No Worries, Mate

Time of my Life

2010-04-03T22:00:00.005-04:00

I've been repatriated. Josh has been asked to be extended....again. We're incredibly lucky though that he has such a good job and that he enjoys (to the most part) the work that he's doing out there. The only good part about it is that I have a ton of free time. Free time in which to blog and try to catch up on all the cool stuff that we have been able to do from last October to mid-March. While I thought that I could disappear from the blog-o-sphere without much notice, apparently there are quite a few people who still like to read about our life.

As a start, following is a story from our time down-under that just sums up how it was to live there. I've posted it over on that social networking site when it first happened, but it's worth writing down for posterity's sake.

In January of this year, we started playing trivia at a local restaurant/bar/hotel, The Russell. Australian trivia is much like any other trivia that you would play in the States except with quite a few more Oz-related political/entertainment/sports questions. Also, I'm not sure if it was because we were in Australia or because we were in the bush, but there seemed to be quite a bit more cheating going on (as in the host going around and giving us answers).

Our team consisted on a regular basis of 4-6 Americans and 2-4 Aussies. Most of the time the other teams just made fun of us for submitting answers in Farenheit or in not using the metric system, but one night I managed to embarrass us beyond all belief. We were one of the 2 teams in a tie-breaker for one of the rounds. While not a very intense situation (we were only playing for a $10 tab certificate), I was totally into trying to beat the other team. For some unknown reason, the hostess would never pull up tie-breaker questions prior to the game that night, but instead tries to think of them on the spot.

While thinking of the questions that would be asked of us, she asks the group "Do you know a lot about poetry?"

I, obviously not still not able to understand the accent, immediately yell out in my not-yet-lost Southern voice "WHAT? You mean like chicken?!?"

It was foreign diplomacy at its best.

Australian is funny - Part 8.

2010-02-24T14:48:00.005-05:00

What? I haven't blogged in 5 months?!? That's normal, right?

So I probably have a lot to catch up on with the blog --- a month long trip back to the States, Josh's parents' visit to our great home, scuba diving on the Great Barrier, Christmas in 98 degree weather, a week in Fiji (*sigh*) --- but in order to ease myself back into the blogging world, today I only have a simple picture from Surfers Paradise to illustrate that regardless of how long you spend in the land down under, you're never really going to understand it.

After wikipedia'ing it, I found out that it basically means no soliciting or panhandling , but I think that I prefer the much more exotic-sounding ‘touting’ and ‘busking’.

The Birds

2009-09-29T17:49:00.004-04:00

Remember right after we arrived here when I posted a picture of this bird?

And I talked about how it was the Australian magpie - the national bird of Australia. And they can make 35 different noises including the imitation of a horse or a dog. And how their natural call sounds like beautiful wind chimes out our window. And how Josh calls them the penguin birds and oh how cute.

Well forget everything I ever wrote about them. The only thing that you need to know is that the bird above is the Australian version of Satan reincarnated.

We had read online that the magpies become extremely territorial while they are nesting and the chicks are growing (usually during the early spring months of August - October). Over the past 4 weeks or so, Josh has been getting swooped at and buzzed on the golf course. It has angered him so much that he's thrown golf clubs up in the trees to try to warn them off. We have discovered that they won't bother you if you keep your eyes on them so normally if we are on a hole that we know has a swooping magpie (there are about 3 out of the 18), I try to keep my eyes on them while Josh takes his swing. It has definitely proven to be a stressful way to play golf and I believe that Josh is almost ready to give up until they stop attacking him.

I haven't really been attacked yet since I believe that they go after Josh more since he's male and taller. It has been frustrating to Josh since I didn't really know how scary it was.

So yesterday, I decide that instead of riding my trainer inside, I was going to go for a nice leisurely hour ride out in the sun to enjoy the beautiful day. Nowhere in my mind was the fact that wikipedia had mentioned that bicyclists were particularly at risk from attacking birds (something about the constant movement forward makes them crazy). At least it wasn't until about a mile from home when I heard a 'SWOOSH' behind me and saw the shadow of a crazy bird following me and diving. It scared me so bad. I was yelling and spinning fast and waving my arms trying to get it to stop following me. And it wouldn't. I finally cycled out of its territory.

Only to be attacked by another bird. After the first I figured that I could keep going and just make it back home by a different route. But after the second one started swooping at me, I just decided to give up and make my way slowly back home.

This entailed not going back the way that I came, putting my sunglasses on the back of my helmet (to try to trick them) and getting off my bike every single time that I saw a magpie (regardless of how small it was). It was a slow journey with me walking and then riding when I felt somewhat safe.

Unfortunately I got a little too comfortable as I was making my way on the grass next to the main highway that runs into Dalby (the Warrego Highway) and the next thing I knew I had been bumped in the back of my helmet by yet another bird. You can not believe how scary it is to have a bird get that close to you in an agressive manner. He was by far the worst. I got off my bike and slowly started walking backwards (you know - because they supposedly won't attack if they see eyes). Well, this male had some serious testosterone imbalances because he would come straight at me while I'm staring at him.

So picture this - I'm in my bike clothes and bike shoes on the side of a major highway with cars passing constantly yelling and waving my bike at this bird flying down at me. If only someone had had a video camera on me, I would have become a youtube sensation over night.

It's easy to see the hilarity in it now. Josh pretty much laughed as soon as he heard the story (though he was happy that I was okay). I am actually still a little spooked by it and probably won't be doing much exercising outside until after I'm 100% sure that all the bird craziness has gone away.

Weather Phenomenon

2009-09-28T04:49:00.006-04:00

Last week while Atlanta was having its own weather problems, we were going through something a little strange in Australia. Wednesday morning I drove Josh into work and it was a really pretty blue sky at 6 am, but the radio hosts kept warning that a dust haze was going to make its way into the area. Neither Josh nor I knew what a dust haze was, but Josh said 'I bet that we don't even notice it.'

Fast forward 3 hours and this was the scene out the patio door.

It was very War of the Worlds. You could go outside and come in with dirt all in your nostrils and all over your skin.

Josh sent me a few pictures that they took out at the power station. He apparently had to spend a few hours out in this that morning (I stayed inside and worked).

We were under the impression that this was a normal thing to happen, but one of the guys that Josh works with says that he hasn't seen one this bad in over 20 years! I guess that we just got lucky.

It cleared out within the day and we had bright sunny skies again on Thursday and Friday. And then on Saturday, it rolled back in again (though not as bad). Josh climbed to near the top of the power station to watch this one come in. He said that it looked us like a thunderstorm except it was all dust.

Against our better judgment, we went out and played golf Saturday afternoon. You can look directly at the sun without hurting your eyes.

That's me playing golf in the dust. The white shorts. Not such a good plan.

And here's Josh cleaning up after we finished playing 9 holes. We didn't really realize how dirty it was Saturday until we went back out on Sunday (which was clear) and all of our stuff was covered in dust.

Josh also found some pretty cool satellite images of the dust haze that shows how big it really was. This thing stretched from Sydney to Brisbane which is like Atlanta to Michigan.

What we've been up to...

2009-09-15T03:18:00.004-04:00

Wow, I've been negligent with the blog. We haven't been anywhere too exciting in the last few weeks. Just day-to-day Dalby.

Last weekend, I did participate in Relay for Life. It was a wonderful experience and I was happy to help raise money to fight cancer here and abroad.

The first picture is of Jonathan. He's one of Josh's best work buddies out at the plant. They cut up way too much and have started putting tire marks all over Jonathan's front yard from their e-brake antics.

Anyway, I just wanted to post his picture to show that it's all guys out at the plant that are as scruffy as Josh. It's not just him.

Also, it was not THAT cold outside. It was probably only in the 50's.

So, since we had a small relay team (8 people) and there was a total of 18 hours of walking, we had to each take pretty big chunks of time. My first portion was from 8 to 10 pm on Saturday. I ended up continuously walking about 2 hours and 5 minutes that night.

Josh's 2 hour period was a little more exciting. He walked the first 10 minutes or so with me until he decided that it was time to go off and find Jonathan. Then Jonathan and he decided to spend 40 minutes talking to the doughnut guy (the local man that fries up fresh doughnuts every other Sunday morning in town and for special events). They were only 50 cents per doughnut, but I think that Josh kept it to only 2 that night. Then they decided to walk with me for another 10 minutes. Then they played death frisbee for 20 minutes, chess for 35 minutes and finally finished up walking the last 5 minutes with me.

I was happy to have him there though.

I ended up also walking on Sunday morning from 6:30 to about 9:00 (with a short 20 minute break to buy some yummy coffee).

It was a wonderful experience and gets 2 thumbs up from me.

Not real sure why I'm looking jaundiced in that picture. I'm hoping that it's the lighting.

The day prior to Relay for Life, we had gone shopping in town. This usually takes up a good portion of the day since Josh never gets to go shopping and did I mention that the Big W has 3 aisles of candy?

However, that day we found a gem in the men's clothing section. Over here, all of the guys that work on the road or lawn care or even sometimes in construction wear the same bright yellow shirts that Josh wear, but they pair it with shorts. Short shorts.

And the men over here are big, burly guys with big thick tree-trunk legs stuck into itty-bitty 80's shorts. It's amusing.

Josh decided he needed a pair of them.

I'm not exactly sure where he plans on wearing them. He calls them his relaxing shorts.

Those are his normal shorts next to his new, blue Aussie shorts.

They are scandously short. I'm hoping to talk him into wearing them out in public.

Interruption in regular posting.

2009-08-28T03:31:00.006-04:00

So I know that I said that I'd post the rest of the Fraser Island pictures AND the V8 Supercar race weekend pictures and I promise that it will get done. Eventually.

But this week we had a visitor and so my blogging kind of stopped.

Ashley graduated high school with Josh and me and I don't think that either one of us had seen her since graduation (or the summer after), but we had gotten back in touch through Facebook (the wonders of modern communication). She decided a few months ago that while traveling the world, her first stop was going to be Australia. Now she's going to get to do some pretty cool and fun stuff over the 3 months that she's here (she's been here 3 weeks, 9 weeks to go), but she made the time to visit us in Dalby.

I picked her up in Brisbane on Wednesday and she spent Wednesday and Thursday with us. She was going to stay one extra day, but yesterday she sat down and figured out how she wanted to book out her tours and where she needed to be on what dates and we realized that she had to be up at Noosa Heads on Friday. So she left today.

Here she is at our kitchen table planning all her stuff.

