Happy Birthday to Me; Or get a load a that little beauty!

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Yesterday was my birthday.  I’m now three dozen years old.  Yikes!

We went to the Australia Zoo, otherwise known as the Steve Irwin Zoo.  Crickey!  It was really great.  We got on the train about 8:00am and made it to our stop at Beerwah just about 9:30, there was a shuttle from the train station that took us over to the zoo a few kilometers away. 

From the moment you get on the shuttle, you’re inundated with images of Steve Irwin.  He’s truly an Australian hero and the sense of loss is palpable.  Leah and I couldn’t help but feel a little sad every time we saw another photo of him.

The park sits on about seventy acres and is in a constant state of expansion.  There are plans to almost double

the size of the park within a few years and there will be a train stop directly at the zoo.  It took us hours to see the whole thing.

Steve Irwin’s parents started the zoo in 1970 and used to be called the Beerwah Reptile Park.  It was used primarily as a rehab facility for problem crocodiles.  Steve and Teri Irwin took over operations in 1992 and renamed it.  Crocodiles still dominate the place; most of the grounds are croc enclosures.  The rest is mostly devoted to Australian animals but they do have some other really excellent enclosures devoted to tigers and elephants.  The Tiger enclosure in particular was one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. 

The animals were almost all easily seen and seemed at ease, the cages were spacious and clean.  Most of the animals were active and busy going about their business.  The enclosure for kangaroos was a stand out.  There was a large area, about a third of the park, devoted to kangaroos.  The whole thing was enclosed in a fence but you can walk through without anything between you and the animals.  There was a vending machine with food so you could hand feed the ‘roos.  It was awesome.  Many of the larger ones were sleeping or resting in the shade.  It was hot, about 34 degrees and the sun was intense.   While we walked through we managed to pet two that were sitting around.  They were juveniles about the size of a medium dog.  They are really soft and well used to people.  They’re hand fed all the time, so as long as you don’t make too many sudden movements they’ll walk right up to you.  It was cool.

Most of the marquee animals were featured, koalas, wallabys, kangaroos, snakes, crocs, echidnas, lizards, birds (kookaburras are really cute and cassowaries are huge) and Dingoes.  Dingoes are beautiful and a little smaller than Stanley.  They had a great habitat and seemed quite at ease. 

There is a big amphitheatre in the center of the park where they have the “wildlife Warriors” show.  We sat down in the shade at eleven to watch.  The show features many of the parks animals, birds, elephants and snakes, with the main portion featuring a saltwater crocodile feeding.  Before they brought the croc out they put up a “little beauty” warning on the big screen, hilarious. The guys running the show did their best Steve impersonations and fed scraps of meat to a huge croc.  I managed to get a bunch of great pictures of it jumping out of the water. 

In fact I managed a bunch of great pictures of many of the animals at the park.  The cages are set up really well and even when the animals were hiding in the shade you could get a good look at them.  You can get within a couple of feet of most of them and you sort of don’t notice that the cages are there at all. 

We ate some lunch after the show and popped into the gift shop.  There you could buy has just about anything you could ever want with Steve Irwin’s image on it.  We got a coozie (called a stubby cooler here) and a couple of fridge magnets.  As you might have guessed Bindi’s image is almost as popular.  They really are pushing her as the face of the park.  We didn’t see her in person though.  Bummer.

While we were in the gift shop, the skies opened up.  I haven’t seen a rain storm that intense in a long time.  It rained buckets for an hour and a half.  We took the opportunity to check the Crocodile Hunter Museum and the memorial for Steve.  People from all over the world sent items in memoriam and they are on display here.  It’s poignant. 

Tired of waiting for the rain to stop we bought a couple of $2 ponchos and set back off into the park.   We managed to pat a koala but missed the chance to have our picture taken holding one.  The park must have twenty or thirty koalas that were busy after the rain stuffing themselves with leaves.  I guess they mostly sleep and eat.  They’re amazingly adorable.

We left the zoo and hopped the train back to Brisbane.  We showered up and headed over to Fortitude Valley, a neighborhood known for its restaurants and nightclubs.  We found a nice place to have dinner (in fact most of the menus we looked at were more reasonable than most we’ve seen, we’ll be going here often) and had a bite and a few drinks.  The restaurant had outdoor seating and while we ate a band started playing in the square.  It made me realize how much I have been missing live music.

In fact it made me feel a bit homesick.  Homesickness comes for both of us in little waves.  Mostly we’re fine but once in a while something sets off a little pang.  The band did it for me.  I really miss being with The Nod.  It’s not only the shows either, I miss the practices too.  I’m not sure how long it will be before I get back on stage and I miss it.  It was nice to hear a live band for the first time here. 

We were both tired and we called it a night early.   It was a great birthday.

Some observations for today:

-the legal drinking age is 18 so the streets are wild with kids getting drunk.

-Girls really dress to the nines to go out.  You see tons of really short prom style party dresses everywhere.  Going out is not casual.

-Terri Irwin has a line of clothing called “The Cougar Collection”.

-Beet root is a common hamburger topping. Also they love a burger with a fried egg on top.

-Prostitution is legal in Queensland, the Sunday paper has an explanation of the law in the personals section.

Highs and Lows

Friday, November 27, 2009

Hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving.  We missed you. 

We started by biking over to the Uni and checking e-mail.  We got to Skype with Leah’s parents and family.  It was great to see everyone around the table.  I admit to having a bit of a tear-eye when we saw Stanley.  No offence to you all but I really miss my dog.  Ross is taking good care of him though.

When we were getting ready to sign off with the family our friends in Denver skyped us from the Thanksgiving party.  That really made our day.  You guys are great.  It was awesome to see everyone.  The purple teeth were phenomenal and I could smell the highballs.  We both decided that Skype time with Leah and Todd should be a part of all parties from now on.  Get working on that y’all.

Feeling great we made our way back to Toowong and popped in to the Telstra shop.  They’re still giving us the runaround about the home phone and internet.  We decided to cancel the work order and get wireless internet from another provider.  (Wireless internet here is the kind that you pop into a USB port and it works off the cell network)  The girl who has been handling our account at Telstra was pretty relieved when we told her we changed our minds.  She had been just as frustrated as us.

We went over to the “3 communications” store in the mall.  They have a relatively cheap plan that they call month to month.  It’s not as fast as Telstra’s home plan but the price is right and we thought we could get it right away. 

Even though the plan is called “month to month” and you pay for the USB modem up front, they still want to

do a credit check. It doesn’t make any sense to me.  A credit check for Telstra was no problem.  They were willing to sign me up for nearly $200 a month on a 24 month plan.  So I figured we’d be fine with 3.  Nope.  Since I don’t have a job, have never worked in Australia and don’t have any Australian credit cards they aren’t willing to let me sign up.   

I failed the credit check, credit here is totally independent from credit in America, so they don’t care that I’ve never missed a payment in my life.  It’s irrelevant.  So I had already cancelled the work order with Telstra and now we’re back to square one.  No internet no home phone and no credit.  The guy did say there is an 80% chance that Leah will pass because she’s a student, but we didn’t have enough ID for her to try. 

