Christmas in a death sweat is weird, but fun! Merry Christmas!

We want to wish you all a very merry Christmas and we hope Santa treats you well.

We thought you'd like to see what Christmas in Oz is all about.  Melissa showed us this yesterday and we got a real kick out of it.






Our day was fantastic.  We're sitting here watching Elf on TV.  We had such a great day even though we couldn't be with our family we were taken in and treated by our new friends to a really terrific day.

We started off waking up a tad hungover. We skyped the family trees which was great! Yay internet. We heard the little ones next door outside fascinated by the rainbow marshmallow reindeer poop that was left behind from Santa's mode of transportation last night. Who knew how delightful reindeer poop was!

Here's a pic of me with the kids last night after we set out the reindeer food:

We went over to the neighbors for brekkie and broke into the toys Santa left them. One thing we found refreshing is that families here don't go over board with Christmas presents like they do in the states. Our neighbors are clearly well-off and the kids each got one (yes, I said only one) major gift from Santa and a couple of trinkets in their stockings (but their stocking weren't full, oh the horror).  Thomas got a lego garage car ditty and Zoe got a little scooter and helmet. Even after the grandparents arrived I was expecting a shit-show of presents, but just one little gift each. The adults all exchanged just a book or something simple to one another. We found it really refreshing considering all the stuff you seem to accumulate on Christmas. Melissa and Andrew gave us a nice bottle of red vino, so sweet.  We got Zoe this little play doh set and she was fascinated with it. She played with it the entire time we were there. We had several glasses of champagne and hung out. Melissa's parents used to own a house in Steamboat, so we chatted alot about Colorado and skiing which was fun. (Melissa's Dad is a telemark skier.)

We headed home around noon, showered, and called a cab to Rebecca's place. She had told us to expect a $30 cab ride and it hit $30 on the button.  They live a few miles west of the city where houses start to spread out a bit.  The cab driver dropped us off at the end of the driveway and little did we know it was almost a mile up hill to their house.  When we got to the house we were sweaty and hot and Rebecca and her husband Pete were horrified that we had to walk all the way up.  They had forgotten to mention the driveway and were joking about the cab driver dropping us at the end.  It really was no problem but kind of funny.  Leah's Special K bars got a little soft and our bottle of wine got warm.  Have we mentioned that it's hot here?

On the way there we realized that we forgot to bring the camera.  So unfortunately we weren't able to take any pictures today.  It's a real shame too as Rebecca and Pete have a really lovely home on top of a hill surrounded by beautiful country.  The air was fragrant with eucalyptus.  It was great.

We met quite a few great people and sat down for an incredible lunch. Turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, roasted potatoes and a fantastic green salad with goat cheese and fresh figs. Of course there was an appetizer of huge prawns.  Rebecca is a great cook and we really stuffed ourselves.  Dinner was followed up by an array of desserts that would make anyone's mouth water.

We spent hours chatting and enjoying company.  The kids were all playing a game on the Wii called "Just dance"  it's sort of like guitar hero but you have to follow the dance steps on the screen.  It's a riot.  Leah and I both took turns.  I beat an eight year old at "Groove is in the Heart"  and Leah beat one at "Pump up the Jam".  Take that kids!

I mentioned before that Rebecca is going out of town for a few days and let us borrow her car.  So we drove home.  Driving on the left side is really different.  It takes some concentration.  I drove yesterday for the first time.  Andrew let me borrow the car to go to the liquor store so I'm experienced.  Thankfully the pedals aren't reversed so it's not that difficult.  Both cars I've driven are automatic.  We'll see what driving a manual is like at some point.

Tomorrow morning we're heading down to go camping and scuba diving for a few days.  I don't know if we'll have a chance to post from the road but we will if we can.

Since we don't have any pics from today to post here's a pic of us at Australia Zoo in our $2 ponchos.