I think that she enjoyed the fast internet that we have. And it was nice to laugh and hang out with someone that kind of knows your background and doesn't ask you how big Georgia or Atlanta is.

It also made us realize that we LOVE having visitors (she's our first one) so anyone that wants to come, we have more than enough room!

I did manage to get her out to Lake Broadwater yesterday to see some wild kangaroos. She had been to the Australia Zoo and petted/fed some tame ones like us, but it's completely different seeing them out in the wild.

The one below had a joey that crawled in backwards in the pouch. The roos were behaving really well. We probably saw between 50 and 75 while we were out there. Ashley was very excited.

I should probably retract my earlier statement that anyone is allowed to come out and visit us. My cousins on my dad's side probably aren't allowed - there is no roo shooting. And I wouldn't want them to go to gaol.

Also I ran over and killed this snake. I feel kind of bad about it because I think that it was just a harmless green tree snake and also because of how gruesomely it died. I was just driving down the road was we were leaving Lake Broadwater and heard some snap up against the car. Ashley said 'You know that was a snake, right?' So we drove around to look at it.

Whatever - I think that snakes that live in trees are probably just as bad as snakes that can fly so I'm probably did the mates around there a favor.

I drove Ashley over to Toowoomba this morning (she was greyhounding it to Brisbane and then up to Noosa Heads). On the way back home, I was pulled over as part of a random police stop (a policeman in the middle of the road waving 4 cars to pull over) and I had to take my first breathalyzer. AT 9:30 IN THE MORNING!!! I wanted to ask the guy how many people he's caught over the limit when they do these tests in the morning, but he was too busy reprimending me about getting a Queensland license that I decided not to trouble him too much.

And I passed in case there was any question.

Fraser Island - Post 4

2009-08-25T05:02:00.003-04:00

So on that Friday on Fraser Island (which I know was over 2 weeks ago), after Eli Creek, we drove up the beach just a little bit more to see the Maheno Shipwreck.

The Maheno was a luxury liner until it was beached on Fraser Island from a cyclone in 1935. A friend of mine (Australian) said that she'd been to see it about 20 years ago and the ship was intact. Now the side to the sea is all rusted away and caved in.

Most of this end is covered by sand, but you can kind of get an idea of how big it was. Josh is standing out where the stern (? bow?) was poking out.

After Maheno, I decided to take over the driving for the first time. I didn't quite realize how big the car really was.

After I drove down the hard beach for a little while, Josh told me to go ahead and give it a try to get up on the inner trails. The problem was that I chose this spot.

And promptly got stuck.

Josh hopped out and started pushing while I went in reverse. It took him about 4 tries before we got unstuck and a little embarrassment from the tour bus that went by and up the trail over an entrance over to the left of this picture.

Josh joked that the tour guy was saying 'And that, mates, is why you want to go on a guided tour and not rent your own 4WD'.

Here was all the sand on our wheel after we got unstuck.

And here's the tire flap from where it was covered. I'm really impressed that we were able to get it out.

After that, I lost my desire to drive and made Josh take over. On the way back, we were going through this forest of HUGE trees. I made Josh pull over and take my picture of me hugging it.

215 centimeters (7.5 feet) is the diameter of the tree right above where my head is (or maybe a little higher). And remember, this is an all sand island. I'm not really sure how the trees can take root so well. It's really amazing.

Relay for Life

2009-08-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

In about a 2 weeks (September 5th), I'll be participating in the Dalby Relay for Life 2009. Another American wife over here had participated in it back in the States and organized a team for us to participate in the Dalby event.

For those of you who don't know, Relay For Life is an overnight, community event where teams of 10 or more keep a baton moving in a relay-style walk or run to raise funds for the Cancer Council. The event brings the whole community together for a night of fun, entertainment, celebration and remembrance.

Every dollar raised at Relay For Life helps the Cancer Council to:
Investigate new ways to prevent, detect and treat cancers.
Educate people in your community about ways they can reduce their cancer risk.
Advocate for cancer control.
Support people during their times of greatest need.

The Dalby event starts at 3:00 in the afternoon on the 5th and ends at 9:00 in the morning on the 6th. As of right now, it looks like our team only has 8 member so we'll each be doing about 2 hours of walking. Both Josh and I have lost grandparents to cancer and so I will be walking in memory of them and in honor of our friends and family who have been affected by it.

So if you have just a little time and money, I would appreciate any contributions that you can put towards our walk on September 5th. And if you can't send any money, then I'd appreciate your thoughts over those 2 days. Someone is going to have to be out there at 1:00 in the morning. I'll find out tomorrow if it's me or not.

My Relay for Life Donation page

Remember that contributions will be in AUD (instead of USD) so the exchange rate will be in effect (this morning it was around $0.83 USD to $1.00 AUD). Also, any contribution is tax deductible. I'm pretty sure that if you pay online, then you'll receive a receipt electronically, but if you need a hard copy, then I can get that to you. You might even just get a thank-you note/postcard from Australia.

Tomorrow I'll start finishing up the Fraser Island posts and our V8 Supercars experience this past weekend. It has been a crazy week and Queensland is undergoing a winter heatwave (over 90 degrees today!) so it has made me incredibly lethargic.

Josh at the power station

2009-08-13T21:35:00.003-04:00

I've got tons more Fraser Island pictures to post, but Josh sent me a picture of him out at the power station today and I wanted to post it before I completely forgot about it.

Since he has glasses, he has to wear the clear protective glasses that fit over his other glasses. Most of the other guys wear these shaded terminator style protective eyewear.

He didn't tell me what he was doing this high up. I'm hoping that he was doing actual work and figuring out what was going on with a control, but he told me a few weeks ago that he and Jonathan (another American co-worker and friend) climbed up the water tank to see how full it was.

Also you'll note that he has not only his shirt, but his bright yellow jacket on. It hasn't really been cold enough for jackets outside lately. My guess is that he was out of the office pretty early in the morning.

Lastly, as most of you know, I am in protest of the facial hair, but I also know that 99.9% of the guys out there have some type of hair growth on their face and I don't want Josh not to fit in. It's only when he starts trying to braid the goatee (which has been mentioned) that he might find that there was an unfortunate encounter with the shaver while he was sleeping.

Fraser Island - Post 3 - Josh crossing Eli Creek

2009-08-11T17:03:00.002-04:00

Josh crossing Eli Creek. It was windy, but you can kind of tell how cold it was by the expression on Josh's face right after he gets in the water.

Fraser Island - Post 2

2009-08-11T04:47:00.005-04:00

So after Lake McKenzie, we headed back out on the town to the "town" of Eurong which is really just a stop on the beach where there's another resort, a store and a few beach houses. Note the differences between the trail in the 2 pictures below.

The first one is apparently pretty easy to drive on because the sand is pretty packed.

The trail below was a little more scary. The car wouldn't want to grip and I was constantly worried that we weren't going to make it and that we'd have to get out and push. I think that Josh had more faith in the 4WD than I did.

Once we got through Eurong, we were on the Pacific and it was smooth driving. She how awesome our highway was?

I'm pretty sure that Josh was happy to be off of those inland trails and out on hard sand. The only thing that we had to be real careful about was wash-outs which is when the creeks flow from inland down to the ocean. On the safety video that we had to watch before we rented the car, it showed cars getting bogged down from going too fast over these "creeks".

The video said that they could get up to 3 metres deep, but we didn't see anything like that. And we slowed down at every sign of moving water.

Also, the highway was a runway. There were certain sections (about 4) along the 75 mile stretch of beach where there would be cones out indicating that you needed to watch for aircraft taking off and leaving.

I think that Josh and I both decided that we wouldn't want to be landing on this beach in that size of a plane.

Eventually we made it up to Eli Creek. It pumps out 80 million litres of water a day. You can walk up a boardwalk and get in and ride the current all the way down the Pacific (think Lazy Riverish). Our rental car guy told us just to make sure that we got out before it actually reached the Pacific or we'd be taken to New Zealand for free if the Tiger Sharks didn't get us first.

The water was cold (much like Lake McKenzie), but I did talk Josh into walking across so that we could get on the boardwalk.

And here's me with another weird tree.

The water was so clear that it was hard to tell it was even there.

I got in and walked down to a sand dune, but didn't ride the current back down. It felt pretty good on my legs after running the day before, but I wasn't ready to go swimming in 60 degree water.

Back on the beach, Josh made the comment that he's never felt so isolated before. It really is remote.

It was a beautiful day.

Fraser Island - Post 1

2009-08-10T00:12:00.007-04:00

So we took a little weekend trip. I had looked into going to Fraser Island about month ago, but really didn't plan it until 2 weeks ago (after talking to another lady that I know here in Dalby that went to Fraser with her family over the school holidays). Josh and I left Dalby Thursday afternoon after he got home from work and got changed. We had about a 4 hour drive from Dalby over to Hervey (pronounced Harvey) Bay. He drove for the first 2 hours and we stopped in this one-horse town to switch over and ate at a "restaurant" in gas station. I drove the rest of the way into Hervey Bay.

Thursday night we stayed at a hotel across from the water. It was past 8:00 when we got there and Josh was coming down with a full-on head cold so we went straight to bed. On Friday morning, we had to be at the rental place at 6:30 for a briefing on how to drive in sand and all of the rules. By 7:45 we were in line for the barge and they started loading us on soon afterwards. All of the passengers had to go ahead and get onboard before the cars started loading. It was a single ramp barge so Josh had to back up so that he would be able to drive right off.

I think that Josh was glad to be first so that he didn't have to worry about all the other cars.

And then after a 45-minute boat ride across the bay, we arrived at the island. It was fun and beautiful driving in.

The rental car guy told us that they would be putting us out at Wanggoolba Creek landing but we actually came off at the Kingfisher Bay landing. Luckily they had also given us a map so after a little stressing we were able to figure out where we were going.

And once we got off of the hard roads at Kingfisher Bay, we were ON Fraser Island.

And OH MY GOSH - were we in for a surprise. I think that both Josh and I had thought that the trails would be pretty hard packed easy driving. We weren't quite prepared for how technical the driving was.

This was our road coming out of Kingfisher Bay (you can see a red truck in front of us). When the sand was real high in between the tracks our vehicle would start plowing. It was slow going until Josh got his sand legs.

But we made it to Lake McKenzie on that first day! It was gorgeous.

As soon as we walked up, Josh said 'Well, it's not West Point Lake'. It was so clear.