There are some pre-paid mobile internet plans out there but they are expensive and charge you for downloads in 10 megabyte increments.  Not exactly fair.

I was feeling pretty crestfallen.  We thought we had it all figured out and we were knocked back.  I’ve never

had this much trouble trying to get basic utilities set up.  I feel helpless.

We went home and sat in the air-con while I fumed for a time.  We made some dinner and sat down to watch a movie on telly.  Tomorrow is my birthday so we’re planning on going to the Australia Zoo, the zoo that Steve Irwin started.  I want to wear my white river/pirate/Michael Jackson/spf shirt (GR 09!) that’s dirty so I threw it in the sink to hand wash so it’ll be ready tomorrow and when I pulled it out of the sink it’s got these yellow stains all over it.  I’m not sure what happened to it but the last time I wore it was on the beach and I suspect the sunscreen from the dermatologist had something to do with it.  Whatever it was, my shirt looks nasty and is probably ruined.  It was really the last thing I could handle tonight.  It seems like I can’t get anything right at the moment. 

So I don’t want to sound too negative, because I don’t really feel discouraged.  I’m just feeling stressed.  I never expected to slide right into the lap of luxury here, but internet at home would be nice.  Also I’d like a Diet Dr. Pepper.

Some observations for today:

-The eighties are alive and well in the dress of Australian teenagers.

-School children here all wear uniforms; you can tell what school a kid goes to by the color of their outfit.  All of them include a hat with a wide brim.  It’s cute.

-The Queensland government has a PSA campaign going on now aimed at road safety called “Slow down stupid.” 

-Things I didn’t know:  I didn’t know that the space shuttle was even on a mission until it landed.  It took 12 hours for the story about Tiger Woods crashing to get here. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday November 26, 2009

Hope all of you are having a great day with friends and family.  We wish we were there to eat and drink too much with you.

We just got back from Melissa and Andrew’s (neighbors) place.  They had us for dinner and to our surprise cooked us a lovely American style Thanksgiving dinner.  It was their first and they did a lovely job.  We’re quite lucky to have neighbors as nice as them.  Melissa even made a yummy sweet potato pie.  It was a real treat.  We spent a couple of hours chatting and playing with their kids.  It took the edge off of missing friends and family on TG. 

The rest of the day:

Leah got up about five this morning to visit the bathroom.  She woke me up because our bathroom was flooded.  The hot water line under the vanity was leaking.  We had eight rolls of TP under there.  Not pretty.  There is no cut off valve under the sink so I went outside and under the house, but couldn’t find the shut off valve there either.  I had to call the emergency plumber from our rental agreement. He told me where to look and I found the valve for the water heater and shut it off.  That stopped the leak, but we had a mess in the house.  And half the apartments in the house had no hot water.

The plumber came out at eight and it only took him two minutes to get the thing fixed. The plumbing is brand new and apparently they left that fitting loose.  Not the way I wanted to start my day. 

 It didn’t get better quickly.  My phone rang at about nine and it was the rep from Telstra telling me she was still having trouble getting our phone installed. The phone company refuses to send someone here because according to their records our apartment doesn’t exist.  It’s frustrating.  One of these days it’ll get worked out.  But I’m losing my patience.

We did manage to get down to the uni so Leah could go to a work out class and I could use the internet.  I submitted my resume for several jobs that look promising.  I then got a chance to Skype with my parents.  I hadn't talked to them since the first day we got here.  It was great. 

We rode our bikes home and turned on the air-con.  I stretched out on the bed for a few minutes and my phone rang.  It was one of the companies I applied for earlier in the day.  I was and still am shocked.  I don’t know how to feel.  It’s not common to get a response so quickly.  I had applied for a job installing solar hot water systems.  Admittedly, I have no experience in the field, but you’ve gotta aim high. The girl on the line told me she thought I’d be a great candidate not for the job I applied for but for another job assessing houses for solar hot water installations. I am qualified for this as the process for assessing sights for solar hot water is exactly the same as assessments for solar electricity. Sounds perfect at first blush but there are some huge caveats.

First, it pays by the job.  I’d have to visit six to eight sights a day.  The appointments are set by the company, but it’s still a little like door to door work.  I’d have to drive around the city all day assessing houses.   I wouldn't be selling the system, just doing the feasibility work.  If the customer buys the system, I’d get paid a few dollars more than if they didn’t, but I’d still get paid even if they didn’t buy.

Secondly, I’d have to have a car.  That’s the big thing.  We haven’t planned on even buying a car, let alone right after we got here.  It’s a tough decision to make.  Cars aren’t exactly cheap and then you have the expense of insurance and fuel.

I told the woman that I had some concerns and need some time to think.  Just from my resume and a quick talk on the phone she thought I’d be perfect so it sends up a red flag in my mind. I’d think they’d at least want to interview someone.  My CV is pretty good though.  I have to call her back in the morning; I have a list of questions I need to ask before I decide to pursue it further.  If it works out it may be the perfect opportunity, but “too good to be true” sends up a red flag in my mind.  Though they didn’t exactly offer to make me rich, the pay would be close or a little more than I was making in Denver.  (Is this getting a little TMI here?)  I don’t want to be too hasty. 

Needless to say, the whole buying a car thing is a big decision.  I’m sure we’ll hash it all out.  I’ll tell ya this right now though, we ain’t lookin fer no Mecedes.

Some observations for today:

-The first Test of the Season started today between the Aussies and the Windies (West Indies) at the Gabba.   Eat your heart out Daniel. (This observation is about Cricket if you haven’t noticed.)

-I think a Carolina style BBQ joint would make a killing here.  

Friends!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

We had our first visitors from the states today.  Paul and Mary were on vacation in Australia and made a special trip up to the Gold Coast to see us.  We got on a train at 7:30 this morning and headed down to Surfer’s Paradise and met up with them.  It was great to have friends for the day. 

Paul and Mary rented a car for the time they’re in Queensland.  They picked us up at the train station and we bopped over to the beach.  It’s funny that they have more experience driving here than we do.  Paul said he got the hang of driving on the left pretty quick.

We hit the beach at Surfer’s Paradise and managed somehow to avoid the throngs of Schoolies that have taken over the Gold Coast.  It was a perfect day, light breeze, no clouds and nice surf.  Paul had rented some boogie boards and we took turns getting thrashed by waves.  Leah was the best of all of us at it.  Of course this should come as no surprise to anyone. Leah was a fish in a past life I’m sure of it.

We spent several hours on the beach, chatting and catching up.  All of us got a lot of sun despite heaps of sunscreen.  I somehow managed to cover everything but the tops of my knees which are lobster red tonight.  We have this great spf 60 that Leah got from the dermatologist that works really well when you put it on right (Thanks Christ).  Paul managed to get lobstered all over his body.  If you’re planning on visiting, spf 15 should be left at home.  Bring the hard stuff. You’ve been warned.

