Picking Watermelons

The new students have arrived and we've begun Orientation. I've not been around much for the first couple of days, so I haven't really begun to get to know the students. I'm not taking my first lecture until next week, so I've been preparing that and trying to get up to speed with the lectures that will follow after my first one. It's going to be quite an intense time, but I think I already told you that, didn't I?

Ruth and I went to Canberra on Tuesday (oh, and the kids came as well) for our medicals. It went well, but we've got no air conditioning in the car so the journey was...let's just say 'highly uncomfortable'. I was the only one having an X-Ray (the kids don't need one and Ruth is pregnant) so had to face, once again, the indignity of having my body zapped with radiation and then the radiologist coming out a few moments later and saying "Yeah, we need to do another one because your chest is too big for the machine". The same happened to me in the UK. So, I'm being doubly irradiated every time they X-Ray my chest purely because I happen to be a stunning Adonis. Well, or freakishly malformed. One of the two.

Speaking of 'Adonis', I've had a few shifts on the farm. We've been doing watermelon picking. We start our shift at 6:30am, and finish at 12pm - so as to avoid the blistering Australian sun. For that period I am picking watermelons. Watermelons can grow to 20 kilos plus (Calvin was weighed for our medicals and came in at 20.1 kilos) so I'm spending a few hours heaving my children around in the heat. A few more weeks of that and I'll have the bronzed body of a Greek god and arms that could crush a human head like...well, like a ripe watermelon. A perfect set of skills for teaching and discipling in a Christian community, I'm sure you agree.

Anyway, I'd better get on with it. Those lectures won't write themselves.