And here's Leah with some kangaroos:

Christmas Eve Y'all

You've probably noticed some changes to the blog.  We've added some links to sites we like and some other stuff.  The picture of the Croc up top is one I took at the Australia Zoo.  He's about ten feet long and I was able to get right up next to him to snap the pic.  As close as I ever want to get to one of those blokes.  You'll also notice that we're starting to post pictures in the body of our posts.  If you click on an image you should be able to see it in full size. We hope you like the way the blog is shaping up, we're going to keep trying to improve it.  As we learn more we'll share more.  In the meantime if you have any suggestions or questions that you'd like answered please send us an e-mail.  Also, I've changed the time stamp to reflect Australian Eastern time. Remember we're almost a full day ahead of you.

Wow, It's about time for us to hit the hay.

You guys are just waking up to Christmas Eve and we'll be waking up to Christmas morning.  I've just checked the NORAD web site and Santa is in Japan and due here in Australia in less than an hour.  We don't have much time to get this post done.

We had a really fun day today that mostly consisted of hanging around the house.  Leah managed a work out class while I watched the kids next door for a few minutes.  We popped over to Coles for a few items and that's about it.  Leah made some Christmas Corn Flake Wreaths and I helped by tasting.

By the time she was done with these we were both stained permanently green and covered with melted marshmallow.  We discovered that they don't have the little red cinnamon candies that we have in the states and had to scramble and come up with an alternative.  We used some little raspberry jellies that we found along with some red mini m&m's.

We discovered that they have the good kind of peanut butter here that has nothing but peanuts listed in the ingredient list.  The kind that the oil separates to the top if it sits for a few hours.  It's our favorite. In addition to the wreaths Leah also made Special K bars.  I really lucked out here boys.

We went down to the shops and got some small gifts for the kids.  We're invited over for brekkie and it's not good form to show up on Chrissy morning without at least a gift for the kids.  Never mind the fact that Andrew and Melissa have us over all the time.  Thomas is really into a cartoon called "Ben 10"  I'm becoming quite familiar with him at this point as well.  There's a whole aisle in the toy department dedicated to him.  We managed to pick out a toy for him and a bucket of Play Doh for Zoe.

This evening we cracked open some beers and cranked the ipod (everyone else in the house must be with family cause we're the only ones here) while we made dinner.  We had bought some prawns and steaks and made a nice tomato, pepper and mozzarella salad.  All the prawns that we've seen for sale here come with the heads on.  You don't see this too often in Denver but we've gotten pretty used to it here.  As a matter of fact, we already know we'll miss seafood when we go back.  The quality of seafood here is amazing.

After dinner we helped the kids spread magic Reindeer food on the front lawn.  Aparently if you spread this stuff out on the lawn and leave some rain water in a bucket the Reindeer are more likely to stop at your house.  Also, we discovered that Aussies leave a plate of cookies out for Santa just like we do, though they call them bikkies.  But instead of a glass of milk the old boy gets a bottle of beer.  I think this should be a tradition in the states as well and I plan on bringing it back with me when I come home.

After the kids went down to sleep, we stayed and had a few drinks.  Probably a few too many.

Merry Christmas.  Here's a self pic of us with Steve Irwin. Eat your hearts out.

More Shopping?

Two sleeps til Christmas. Even though the stores and markets are packed and crazy, it just doesn't seem like Christmas when the temperature is ninety degrees.  (actually 30C)

I think I mentioned before that we are going to a friend's for dinner on Christmas.  She has offered to let us use her car while she's away in New Zealand for ten days.  We have decided to get out of town for a while since we are going to be working and in school in another week.  We're heading down to New South Wales and a town called Byron Bay. It's about two hour's drive from Brissie.  Along the way we're going to climb Mt. Warning, the highest peak around I believe and the first place that the sun shines on Australia every day.

Today I made reservations for us to take a scuba certification class starting Monday at Byron Bay.  Scuba has been high on our list since we decided to come to Oz and we're both pretty stoked.  The class takes two days and gets us certified to dive with a dive master anywhere in the world.  After that we have to make a couple more dives with an instructor and get a dive physical and then we'll get our open water license that allows us to dive on our own.