After the beach we went to get some lunch.   We found a restaurant with a bar and talked and drank for a couple of hours.  Then went over to their hotel and while they showered and changed, Leah and I checked out the pool.  The Marriott at Surfer’s Paradise has one of the nicest pools I’ve ever seen.  Actually they have two huge pools outside.  One is shaped like a river and has fresh water.  The other is shaped like a lagoon and has a sandy beach and is salt water full of tropical fish.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I took a picture from their balcony and will put it up when we can.  It was awesome.

All clean and showered, Paul and Mary drove us back to Brisbane and we stopped by our house so we could change.  We then walked over to Park Road and grabbed a pizza.  This time we went for the meter pie.  It was great and we damn near took the whole thing down. 

Paul and Mary are leaving at six am to go back to Sydney, where they started their vacation, and then back to the states.  It was great to see them, but we’re sad they had to go back so soon.  One day is too short.  Keep that in mind for your visit.

Some observations for today:

-The Australian media is obsessed right now with a singer from Canada named Michael Bublé (pronounced boo blay) it’s really fun and funny to say with an Australian accent.  I’ll try and record what it sounds like and post it up here soon.  We all laughed about it all day.

-On the spot fines apply.   There are signs warning people of possible consequences for everything everywhere.

-Four jugs of beer divided by three people equals a nice buzz.

Two Weeks and Counting

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Today marks two weeks since we’ve left the states.  It’s gone quickly but looking back we’ve done a lot.  We’re settling in nicely.  Not that we have a routine yet, but we have roof, a bank account, a phone number and are starting to feel at home.

Brisbane has been an easy city to like.  I said before it feels a lot like Denver; it’s big enough to have all the benefits of a city, but feels much like a small town.  We like that people are active here.  You see people jogging and biking everywhere.  I think we’ll have no problem adjusting for the long run.  Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, the sunshine state.  Queensland feels a lot like Florida. 

I find Queensland, and Australia as a whole, to be a bit of a nanny state.  Taxes on sin items like alcohol, cigarettes and soda are high.  A case of coke costs $13.50 here (that’s the sale price), cigs are $14 a pack, a six pack of beer $17. A government official today is trying to get legislation passed allowing hospitals to put the obese to the end of the line for health care.  There has also been talk of refusing health care to smokers. 

The place has tons of surveillance cameras all over the place.  People here don’t expect the same level of privacy that we expect.  The police have some broad reaching powers here too.  It’s not uncommon for drivers to be stopped at a random sobriety stop, and for the police to give everyone a breathalyzer test in order to get through.  From what we’ve heard they occur all over the place all the time.  It has the benefit of cutting down sharply on the numbers of drunk drivers.

Really it’s a lot like home but the little differences (Hey Vincent Vega) are what we are noticing now.  We went to the grocery store and couldn’t find any dill pickles.  Well they did have some that were sort of dill but they were super tiny, like miniature gherkins.  There’s not one Grape flavor in the jelly section.  NO GRAPE JELLY! If you look at the jelly aisle at home I’ll bet you find at least six brands of grape alone.  Here there are several types of black currant. (Which I like better than grape anyway but I did notice) We found out hamburger buns aren’t pre-sliced.  We went to get laundry soap and didn’t recognize a single brand. The same goes for the medicine aisle. You take for granted the items you see on a daily basis.  Here we have to read the fine print in order to make sure we know what we’re getting.  The writing is in English but it’s like a foreign language.

When you read the nutrition information on the side of food containers here, the energy is listed in kilojoules (kJ) instead of calories.  It’s been a long time since chemistry; I don’t even remember what a Joule is.  They also say serve instead of serving.  So “a single serve of this product has blah blah kJ of energy” just sounds strange to my American ears.

Tomorrow we have a busy day planned so I’ll sign off without any observations. This post was mostly just observations anyway.

Hello Kitty

Monday November 23, 2009

Yep, that’s right, I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to mention.  There’s actually a Hello Kitty store in the mall right by our house.  If you closed your eyes and stood on the street, you really might think you were in Japan.

Well today was a good day.  Leah headed over to UQ Sport and took a yoga class.  I stayed home and did laundry.  When she got back we went to a pay phone and I called about our phone connection.  The Connect Now people still didn’t have their shit together, so I cancelled our order and went straight to Telstra.  I should have done that first, but I didn’t know. 

At the Telstra store we signed up for a home phone line, internet access and a mobile phone.  We saved a nice amount by bundling all of them together.  It’s going to take about four days to get hooked up, but at least we know we’re dealing with the right people.  The plan came with a really nice phone for free, so I now have a new phone.  We only have 150 minutes a month and 150 Mb of data, but at least we’re reachable now.  I can also get emails on the phone so I’m much more accessible than I have been.  I can get all my normal e-mail boxes on the phone so feel free to shout out. 

Internet plans are really different here than they are at home.  I’ve mentioned it before, but now I’ll explain a little.  They measure the amount that you download including browsing web pages.  You pay for the speed you want, but you really pay for the amount of data you use.  You have to pick your plan based on how much data you’re likely to be using.  I’d consider myself a heavy internet user and I really have no concept of how much data I’ve been using in the past.  Australia forces you to be aware of how much you use of everything, water, electricity, food, and even data.  It’s been hard for us to acclimate to the data usage thing.  At home, you pay for the speed and not the data, unless you’re hosting web sites.

We chose a 12 gig plan at a decent speed; it will slow down when we reach our data limit, as opposed to charging us for overages like some other plans.  The bloke Mark, who had us over for dinner last week, told us that when he first got here, his first internet bill was $8000au. Eight Bloody THOUSAND dollars.  He was on an “Unlimited 10 gig plan” unlimited up to 10 gig and then apparently they rape you.  We didn’t want that to happen.   So just like the house, we’re paying more for less here, but that’s how it is.  They just don’t have the population of the states.  We take it for granted how cheap information is.

The home phone is another thing, we have to have one because the internet is going to be DSL, the house isn’t wired for cable.  You get the phone line for a price and then pay for individual calls, no free calls included.  You even have to pay for local calls.  Calls to mobile phones are more expensive.  I need to get a job quick y’all.

So with phones sorted out we headed home for a while.  It was a hot day so we hid out in the apartment with the air-con on.  Later we headed over to the coffee house to use the internet and drink an iced coffee.  The coffee was delicious, the internet was slow. 

I did manage to make some changes to the blog, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now.  The picture at the top was taken on our last night at the hotel when we got here.  The pool deck was on the second level and the view of the river was really great.  The bridge (I’m blanking the name right now) is recently opened and is only for pedestrians and bikes.  It goes from CBD (on the left) over to Southbank and the art museum.  The colors change every minute or so, it’s neat to watch.  I took a bunch of photos from up there.  That one took ten minutes to load to the blog.  Hope you like it.

Some observations for today:

-Aussies love to say “Heaps of” as in heaps of data for one low price.

-I can read cricket scores now and understand much of what I’ve read.