And the hills around it made it the perfect place to just lay back and enjoy the weather. We probably sat around on the beach for an hour just enjoying the sun and beauty.

I managed to get in the water up to my mid-calves. It was just a little bit cold to be full-on swimming.

Of course that didn't stop the fellow German tourists from stripping down to their speedos and running straight in. They were having a blast.

I persuaded Josh to at least walk a little way in. He didn't even want to come in this far.

As we were leaving someone asked if we were local because they wanted to know what kind of tree was in the picture below. Obviously we didn't know, but we thought that it was an odd enough tree so we took a picture. There were little furballs of nuts or flowers or something all over it.

After we walked back up to the car from the lake, we had a grand feast lunch of PB&J sandwiches and drove on to our next destination. We have plenty more pictures and stories to share (including my attempt at sand driving, Josh's failed attempt at safe driving and the snake that we walked right by).

Relay for Life

2009-08-03T23:38:00.005-04:00

In about a month (September 5th), I'll be participating in the Dalby Relay for Life 2009. Another American wife over here had participated in it back in the States and organized a team for us to participate in the Dalby event.

For those of you who don't know, Relay For Life is an overnight, community event where teams of 10 or more keep a baton moving in a relay-style walk or run to raise funds for the Cancer Council. The event brings the whole community together for a night of fun, entertainment, celebration and remembrance.

Every dollar raised at Relay For Life helps the Cancer Council to:
Investigate new ways to prevent, detect and treat cancers.
Educate people in your community about ways they can reduce their cancer risk.
Advocate for cancer control.
Support people during their times of greatest need.

The Dalby event starts at 3:00 in the afternoon on the 5th and ends at 9:00 in the morning on the 6th. As of right now, it looks like our team only has 8 member so we'll each be doing about 2 hours of walking.

Both Josh and I have lost grandparents to cancer and so I will be walking in memory of them and in honor of our friends and family who have been affected by it.

So if you have just a little time and money, I would appreciate any contributions that you can put towards our walk on September 5th. And if you can't send any money, then I'd appreciate your thoughts over those 2 days. Someone is going to have to be out there at 1:00 in the morning. I'll find out tomorrow if it's me or not.

My Relay for Life Donation page

Remember that contributions will be in AUD (instead of USD) so the exchange rate will be in effect (this morning it was around $0.83 USD to $1.00 AUD). Also, any contribution is tax deductible. I'm pretty sure that if you pay online, then you'll receive a receipt electronically, but if you need a hard copy, then I can get that to you. You might even just get a thank-you note/postcard from Australia.

Tomorrow I'll start finishing up the Fraser Island posts and our V8 Supercars experience this past weekend. It has been a crazy week and Queensland is undergoing a winter heatwave (over 90 degrees today!) so it has made me incredibly lethargic.

Which way does the water flow?

2009-07-31T03:23:00.007-04:00

My future brother-in-law, Matt, asked and so I obliged. My best guess as to why he asked is because he wanted to know how the water drained. Well, I've done some research (both hands-on and via Google). There's a theory that the Coriolis effect means that the water drains counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. But apparently this is just a myth - the Coriolis effect doesn't have an effect on that small of bodies of water.

Also, here in Australia, the toilets flush with such force that the water just goes straight down.

Note the "big flush" and "little flush" buttons on top of the toilet. It's on all of them. They are serious about saving water - did I mention the drought that Australia is in?

Also, when you need to find the nearest lavatory, then you need to ask 'Where is the toilet?' and not 'Where is the restroom?'.

I did also take a video of the bathtub draining and you can see (after I disturb it a little bit) that the water does indeed drain clockwise.

If you want to take this as scientific evidence of the Coriolis effect in action, then feel free to. I'm going to trust the info I got on the internet though.

Josh likes beer

2009-07-28T05:50:00.004-04:00

Josh got sick last week. Either some nasty bug that was going around or food poisoning. He tried to blame it on my cooking, but it turns out that the guy that sits next to him was out of work the exact same day for the exact same reasons. Let's just say that he won't be eating free vendor food that sits out on their kitchen table anytime soon.

But out of that experience, we actually found a beer that Josh will drink.

Roo likes it too.

I thought that it was Root Beer when he first picked it up since ginger is a root, but it's actually the other word in the title that's a synonym.

Wednesday 22.07.09 - Random Notes

2009-07-22T05:19:00.004-04:00

Did I mention that I started taking golf lessons? Every Wednesday, I drive to Toowoomba for an hour lesson at 10:00 am. It takes about an hour to get there and an hour to get back, but when you think about it, if we were still in Atlanta a 2 hour commute to get somewhere and back would actually be considered pretty good.

Anyway, the golf lesson is just a ladies' beginner class. There were suppose to 5 of us in it, but it's only me and 2 other (older) ladies. It's pretty fun. My favorite part is that the instructor has decided to call me 'Becs' even when I distinctly introduced myself as 'Rebecca'. It's 'Nice job, Becs' or 'Becs, how you going?'. I told Josh about it and he said that it seems to be an Australian thing to add an 's' or 'y' to the end of people's names. Some of the guys out at the power station have the habit of calling him 'Joshie'. I don't think that he's told them that only his relatives are allowed to call him that.

In Dalby, it's been just plain hot the past couple of afternoons. Yesterday, I went for a run at 3:00 and it felt like summer (okay, maybe late spring). Today it was scheduled to get up to 24*C. On nice days like this, I open the sliding door next to the kitchen so that I can get a nice breeze and kind of pretend that I'm working outside. And with the door open today, I could hear my favorite part of Wednesday coming down the street.

Every single Wednesday, the Home Ice Cream truck comes clanging through the neighborhoods. I first heard it about 2:00, but it must have been a long way off because he didn't make it into our cul-de-sac until 3:15. The Dalby ice cream truck isn't like your normal American ice cream truck. In America, they normally play a nice melodious song and let the little kids run up to buy their favorite treat. Here, it's just a big bell clanging (like the one on the schoolhouse in 'Little House on the Prairie') and they don't sell single treats. They sell BOXES of ice cream.

My best guess is that it's for the housewife who realizes that she doesn't have any ice cream treats in the ice box and doesn't want to run up to the nearest Coles/Woolworths to buy some. I haven't bought any from him yet (as evident by my picture taking covertly from behind our water tank), but I know that there's going to come a day when I'm running down the street with my $5 note. My bet is that it's going to be mid-December.

3 Months

2009-07-19T17:50:00.005-04:00

On Friday, we hit 3 months of living in the country. The time has completely flown by and when both Josh and I tell people how long we've been here, we can't believe that it's already been 3 months.

I think that we both feel like we are starting to fit into our life here. Josh is busier than anyone can even imagine with work and I think that he sometimes wonders how it is all going to get done. My work is going well (at least I think so) and I find that I am actually getting more done without the distractions of the office. We are both meeting more people and have enjoyed our few trips out of town.

It's been 3 months and we've managed to stay out of Gaol so everything has to be good.

More Birthday Presents

2009-07-16T20:54:00.003-04:00

I've been terrible about updating. I have a backlog of blogs that need to be edited and published. I'll try to do it over the next few days.

First though - Josh received some packages in the mail on Monday. His parents had sent him some Australia-themed 30th birthday gifts.

He got mousepad and a koala poster.

And we both got mugs of boxing kangaroos. We're going to love drinking our morning tea out of them.

I especially love our 'kangaroo crossing' magnet. Now we can finally hang up the picture of our adorable nephew and niece that we miss so much.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

2009-07-13T04:59:00.007-04:00

What we do on the weekends that Josh has off and we don't go anywhere, but just stay around Dalby.

We play dominoes.

And we play cards. Both alpino and rummy 500.

And we play golf. Sometimes twice.

This weekend, we went on Friday and Saturday. On Saturday, it ended up being almost 80 degrees. It was wonderful weather!

And we don't play with the yellow practice balls.

Sometimes, we even get around to cleaning the house.

This past weekend some cleaning got done, but most of it got carried over to this week.

And that's mainly because I convinced Josh to go on a walk with me on Sunday afternoon. The weather was perfect again and we needed to get out of the house.

We walked along the creek and made our way down to the park. Josh and I spent a lot of times on the swings. He even managed to jump out of the swing without damaging his back or knees.

I had a bottle of water next to my swing and this little 3 year old boy came over and started to pick it up. I had to explain to him that it was my water. I'm not sure if he understood me or not.

On our walk out to the park, we finally got our first good look at a kookaburra. They are scary, meat-eating birds.

This one let us get pretty close to it until it flew off.

Macca's

2009-07-09T03:58:00.003-04:00

So I'm sitting at home this morning doing my work and talking to my 2 sisters over Skype and all of the power suddenly went out. Everything. Which meant that our wireless was out and that my computer was going to have to run off stored power for however long it needed to. Luckily, we have our back-up wireless broadband and I was able to hop on and let Josh know that we had no power. His reply was to forward an email from Monday informing all tenants of a planned outage from 9 to 3 because of some maintenance.

So I continued to work for a few hours off of a dim screen and the mobile broadband. And then I found out that apparently McDonald's was suppose to have free wireless. I figured that I could ride my bike up there (Josh had the car today) and charge my computer and sit for a little while.

Now, you might think that I'm such a westerner for going to McDonald's, but seriously - Aussies love their Maccas (fyi - I just found out from a sign today that they call it Maccas. They are so funny) because every one that we have been in has been CRAZY. And the Dalby location didn't disappoint. There was barely a seat empty in the place. I found one outside, but was finally driven inside because of the little bitty lizards running all over the bricks.

Also, in every McDonald's, there is something called a McCafe. It's like a little Starbucks in each store. Australians, much like Europeans, love their coffee. And they love taking tea breaks.

So I sat at the Macca's for a few hours reading my book. The working there didn't go so well since it was impossible to find a plug-in and I didn't see any signs for wireless internet, but I managed to pass the time pretty well.

Power came back on at 2:35 - about 5 hours after it went out.

Australian is Funny - Part 7.

2009-07-07T05:37:00.003-04:00

By the way, this is one of the examples where I find 'Australian' making it's way into my everyday language. If I'm with Josh, I'll tell him to push the trolley over this way.

Happy Birthday Josh!

2009-07-04T04:13:00.008-04:00

Yesterday was my husband's 30th birthday. I think that the story goes that back in 1979 his mom was told that she could have Josh on July 3rd or July 5th, but that the doctor really didn't want to come in on July 4th. So July 3rd it was and what a great idea because it meant that it was easy to take extended weekends and not work on your birthday or sometimes you actually got your birthday off as a holiday when the 4th falls on a weekend.

