England) called Chester-le-Street and later moved with her family to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe as it is now known) in southern Africa where her father took a job as a school teacher [CORRECTION: via my Mom: My father was a school teacher before going to Rhodesia. After arriving there he worked for 11 years as a buyer for the Rhodesian branch of Anglo-American, a large company owning mines for coal and other minerals in the southern half of Africa.] After moving to London and attending trade-school (focus on photography) my father took a job with the Rhodesian government as a photographer, something he had both a great love and great gift for. It's probably not to hard to figure out what happened from there.

For various reasons that I won't go into now after giving birth to twin daughters (my first two sisters) and later to my third sister my parents decided they didn't feel comfortable anymore raising a family in this region of Africa (this was the early to mid 60's to those of you familiar with what was taking place during this stage of history in the southern regions of Africa) and as such applied for two sets of visa's; one for the U.S.A. and the other for Australia. To make a long story short the U.S.A. visa's came through first and before too long my family found themselves in California (where my brother, next older sister, myself, and my younger sister were born.) A few years prior my mothers family had applied for visa's and had sinced moved to Perth, Australia where they continued to raise their 5 remaining non-married children who ranged in age from 10 to 14 (a feat in and of itself!).

The result of growing up in the U.S.A. when the rest of your cousins (18 in all) live in Australia is that you find yourself slowly getting to know them as either they come to visit us here in the U.S.A. or we (meaning myself and my brother and sisters) go to visit them in Australia. Believe it or not as much as I have traveled the world I have never had the chance to spend any time with my cousins in Australia so its been left to their visits to the U.S.A. that have prompted spending any significan amounts of time getting to know them in person.

While I have gone road-trippin' around the western U.S.A. with my cousin Dan, snowboarding at Snowbird (one of the many world class ski resorts here in Utah) with my cousin Carl, and have hung-out with my cousin Russell before he took of to work as a councilor at a summer youth retreat here in the U.S.A. that would be about the extent of the time I have had to get to know any of my cousins at any great depth. This year my cousin Megan and her husband Brett came to spend Christmas with the "US Cousins", most of which have migrated to the state of Utah over the years (I tend to live in a hotel near "wherever my next contract takes me" but have a base here in SLC and just so happened to be here for the holidays.) Adding to my belief that "Aussie's" simply understand life in a different and inherently better way than we do here in the states, as always, it was a joy getting to know Megan and Brett and I am ever-so-grateful they chose to come and spend their Christmas holiday with us.

A tradition (as it has become) for each visit to the US by one of the cousins is to bring with them a little piece of Australia to share with us here in the states. With as many of us as there are (7 cousins, each of us with children amassing to 24 -- so far) you can imagine both the time and cost incurred by such a tradition. Still, with each of their arrivals to Salt Lake International airport is found yet another suit-case full of Aussie treats for distribution to the hords of Storey descendants (my mother's maiden name) that abound in this region of the U.S.A. This time around, of course, was no different.

I can't say for sure what other cool things were given to my siblings as Christmas gifts from down under but if they are anything like what was given to me I am sure they too are in awe by the wonder and amazement that is the continent "Down Under". I have always known Australia to be a place of wonder and intrigue, but to be honest, I had no idea:

To be fair to the makers of this calendar and to try and make up for any copyright infringements I may have incurred by scanning and posting this picture, here is the company's web address who made this calendar: http://www.rankin.com.au.

I will try and locate a place where you can purchase this calendar online as I don't see anywhere to place an order on this site. [UPDATE: Just had to look a bit harder... here is where you can purchase this calender from the publishers site] But let me just say that the rest of this calendar is just as incredible! What an AMAZINGLY beautiful country that I plan to visit now (as if I didn't have any reason to before ;)) ASAP!!!

[MORE TO ADD SOON]