-You can’t escape stories about Shittany Spears by traveling half way around the world.  The celebrity goss (duh) is a regular spot on the news.

-Heaps of people walk around barefoot here, even though the sidewalks are as hot as the sun.

-Popsicles are called “Icy Poles”  the

Busy Weekend

Monday, November 23, 2009

It’s Monday morning here. I’ve decided that we need to take a day or two off each week from writing the blog. It will probably be Sunday and Monday here as most of you who are reading are back in the states. That’ll make it the weekend for you. So we’ll start that this week.

Looking at the TV schedule this morning I see that the Broncos are playing on TV here at 3:45. I’m going to try and be around for that. I’m missing football a little. Don’t get me wrong, Cricket has just started its regular season last night, but I do miss American sports. (Aussies seem to like basketball the best of American sport. It’s not really my fave.)

We started our weekend on Saturday morning by biking over to Southbank, an area just the other side of the river from CBD. Southbank is where the state library of Queensland is, along with the Queensland Museum, Maritime museum, and the art museum. There is a really big park there dominated by a man-made beach/swimming area called Streets Beach. It’s really lovely, a nice lagoon area that’s free to swim in. Around the beach there are a bunch of restaurants and shops. They also have a market on the weekends where people sell their crafts. We spent an hour or so browsing and then grabbed some lunch at an outdoor café.

We took the opportunity to drink a jug (Aussie for Pitcher) of Victoria Bitter (VB). VB is the state beer of Victoria. It tastes a little like Heineken, only not as skunky. It was good and cold and we both managed our first little buzz in Oz. We ate a nice lunch of fish and chips and set back off to explore.

We walked up and down a really nice footpath and took a few pictures. We also popped in the library and used the WIFI there. (We’ve decided to sort the home internet and phones out this morning, enough is enough) We spent about a half an hour exploring the Queensland Museum, reading about the history and culture of Queensland. We’ve picked an interesting state to live in. Did you know that macadamia nuts are native to Australia? They were found wild in a small part of Queensland then planted in Hawaii where the industry took off. I always thought they were 100% Hawaiian.

After walking several miles, our feet hurt and we biked back home. The bike ride was only about four miles one-way, and it only took us fifteen minutes or so. We’re both excited that it’s so close. We plan on spending a lot of time there.

On the way home we stopped off at Coles for some groceries for dinner. The shops close at five or five thirty every day, so you need to get any shopping done early. We made some turkey burgers and a salad for dinner. Leah was relieved to find ground turkey in the market.

The next morning, Sunday, we set off to the beach. We’ve been here for almost two weeks and hadn’t seen it. That is unacceptable. We grabbed a train to the Gold Coast, an area of long white beaches and huge hotels just south of Brisbane. We had an appointment to meet a girl from the states who just finished the OT program that Leah is about to start. The train ride was about an hour and the bus was another twenty minutes. We’re told that you can drive there in under an hour, but we didn’t find it inconvenient at all.

We got to Broad Beach at about 10:30 and weren’t set to meet Beth until 12:00 so we took some time to check out the beach. It’s beautiful, long and white, just what a beach should be. The water was colder than I expected, but it felt great on a hot day. There were surfers everywhere. We found out that this week is called Schoolies here. It’s sort of like spring break (SPRNNNG BREK, that’s for you Katie) in Florida. Schoolies week sees thousands of year twelve seniors celebrating the end of school by going to the gold coast and getting wasted. The news is full of stories about how your kids are getting high and having sex while you’re none the wiser. It’s pretty funny to us. We were only annoyed by them when a couple of drunken teenagers on the bus were acting like retards. They almost got in a fight with a rather large Asian.

We met Beth at about noon and grabbed some lunch. Leah and Beth hit it off really well. They had been e-mailing with each other for over a year. She had lots of great information about the program and what it’s like to live here while in school. Leah feels a lot more confident about the program after talking with Beth for a while. Leah’s taking a pretty huge leap here with almost no help. She’s been really brave so far, but I can tell she’s much more at ease now. She’ll do great.

We ate lunch and had a couple of beers and talked with Beth for almost three hours. Afterwards we said goodbye (Beth is going back to the states in December) and went back to the beach. Too bad Beth is leaving because Leah and her would be great friends, you could just tell. They had a ton in common. Leah read her Kindle (world’s best gift) and I snoozed in the sand. There’s something about the sound of waves, I can sleep like a baby on a beach.

Leah here…by the way, while we were eating lunch there was a guy dressed in white linen pants and an electric blue shirt with, oh no he didddn’t, a microphone. He was belting out the funniest songs in a Robert Goullet (sp?) slash Tom Jones voice in the middle of this beach -mall strip area. He had about 200 chairs set up, a little aggressive in his audience turnout considering there was one lonely grandpa sitting there. We did hear Dirty Dancing’s, she’s like the wind (RIP Patrick, I heart you). Tom, he may have stole your thunder, he done did it and sang Chris Issac’s “Wicked Game” (we thought of you). Todd may have had a crush on the guy. He kept making so many comments that at one point I offered to get his autograph for him, but he was a tad too shy.

We made our way back home and got back around dark. Both of us were tired and a bit browner. We’ll be at the beach a lot.

Some observations for today:

-ketchup is called “tomato sauce” here. The bottles are shaped differently but mostly it tastes the same.

-Teenagers in Australia have underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex just like American teens. We started calling them PFC’s.

-Cows look hilarious in a field surrounded by palm trees.

-There is no tipping in restaurants so the service isn’t as quick as it is back home. It’s sometimes hard to get a second drink.

-Christmas decorations look out of place when it’s 90 degrees outside.

-SPF 30 isn’t going to cut it.

Another day in Paradise

Friday, November 20, 2009

Ugh. I’m sick and tired of dealing with this phone issue; we still don’t have a phone in our apartment.

We rode our bikes this morning over to the university. We made it there in about twenty minutes. It took us less time to get back since we were familiar with the route now. It was a nice ride this morning, St Lucia, where the Uni is, is a really pretty neighborhood.

Leah had an appointment to get some vaccinations that she needed to start school. While she went to the health center, I popped over to the bike shop and returned the grease I had borrowed a few days ago. After that I grabbed a paper and a long black and sat around the square and waited for Leah.

She was done in about an hour and we walked over to the post office and I grabbed a couple of post cards. The postage to get a card to the states is $1.75. Cards in hand we then made our way to the student recreation center and Leah got herself a membership. They have yoga classes and a bunch of other random classes that she’s interested in. The membership for students has all the classes included. I hopped on a scale while Leah was signing up and found out I weigh 92.5 kg. I don’t even know what that means. I had to get an app for my ipod to do metric conversions.

We finished up at the rec. center and logged on while sitting in the square to check e-mails. We were both able to log on at the same time on Leah’s student account so we spent about an hour surfing. We also checked Skype and found Leah’s parents on line so we chatted with them for a while. (Hi Guys!) While we were on with them a bush turkey walked right by us so they got to see it. The funny thing about those things is, even though they’re everywhere, we’ve had a hard time getting a good picture.