Until you move to Australia.

Josh had to work yesterday. He was very tired when he got home.

The orange in his hand was his birthday gift from the guys at work. Also, as a side note, please ignore the lack of real furniture in our house. Cardboard moving boxes and a kitchen chair work just fine as side/coffee tables, thank you very much.

He already knew about his golf clubs since we spent 2 hours in the golf store swinging and looking and putting and swinging and changing out drivers and swinging and purchasing. Then we spent another hour at the driving range that day. Then we spent another 2 hours playing 9 holes last Sunday. He played the best 9 holes he ever has with them. I think it was a good investment.

I also got him a golf towel as little, unknown gift since it poured last Saturday and we were in dire need of one.

He changed out the driver that was part of the package for a square driver. So it's red while the rest of them are blue.

And yes, I actually got on the ground to take this picture.

Some more little gifts - That 70's Show Season 6 and 7 (we're big TV on DVD fans).

And a set of double-6 dominos.

I can't control craziness in the pictures.

Also, happy birthday to ME!

I spent most of my holiday day trying to figure out how exactly I was suppose to be making Josh's birthday dinner of boiled shrimp....excuse me, prawns.... and hashbrown casserole. Especially considered that Old Bay seasoning isn't allowed in Australia due to a quarantine on some of the spices. I believe that you can buy Zatarains somewhere, but not any of the 2 Dalby grocery stores.

So I trusted the internet and made my own. And since I also has trouble finding cheesecloth, I went ahead and used another internet suggestion of knee high panty hose. It turned out fine.

The prawns were big! Here I am pointing at them.

They had their heads and eyes on still which is not how we typically partake of them, but I couldn't find any fresh, shells on, heads off ones.

These were okay, but not as good as the ones from the Alabama shore. Hopefully we'll be back next summer to have some.

As for the hashbrown casserole, they only sell hashbrowns in those big chunks (not in strings or southern style), but I did find some potato wedges and I think that it was fairly good. The cheese situation just isn't working down here though.

I believe that cake made up for everything though. Then again, when doesn't chocolate make everything better?

And since there are only 2 of us, we'll have it for days and days.

I heart math

2009-07-02T04:13:00.007-04:00

Let's just note that it's a good thing that I majored in math for undergraduate studies - otherwise these darn conversion might have killed me by now.

I've gotten pretty good at estimating the temperature outside - double the celsius, subtract out 10% of the original number, add 32. That means that 18C is really like 66ish F.

And I can approximate how long it will take us to get somewhere when the GPS gives us kilometers remaining. When the little lady in the machine says 'Continue 60 kilometers', what it really means is - multiply 60 by .62, that puts you at about 37 MILES to go, don't freak out and think that it's longer than it really is.

But start throwing reversals in there or uneven numbers and my mind goes all kattywhompus. Such as running a 9.8 pace on the treadmill. I know that a 10 showing means that it's 6.2 miles/hour, but 9.8 is just too many decimals for my mind to handle WHILE I'm also trying to run.

I also find this true when I'm trying to cook from a recipe. Which is why I find myself just winging dinners. But last night, I wanted to make some cornbread to go along with our chili (which first of all, yay to me for finally finding the kidney beans in the grocery store).

Knowing that I wouldn't be so lucky as to find a pack of our go-to Betty Crocker Cornbread Mix, I had my fingers crossed that there would be any type of corn meal. Luckily, I found some polenta and just hoped that it would be simliar enough - after all, it did say corn meal on the package and it was yellow.

Then I had to come home and actually follow the recipe so that I could hope to have something similar to cornbread come out of the oven. All of the liquids are pretty easy because I made sure to get measuring cups and teaspoons that have the American standard on them. But when the recipe calls for 1/2 stick of butter, I first have to remember how many TBSPs are in a stick (since butter here is sold in blocks, not sticks) and then convert that to grams.

I find myself back and forth from the counter to my computer googling things like '4 tablespoons is how many grams?' and ending up at websites like this. Because let me just show you what the knobs on our oven look like:

Not only do I have to worry about converting 400F to Celsius, but I also have to figure out what 'Fan Grill', 'Grill', 'Fan Forced' and 'Fan' mean (I've got 'light' covered). I've pretty much have been cooking everything on 'fan forced' since it seems to heat the most evenly and I just watch and check every 3 minutes.

The cornbread turned out pretty good. We ate the pieces around the edge because the middle was a little soggy.

The whole experience makes me wonder why on earth they brought Americans over here to build a power station. If my cornbread turned out soggy, what's going to happen on first fire?

Epic Fail and MORE mail!

2009-06-30T00:38:00.004-04:00

Josh opened the Turkish Delight on Sunday thinking that it would be a nice mid-afternoon treat.

It was terrible! It tasted just like soap smells. Josh assures me that it doesn't taste exactly like soap (him having had actual experience), but it was hard for both of us to just get small pieces down. Perhaps we didn't get a good flavor. My guess is that the center of this particular candy was rosewater and not one of the fruit centers. I don't think we'll try another one.

In brighter news, we got ANOTHER international package yesterday. This one was a surprise since my dad had just posted it last Thursday.

It contained 4th of July shirts! Josh questioned if my dad knew that wearing USA stuff outside of the home country would cause unjust feelings. I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway since Josh has to work the entire weekend (including his birthday this Friday) and there aren't any 4th plans for us.

I was also happy to get more books (!) and an old white skirt that I had dropped an open pen on at work about 2 years ago and didn't realize until 2 hours later. My mom magically made the big red blotch on the front of it disappear.

Also included was one of my dad's famous notes.

Sparklers and M-80's. Heh.

We love our town

2009-06-27T20:11:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned before that we get a local paper once a week. I think that I could get another one if I wanted to pay, but free is a pretty good cost right now.

The paper that we get is only 24 pages long and they can stretch to find some news around here. The front page story this week was entitled 'Tractor trekkin''. What caught our eyes this week though was the picture on the back page.

I keep wondering if this young girl is proud to have her picture in the paper or completely embarrassed by the fact that her face is planted in the ground.

Grocery Stores

2009-06-24T05:39:00.004-04:00

Here's the deal - almost everything around here is closed on Sunday (except for the little corner stores). So that means that instead of doing our weekly shopping on Sunday evening (like we use to in Atlanta), I usually go by myself on Monday. And it's worked out pretty well. The first few weeks, I was going to Woolworths which is in the Dalby ShoppingWorld. I really don't like it because it's small and I could never seem to find anything.

So I started going to Cole's which is a stand-alone shop and seems much more to me to be more of a typical grocery store. Okay - they do have an section where they sell pajamas which is odd, but still they have nice wide aisles and tons of food. But that doesn't mean that it makes it any easier to find things that I want.

I have learned that I can never go in looking for specific items or I'll be highly disappointed. Generic things are fine. Potatoes? Check. Meat? Check, check, check. Graham crackers to make that homemade crust? Uh, think again. [though Arnott's Scotch Finger biscuits might work (also they are all called biscuits here - not cookies)]. Grape Jelly? None at all.

But I was just sure that they had to have fresh eggs here. And so I looked and looked and check out where I found them.

Fresh eggs - right down on that aisle with the Confectionary and Chewing Gum.

International Mail Call 2

2009-06-22T05:21:00.003-04:00

We received another International package today. And luckily I was home to receive it.

The postie noticed that it was sent from the United Statesand then proceeded to talk to me for another 5 minutes about where we were from, how long we'd be here and the weather here and there (it was pretty cool today from the rain). Uber-nice people here.

We were expecting this package. Josh had complained about the taste of ketchup and mustard over here and so his parents went to Sam's and bought us enough to last the entire year! 2 HUGE ketchups and mustards. Thanks!

We also got a kitchen towel (which is much appreciated since the dish towels they put in the house don't seem to dry very well) and a soft GT basketball (though it got squeezed in the box so I thought that it was a football). Josh wants to set up a mini-hoop in our living room.

And he has started in on the ketchup already!

1st day of winter

2009-06-20T23:22:00.005-04:00

As Google so nicely told me on their Australian Google homepage, it's the 1st day of winter down under. The 'winter' image above makes me laugh because I would be surprised if lifelong residents of Dalby have ever seen snow in this town.

To chronicle the first day of a season here in our Australian hometown, I thought that I would take pictures throughout the day of outside, report the temp and let you know anything interesting going on.

The first picture is from 5:56 am this morning right after Josh left for work and right before I headed back to bed. Forecast - dark. This picture was taken from our front door and I had the flash turned on, thus you can see our mailbox and some of the lights in the houses across the street of people getting up and ready. Temperature at the time was 53.2 degrees (I'll report in Farenheit since most people that I know don't convert Celsius all that often) and it felt 51.6. Since Josh has had his jacket stolen, he doesn't like temperatures in the morning to be below 60 since it makes for a cold job outside if someone needs him.

Two pictures from 8:45 this morning. I had gotten up and eaten breakfast and was surfing the internet trying to get myself motivated to get my hands dirty and get my bike together. It was around 56.1 degrees outside. The first picture was from our side sliding glass door. Most of the recent mornings in Dalby have started off real cloudy like this making you think that it's going to rain all day and would be perfect for a nap, only to have the clouds burn off by lunchtime.

And ignoring all the fences and clothesline and such, check out that tree. I LOVE that tree when the wind is blowing real hard.

Same time, but from the front door. The clouds are starting to clear off over to the west just like they always do.

1:15 pm and the temperature has risen to 68.6 degrees. I'm telling you - it's awesome in the afternoon! I took this picture from the back porch type area - where Josh is suppose to bang off his boots before entering this house. The sky is that wonderful summer-blue, but there are still clouds hanging around. Usually we don't have clouds for this long. I betcha that we're have some rain in our future.

Also, when I stepped outside to take the picture, it smelled like cow manure. Sometimes it does that. Usually it occurs in the early mornings, but I have smelled it throughout the day before. There is a stockyard on the other side of town and since the town in only about 3 miles in width, I guess that if the wind blows a certain way then you're going to get a nice scent. Also, if there are an excessive amount of road trains delivering cattle, then you can smell it too.

And then Josh got home and I forgot to take our camera out with us on the golf course (since there are so many other things that i have to remember - jacket, bug spray, water....), but it remained pretty much the same from 1:00 to 5:00. Cloudy with some patches of blue. Temperatures hanging right around 70 degrees.

