No worries.

 Good on you.

 How’re you going?

 Essendon Bombers.

 Mooloolaba.

 These are additions to my vocabulary after spending two months in Australia.  I had the opportunity to work with Tony Attwood for several weeks, collaborating on sessions with families and co-presenting a two-day training for professionals in Brisbane.  We enjoyed exchanging ideas and found that our styles in approaching families were compatible and complimentary. I very much appreciated Tony’s invitation to visit and collaborate in Brisbane. We hope to have future opportunities to provide joint trainings in the United States, Australia and Europe. Anyone interested in arranging joint training workshops can contact Tony www.tonyattwood.com.au or me.

 The Australia Council for Educational Research (ACER) sponsored my three training workshops: a two-day training in Brisbane, and one-day trainings in Melbourne and Sydney. I very much appreciated Li-Ai Lim’s invitation to provide these trainings through ACER. Li-Ai is ACER’s Product Manager for Assessment. The ACER staff made my time in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney memorable in every way.  I’m happy to now have colleagues in Australia, including Amanda Coleiro, Eirini Lammi, Blair Heading, Laura Beckett, Debbie Lee, Marian Power, and Yana Gottmaker. Thank you for your warm hospitality and enthusiasm regarding the content of the workshops.  I look forward to our future collaborations.

 LaTrobe University in Melbourne has a newly established autism research center and I was fortunate to spend a day there. Cheryl Dissanayake is the psychologist who directs the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre (www.latrobe.edu.au/otarc) and we enjoyed discussing the work her teams are doing with young children as well as discussing best practice autism evaluation methods. Cheryl and her team have begun to incorporate my Visual Framework into the way they discuss the autism spectrum diagnosis with parents. We hope to collaborate on a research project that target how to best deliver the diagnosis to parents.

 So what about the phrases at the start of this post?

 Try saying ”no worries” a few times a day and you may find yourself less stressed.

 “Good on you” is a way to recognize something you’ve done or some good fortune that has happened to you. Sort of like congratulations or nicely done.

“How’re you going?” is another way to ask: How are you?

The Essendon Bombers are an Australian Rules Football Team based in Melbourne. Thanks to Colin Reis and Julie Contole, my husband and I were able to see a live game and learn the rules from Colin, a lifelong fan.

Mooloolaba (pronounced Mooloolaba) is a town in Queensland on the Sunshine Coast just north of Brisbane. The beaches are beautiful, the people are great, and I dubbed it the “St. Petersburg of the Southern hemisphere” because in some ways it was similar to the beaches and beach culture in that part of Florida. Like many places in Australia  Mooloolaba is derived from an Aboriginal name.  It comes from one of two possible Aboriginal words: the word “mulu,” meaning “snapper fish.,” or the word “mullu,” meaning red-bellied black snake.”