The day after tomorrow my wife and I with two of our three children will board a plane at DFW airport to fly from Dallas to Brisbane, Australia. We intend for our oldest son to join us for his Christmas and summer breaks while he finishes his college education, and then perhaps join us permanently in December, 2007 when he graduates.
My younger son has made only a one-hour flight on a plane in his life. My daughter has never been on a plane and neither of them has ever been out of the United States -- or even out of the southwestern United States.
I will work as the customer service manager for an Australian construction industry trade alliance, as my Australian buddy (or "mate", as they say), work toward launching a new church in Brisbane where broken, wounded, defensive, isolated people (which is pretty much all of us) will find healing and love and joy together.
Along the way we'll get to play on Paradise Beach on the Gold Coast, take long walks in the cool rain forests surrounding Brisbane, and enjoy a cup of hot tea on the veranda within sight of an occasional kangaroo or wallaby, or a more expensive cup of tea at a sidewalk cafe on the river in "the city", as they call downtown Brisbane. The first weekend a big fireworks display is planned in the city, and we'll watch that.
We'll work at assimilating ourselves into what is simultaneously somehow both a kindred and an alien culture, with words, phrases, habits, plants and animals not our own, interspersing what is, nevertheless, a very familiar environment shaped by people from the same British tribes and classes that settled and built my own culture in Arkansas and Texas.
We arrive in Brisbane in 3 days, 9 hours and 54 minutes!
