from our own correspondent

[teafortwo]

Old thread...
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/2423/576865?ts=1222265998268&msgid=12499051

New thread...

to be created below!

Enjoy!

ninedragons

Bosnia

Just a quick post to say hi on the new thread. Unfortunately unable to make time for MN and FOOC at the mo (I know, it's shocking!!!). At the risk of sounding ever so twee, it is harvest time and I am too busy trying to get everything in. It has of course also decided to pee it down with rain daily after the driest summer in yonks, so it is a slippery old job out there in the mud!!

I went to my first ever Serb (Orthodox) party last Sunday and omg, what a party! And of course all the way through I was thinking "Oh, I can't wait to tell the girls on the fooc thread about this". And I WILL. Very soon.

Hope everyone is well. Cali, your wildlife report was a hoot!!

OREGON

We're getting our first taste of fall here in the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday the kids went to an apple orchard as a field trip for pre-school, and it was all nice and crisp in the morning. However, it is getting warmer and warmer here during the day, as summer is not letting go. I have several bags of lovely apples, and it is supposed to be in the 90's, which is not inspiring me to bake with them. Bring on fall, I say. It is my very favorite season.

It was our 10th anniversary yesterday. I'm not sure if I can't believe it has been that long, or if it seems like it has been much longer. Neither of those are meant in a bad way, I guess anniversaries of anything that end in zero tend to make me more introspective. Anyway, DH is great, and I can't believe how much my life has changed for the better since he's been in it.

I love this thread so much.

Cali my ILs live in California, but down south, nearer LA. Ypur area sounds amazing.

Brilliant thread. I wish there was a way to post photos.

Sydney

Bill Bailey is fantastic - I saw him the week before last. If you liked him, check out Black Books (TV series).

We are overrun with magpies at the moment, we will often have 6 circling around the patio. DH tells me they will pounce on me, but I like them and have made them a bird bath. We also have a friendly resident possum and lots of lizards on our terrace. It's a thing I love about living over here, the abundance of wildlife that is exciting and new to me, even if it's like squirrels and blackbirds to Aussies.

Plus I have lemons and orange blossom coming out. Ever since a trip to Greece aged 7 I have longed for a back yard scented with lemon, orange and lime trees. And now I have it.

But on a separate note, DH and I are currently weighing up between staying in Sydney, or moving and settling down in Adelaide. Thoughts?

Your DH is right about the magpies, I'm afraid. They are vicious bastards and will dive-bomb you if they have nests with chicks anywhere in the area. I had friends who lived in leafy suburbia, as it's always called, who had to wear ice-cream buckets on their heads to get from home to the bus stop to go to school each day. You can buy native seed mix to encourage the rainbow lorikeets to come; they're much nicer. Once they know there's food put out regularly, they are very loyal and will visit you daily.

Melbourne

It is a year ago this week that I thought I had an infestation of fleas from our cat and flea bombed the house to try and get rid of them. This flea bomb was supposed to kill every insect in the house and while I was happily hoovering up the fly and beetle corpses I came across my first hunstman spider. He was not dead. He was dead stoned from the effects of the insecticide and great laughs were had on mumsnet over my story when it later turned out that rather than fleas I had developed an allergy to something that was causing the itching
Anyway, last night, almost a year to the day since our first visitation, we had our 4th, and largest to date, huntsman in the house. DH found him on the bathroom wall and actually managed to catch him in a glass for me to express wonder at (photos on my profile if you want to see the size of the fucker fine specimen)
My reaction has been a surprise, even to me. I am an arachnaphobe and have managed, to some degree, to overcome many of my issues with our 8 legged friends in order to live in this country. I have even managed to kill a large spider when DH was overseas (without calling the fire brigade, which admittedly was an attractive option at the time)
This one was too much though. After screaming wildly, shouting "Oh My Fucking God" at the top of my voice, grabbing the camera and taking lots of pictures (most of them blurred as I couldn't hold the camera still and scream at the same time), I broke out into a sweat, fell into uncontrollable sobs and threw up . Then begged DH to take me back to New Zealand where the most threatening insect is the rather cute and cuddly weta
Sigh.
I need some professional help i think.

pmsl at ghosty. sorry but that is so funny. However from one who hates snakes and breaks into a cold sweat around them - you have my sympathy.

Kapiti, New Zealand

This is your, trying not to appear excited about it but can't help it, correspondent reporting that Wellington Pheonix rose from the ashes yesterday from the bottom of the league, winning 2-1 against top of the league Sydney....yeeeeehhhaaaa, and I don't even like football!!