Other than that is was a pretty uneventful day for us today, we hit the grocery store for a few items for Christmas eve dinner and then went with Melissa, Andrew and the kids over to Rocklea for the twilight markets. We got some local honey and some oranges for 99 cents a kilo.  We also found a nice bag of pine nuts for $8.  Pine nuts in the stores here are outrageous so we were happy to pay that.  We got some wasabi flavored macadamia nuts that are out of this world.

Today I noticed a few items that I'm going to miss.  All the dental floss at the store is waxed.  I can't stand waxed dental floss. (If anyone would like to put together a care package of dental floss and Q-Tips brand cotton swabs I'd be in your debt.) Also they don't sell cocktail sauce at the store.  We even tried to buy horse radish and make some ourselves but they only had the mayonnaise type of horseradish. (I found a bottle of the good stuff at a German butcher at the market this evening, woot!) Also, Leah is planning on making special K bars and we had a hell of a time finding corn syrup.  It's called glucose syrup here and gave us both the creeps.  We're gonna try the bars with honey instead of the corn syrup.

Some observations for today:

-"A Christmas Story" is going to be on here, but only once and at 11:30 am on Christmas day
-Prawns, Lobster, and Oysters are common items on the "Christmas Lunch" menu at most peoples houses

To Market

One of the great things about summer is the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Brisbane has them in spades this time of year.  Along with the hot weather summer has brought us ripe cherries, mangoes, papaya, tomatoes, passion fruit, kiwi, nectarines and just about anything else you could ask for.  Our first few weeks we found a grocery store and did most of our shopping there, now that we know our way around we are finding the farmer's markets.

It seems that every day of the week there is a market in some part of the city.  If you know where to look you could buy fresh produce cheaply.  There's a small market at the end of the Queen St. mall on Wednesdays.  We thought it was fantastic when we found it.  It probably has 35 or 40 stalls.  Then we found the West-End Saturday Markets, they have nearly 200 stalls and you really can get just about anything there.  Today we went to a sunset market in new farm and bought a kilogram of prawns for $15 bucks, the largest bunch of basil I've ever seen for $2 some fresh green peppers (they call them Capsicums) and hand made buffalo mozzarella.  We also found a jar of maccadamia nut butter that Leah couldn't resist.

Aside from the fresh veggies there are tons of other things for sale as well.  On Saturday we ate the most incredible empanadas made by an old Argentinian man.  Today we had some Turkish cheese bread and a Greek meat and potato pie.  We have decided we could make a killing with a taco stand.  This country needs some Mexican food.  (more on Mexican food another time)

Tomorrow we're scheduled to go with Melissa over to another suburb and check out their markets.  We're becoming regular little piggies.

Unintentional segue.

Speaking of little piggies. You should see the size of the cockroaches here.  I just took a shower and when I came out there was a school bus rolling across the floor.  If I had a leash I'd catch one and  name him Thomas the Tank Engine because it was about the size of one of my nephew's toys.  These things are big.  I whacked it with a sandal and it just looked at me as if to say "Is that all you got mate?"  I don't know what you'd do but I'm going to the store tomorrow and asking for an industrial sized can of raid.

Oh, and they fly...

Some observations for today:
-big freaky flying f-----g Cockroaches.  Nuff said.

Cue The Choir!

It's a Miracle!  We have internet!  It's like an early Christmas, it's as if the heavens opened up and smiled upon us.  I can't tell you how relieved we are.  We're both sitting on the couch connected to the world and it's wonderful.

We haven't posted here much lately, believing that any day we would be connected at home and able to post in comfort (read "in our underwear").  As I write this I see Leah's little face in the glow of her personal entertainment rectangle and I am content.

Ok, so what the hell have we been up to?