At noon we had a date to meet Rebecca, a professor here and cousin of a friend from home. She’s an American who’s lived here for fifteen years. We met her at her office and walked over to the pizza shop on campus for lunch. Leah and Rebecca have been e-mailing for several months and it was great to finally meet her. It’s funny to see what fifteen years in country does to an American accent; hers was a great blending of the two. She invited us over to her house for Christmas, saying she couldn’t stand the thought of us being without family for the holiday. She also offered us her car for a few days after since she and her family will be in New Zealand for a bit. We may just take her up on that, since we want to go camping around Christmas anyway.

By the time we were done with lunch the sun had come out and it had gotten, as Leah likes to say, hotter than Hades. The ride home was a sweaty one.

We got back to the place and met one of our housemates, Fred. He’s from Sydney, has a super thick accent that Leah had a hard time following, and has moved up here for a few months for work. Fred is old, likes to walk around shirtless slash barefoot and is about the size of a hobbit. He works for Telstra (the main phone company in Australia) as a linesman. We had a nice conversation where he told me he got his phone hooked up “not a drama” (Aussies like to say that one; It’s a nice change from “no worries”). He told us our mistake was listening to the landlord and not calling Telstra direct. I called a service that was supposed to get all of our utilities with one phone call. Lesson learned. Enough whinging (Aussie for complaining) about the phones, we still don’t have one.

I think we’re both missing home a little so we made tacos for dinner. Just what the Doctor ordered. (aside from Diet Dr. Pepper, how I miss thee)

Some observations for today:

-That critter on the power line was indeed a Possum.

-Burger King in Australia is called Hungry Jack’s

-Aussies are crazy for breaded chicken breast sandwiches that they call Schnitzel Burgers.

-The bats fly every evening from St Lucia up to the botanic gardens at Mt. Coot-Tha

-Canadians aren’t exactly happy when you ask them if they’re American

Still waiting for a phone

Thursday November 19, 2009

We had kind of a slow day today. We got up around eight and I went down to the café to check e-mails and do some school stuff. Todd stayed around the house to work on his resume. He’s been checking out the want ads and is ready to start looking for a job. There are at least a few Solar/Green building companies in the area looking for people. He’s feeling good about the prospects. The only issue we’re having right now is we don’t have a contact number that he can put on any applications or his resume.

Todd called the company that is responsible for getting our phone hooked up. Apparently since our house has just been converted to apartments, they’re confused at the location to hook up the phone or something, who knows what the delay is. Therefore, we are still in limbo waiting for our land line. Wow, that feels so weird to say, land line, and the fact that were angsting over having one is even weirder…. what even is that? Were both pretty annoyed at how expensive communication is here. I am pretty sure Todd has mentioned this before. Without jobs we can’t really afford the cell phone and monthly internet payments, but at the same time we can’t fully stalk jobs to earn money to pay for it all. What a conundrum.

I read on my Kindle (thanks freeeends, I’m obsessed) the rest of the day. Thanks Nikki for the book suggestions, I’m loving “The Help.” I gotta get in my “fun” reading fix before I have a serious grad student face. Todd took care of biznasss with that resy (aka CV down ‘unda) and job searching pretty much all afternoon. We did get our debit cards and health insurance cards in the mail today, so that was exciting. In the afternoon we walked to the grocery and picked up some items. Todd experimented with, of course, the Asian selection, what else? Needless to say we had another yummy stir fry concoction with chicken, shrooms, red capsicum (pepper), carrot, asparagus, and ginger.

Some Leah observations for today:

-There are a lot of tall Aussie women (Sarah you’ll be right at home)

-“No” is pronounced “No-OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” with a high voice inflection at the end, like it’s a question. Once we can start skyping from the privacy of our own home, we’ll demonstrate.

-We saw a really long, stretch-marked ass-crack hanging out of a jirt (jean skirt). There’s still white trash, one might say, even in Oz.

-Plain yellow mustard is called “American Mustard,” but tastes like honey mustard

-We got the TV schedule and there is no “The Office,” no “30 Rock,” or “SNL.” “Good Morning America” is on at 3:30am (Hey Robin Roberts!) but we do have all the “Two and a Half Men” we could ever want to see. Whoopeee for “MEEEEEEEEN!”

Finally something just for fun

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

We started our day late today. Well, actually I started late; Leah got up early and read her book while I slept in. I’m feeling beat and my body demanded sleepy time. I stayed in bed until almost eight. Leah is feeling much better but her cold has settled in her chest and she’s been coughing a lot at night. We don’t have a spare room to sneak off to anymore so she kept me awake for a good portion of last night.

We had some toast and coffee for breakfast and headed over the café for the free internet. We both had another coffee and caught up on some e-mails. By the time we were done with that it was already noon. I called the phone company from a pay phone and asked when they’d have our phone hooked up. It may be tomorrow, or it may be as late as Monday. So we’re still without any form of communication outside of the odd free WIFI we come across.

We decided that, since we haven’t done anything just for fun yet, today was the day. We walked home and packed up our bikes for a ride. I’d forgotten that my front brake wasn’t working but fortunately Andrew and Melisa, our new neighbors, were out and about in the yard. Andrew let me borrow a couple of tools and in about thirty minutes I had the bike fixed and we were off.

We headed west from our place up over a hill and over towards Mt. Coot-Tha. It’s not much more than a big hill but it passes for a mountain in Queensland. The Brisbane Botanic Gardens are there. Actually there are two botanic gardens, one in the CBD and one at Mt. Coot-Tha.

It was only 1.7 miles (2.7k) there and only took us a few minutes. The place is absolutely gorgeous. We walked around acre after acre of perfectly manicured gardens. Leah spent most of the day with the camera in hand and took almost 150 pictures. We both agree that the camera we bought before we left was worth the expense. Some of the photos look like they might have been taken by a professional. Leah really has a great eye for composing pictures.

I was happy to see the names of some of the plants we’ve been seeing around. There are so many beautiful flowering trees around right now I’ve been wanting to know what to call them. One of my favorites is called Plumeria. The Blossoms are white with pale yellow edges. We walk past several of them every day and I’ve been wondering what they were called. They have a faint, sweet perfume that smells incredible. Leah looks great with one behind her ear.

We got our first good look at some critters there as well. There were a bunch of ducks and some sort of cranes in the pond and a ton of lizards called Water Dragons that were running all over the place. We also had a good look at some orb weaving spiders, nothing too big though. The biggest was about three inches.

We didn’t even walk half of the pathways in the gardens. It’s so close that we agreed to pack a picnic and spend another morning seeing the rest. About four we hopped back on the bikes and went home.

We also got out of our comfort zone for dinner. So far we’ve stayed close to home, either eating in or at cafes near here. We asked Melissa where some other options were and she gave us a book called “Brisbane’s Budget Bites 2009” a guide to cheap good eats. We perused the book and though we didn’t choose any of the places in it. It did give us an idea as to where we could find something. We hopped the train, up a couple of stops and explored another neighborhood called Milton.

