Thursday, July 23, 2009

On holidays


Spent the weekend in Canberra after spending the previous one in Cairns - my half-hearted attempt to tour places in Oz beginning with 'C'. It was lovely and cold, as well as cultural and Mum looked after me very well. Putting up with my self-centredness and even buying me lots of purple maternity gear, since the belly is growing and kicking away. I have booked my bed in the hospital and there's no going back now.

My favorite part of Canberra was the National Museum, which was free (excellent), vibrant (excellent) and pretty inoffensive (amazing). I was a little annoyed that the short film introducing the Museum and the story of Australia had no subtitles for speakers of other languages but I hope that eventually Australia will realise that our langauge is not always easy to follow, even if you speak fluent English. The First Australians exhibit also impressed me, as well as teaching me that the Tasmanian Aboriginies are alive and well - always good to actually learn something at a museum.

Funnily enough though, the best exhibition was from New Zealand about the journey to conquer the Pacific by 'the ancestors'. It was really well done and quite thrilling, to think that they had the navagational techniques to sail a canoe across the Pacific to find all those islands, some of which are tiny. I feel I have acheived something by managing the grocery shopping. Makes you wonder if we've really gone forwards at all.

http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/vakamoana/

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Up the duff


Sooo I'm pregnant. The I can't believe it stage has given way to a weird kind of acceptance. It's a bit like being told you're going to the moon. You have seen it on TV and you have a basic idea about what it involves but actually doing it is extremely remote from your life experience. I keep looking warily at screaming children and wondering why I am doing this again. I suspect my desires and needs had nothing to do with it, this is my body just doing it's thing.

Which is pretty exciting really. I can't think of another time in my life when I felt so at the whim of the physical. Every day the bump gets bigger and I'm watching it like a facinated gardener watching their seeds grow into seedlings. Amazing that all that stuff I learnt in year seven biology is happening in my body. It works! Who would have thought all that life giving potential was lurking beneath.

Unfortunately, as thrilled as I am to be pregnant, I don't really look it, I just look rounder than usual. There is a sign on buses and trains for the people you should vacate the seat for and the prego lady is thin with a big bump out front. I am beginning to realise that that is not going to happen to me. I am slowly acquiring a waist that otheriwse copious doughnuts would give me. At the end I think I'll look more like a large bell than a stick with a bump. As a bonus, I also have enormous breasts and keep accidently flashing my students cleavage in tops which were previously quite chaste. So not only am I more voluptuous than usual, I'm also a bit of a poser. Not the serenly maternal look I was expecting.