Ninedragons, I have also heard about people here with ice cream tubs as hats, but assumed it was people taking the micky out of easily fooled brits.

The magpies are so far ok to me.

I will get some seed mix though as I love lorikeets and we do have them around the area, but not as yet on the terrace.

FOOC Auckland

Birdwatching in Auckland too. For the 6 years we have lived in our house every year a couple of swifts return and build a nest in the woodshed which is attached to the outside car port. Every year the boys and I watch as they build their nest precariously onto the side of the wooden rafters. Eventually little beaks and eyes appear over the side of the nest, last year we had 4. We watch as they learn to fly and eventually leave. ds1, at times nicknamed dr doolittle, as he has been known on several occasions to have rescued baby birds in old boxes, gathered bedding and worms to hand feed the babies absolutely loves them.

The other side of the story is the fact that they dive bomb us everytime we get in and out of the car swooping so close to my head they have on occasions taken a few hairs with them. They terrorise ds2 who at 4 must seem fair game compared to the rest of us. The also sit on the arial on the top of my car and poop right in the middle and being a short arse fairly average sized gal I can't reach it to clean it.

I far prefer the paraqeets and tuis which can be admired from a safe distance.

at Ghosty.

Nairobi

Yesterday we took a day trip out to a mountain called Ol Donyo Sabuk, meaning Buffalo Hill. To get to it you must pass through Thika town, of the famous Flame Trees of Thika TV series. Sadly there are very few flame trees but a great deal of dust. There is also a dilapidated former colonial hotel where you can sit and admire the Chania Falls. Ahem. Trickle more like. The mountain is lovely and fully expecting to have to hike 10km from bottom to top in wild buffalo terrain I we were pleasantly surprised to find there was a road right to the top. Where the Lonely Planet promised us a 360 degree amazing view. Instead at the top there were 6 enormous masts . Still we found a lovely picnic stop and on the way back stopped at the grave of a Sir Macmillan, who was an American farmer in the area and did a great deal for the community in the 20's and 30's. When he died he requested he be buried at the top of the mountain. His hearse was pulled up on skis, by a tractor. His mourners followed by car, but the cars could not make it all the way to the top so they stopped halfway and buried him there! His dog, wife and her maid were also buried there. We were musing how wonderful it would be if you could be buried in your favourite spot....

Ha, you might all think you can get away from me but I've tracked you down on this new thread!

Nigeria

I could post a rant about the crappy internet/phone service we have but I shall refrain from that and tell you about the latest antics at dd's school instead.

I had an interesting series of text messages from dd last Friday which contained bizarre information about sand, cars, bricks and the nearby shopping mall. It transpired that overnight on Thu/Fri a wide drainage trench had been dug across the road in front of dd's school. Neither cars nor humans could get into the grounds as all the sandy soil and the brick blocks used as road surface had been carefully piled up into 8ft high heaps by the gates. In a city whose highest point is a grand 12ft above sea-level you can imagine the excitement this engendered.

Children being children, they all suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to attend school and not bunk off for the day. This task required manoevres not unlike those undertaken by the Armed Forces in Afghanistan, with children scaling the heights in anyway they could, with the ever-present threat of sand slides or brick avalanches or, even worse, losing one's footing and being unceremoniously dumped into the foot of dank, green sludge that passes for water in Lagos.

As school staff live on the campus, the first intimation they received that all was not well was a series of dishevelled, dirty and bedraggled children lurching into school - with big grins on their faces! Pleas by staff to have the road made passable again fell on deaf ears. The trench is, apparently, all part of ongoing drainage works and is therefore a burden to be borne for the greater good of mankind. However, a small concession was granted so that at the end of the day a narrow path was formed in order that the children could get out without a mountaineering session and proceed to the shopping mall, where their cars could collect them and take them home for a good hose down.

Nigeria is currently closed for three days, due to the end of Ramadan and Independence Day, so last week's events have not been repeated. However, school having been assured the work with be finished soon, I am in full expectation of a repeat performance on Thursday.