The first place we saw was a pizzeria with a huge TV showing the Australia vs. England rugby match. We didn’t even have to talk about it, this was it. The pizza was good. Ours had Salami, olives and chilies with Tabasco. Pizza is pizza, but I have noticed Aussies have a love for BBQ sauce. Most of the pies had it. This place did pizza a little differently than I’ve ever seen. They sell their pizza by length. We opted for the 25cm pie, but you could get it in several lengths up to a meter. Obviously it isn’t round; it’s about 8 inches wide and whatever length you order. I think when we go back we’ll have to order one a little bigger. We didn’t understand what we were ordering and assumed the pizza was round. Ours only had six slices, and since we’d only had a light lunch at home we were both hungry. I had a beer, Thooey’s extra dry, and Leah had a glass of wine. Our bill was $32. This is not a cheap place to eat out.

Whenever you see beer on a menu here, they list the alcohol content. The one I had was 5%, the strongest on the menu. I’m gonna have to figure out how Aussies afford to get drunk here. At $6, the cheapest on the menu, it’s hard to even justify drinking with dinner. Not that going to the liquor store is cheap either. A six pack of beer is around $17. I had read that before we came, but we actually went into a store to check for ourselves. I almost had a heart attack to see a case of Corona was almost $90. Srsly, I miss PBR.

After dinner, I was sitting on the back stoop and saw more of those huge bats and some strange possum like thing climbing on the power lines. I didn’t get a good look at that, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled and maybe ask someone what it was.

Some observations from today:

-Most restaurants here are open to the street. To use the toilet (they rarely call it a restroom and never call it a bathroom) you usually have to go outside and around the back.

-Rugby is really fun to watch and brutal. Two guys clashed heads in the match today and the one was still unconscious when they carried him off the pitch.

-Someone said G’day to us! It was actually yesterday at the library. I mentioned it to Sally and she said it’s kind of gone out of fashion.

-Women tend to wear really short skirts, not that I’m complaining.

-I was the only one in the restaurant eating my pizza with my hands; everyone else used a knife and fork.

One week and counting.

Tuesday November 17, 2009

BUBBLES! Rice Crispies here are called Rice Bubbles, I meant to type that yesterday but must have blanked it. It just struck me as weird.

My feet hurt. I’m tired.

We walked all over the place today. After breakfast here at the studio, we headed over to the library and signed up for cards. We’re starting to feel like regular members of the community already. The branch library is right next to the train station at Toowong shopping centre. It only took us a few minutes to get our cards and a few minutes more to pick up a couple of DVDs. To this point we’ve been at the mercy of Aussie over the air TV. We haven’t had a TV schedule so it’s been hit or miss.

After the Library we had to make it over to Paddington and the rental office to turn in our inspection report for the unit. We took a train downtown and then walked over to Paddington from there; about twenty minutes hike. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but today the temp got up to 37C, about 98.9F. That’s hot anywhere.

After the rental office we walked back downtown and checked out the Queen Street Mall for a while. We found out it’s going to be near impossible to get a contract for a phone without a job. We also looked into getting Leah’s phone unlocked to we could get some pre-paid time, but the unlocking fee is more than it costs to just buy a new phone and go pre-paid. That’s what we’ll have to do I guess.

We grabbed some lunch in one of the many food courts around the mall. We’ve done a lot of food court eating since we’ve been here, but usually there is a nice selection at a reasonable price. I’d say the options are mostly fresher and better than what you would get at a mall food court in the US. Of course there are Maccas (Australian for McDonalds) everywhere and KFC seems quite popular as well. We tend to go for sushi hand rolls or Kebabs. Kebabs are very much like Gyros, only the bread is thinner and you have more choices at to what goes in them. I saw someone get tomato sauce (Australian for ketchup) on one today. I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon. I get Hot chili sauce, the only spicy thing we’ve had here.

---slight interruption---

!!! Paul Hogan sighting!!! As I write this there’s some old Australian comedy show on featuring The Man himself. Man’s a national treasure. And judging by the tightness of his shorts this show must be from the 80’s.

---Resume posting---

We did some more shopping, I got some hair clippers, and a home phone. I haven’t had a land line since I made the cell switch in 2002. You don’t get much choice when you’re trying to buy a phone with a cord these days. $39 for the cheapest cordless they had. They didn’t even have one with a coiled cord anymore. When I asked the clerk about them he looked at me like I had the pox.

We also managed to find a full set of bike maps. When we went to campus last week they gave us a bike map (number 6) It’s the best map of the city I’ve been able to find but it only covers a small area around St. Lucia. (That’s where UQ is) It has the names of every street, all the bike routes, and all the bus routes. I’ve been on a mission to find more since last Thursday. I finally found the city council office and got a full set of ten.

Oh, a few things to mention on the shopping front. We checked out the grocery a little closer and found you can have ranch dressing here, despite what I’d heard rumored on the internet. In fact you can get Newman’s Own.

When we came home we were shagged. It was almost five when we got in and we had been walking around since eight. We met our new neighbors to the south, Melissa and Andrew and chatted with them for a while. They told us that the house we live in now used to be owned by a couple who were in their late nineties and just moved into a retirement home this past June. The new owner divided the house into studios, so that’s why everything is so new.

They were super nice and had some advice for me on where I might look for work. I’m running out of small things to do now and have the whole find a job thing looming big now. My plan is to get up tomorrow and hit the streets a bit. Our phone should be hooked up sometime tomorrow so at least I’ll be somewhat reachable.

About 6:30 clouds rolled in and we got a nice bit of rain. Lots of lightning and thunder made for a great break from the heat. It poured really hard for about an hour. Then cleared up and cooled off. That would be nice every day.

I just looked at the clock and it’s only 9:30. It feels much later, Leah has been asleep for almost an hour already.

A few observations from today:

-Movember is hilarious. There are so many awesome mustacos (Australian for moustache) around town right now.

-Managed to cook dinner without setting off the alarm tonight. Though it was only 280g of shrimp and it took about 40 seconds to cook.

-I haven’t been able to find real Q-Tips anywhere here yet. The only ones they seem to sell are the cheap plastic kind. (Mom, you may need to get a care package ready)

-Nudity isn’t uncommon on regular TV here.

-NFL Football is called “Gridiron”

-I’d kill for a Diet Dr. Pepper

-I’ve been told that food portion sizes are much smaller here. I don’t find that to be true. The only difference I’ve seen is in the drinks. A large Coke at Maccas is the medium back home. Otherwise portions are quite similar.

-I didn’t realize that I’d adopted “a bit” as a turn of phrase. Thanks April for keeping me in line.

Sports, Shopping and Adventures with Smoke Detectors

Monday, November 16th, 2009

It’s been a busy couple of days for us. Even though we had been told Sundays were sleepy here, we still managed to get a lot done yesterday.

We started at our usual six or so and waited around for someplace to open for us to get coffee. The news promised it’d be warm and they weren’t lying. The temps reached about 34 C, or about 88 F. Hot enough for us, but nothing, apparently, to what is to come.

