Settling In To School

Vinny had a slow start to making friends and getting comfortable with school.  There were a couple of children who included him right away but on the whole he felt very homesick and missed his friends at home and in Montessori.  He has the idea that when he gets back into the United States that he will be able to go back to Montessori and have school with his old friends.  It has been difficult explaining to him that even if we returned his friends have moved on to other schools as well.

We have done all we can to help Vinny make the best of it.  Every day after school when I pick him up I sit around and allow him to play in the playground with other kids for an hour to an hour and a half.  At least it helps him maintain his presence and facilitate the friend-making process.

He has taken to the curriculum well as their model for Pre-Primary is similar to the Montessori model.  Recently he heads quickly into the school room after the bell -which is an air raid klaxon- to see what "jobs" or "duties" he has for the day.  Some days he helps clean, others he gets to write the day of the week (not his favorite) and on others he can be "line leader."

As we expected he is more advanced than most in reading.  The books he brings home to read aren't much challenge so we try to make up for that at home.  It appears that they do not emphasize mathematics much in their Pre-Primary curriculum, so we keep up on that too.

Vinny had been very excited about a near end-of-year disco dance that had been advertised.  I never went to these as a kid because at first i thought they were ridiculous but looking back I know that never attending these helped dent some of my popularity.  With that in mind, when I spoke about the dance to Vinny I'd do so with great enthusiasm, but it didn't take much.

As you know Vinny loves to dance.  He did very well in the spring in his dance recital and has begun more tap and jazz lessons here.  As soon as the word dance would cross one's lips, he was ready to disco.

He looked forward to the dance for over a week. When the evening finally came, he told me he wanted to "look handsome" and asked me to help him find some appropriate "handsome" clothes.

He went, it was dark, it was noisy, it was full of hyperactive children singing with Australian accents, and he had a blast.

He also got some kisses from a friend of his who is a recent immigrant from Spain.  She doesn't speak a word of English, but who needs words when one can speak the language of love?




If you watch these videos, I recommend turning your volume down.

Internet Connections

Coming from the United States I expected to find some fiber-optic cable connections in Australia but it was not so, at least in Perth.  What they have here is ADSL2.  I don't think it is as fast as our 6Meg/sec fiber optic back home but they claim it is 10Meg/sec over their phone lines.

We weren't sure what to get, so we started searching around.

We looked into Telstra, Iinet, Dodo, and TPG.  There are a few more companies available, but these are the four that were suggested the most, either by word of mouth or by media advertising saturation on billboards and buses and TV.

Telstra is the largest company and is effectively AT&T.  They own everything and they aren't afraid to prove it.  Their services are very expensive.  They may be the most reliable, but again, they are very expensive.  Their services are also the closest to our fiber at home, but again, they are very expensive.  Telstra has a home broadband and a "super-fast" broadband, each with  its own subset of combos.  You can sign a 2 year contract and get 50Gig of downloading per month for $50.00AU a month or you can get the same on the "super-fast" for $60.00AU per month.  50 isn't that much.  Our service at home, the cable fiber always on connection, actually had a limit of around 150Gig.  Most do. The one saving grace we had from Telstra the first month we were here was their mobile broadband.  You can get a mobile dongle that will connect to the Telstra network (can you hear me now?) anywhere at any time.  The cost?  Over $50.00AU for 3Gig.  3! This is why I had to stop posting.

My wife suggested TPG, and I looked into it, and found very bad reviews.  They claim an unlimited ADSL2 with landline phone carrying unlimited local and australia calls and 100 minutes of international calls AND a wifi modem for 70.00AU.  Sounds like a steal, right?  According to the reviews I read, TPG was the worst company around, despite having one or two gleaming positive reviews.  If you're interested in TPG, please read the reviews first.

Dodo was pretty much the same. They had a much lower price for a "naked" service (internet connection only).  They offered ADSL2 with no limits, quotas, peak times, or combos required.  The problem with this service was the two year contract you had to sign.  One would think if one wanted to change services badly enough one could just pay the early termination fee, but according to the reviews of Dodo I read, it is very difficult to get dodo to actually cancel your service.  And with the rumors out here that free broadband is on its way to everyone, it didn't make sense to sign a two year contract.  It seems that Dodo might actually be worse than TPG according to the reviews, but this may or may not be tied to the fact that there are simply more reviews available for Dodo.

We've signed up with Iinet.  We got a combo through them that gives us 200Gig in downloads with no peak times, a "landline" VOIP phone and a FetchTV pack of TV channels (like basic cable) for $99.00AU per month.  This isn't a bad deal.  The phone has free calls to any australian landline and charges only five cents per minute for international calls.  1300 and 13 numbers are 30 cents flat.

Iinet gave us this wireless router that does it all, phone and internet in one, called the BoB2.  We haven't had much issue with the BoB2 other than we can't get the wireless to operate.  No computers can join the network even with the proper security keys, and going into the router to change settings is useless, as nothing is saved upon exit.  We can connect direct over Cat5 though, and that has been ok, but Iinet still needs to be called and this needs working out.

The FetchTV is a little confusing.  The over the air channels come in fine (which they wouldn't on our American TV had we not gotten the FetchTV and its "cable box") but something is up with the package.  I thought we had the starter (which only offers box functions like on demand movies and TV) but the box itself says we have the entertainment pack (which offers additional channels you'd find on basic or extended basic cable). These extra channels, however, won't come in.  This, too, needs working out.

To make a long story short, when it comes to investing in an internet connection in Perth, be sure to fully, and i mean FULLY, research your options before you decide.  Don't be afraid to ask around of the people you meet.  If they have an opinion, they'll tell you.  Most of them will be nice about it, too.