I have forgotten where we even left off.  Jeez it's been a long time since we were doing daily posts.  Mostly we've been in a routine of going somewhere to find internet connection and then spending the day from there. We've both been reading a lot.  I read a history of Australia and several fiction books.  Leah did her preliminary work for school and also read some fiction.

We've spent a lot of time hanging out with the neighbors (not the nekkid one) we're really lucky to have moved in next door to Melissa and Andrew.  They are a huge help and always there if we need anything.  Besides it's nice to have someone else to talk to.

hmm.  The days kind of run together, but a few highlights:

Last Thursday we were supposed to be able to pick up our internet router after 11 am.  Just when I was about to leave the house and pick it up, the mobile phone rang.  It was the guy from the job interview a couple of weeks ago.  He asked if I could come by later in the day for a second interview.  Of course I agreed and later that afternoon I took the train to Nundah and met him for my second interview.  He offered me the job right away and I start on Jan 4th, the first working day of the new year.  I'm pretty excited.  It's a pay cut from my last job but it'll get us started.

I felt like a million bucks leaving the dealership.  I really had to fight the urge to click my heals together walking back to the train.  I'm not kidding it was exhilarating.  When the train dropped me off at Toowong I popped into the Telstra shop to pick up our modem.  It was there and I felt even better.  The day before I had called to make sure our order went through and the guy told me there was a big green check mark next to our order.  Good to go.  So new job and internet access in hand I practically floated home.

And then it happened again.  The damn internet connection wasn't there.  I called Telstra and found out that despite the guy telling me that there was a big green check mark the computer had spit out our order.  Something else was wrong.  But "No worries" this guy says, we'll have you fixed up by Saturday. I lost my shit.  Seriously, I had been so happy only seconds before and I felt as if someone had pulled the rug out from under me.  I held it together long enough to be cordial on the phone but as soon as I hung up I went on a tirade.  Imagine the father from "A Christmas Story" and you'll have a good idea of what I sounded like.

So Saturday comes around and we haven't heard from Telstra so I call again.  It's been over a month at this point since we put in our order.  This time the woman tells me that there's a problem with the lines and they need to send a linesman out to "jumper the line"  Whatever the hell that means.  Basically they tell me it'll be Tuesday.  I gave that woman an ear full without swearing or even raising my voice.

Tonight, just for giggles I plugged the router in and sure enough the green lights started twinkling and here we are: Basking in the glory of teh interwebs.

I have some more to say but I'll leave it there for now.  I'll be back tomorrow with more.

Some observations for today:

-The neighbors are hoping the grass is nice and green for Christmas.
-Arugula is called Rocket
-There was a show on yesterday called "a conversation with Michael Bubble

Bloody Telstra!

Ok, so we still don't have internet at home, but I'm using the library cpu for a few minutes to post. 

I got a job this week.  I was hired at the Honda dealership that interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and I start on January 4th.  We're pretty excited.  I'm taking a pretty big pay cut from my last job in the states but it's a great start. At least we'll be having some money coming into our account.

We're supposed to have internet access tomorrow.  Still not holding my breath but I am hopefull.

Only a few days til christmas and We're missing home.  Hope all is well with everyone.

Will post more as soon as we can.

Don't give up on us yet

Howdy Y'all.
We got our phone installed yesterday and I am supposed to be able to pick up the internet modem on Thursday.  Our long wait is nearly over.  They did agree to waive the $299 installation fee for the phone line because of all the trouble, though the landlord said he'd pay it anyway.  I guess we don't get anything for our troubles. 

I just got done looking at Erin Porter's photos from Kathleen's birthday at Crested Butte.  Looks like we missed another fun gathering kiddies...

I'm at the library for a while and Leah is on campus.  Her financial aid came through this week and she has to take care of some paper work. 

I've missed writing these updates for you guys.  Don't give up, soon I'll be able to write from the comfort of my couch and then we'll keep you updated better.

Ok, so short and sweet.