We managed to make it through 7.5 of 9 holes before it got so dark that we couldn't see where we were hitting. As soon as we made it back to the car and loaded all of our stuff up, rain started dropping on us.

It's 5:30 Monday morning now and I just dropped Josh off at the park and it started raining as I drove back home. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a nice grey day.

why I wasn't home if you called

2009-06-19T02:33:00.005-04:00

Here is our normal morning routine:

Josh wakes up at 4:10 and is out of bed by 4:15
I sleep in while Josh takes a shower and gets dressed. I usually manage to roll out of bed by 4:45/4:50 when my watch goes off for the 2nd time that morning.
I make Josh breakfast which he eats while getting a dose of morning Facebook and other internet. I also pack his lunch during this period.
Josh goes to brush his teeth and put shoes on. I either sign into work (if I'm going to work at 5:30) or put gym clothes on, contacts in and brushe my own teeth (if I'm going to the gym at 5:30)
We both leave the house around 5:20 and run by Jonathan's house to pick him up (his bike got stolen 2 weeks ago).
I drop Josh and Jonathan off at the park around 5:25 and either head back home to work or off to the gym. If at the gym, I make it back home after a spin class or weights - usually by 6:50.

Here is an abbreviated version of what happened this morning:

All bullets from 1 to 6 occurred according to schedule.
Rebecca reenters her house at 10:15 am (almost 5 hours after she left).

Here's the deal. We have 2 sets of house keys and garage openers - like the one below.

Except mine is pink. Naturally. This is Josh's set and it hasn't left the counter since we got here. About 2 weeks after we arrived, I decided that I was worried about taking off with the car keys (which were on another key ring), shutting the door behind me and not having the house keys. So I attached my set to the car keys.

Which actually makes sense since I don't go many places without the car and if I go for a walk, I usually put a key outside (or leave the sliding door unlocked - ssshhhh). However, this morning, when we got to the park at 5:28, there was no bus. There were about 40 guys in yellow shirts standing around, but no bus. We waited about 10 minutes and one never came. Josh wasn't real keen on standing around waiting for it because his work jacket got stolen after he left it at work over the 4 day weekend. So I told them just to drop me off at the gym, they could take the car on to the power station and I'd just walk home after spin class.

So we arrived at the PCYC (my gym) and I took my gym pass off the key ring, but I forgot one other important item. And I didn't realize it until we were cooling down on the bikes and I started thinking about my walk home. Nice.

But I had a plan. I would go ahead and start my walk home.

I was going to stop by the power station downtown office where the site services group (the ones who take care of us) work. Hopefully, they could give me a spare key or call the rental company to come meet me and let me in. It took me about 15 minutes to get there from the gym and I was not happy to see a sign on their window that they moved their offices out to the site.
Secondly, I would go ahead and walk home and see if maybe one of the doors hadn't been shut tight or wasn't locked or a window was cracked. I really had my fingers crossed for this one. After another 30 minutes of walking, I was home and I had no luck.
If the first 2 failed, then I figured that I could walk over to the Robinson's house (Bryan is Josh's boss) since if they were home, I knew that they would be up and use their phone to call the people that I needed to call. Luckily, Kathy and the kids were up and about and Bryan was at work for a meeting (this weekend is actually his off weekend), but she was expecting him back in about an hour (It was about 7:45 by this point). We were able to get in touch with Josh to give Bryan the key so that he could it back to Dalby to me. So I hung out at the Robinson's house and played with their kids and talked to Kathy until Bryan was able to get away from the site. He finally made it back around 10:15 and gave me a ride home.

Luckily it all worked out and I didn't get too upset about it at all. I even had a back-up plan in case I couldn't get to a phone at all. I had my purse with me so I would have just made a day in Dalby - brekky at McDonalds, coffee at The Coffee Club, a few hours reading at the library, lunch at the bakery, browsing the shops and back home. It would have been fine.

It's a good thing that I don't have to test that day in Dalby plan since our spare key is getting placed outside tonight.

In other news, look what arrived today! It only took 63 days.

Now....to put it all back together.

18.06.2009

2009-06-18T05:30:00.004-04:00

Weekdays get a little crazy around here. I'm working from 5:30 on (and starting to actually work out again) and when Josh is around, I try to hang out with him (read: fix him breakfast, fix his lunch, cook dinner) so not much blogging gets done. But I did want to share the pictures from our drive home last Sunday.

A friend/co-worker of Josh had mentioned that if we were in the area of the Gold Coast, then we should try to go up to Mount Tamborine which has a network of walking trails and a drive throughout the national parks. So on Sunday, we took the scenic route and drove over to the Mount Tamborine area. It's about 30 minutes west of Surfers Paradise (isn't that crazy that the mountains are only 30 minutes from the beach?) and I'm glad that Josh was driving because there were some curvy, steep roads.

When we got to Mount Tamborine, there were TONS of people there. Every 2nd Sunday, they have a market....which I knew about. I thought that it was just going to be like a small farmers market, but it was more like a country fair. There were booths everywhere. We ended up not going in since it was cold that day and we were hungry (of course, I was hoping for funnel cakes and cotton candy, but Josh was looking for something with a little more substanance), so we kept driving. Right down the road, we came to about 20 cars parked on the side and all the occupants out at this look-out point.

Isn't it beautiful?
At one point of our drive, we could see the city of Surfers Paradise, but we were facing the wrong way at this point.

Turns out that this was launching point for hang-gliders.

This guy was just getting set-up so we went down the road to a Polish cafe and had some apple pancakes and walnut cake (it was more of a tea rather than breakfast) and came back and got to see 2 of the gliders take off.

Those guys are crazy.

As we're walking into the cafe though, there was this little outside sitting area with a bird feeding area in it. And there were about 30 parrots that keep flying to it to feed. It was pretty awesome.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Australia has some amazing birds. On the drive out to the power station or on a walk out on the creek path, you'll see a flock of cockatoos (white birds with the yellow tuff) diving and squawking. Or out on the golf course, we get buzzed by little lorakeets (birds that are similar in color to the ones in these pictures, but smaller and SO much faster). We've also seen these types of parrots (?) in our day-to-day, but we haven't seen this many together or been able to get this close to them.

They kept flying from the trees to the feeding area.

Australia can be pretty awesome sometimes.

More Surfers Paradise

2009-06-14T05:46:00.002-04:00

Saturday afternoon we drove out the 'The Spit' which is at the end of a peninsula on the Gold Coast. It has a network of dune trails that you can walk, but we got there a bit too late to do that. So we just walked down a built-up rock jetty sticking out into the Pacific. It was about 4:30 or so and there were surfers just getting into the water. And some of them didn't have wetsuits on. Crazy, I tell ya.

Josh made me nervous by squatting and not sitting on the rocks.

Then we realized that there was a much cooler jetty to the south of us that was blocking our view of the city and so we headed over there. This is the start of the dune trails. It was really pretty.

And Josh made a new friend.

It turns out that the jetty that we wanted to be on was a sand-pumping jetty - so it's basically a long bridge out into the water with pipes attached to it that pump sand out of the ocean and back onto the beach for their dune regeneration program. It actually cost money to walk out onto it, but Josh and I didn't mind paying the fee.

We were able to get some really good pictures of Surfers Paradise out in the distance. And the crazy surfers in the foreground.

Here's a little more zoomed in shot of the city. The tallest circular building is the one that was right across from our hotel.

The jetty is also a big place for fishermen (as evident from the picture below). When we were on there around 5, there were about 65 people out fishing and more coming. We talked to the guy that runs the kiosk where you pay your fee (and can buy goodies) and he said that at night there are up to 300 people (!) out fishing. He noted that the Vietnamese are very family oriented and so if the mom and dad come out to fish, then the kids are out there and the grandparents and any siblings. They bring their one-man tent and a little cookstove and cook whatever they catch right then and there.

Josh asked how big the catch was and the guy said that they were usually between 20 and 36 kilos (44 to 80 lbs). Unfortunately, we didn't see anyone reel anything in.

We watched the sun start to set from the jetty and then headed back to our car - before it got too dark that I couldn't see that spider from earlier.

Surfers Paradise

2009-06-13T07:21:00.004-04:00

So yesterday, we drove from Dalby to Surfers Paradise. Not wanting to make the same mistake that we did last time we went on holiday and get stuck in Brisbane 3:00 Friday rush hour traffic, we decided to leave town around 10:45 or so. Which meant that we could stop in Toowoomba for lunch. Just the night before, Josh had seen a commercial on the telly for Phatburgers in Toowomba. So we stopped there.

And man, those burgers were huge!

We also drove on the first real motorway that made us feel like we were back in Atlanta. Count them - 5 lanes of traffic!

Back as early as in the late 60's (we saw a picture mural in the Baskin Robbins), Surfers Paradise used to be a quaint seaside town with lots of beachhouses and just a cozy type atmosphere. Now, it is like Miami on steriods. There are condos everywhere and more going up as we walk around.

Unlike Caloundra where it felt like there was nothing to do after 5:30 when all the shops closed down, here I think that it gets MORE active the later it gets.

We have an ocean view room (the beach is about a block away). And yes, you can see the beach - it's just around that huge complex right in front of us.

Just to give you a perspective on how big that complex is, our hotel is about 20 floors high - we are on the 9th floor. It's a nice resort and spa. But here is a picture from our bedroom of the complex across the street. It's ridiculous.

Also ridiculous are all the luxury cars that we see cruising the streets.

Of course, we don't mind so much that it's more of a touristy beach town now since it means that there are plenty of putt-putt golf course to keep us occupied.

Josh beat me both times.

Also, we did get away from town a little bit today and got some pretty cool pictures out at the ocean. And we'll be taking some backroads home tomorrow.

absence

2009-06-12T08:01:00.003-04:00

I hate when I can't post at least every other day. I know that my family at least is depending on some sort of entertainment. Work on Tuesday and Wednesday was crazy and I wasn't getting much sleep. Then Thursday just kind of flew by as well, Josh got off early for his R&R weekend (and an extra day this coming Monday for the holiday that he didn't take last Monday) and I spent my time hanging out with him (and catching up on my sleep).

