Day 181 (December 20): Beautiful Byron Bay

The pictures of our days in Byron Bay, on the Gold Coast of Australia, are golden. If I was a proper social media propagandist, that's probably all you'd see. But the truth is that these have been hard days and there have been a lot of tears.

We left Hamilton in the afternoon on Monday and had an easy, 90-minute flight into Brisbane. There, we rented a mini-van and had our first experience driving on the wrong ("other") side of the road. Fortunately, the airport dumps you directly onto an interstate and that's about the best place to start. I found it about as disorienting as driving the RV because I simply had no idea where the far edge of the vehicle was.

Two hours later, with no incident and only one episode of car sickness (poor Cate), we parked at the famous Beach Hotel on, you guessed it, the beach. It is an extremely laid back place. For an arrival night, the good side of this is that the hotel immediately provided an extra cot but the bad side was that it somehow took 30 minutes to obtain a burrito from a takeout joint on the main drag.

Our first impression was that we were too old to be here. My guess is that the average age is between 20 and 25. The average person on the street is not wearing any shoes and then whatever they were wearing in the surf (rarely a shirt). Music comes from most open doors and the streets are full of smiles.

Right about the time that we were applauding ourselves for overcoming jet lag after one week, the tears began. Collectively, we're tired and weary and homesick. The kids, as is their prerogative, want things. Their first words in the morning might be about a coveted toy (Christmas is in a week) and their last words might be about something they didn't get. Henry has become combative about school, in particular, and there have been epic battles in the hotel this week.

It's been almost a month since we left our apartment in Buenos Aires and since then we've been on the move, living out of bags and in hotels. We're eating almost all of our meals in restaurants and it's just too much for the kids. There are too many decisions to make and the expectations for good behavior are too high. They're coming apart at the seams.

We were supposed to spend two full days here and then use Thursday to drive 6 or 7 hours down the coast. This would give us two nights in an extraordinary house available to us through a family friend. But the prospect of an epic drive and another pack/unpack was too much to bear. Fortunately, airfare from here to Sydney is about $50 per person, even last minute so we, in rapid succession, extended our hotel here, extended our hotel in Sydney, booked the air fares, modified the car rental and notified the family friend. Then we did some more fighting and crying about who knows what.

We've ended up having a great time in Byron. Lily had a surf lesson; we did a hike to the Cape Byron lighthouse and a spit of land that includes the easternmost point of Australia; I saw a rolfer to treat a wrist injury (he turned out to be from the Portland metro area); Elise got some solid retail therapy; we hired a babysitter for four hours one afternoon; the kids got to go to a library; we discovered a favorite breakfast joint and a love of protein shakes; we spent hours and hours in a pool, often in the company of other kids.

Family and friends in the states have been writing with concern about the heat in Australia. I don't know what it means to have a nationwide average temperature but this metric set a record yesterday. Lucky for us, it's been 80 and breezy in Byron Bay so we've been oblivious. I don't think that will be the case once we land in Perth this weekend or Melbourne two weeks later.

I hope to write a blog entry soon about school. It's winter break back home and we're reaching a halfway point with many parts of our curriculum. I have a lot to say, as much for my own benefit as for any reader's. In one sentence, we just can't imagine why anybody would choose to homeschool, in light of all the non-pedagogical issues we are encountering. It is simply so difficult to be both parent and teacher, especially when things get rough on one front, much less both. So stay tuned for that one.