VanDijkTrack

After now being a month in Brisbane, we are happy with the progress we made. Friday we will move to a normal house (leaving the cabin) and the children already found good schools close to our new home. Also most of the formalities and paperwork have been done now.
It still feels as a luxury having a temperature between 25 and 30 degrees each day with lots of sunshine. The new environment and habits are a nice experience. 
                 

After Nicole has done an acceptance test she could start in grade 1 at “Genesis Christian College” on the 19th of March. The first term had just started in February, so Nicole will try to catch up and already started immediately with serious lessons. Her curriculum looks interesting with courses such as Mathematics, English, Science, Study of Society& Environment (Cultural, History & Geography), Music, Art, Japanese, Health & Physical Education, Christian Life, and Information Technology (computers).
As usual on all schools here, she has to wear a uniform. She has a dress for normal classes, a uniform for sports and a combination for special occasions (such as cross country run on the 25th of March). You can see the uniforms on the pictures, with the hat being part of it. The hat should protect the children against the sun, which is shining intense most of the days.
Nicole really likes school and is looking forward to each next day although she really got tired after 4 days, which is quite understandable. It’s not easy to start with serious lessons and with a new language at the same time. The school gives Nicole very good support. A teacher from South-Africa (with knowledge of the Dutch language) sometimes pops in the class-room to help Nicole with some translation and the school is also proposing some private English  lessons which we will do.This will help her to catch up more smoothly.
This week is de last week of term 1, followed by two weeks holiday. The holiday will give Nicole some time to relax and time for additional English lessons.
Tomorrow Nicole has an excursion with her class to the “Science Centre” in Brisbane. 
                   

On the 20th of March Jorick started at pre-school “Living Faith Early Learning Centre”, which is like a creche with some educational programs through playing for the children of 3-5 years old. Jorick enjoys it now for two days a week. He can do all kind of plays but has to get used to the quiet time in the afternoon in which the children are supposed to sleep.
Recently we bought Jorick a “Thomas train” (with railways) and after “Cars” he now is a fan of Thomas as well. When you start the train it says “Come on Thomas, here we go” and you can imagine what we are hearing all day long 😉
For pre-school he needed a backpack and as you can see it is a Thomas one..

We are supporting the children to get used to the new situation by talking some English at home, reading booklets with them in English and doing their homework. Nicole will not start with “after-school-care” before she gets used to school and English a little bit more. The days Jorick is going to pre-school is also still limited to 2 days a week.

Besides all this we have been preparing the move to our next home on Friday. We have done some research on local plans of the government, have done all the formalities and procedures, have already arranged beds, a fridge, outside furniture, a BBQ (essential for an Aussie), etc. We also have already arranged insurance, Medicare, electricity delivery, a Telephone connection and an Internet connection which should be supplied in two weeks and also our laptop has been repaired now.

Today we succeeded to get an Australian (Queensland) driving license. Yes !! We had collected a range of required documents and finally we’ve got it. This makes it easier to buy a car which is one of our next challenges now. (we still are renting one)

Next week Anita will start working at the Prince Charles Hospital. Once the children are fully adapted and our settlement is mainly done, Jan will start looking for a job as well. Probably this adapting and settlement will take another month. We’ll see.

Thanks for all your emails. Since we have bad internet availability and our laptop broke down, not all emails have yet been answered very accurately. Sorry for that. In 1 to 2 weeks we expect to have good internet in our new home.

Kind regards,
Jan, Anita, Nicole and Jorick

Finally another update with a new laptop since our DELL already gave up after half a year of service.

We are now living for more than two weeks in a cabin at BIG4 Brisbane Northside Caravan Village. Since we want to settle in the northern part of Brisbane, this is a good location from where were to organize everything. The living space in the cabin is limited bringing some challenges, although we are enjoying the weather and local atmosphere.

After our previous update we have done many inspections of houses, have visited several (state and private) schools and have seen some pre-schools and kindies (creches). This research was boring for the children, although this was changing after installing a car-dual-video system which nearly kept them in the car whole day long (if we would let them). We also enjoyed swimming, city walks, a wildlife park called Alma Zoo, walking in rainforest (Nicole calls it “natte vieze kledderbos”) to “Greene’s Falls” in the Brisbane Forest Park, swimming, play-ground, libraries (with entertainment and learning activities) and some shopping. You can imagine that we have been quite busy with all these things and all procedures and formalities around it, but it also brought us what we were looking for. Last week we signed the contract for a house, for Nicole we submitted an application for a Christian School called Genesis Christian College” and for Jorick we selected the pre-school “Living Faith Early Learning Centre”.

Main criteria for our house search were: a natural environment (what we enjoyed in Bosch en Duin), enough space (also for guests) and not too far from Anita’s hospital (Prince Charles Hospital) and from the Central Business District. Following this criteria we have inspected many houses. Remarkable was the way this is usually done here, especially the habit that you leave your shoes outside when you are entering a home. Finally our search led to a home in North Brisbane in the suburb Cashmere. It is located at the border of the city, against the Forest and has a garden (20.000 sqm) with mainly bush land. It is situated in a living area for wallabies, koala’s and other national species (some photos at the bottom of this page). Although still some formalities need to be done we hope to move from our cabin to this house in the 2nd week of April. After having a house-address it is easier to arrange all other things ranging from schools and creche to a driving license and insurance, subscriptions at the library, etc.

Nicole cannot wait to go to school. She wants to socialize with other children and wants to learn to speak, read and write in English. Probably she will start this week in primary school grade one. Tomorrow we will try to arrange a school uniform for her. Jorick will probably spend a few days each week at pre-school to play. He is really looking forward to it. We’ll keep you updated.

Below you’ll find some pictures of the house we hope to enter in the 2nd week of April. We love the way it is situated.

Kind regards from us all.