So now it's Friday. And we're not in Dalby. We decided to make the drive over to the Gold Coast this weekend. It's a little more built up with huge condos right on the water and lots of restaurants and clubs and shops. But you have to realize that it's winter here. And lately, the winter has really hit. I think that it feels more fallish (with temps ranging from 37 to 68 over a day), but Josh claims that anytime the temperature falls below 40, it's winter. So we're in jeans and long sleeves (and coats at night), but it's still nice to walk around and see everything. Plus I don't think that we will want to deal with the crowds once summer rolls around.

We're going to stay in Surfers Paradise tonight and tomorrow and I think that on Sunday, we'll take the scenic route and drive back through the rain-forestey mountains around Mount Tamborine. I'll make sure to get some pictures up as the weekend progresses.

fulfilling a childhood dream

2009-06-09T03:08:00.003-04:00

I know that most of you have probably read 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', but for those of you that haven't, the youngest brother in the book, Edmund, gets tricked by the White Witch into bringing his brother and sisters into the country partially due to the delicious taste of a tasty treat called 'Turkish Delight'. As a child reading the book, I always assumed that 'Turkish Delight' was some type of nice warm meat product (Turkish.....turkey.....meat). However, it's really a type of candy. A type of candy that they sell in Australia.

I haven't convinced myself to eat it yet (especially after reading the description on wikipedia), but how could I resist buying something that makes me think of a book (and a great book at that) every time that I see it?

This and That

2009-06-08T05:29:00.004-04:00

Today was the Queen's Birthday holiday. Obviously, it's not the Queen's real birthday, but they celebrate it on one day each year (I guess so that it doesn't change when there is new royalty). So most everyone had the day off today....and of course, all of the stores were closed. Except to us, it was just a regular ol' Monday. Josh still had to work. 'A' Shift had today off and so 'B' Shift will get next Monday off, which actually works out better since that gives both shifts a 4-day weekend.

As has become a habit, I drove Josh into work this weekend so he can get that extra 30 minutes of sleep. Both Friday and Saturday were really foggy mornings - our first here in Oz. On Friday, I was trying to find the gym after I dropped Josh off at the park and I almost missed it because of the darkness and the fog. On Saturday, Josh was able to take a few pictures. I apologize for the blurriness since apparently I was trying to hit every bump in the road.

I was happy to have someone in front of me so that I could kind of see what was coming up in the road. Plus, I figured that a kangaroo wouldn't be stupid enough to hop between the two of us.

On the way back home the sun started getting high enough to burn off all of the fog, but it was so pretty watching it rise. The picture below doesn't do it justice since I was zoomed in to try to avoid the sign indicating that bulls are for sale at the place I pulled off, but it's still kind of pretty.

Sunday after work, Josh and I met Jonanthan and Kelly over at the golf course for 9 holes. They are both beginners too and so we had agreed that we would just have fun (Really, you should see me play). Josh and I were both scared when it looked like Kelly was going to bogey the first hole, but she brought it down to our level after that. Josh did manage to bogey two holes again (he came so close to par) and this time it was only out of 6 holes instead of 9 so his percentage is getting much better. We only made it to 6 holes because we were walking it and there were 4 of us and did I mention that in 2 weeks it will be winter here so the sun goes down at 5:20?

We all had fun and I think that we'll definitely do it again. I think that Josh might have caught the golf bug since he's sitting on his computer right now looking at clubs. The only part that I didn't like was when the sun came down and the mosquitos came out and I came home with 21 bites! 21! Josh didn't get bitten once and in the 15 minutes of darkness, I got bit 21 times. Josh says that it's because I'm just too sweet.

Australian is Funny - Part 6.

2009-06-05T20:47:00.000-04:00

I love this country.

T.I.A.

2009-06-04T03:15:00.006-04:00

Josh and I have subscribed to WebFlicks which is the Australian equivalent of Netflix. We have made our way through 6 movies already and number 7 and 8 are sitting on our kitchen table right now. One of the earlier movies that we received was 'Blood Diamond' and one of the underlying themes throughout the movie is T.I.A. which stands for 'This is Africa'. Josh and I have decided to adopt the saying for our year abroad which a slight variation for the 'A'. Basically whenever anything out of the ordinary happens or we see something odd or a person says something funny, one of us inevitably says 'TIA'.

This morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table working when I heard kids talking and laughing outside. I figured that they were probably just paying out in the street (it's a cul-de-sac and it was seriously only like 9:30 this morning), but then I heard them really close to the house. Since the house is built up on stilts, I *thought* that they had found one of the doors that allows access to underneath the house and they had decided that this was going to be their clubhouse. I thought that it was pretty funny though a bit annoying about how loud they were (our walls aren't that thick) and I wrote Josh and signed off with 'TIA'. He, being the more responsible one, wrote back and told me that we really don't want little kids getting hurt on our property and that I really need to chase them off.

I didn't want to be that woman who yells at the little neighborhood kids so I took care of the situation by starting a load of laundry....which kicks the water pump under the house on....which I'm sure scared them since they began scattering right after that. I watched them through the blinds. And it turns out that they weren't underneath the house (the door is only accessible through the gated area of our yard), but were camping out in between the house and water tank.

Also, I have started back running this week. When we were golfing Sunday, it was getting pretty windy. When Monday blew it, it brought all kinds of nice fall-ish weather. Gray skies, cooler temps (highs in 60's instead of 70's) and a nice crisp breeze. Perfect running weather. Of course, by today (Thursday) it was back to typical Australian fickleness (40 in the morning and high 70's in the afternoon). Josh has reported that our bikes should be getting delivered sometime soon and one of the girls I met last week has already talked about us getting together for a ride so I'm looking forward to that delivery.

Australian is Funny - Part 5

2009-06-01T17:22:00.004-04:00

They call them road trains over here if there are 2 or more trailers attached to the cab. There can even be 3 or 4 trailers in a row. It's scary. But kind of fun to say 'Watch out for the road train'.

There are also signs warning you of the road trains.

Golfing Sunday

2009-05-31T17:07:00.002-04:00

We made it out to the golf course around 1:00 Sunday afternoon. It's only $15AUD to play 9 holes ($25 AUD for 18) so it's a pretty good price for a couple of hours of fun. We thought that we would rent a cart, but they only had 9 and they were all either rented or reserved for others. So we walked. It was actually a really pretty day to be walking.

Josh was a little rusty, but a quite a few good shots and shot a bogey on a few of the holes. I think that he was the most proud of the one over on the Par 5 hole 9. I don't think that the golfing hurt his joints, but toting the golf clubs around wasn't so good on his back. He seemed to have fun.

I, on the other hand, need a few more hours on the driving range. But I still had fun. And I didn't get too frustrated when I would chip the shot just a few feet down the fairway.

The course wasn't crowded at all compared to what I've seen in LaGrange, but we did have one couple start breathing down our neck. I think that we'll try to play on Fridays from here on out when it seems like there is NO ONE out there.

Weekend thus far

2009-05-30T17:19:00.005-04:00

Friday, Josh and I went to town to get a few items and we had lunch at a little bakery that served meat pies. Josh has already had one brought to him at work by one of the guys that lives out at man camp, but I figured that I should try it out. Plus, they were only $2 so it made for a cheap lunch out.

We both choose Meat and Mushroom because mushrooms always makes things taste better.

I peeled the top off and this is what it looked like.

Not too appetizing to look at (especially when you bit it open), but it really wasn't too bad. It was like a beef stew cooked into a pastry. I can't say that we'll be having them too often, but I'm not a real fan of beef stew. It WAS really filling though which is kind of nice when you're only paying $2 for something.

That afternoon we drove into Toowoomba to see a movie. It turns out that 'Star Trek' was actually a pretty awesome movie and I really enjoyed it. We went to the 4:15 showing and got out around 6:15. The movie theater that we go to is in a mall type complex and so we figured that we'd just walk back through the mall for a little bit while waiting to get hungry enough to eat. It turns out that Toowoomba - like Dalby and much of Australia - also has early trading hours and so the gates to the "mall" were already closed at 6:15 at night. That is one of the hardest things to get used to. If you want something from a store after 6pm, then you better hope that one of the corner stores has it because every major place is shut down until 8:30 the next morning.

When we parked the car in the afternoon, there had been plenty of cars in the parking deck. Not as crowded as when we went up on a Saturday, but still pretty active. When we left, it was only our car in the section of the deck.

(That ghost-like face is me trying to find a place to eat on our GPS.)

We went ahead and went to a restaurant in Toowoomba which was pretty good - though the service was terrible as usual. It turns out that servers here get paid about 18AUD an hour and so it's not really necessary that they work too hard for good tips (most people only tip if the service was exceptional). Combine that with the fact that most Queenslanders are fairly easy-going, laid back people who enjoy lingering over dessert and a last pint and you can be sitting at the dinner table for a bit. I had the enjoyable task of driving the 75 kms back to Dalby in the pitch dark.

Yesterday, we stayed close to home all day. We did make it over to Sharlane's house to pick up golf clubs so I think that we're going to hit the course this morning.

29.05.2009 (Morning Update)

2009-05-28T17:19:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I had tea with the ladies again. Do I sound like a kept woman yet? I think that my time for hosting tea is coming up so I guess that I need to get my act together. One of the women, Kathy, is going to head up a Relay for Life team for an event here in Dalby in September. So we were getting together to talk about a team name (which didn't happen) and just to chat. I also got to meet Kelly, who is the girlfriend of one of the guy's that Josh works with. She is really into biking (brought her mountain bike, but has slicks) and actually teaches a spin class out at the PCYC (Police Citizens' Youth Club) which I guess is like a YMCA back in the States since it has a lot of kid's activities, but it also has a gym that you can belong to. I'm going to check out the gym on Monday and maybe hit up Kelly's spin class next Friday (we slept in today).

Josh started his 3 day weekend last night. I was getting ready to head out to pick him up at 3:00 and I get an email telling me that he wouldn't be home until 5:30. He has A LOT of work to do and not enough hours in the day to do it. He even hopped online this morning to handle some outstanding work emails. I know that he's glad to be home and relaxing for a few days though - at least we don't have to get up at such an unseemly hour. I think that our plans are to head to Toowoomba today to check out the 'Star Trek' movie (his choice, not mine) and then I *think* that we might play golf on Sunday. I found out that Sharlane has a set of men's and women's clubs that she'll let us borrow - plus, if golfing turns out okay, then maybe the girls will get together during the week and do it.

let's talk about driving

2009-05-27T02:08:00.006-04:00

Australians, as they are about a lot of things, are very casual about driving. Here is the road that leads down to our house (Orpen). Notice that there are no lines down the middle or the side. Almost all the roads around here are like that with the exception of a few main roads.