Small town, somewhere west of Paris
I feel I'm so behind on this thread, though have enjoyed catching up.
Some confusion reading Califrau's thread about the family with the 4 bio kids and the two adopted ones, because in France bio means organic, then I realised she meant biological. Think I've been speaking too much French recently! DH is getting home from work so late that we just sit in companiable silence most evenings and I currently only speak English to the kids, and neither of them talk very much (one's a baby, the other has a language disorder). I think I need to get out more...
Also PMSL about the spiders!
Anyway, back to the more interesting stuff. The weekend before last was the "Flower Festival" in our neighboring town. When first we went along, there didn't appear to be many flowers, just lots of candy stalls and silly arcade games, but then there was a procession with floats, and all the floats had been decorated with flowers and they must have taken AGES to do - there was a mermaid with a tail made out of laurel leaves and body of chrysanthemums, a globe made entirely out of daisies in different colours. Very pretty, except that I think DS was more excited by the tractors pulling the floats. DS has recently started "halte garderie" which is a French nursery for mums who don't work and they asked if he had a "doudou" or teddy that he sleeps with. They gave me rather odd looks when I explained that he sleeps with a metal toy tractor.
This weekend was the "vide grenier" in my town. It's a bit like car boot sale (vide grenier means emptying the store cupboard/attic) except that each "quartier" of the town is only allowed to hold one per year so as not to put the local antique sellers out of business, so you usually get a much more festive atmosphere than you would at a car boot. All the local bakeries will put out stalls doing coffee, cakes, sandwiches and possibly crêpes, there might be street entertainers, and people will be selling EVERYTHING from old toys to complete sets of dining tables and chairs and antique wardrobes. Mainly it's just full of people and colour and both of my kids always love it.
Sunday afternoon DD and I went raspberry picking. Theoretically we were supposed to bring some home but most of what we picked went in our mouths. It was unusually warm and it was lovely to be out in the Autumn sunshine. The French are very big on picking their own food - I live with a small wood behind my house and recently have been walking there after school, watching the kids with their baskets collecting mushrooms and sweet chestnuts to take home for their "gouter".

FOOC Buenos Aires

My friend called me this morning to say did I know that there were protestors on the obelisco and they had shut down the main road into town? Well this is exciting news indeed so babyLWFH and I decide to hot foot it into the centre to have a look. We pause only to finish our nap (babyLWFH), feed the baby (me), get changed (babyLWFH), have a shower (me), get ready to leave the house (both of us), decide not to tell MrLWFH that this is what we were doing, buy some biscuits (me, as demonstrations can get a bit boring), catch the subway and fall asleep again (babyLWFH - although this didn't delay our adventure as it was already in progress).

We were very excited to arrive at the obelisco (although babyLWFH was still asleep I can tell that he was excited) but disappointed to find no sign of any demonstrators at all. There was a man tending the blue and white flowers (colour of the Argentine flag) in the flower beds at the base of the obelisco, but I doubt that this was strongly politically motivated, although I guess that it might be.

I am at a loss, either the demonstrators got a bit chilly and decided to come down for a nice cup of tea (or a spot of gardening), or the authorities here are so efficient that they can clear up a demonstration in the truly insignificant amount of time that it took us to leave the house.

Oregon

We've been back here for slightly over 2 years, and I've found it difficult to find people I actually want to be friends with out of the oh-so-small pool of SAHM's here. (No problem with working mom's whatsoever, but SAHM's just fit into my schedule much better, since DH works long days, and we spend a lot of time on the weekends together as a family).

Today I was talking to several in DD's class, and it turns out that they live in the same subdivision I do!!! And one even already offered me the loan of her canner!!! Most people look at me like a knit your own yogurt lentil weaver when I say I can or freeze or pick berries, or whatever. I'm very excited about the school year.

Brasilia
Well, monsoon season has arrived and the internet went down almost immediatly, that was a week ago and we just got it back today. The rains will now go on until about next April so I guess I won't be around too much.
Today's highlight was spotting toucans flying over our garden - they are seriously wierd when they fly

Paris fooc

I have been so busy in rl that I haven't been reading the foocs for a whole week!!! Wow -What lovely posts - They were truly a real pleasure to read! Sue - very interesting and Eidvold - do do do check out black books - it is very very good!!!

So, here it is jumper to coat weather. Look one way and the sky is crisp blue but the other way it is dark grey, blue and in some spots even black.

Our picnic in the park after baby school was rained off and became pipping pasta in the apartment instead.