We went down the street to a coffee shop about eight and grabbed some breakfast, I had eggs bacon toast and baked beans (not at all uncommon for brekkie here) and Leah had toast and jam. We discovered that they had free WIFI there but unfortunately we didn’t bring the laptops. After food we headed over to Woolworths to get some groceries. Woolie’s isn’t like the five and dime stores we used to have in the states, it’s one of the largest grocery chains in the country. We found it to be much like US stores, fewer options for most things. For example, in King Soopers you have an entire aisle devoted to chips, here you get about fifteen feet of an aisle and maybe twenty choices. Doritos original are just plain corn chips, Cheetos come in bacon flavor and you can get potato chips with honey chicken soy flavor. We did find salsa but only one choice and it was Old El-Paso, a bit shocking when you’re used to Denver.

On the other hand, the Asian options here are unbelievable; seriously, there are more Asian foods in a regular grocery store than I’ve ever seen in the states. It’s great. We’re looking forward to expanding our pantry and getting to know Asian foods as well as we know Mexican.

The meat department was a nice surprise as well, beef is a lot cheaper than I expected. You can get T-Bones for $15 a kg. (it’s going to take some getting used to this metric system thing ) Many of the cuts of meat are named differently here, so I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at sometimes. For instance, they had a steak that looked like a New York strip labeled porterhouse. Believe me, I know my porterhouses and this wasn’t it. But I’ll get used to that. We grabbed some steak for stir-fry for about $6.

As I expected there was a ton of lamb reasonably priced, and also lots of veal. You don’t see too much veal at a regular grocer in the states, but it must be popular here. Sausages have weird names, I’m not sure what most of them are, but mostly they look like long hotdogs.

One of the most common questions people asked in the states before we left was, “Are you going to eat kangaroo?” Well, we saw it and I’m not going to try it until someone cooks it for me first. It’s really dark and gamey looking, so I don’t want to screw it up and turn myself off of it. I will say, we haven’t seen it on any menus yet.

We picked up a few staples including butter (it’s more yellow here) Jam, yoghurt, Vegemite (course I would y’all), coffee, a couple of bananas and some veggies to make stir-fry. The produce is a bit more varied than it is in Denver; they just don’t have as many types of chilies, though there are a few so we won’t be eating too blandly. There were at least six different kinds of cabbage, bok choy, mok choy etc. It must be an Asian thing. We took some baby Buk Choy. It’s tiny and adorable.

We dropped the groceries off at home and hopped on a train to go to Indooroopilly (pronounced in-drugh-pilly) a suburb two or three stops south of home, to check out a huge mall there. It’s big and we did a bit of shopping. We found target (Sarah, rest assured they have it and its glorious! Leah was in her dream) and bought some much needed cleaning supplies and a few other things. We also took the opportunity to check out Coles, the other major grocery here. It had a bit of a wider selection. We stopped into all of the mobile phone providers again and tried to make sense of the wacky system they have here. I think I may finally be starting to understand how it works. In fact, I may be qualified to work for them by the time I choose a plan.

We made our way back home about five or six and spent the next few hours rearranging our apartment. There’s only so much you can do with one room and the cheapest Ikea furniture, but it was fun anyway. By the time we got done with that we were too tired to cook the dinner we planned so we settled for ramen and crashed by 9:30 again. We are so rock and roll!

Monday morning was a miracle, we slept in! We actually slept until almost 7:30. And here’s the kicker, I kinda felt guilty. We must have finally kicked the jet lag to the curb. I’ve never traveled this far before so I didn’t realize just how much one is affected by it. If you come to visit us, plan on three weeks. You’ll thank me for it.

After checking out the local news for a while we flipped channels and discovered, much to our surprise, that the Packers were playing the Cowboys on channel nine. (In fact, as I write this I just found New England and Indy) I’m not sure if the game was live or not, but it was cool to see some NFL after a steady diet of Rugby and Cricket. I’m not kidding, at any given time out of the eight or so channels we get on the antenna, at least three have sports and most of it is Rugby and Cricket. Rugby is a bit of a mystery to me still, though I get the gist of it. Cricket is much easier to grog after watching a bit. I think I’ll really like it. I just need to get the lingo a bit. It’s got enough similarities with baseball that I think most Americans could suss it out quickly. (How ya like that lingo?)

It’s also funny to see that America isn’t the only place that has Tiger fever. Mr. Woods has been in Australia all week winning the Australian Masters, a tournament I didn’t even know about before now. Every news program and newspaper has given him quite the welcome. The organizers of the tourney paid him three million dollars just to show up, not to mention the prize for winning. I think Tiger enjoyed himself.

Our first meal at home was brekkie this morning, toast, jam and peanut butter for Leah, and toast butter and Vegemite for me. Vegemite is tasty, provided you don’t get crazy with it. Daniel advised us before we left, lots of butter, little vegemite. He was right. If you haven’t ever tried it, go out to the store and get some. Leah’s dad found it in Madison, I’m sure you can get it in Denver. DO IT, you’ll feel closer to us.

We didn’t stick around to see if the Pack could pull it out. We headed down to the coffee shop and got on the internet. We had a bunch of things to get done early. We switched the power, gas and phone over to our names. It was a painless process, I only had to make one phone call and it was done. The whole thing only took about five minutes. We’ll have the power and gas switched on Tuesday, and the phone will be done by Wednesday. The phone costs us $29 a month and we can’t make international calls on it. I’m not sure if we can even receive international calls, but we need to have it in order to get internet access at home. Our place isn’t equipped for cable and looking at the prices, I’m not sure we could afford it anyway.

After that we tried to get library cards but couldn’t cause we didn’t have proof of address. We’ll do that tomorrow. So on a whim we headed off to Ikea, Leah needed a few more storage/organization options and I wanted a couple of things for the kitchen. Little did we know, Ikea is a long freaking way from our house. We took a train, to another train, to a bus, to another bus, and then had to sprint across a freeway to get there.

Ikea is still Ikea, even in Oz so I’ll spare you the deets, we did manage to get $85 worth of stuff and head back home. It took us an hour and a half to get home and by the time we made it back to the city everyone was getting off work so the train home was packed.

At home we finally made ourselves a dinner at home and promptly set of the smoke detector (holy shit is that bugger loud) about ten times. The only cooking device we have is an electric frying pan, so I’m not sure how we’re gonna avoid a repeat in the future. I’ll probably have to move the whole operation across the room and get used to cooking with the window open. The ceiling is about twelve feet in here, and the smoke detector is hard-wired right in the middle of it. I have to figure something out or I’ll go nuts.

There are at least two full pages in our rental agreement about how it’s unlawful to tamper with the smoke detectors in apartments. Perhaps I can use a pole with an inverted bowl on it to cover it up while I cook. I’ll post some pics when I figure something out.