I think that the idea is that you can drive wherever you want until another car meets up with you and tnen you just move to your left.

In Dalby, there are 5 stoplights (3 on the main highway, 2 on the road that parallels the main highway) and there are no stop signs. Instead, all over the place are 'Give Way' signs which means 'Yield' in American.

So you come to a road crossing and if you have the 'Give Way' sign, then you just have to slow down, look to your right first (always to the right first) and left and then go. If nothing's coming, then you don't even have to stop. It's so much more efficient. But knowing how traffic works in Atlanta, these signs would be terrible.

If there is a road crossing where one road is perhaps not bigger than another road and they don't want to handle traffic with 'Give Way' signs, then they stick a roundabout in the middle of the road. Here's the sign warning you that you have a roundabout coming up.

And here's the roundabout.

This is the one in our neighborhood - only one lane. Remember on some of the ones from our trip last weekend, there were 3 lanes! The general rule is that you yield to your right. So you approach that dotted line and slow down. If nothing is coming from the right, then you keep going. It's scary when you are the car with the right away and something pulls up from your left and you aren't really sure if they're going to stop or not.

Also, Josh constantly trys to claim that I don't look to my right on this roundabout. But I do. Every time. Also, he says that I get really close to the outside curb when going around. And well, okay - that statement might be true.

And don't forget - we're learning all of this with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.

There are a few things that we've had to get use to -
1. not hugging the left side of the road and scaring the passenger,
2. not turning on the windshield wipers when we really want a turn signal (signals on the right)
3. not going to the other side of the car to get in when you're driving (I've done it 3 times in the past 5 days - it's embarrassing)

Just as a note, I'm the driver in the family over here, but these pictures were taken one our trip to Toowoomba a few weeks ago. Josh drove so that he could get some experience behind the wheel, but I think that he can count on one hand the number of times that he's driven over here.
I was a happy passenger though.

Pizza (and Beer)

2009-05-26T06:01:00.002-04:00

Tonight we had some guys from Atlanta over to eat pizza with us and hang out. Tuesday nights are cheap pizza night at Eagle Boys. It's really good pizza AND on the flyer that I got in the mail the first week that we got here, it advertised that their "Australian" pizza is 14% larger than "American" pizza. This pizza has to impress.

Also, since the 2 guys that came over drink beer, I was put in charge of going to buy it. I hadn't remembered seeing any alcohol being sold in grocery stores or in the corner store, so I headed to the drive-thru liquor store. I still had to get out of my car, but you really just drive in, tell the guy what you want, pay and drive out.

Josh had done all the research on authentic Australian beer so he told me to get Victoria Bitter and XXXX.

The Roo sipped back a bottle of each.

Victoria Bitter is the most sold beer in Australia. Matt tried one and said that it tasted like a Colt 45. My guess is that the other 5 stubbies are going to stay in our fridge for the next year.

When I asked for XXXX, the guy wanted to know if I wanted XXXX Gold or XXXX Heavy. I elected for Gold because drinking something labeled Heavy is just not an option when you can drink something with Gold in the title.

XXXX is a Brisbane brewer and it's a very popular beer here in the state of Queensland (and beginning to be across all of Australia). I had 2 sips of it from a glass and I concurred with Matt that it basically tasted like Bud Lite. I was hoping for a nice appley crisp taste - I was highly disapponted. I switched to Diet Coke after the 2 sips. Much better.

The pizza was delicious and it was nice having people over --- even if I was the only girl.

25.05.2009 - Just an update

2009-05-25T04:59:00.002-04:00

My younger sister complained that since I didn't post yesterday (in her words "Gave up blogging"), she didn't have anything to read while at work. Since it is our family's sole purpose not to upset Sweet Melissa, I figured that I better not skip two days in a row.

My camera battery died on me (again) so it's getting charged so no pictures with this post, but I realized that it's been awhile since I did just a generic update on how our lives are going and what we are up to. I also call this 'easy blogging'.

Josh finished his 8th day of work in a row today. This is the first time that he will have to do 11 days straight (he's done 10) and he seems to be making it through okay. I drove him into work both Saturday and Sunday so that we could both get a little more sleep (and because I had nothing else to do). I like driving out there because on the way back everything is waking up and it's really pretty looking at the open fields with the sun coming up. I saw a kangaroo both mornings (Josh saw one on Sunday) along with plenty of dead roos. Also, right near the power station there is this HUGE dead boar. It is the nastiest, grossest thing ever.

On the Saturdays and Sundays that he has to work, Josh only has to work 8 hours and gets off at 2:30. Which means that I should be at the park at 3 to pick him up. I somehow got it in my head that pick-up time was 3:30 and didn't realize it until I got to the park at 3:24 and there were no other vehicles there. Oops. He was almost finished with the ~1.5 miles when I caught up to him. I don't think that he would have been so nice if it had been raining.

Speaking of rain, only about 3 hours to the east of us, the coasts are getting battered by some storms. They show pictures on the news of cars in the sand and towns completely shut off due to the floods. We have been pretty lucky and only got 2 days of rain (Tuesday and Wednesday) last week which was welcomed since we were afraid that we wouldn't see real rain for awhile. Apparently when it rains too hard, the workers out on the power station get sent home at half-day since they can't do any work. Josh does "office work" in a trailer so he still had to do his full 10 hours. It would have been nice to get a call that he was coming home early, but I guess that he should put that college education to good use.

I have been busy working. I even worked today even though it's technically Memorial Day. I figured that since I had work to do and no one was here to entertain me, that I should just get it done. In the past few days, I've also gotten a few more bug bites on my feet. I have no clue what it is giving them to me. I've gotten a few as soon as I take my sneakers and socks off from working out and some in the middle of the night. You would think that it was a flea or something, but Josh isn't getting bitten and I'm not getting bit on a regular enough basis. Our best guess is that I'm getting some chiggers when I wear my flip-flops outside and the bites aren't showing up until later. It's completely ridiculous - especially considering how sensitive I am to insect bites.

We don't have any big plans for this upcoming weekend. I think that we'll take in a movie in Toowoomba on Friday and maybe drive up to the Bunya Mountains for a hike either Saturday or Sunday.

Caloundra

2009-05-22T20:25:00.007-04:00

Last Sunday before we headed back to Dalby, we stopped by the beach in Caloundra to see if it was worthwhile coming back to once it was a little warmer (it's almost winter here!) and because we've never seen the Pacific from this side of the world before.

Caloundra is on the southern part of the Sunshine Coast which is just north of Brisbane. The Gold Coast is just south of Brisbane. Apparently all coasts in Australia are beautiful, but the Gold Coast tends to be more high-rise condos right on the beaches (think Miami) with amusement parks nearby while the Sunshine Coast is more lower apartment, condos and hotels. If we go even further up the Sunshine Coast, it gets even more remote.

We parked at King's Beach and sat for awhile watching the lifeguards do some type of training with their raft boats. At this beach, they have lifeguards on station year-round and in order to be protected you have to swim between the yellow and red flags. Josh is pretty adamant on the point that he won't be getting in any Australia beach water since everywhere you are warned about rip tides and jellyfish.

There was also this awesome board walk that ran up above the beach. We went out there about 9:00 in the morning and there were tons of people out (though there are none in this picture). Lots of people running, riding their bike or setting up for picnics in the park that is right down the way. We spent about an hour walking along the boardwalk watching the surfers ride the waves in.

I did go down at one point and test to see if the water was as cold as I was thinking it would be (it was probably about ~70 degrees outside). It wasn't painful cold like the San Francisco bay, but I don't think that I would go at this time of year without a wetsuit.

Also, from the beach you could see some of the Glasshouse Mountains - those peaks in the picture below. The one all the way to the left in this picture is really funny looking - all crooked.

Obviously Australians think that the water is warmer than I do as noted by the guy in this picture who has no shirt on.

After walking we had brunch at this cafe right on the beach. It was delicious! We both thought that Caloundra was beautiful and will hopefully be visiting a lot more of the beaches over the next year.

International Mail Call

2009-05-20T20:18:00.004-04:00

I got a package in the mail yesterday. I actually got the notice in the mail on Tuesday and went and picked it up on Wednesday. It was from my mama - or my mummy as the post office woman said. I was thankful that they (because I'm sure my dad put some sentiment in it too) spent that much to send me something.

And when I opened it up, it was full of books.

No candy, no note (which is okay because I talk to my mom almost every day over skype), nothing that Josh would be interested in - just 11 books. I think that I've read 2 of them already, but as a notorious book re-reader, I'm okay with that.

It was a great package because in the month or so that we've been here, I've made my way through 10 books.

(There's only 8 showing, but 2 of those are double books in one binding.)

Granted they weren't the hardest books to get through. And they weren't all good (I joined GoodReads to keep a track of what I read while over here and I also ranked them. I gave 5 of these 10 2-stars out of 5 and another one 1-star.). But 10 books in 4.5 weeks is a lot of books for me. Especially combined with the 45ish hour workweeks, the weekends Josh is off and the other household things that have fallen my way (breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, grocery shopping). I don't know where the extra time has come from (no more commutes, lack of telly stimulation), but I love it.

My mom has indicated that she doesn't think that she can do this every month so I better slow my roll.

Cute Zoo Animal Pictures

2009-05-20T00:42:00.007-04:00

The little otters were adorable. The two of them would perch up on this log and look around a little bit and then they would dash off and do a circle through their little pond around the habitat until they paused again to look around.

Seriously they were all jacked up on the Mountain Dew.

This little lizard (aka water dragon) that I'm pointing to is not necessarily cute, but there is a cute story that goes along with seeing him.

There are signs all over asking you not to touch the water dragons (or else you'll get kicked out) and right before we took this picture, there was a family with a 2 year old girl trying to get her picture with it. The girl kept moving closer and closer (giving Josh a near heart-attack), but her dad was telling her 'Don't touch, don't touch. Just sit and look.' And then he started moving down the pathway and left the mom there to get a picture. The first thing out of the mom's mouth was 'Touch it, touch it.' I guess it was her misguided way of trying to get the girl to move closer to it.

I followed instructions a little better and just pointed.

That's Josh feeding a kangaroo along with OUR roo. Kangaroos are both cute and scary - have you seen their claws? Also, if you look in between this roo's legs you can see another leg just kind of hanging out in the air. That would be the joey in the pouch. He decided to crawl in there and not turn around and so his tail and one leg were sticking out. I think that it's about time for that kid to move out.