At this time of year warmth and magic is much needed. My daughter experienced this yesterday while celebrating Eid with her babysitter?s family. While I got just the right dose of warmth and magic at my birthday dinner chez Julien. Sipping champagne and eating a very chocolatey pudding seemed simply the natural way to go!

www.avignon-et-provence.com/restaurant-de-paris/brasserie-julien/

New Correspondant reporting in from Athens, Greece. What an amazing thread it is that has sprung up while I was on 2 month holiday in UK! I can't believe I missed its inception. Don't use internet while I'm at home as I'm rushing around enjoying all the things (and PEOPLE) I can't have while in living in Greece, but now I'm back and feel a little bit more native than I have done so far.
I have only been living here 18 months, and as the storm clouds were gathering over the city last week when I landed it really did feel like home. When you first move around this place everything looks the same, white concrete, disorganised, messy, ugly, but I'm starting see other things now. The buildings that offended me so much have become background and now I marvel that in the centre of this city, living on top of a hill I can turn East and see huge mountains in the distance, and I can turn south and see the sea which always holds the promise of escaping from the chaos of the capital to an island.
I can't promise exciting tales of adventure but I do have my fair share of cockroaches and a constant supply of irritating and ridiculous advice about housekeeping and child rearing from my Greek extended family.

Welcome Rubimama - we look forward to your future posts!!!!

brisbane

well things have been hectic in a stay at home and get lots done sort of way.

However - I managed to catch up with an aunt and uncle who I had not seen for over 20 years. They were visited my mum and so we popped over to see them. The dds took to my aunt and spent the morning desperately wanting her attention and clambering all over her.

We also spent a day at the beach visiting my brother and SIL. They live at the Gold Coast.

here The dds had fun - the older two were chasing the seagulls and running away from the waves. Dd3 was not sure about the waves. She went in with my brother holding her hand and lifting her over the waves. She was doing her - I'm not really enjoying this and don't know whether to laugh or cry laugh.

School goes back on Monday. Back to the usual mad weekly routine. Dd1 is ready for school to go back in. She really needs a lot of structure BUT also needs the down time so she finds holidays a bit stressful - which makes it sometimes a little stressful for me.

A nice crop of posts ladies. For the 50th post on our second thread. Here's who we are and where we are:

Tea for two - Paris

ANTIPODES
Sibble - Auckland, New Zealand
MrsJohnCusack- Christchurch, NZ
Kjaysmum - Kapiti, New Zealand (N.Island)
shells - Wellington, NZ
ClaudiaSchiffer - Adelaide
Hethbell - Adelaide
Eidsvold - Brisbane
Chloeb2002-Brisbane
Ghosty - Melbourne
suzywong - Perth
Arfishy - Sydney
brightongirldownunder - Sydney
Tinto - Sydney
Ozziegirly-Sydney

ASIA
RoseoftheOrient - Japan
Ninedragons - Shanghai
Mangolassi - Thailand

MIDDLE EAST/INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Moondog - Bangladesh (but now back in UK??)
Meowmix - Qatar
4gotoindia - Tamil Nadu

AFRICA
Diddybobster- Ibadan, Nigeria
Suedonim - Nigeria
Themasterandmargaritas - Nairobi
ZamMummy-Lusaka, Zambia

EUROPE
WelliesandPyjamas - Bosnia
GGlimpopo - Bordeaux
Scouserabroad - Southern Brittany
AuldAlliance - Luberon, France
Frannikin - Parisian governess
Briochedoree - West of Paris
Berolina- Berlin
Taipo - Black Forest, Germany
MmeLindt - Düsseldorf/ off to Geneva
Sssandy2 - somewhere in Germany
Pollylogos ? Athens
RubiMama - Athens
Zazen - Dublin
Frodosgirl - Luxembourg
cotedAzur - Monaco
QuintessentialShadows - Tromsø, Norway
Patoamarillo - Cantabria, N.Spain
Cies - Galicia
Squigglywig - Sweden
Gipfeli - Basel
CSLG - Zurich

L.AMERICA
Albert - Brasilia
Longwayfromhome - Buenos Aires

N.AMERICA
BrownSuga - Montreal
Hellish - Ottawa
MrsSprat - Toronto
Dooneygirl - Oregon
SuperBunny - Chicago
SittingBull - Close to San Francisco, California
Califrau - San Jose, Northern California
Alipiggie - Colorado
Anorak - Bermuda
Cq - Trinidad

AND FROM DEAR OLD BLIGHTY
EffiePerine - Hackney, Norf London
Themadhouse - North Yorks
Swampster - Sarf London
Litchick - somewhere in UK

Phew. Points of order, arbitration and membership applications will be duly considered here

WOW - I am overwhelmed with pride for our foocs thread!!!!

I feel like pressing print and framing that list immediately!!!