Speaking of pics, the only internet access we have been getting at this point is free WIFI at a few key places. Data is so precious to Australians I worry about using up their bandwidth loading photos, so we’ll be posting pics only after we have access at home. I think that’s gonna be at least a week and maybe longer. In the meantime, bear with us dear readers. We’ll get them as soon as we can.

Whew, that seems like a lot, doesn’t it? It’s all mundane now that I look back at it, but somehow it seems exciting.

Observations from the last couple of days:

-Froot loops in Australia are still Froot Loops but Rice Crispies are called Rice

-Power is billed every three months here, gas, every two, and phones every month. You can pay all of your bills through a system called B-Pay that you can access from your internet banking site.

-the on the spot fine for littering in Brisbane is $200 and it is enforced!

-“Tasty” is a flavor of cheese here, I think it’s supposed to taste like cheddar, but it doesn’t

-Eggs are not refrigerated here; they’re just down a regular aisle like bread (Kathleen, your worst nightmare). The yolks have a deep orange color like eggs in Mexico. They still taste good with a couple of rashers of bacon.

-Leah here…we also saw the most extreme raptor arms on a human that we have ever seen in our life (easy, T-Rex)

-

Home is where you hang your hat.

Sunday November 15^th, 2009

We did it, we moved into our new studio. Yesterday was super busy. We started our day early again getting up just about 5:30 and not stopping until 9:00pm. We packed our stuff and stored it in the storage room at the hotel, grabbed as much as we could on our bikes and pedaled over to the rental office. We overestimated how long it would take us so we showed up more than an hour early. We grabbed a seat at a café across the street and had a bite to eat of toasted ciabbata bread and homemade jam. I’ve been Jonesing for some real coffee. The only black coffee we’ve seen so far is either instant (bleach) or really watery. I discovered that to get the kind I like I have to order a “Long Black” It has a bit of foam on top but no cream or sugar. It was heavenly and strong. I needed it.

After our brekkie (yeah I know, Leah is right at home here) we popped into the rental office at 9:00. We went over the paper work with the rental agent and got the keys. The rental process is a lot more involved here than it is in the states. They are required to be extremely clear about the responsibilities of each party. We have a huge file already devoted to the apartment. After we were done (about and hour) we set off to bike to the new place. The rental agent sort of raised an eyebrow when we told him we were biking there and now I understand why. It was a real ass kicker. Though it was only about two or three miles, there were about fifty hills to climb. And since my front brake isn’t working it was a little hairy coming back down. Not to mention we were loaded down with a ton of stuff.

We got into the place about 11:00 and took a quick inventory. Everything looking good we walked over to the train station (about five minutes walk) and headed back to the hotel. While we were there we took a minute to check our e-mail and discovered we had been invited to a Thanksgiving dinner put on by an American, Kate, and her Aussie husband, Mark. Our friend Julia in Denver had made an e-mail introduction for us to another couple Sally, and Aussie and her husband Rob, an American from Seattle. Sally and Rob were the ones who invited us to the Thanksgiving feast. They also in our panic of not being able to find an apt, kindly offered for us to stay at their place if we were in a bind, even though they are in the process of moving next week. I must say they are extremely generous to us, even though we had never met, they were willing to take us in and invited us to our first party in Oz.

We packed the rest of our stuff into a taxi and made the trip to our place. The cab ride was only $16, a pretty sweet deal compared to hauling everything by bike. After we unloaded, Leah had a horny face about organization for the next hour and a half or so. That’s really all the time we needed to stow our stuff since we don’t have a lot. Then, unpacked and smiling we walked over to K-Mart to get some bedding. Obvi we grabbed sushi once again for lunch….rolls are $2, which is pretty hard to pass up. So delicious!

K-Mart in Oz is pretty much like K-Mart in the states only not bankrupt. We spent the next hour picking out sheets and pillows, a duvet cover and a quilt. So, funny story happens in K-fart. We’re debating sheet colors and I here this tiny voice beside me, “Excuse me, do you know where my dad went?”. I look down and there’s this little red headed freckled kid looking up at me, he probably was about six. “Sorry mate,” I say, “haven’t seen him.” “Oh he says.” So I ask him what his dad looks like. “Black hair, big tummy” he says. So we suggest maybe he’s around the corner and off pops the kid. Thirty seconds later he’s back. “He wasn’t there.” The kid says with a little bit of a pouty face. So I offered to help him find his dad. I introduced myself and he tells me his name is Angus. You don’t meet too many Angus’s in the states. It takes about two minutes to find Angus’s dad, and sure enough he has black hair and a big belly. What struck me as strange about the situation was how unafraid to ask for help Angus was. Americans are frightened; it’s kind of hard to tell when you’re there.

Well we got our bedding (which was really pricey by the way and we were at K-fart mind you) and a few other necessaries and carrying our huge bags went back home. By this time it’s after three and Sally and Rob are to pick us up at four. So we made up the bed grabbed a quick shower (it’s hot here, have I mentioned that) and packed up some togs. Togs is slang for clothes I guess. Anyway, the place we’re going for dinner has a pool and we’re supposed to bring some swimmers (also slang, means Board scccchorts).

Kate and Mark live in a gorgeous house right on the river only a few blocks from the shitty apartment we looked at the day before. Leah and I were both a little surprised to know where we were so soon. So we had thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of strangers on a Saturday, temps in the 80’s and it was a pool party. I could get used to this. Pretty much all of the staples were there, only no cranberry sauce. I don’t think they even have it here unless you can special order it from USA foods. Also, they have a big yummy salad, but no salad dressing, weird huh?

There were four of us Americans and about ten or fifteen Aussies, plus five or six small children. Leah falls hard for a child with and Aussie accent. I admit it’s adorable. We found ourselves explaining what the big deal was about thanksgiving and why we have it. After dinner and a few beers we sat in the yard and chatted with our new friends, getting the 411 on cell phone plans and internet options. The only thing I’ll say right now is Ausssies have weird ways of selling phone and internet plans. It looks like we’ll have to spend a lot more than we were in the states to have similar plans. While we were sitting we could see these huge bats flying over our heads. I guess they’re flying foxes, they were about the size of a Chihuahua with wings. Huge actually slash gross.

Back home about nine pm and sleeping by nine thirty, we actually managed to sleep in until almost six this morning. We’re feeling good about that. Today we are going to check our groceries and try and find some internet access, though we’re not too hopeful as most places are closed on Sunday.

Some observations from Saturday:

-Shopping buggies here have four wheels that pivot, not just the two in front. This makes them extremely maneuverable.

-PM Dawn is still acceptable radio faire.

-Todd officially thinks he is Australian…his lingo and accents is passable for a real live Aussie.

-Bindi Irwin is alive and well every morning

-We may in fact be living in Asia, were not sure

-We heard the same story of a partygoer breaking his testicles about 5 times, who doesn’t love a ball sac story

-What Aussies call pumpkins we call squash, they don’t get the big orange things we have. During a discussion about pumpkins they were just weirded out by the fact we bother to grow them but don’t eat them.

-Birds are really, really loud here in the morning. And I don’t recognize a single one. (Except for Bush Turkeys of course.)