Now - cutest animals ever.

The koalas looked like big stuffed animals just sitting up in the trees. I could have snuggled up to one.

We even got to pet one later on in the zoo.

I got to pet this one too, but see that pole running across? That pole kind of blocked my face from the picture. But it didn't ruin my excitement of getting to pet such a sweet animal.

Australia Zoo

2009-05-18T16:20:00.002-04:00

We spent right at 6 hours at the Australia Zoo on Saturday. 6 hours! That's a lot of animal seeing. Here's a picture of the map of the zoo to give you an idea of how big it is.

Just as a recap - here's how the day went:

9:15 - Arrived at the zoo and had no trouble getting a parking space or buying tickets. The only people there right at the opening were families with small kids and 2 American young adults.

Saw Komodo Dragon, Australian Lizards and Otters. Saw Native Turtles and Aldabran turtles. Saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator.

10:00 - Saw Tasmanian Devel. It was Tasmanian Devel day (they are trying to raise money for the plight of cancer that is endangering the devel). We hung around here a bit to see watch them get fed, listen to the keeper's talk about them and watch them bring one out on the leash. Josh did not do his imitation of the cartoon devil. Saw Gator. Saw Dingoes and Cassowaries.

10:30 - Snack because we hadn't had much for breakfast. Saw Koalas (on Koala island) and Foxes.

11:00 - Went to the Crocoseum to see their twice daily show. It was awesome. The birds were so well trained and were dive bombing the crowd. They had the elephants and snakes out there. And the main event was getting to see them get a gator to go for the meat. It took forever, but it was pretty awesome.

11:45 - Saw Eastern Grey Kangaroos and Wallabies. Bought roo food for a $1 and fed and petted the kangaroos. Saw a kangaroo throw up from eating too much food (not our kangaroo - another one) and saw a Joey crawl into its mama's pouch. Saw Echidnas. Saw all kinds of birds in The Wetlands section. Saw Emus, Elephants and Red Pandas.

1:00 - Went to main food court and ate lunch. We were pretty much starving at this point. Saw Gator, saw Gator, saw Gator.

1:30 - Took shuttle back up East Asia section and saw Tigers. Watched them play in the water with toys and the trainers. They were just big ol' kitty cats. Came back and saw Koalas (again, but this time in an open range. And we got to pet one.). Saw Red Kangaroos. Went into Rainforest Aviary and saw more birds. Saw birds of prey in their special cage. Saw Southern Hairly-Nosed Wombats, Common Wombats and Australian Snakes. They had about 12 snakes on display. About 7 of those snakes were venomous. It was creepy. Saw American Alligators.

3:00 - Made it to the gift shop and walked around in the air conditioner looking for a magnet to remember our trip by (it's kind of our thing). We settled on a cute koala.

3:15 - In the car driving back to the hotel.

I'm pretty sure that the only things that we missed were the Camels (but we did smell them) and the Kookaburras (but I did sing that old camp song when I saw their name on the map). What impressed us most was how active and interactive the animals were. We were afraid that we were just going to be walking around looking at animals napping in their cages, but in most cases, there was a keeper at each exhibit to answer your questions or to play with / take care of the animals.

We were also impressed with their signs.

The last 4 don't just get an X, but they get a red Death mark.

Josh says....

2009-05-17T05:04:00.001-04:00

If you can't beat them, join them.

Boxing Kangaroos

2009-05-16T17:06:00.002-04:00

HA!

Caloundra - 15.05.2009

2009-05-15T06:49:00.002-04:00

I had a post and pictures all planned out for yesterday, but I worked too late and by the time it was 8:45 all I wanted to do was hit the hay and not try to be coherent for the internet. And I'm kind of glad that I didn't post because I was going to talk about driving in Australia, but our experience today really made me understand driving in Australia.

We left for Caloundra around 11:45 (after my tea with the 2 other girls that I know). Josh hasn't been feeling that well since he has been working side-by-side with a guy that came in with a cold this week. Caloundra is a coastal town about 3.5 hours from Dalby, but because we needed to get our quarantined and now cleaned shoes from Brisbane, we had to head east to Brisbane and THEN up the coast instead of just going diagnally from Dalby.

We made it to the outskirts of Brisbane within the 2 hour and 15 minute mark and that's where it started going downhill. We bought a navigation system last night because I wasn't really confident on us just going off to big cities without having some type of directional aide. And I missed the exit that I was suppose to get off of. The GPS lady told me that it was coming in 600 meters, but what she really meant is that I should have gotten over to the left all the way and flowed left until 600 meters when road appeared. And I got to experience my first double-lane, motorway roundabout.

A roundabout is what the Australians have decided is the best way to avoid building bridges on highways or putting stoplights and stop signs on smaller streets. It's also an immense amount of stress when you have 50 cars wanting to go aroudn the small roundabout. The rules are you yield to the right, but I also think that the rule is that you just punch the gas and just hop that the other guy slows down enough to let you get around safely to your exit. AND your exit can be any number out there. It's pretty funny when you approach the roundabout and hear the GPS lady tell you to enter the roundabout and take the 4th exit. Josh and I quickly learned to start counting the exits.

Luckily, I was able to follow directions to get us out of our misdirection and we made it to the warehouse to pick up our shoes. For anyone interested, they were both Josh's shoes, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't need either pair of them. And since I was primarily in charge of getting our stuff together to be packed, I think that I am somewhat to blame for them getting in the stack dirty. But we got the shoes.

After lunch, we were on our way from Brisbane to Caloundra - only a 111 km ride - should have only taken about an hour. What I didn't account for was that everyone in Australia gets off of work at 3:00 on Friday. And when you have 4 million people hitting the streets of Brisbane all at the same time, you have a major traffic jam. It was a nightmare. And made us not miss Atlanta at all!

It took us 2.5 hours to go that 111km ride. And with a sick boy in the passenger seat and a stressed out girl in the driver's seat, it wasn't such a great way to start a weekend holiday. When we finally made it here, the hotel/condo room made it totally worth it. Even though we're only on the 2nd floor, the room is spacious and modern and clean. It was dark when we got here so we haven't gotten to see a lot, but we were able to relax some, get some dinner and are back in the room now. I'm trying to finish up some work and Josh is trying to feel better. We did get some medicine from a convenience store to hopefully help Josh through the night. I've got my fingers crossed that he will be feeling better in the morning so we can still make it to the Australia Zoo.

If he's bed-ridden, then I'll just make a day at the spa.

Aussie School Children

2009-05-13T04:58:00.006-04:00

I didn't get out of the house in time to take any pictures of the schoolchildren. And I really am hesitant to take pictures of them because if you were a parent wouldn't you be weary of some woman standing around taking pictures of your kids?

And apparently the Aussies don't realize how stinking cute their uniforms are because it was really hard to find a picture out on the web that showed the uniform off well. Here's one that I found out on the world wide web.

Usually the shirt is either a button-up like this little girl's or it's a polo with the school's name on it. The boys wear matching shorts or pants and the girls wear skirts or shorts. But ALL of them wear those hats. If the kids are outside, they have those hats on. I'm sure that it has something to do with the blistering Australian sun (Have I mentioned that I have shirt tan lines and I spend a maximum of an hour a day outside? And it's suppose to be fall?).

I've read that Dalby has 5 schools. I don't know how many of these are private (I *think* 3) and what ages they go through, but I haven't seen a single kid on a school day that wasn't in a uniform. So far, I know that we have a royal blue school, a yellow school and a green plaid school.

What makes me happiest about the school children here is that whenever I got out of the house around 8:00 am or 3:00 pm (and even today at 5:15 pm), I see the kids making their way home. And they are all either walking or riding their bikes or moving along on their scooters (very popular here). I'm so glad that (1) our town is SAFE enough for parents to allow their kids to make the at most 2 mile trek home and (2) that the kids do this happily. They seem to love making the trip home with each other. It's such a different experience than in Atlanta where you drive to the grocery store across the street and even LaGrange where the school is too far away so you have to drive (except for my Daddy of course - uphill both ways, snow, rough life). It really is small-town living at it's best.

WINNER!

2009-05-12T00:32:00.005-04:00

And the winner is.....Beth....who guessed EXACTLY the correct number of 128 tires. Though I was pretty impressed by Adam (Josh's brother) who did an actual calculation of how much load a standard 18 wheeler can handle to come up with a pretty close guess.

Josh sent me a picture of the whole trailer with the advice to count the chrome and to not forget the ones in between the guy's legs.

It's probably too small to count in this picture, but there are 16 rows of 8 tires each.

Beth - I'll send out your prize early next week after we're back from our weekend away.

Australian is Funny - Part 4

2009-05-11T06:28:00.002-04:00

Mmm - extra tasty. What's really funny is that right next to this in the cheese aisle was 'tasty' cheddar cheese. Why on earth would I just get the tasty cheddar cheese when I could have the extra tasty cheddar cheese?

My only reasoning is that Australian for sharp must be tasty, but then why on earth would they need an additional sticker telling you that there is extra bite in this cheese? It all just doesn't make sense to me.

On a semi-related, fairly interesting note - there is no orange cheese in Australia. It is all the white/yellow color that you see above. ALL of it - Colby, Cheddar, they don't have American but I'm sure it would be yellow too. It's very odd to go to the cheese section and only have yellow lying in front of you. I think that it all has to do with the anti-processing of food that they have going on in this country. But we haven't been able to find a single cheese that we really like (we use the stuff above mainly grated on our salads). It's going to be a long year.

Weekend Update - 10.05.2009

2009-05-10T05:24:00.005-04:00

As an update to the post yesterday, that was NOT all of the trailer. If I showed you a picture of the entire trailer, then it would be called the 'counting game', not the 'guessing game'. Also, I don't think that he took a picture of the entire picture. Mama and Haley, if y'all want to reguess, you can. Or you can stay with your original guesses. Just try to think about how many tires need to be there to carry a 240 ton object.

As a hint, there were 2 cabs hauling the trailer - one right behind the other.

Also, the winner will get something authentically Australian sent to them so if anyone else wants to play, go ahead and guess. I'll leave it open until Monday 05/11 at 11:59 EST (US).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I took Josh to work this morning. He said that it was to give me something to do, but it's really because he wanted the extra 30 minutes of work. I have told him that he can take the car, but he's not the best with directions (it's 3 right turns with signs marking them) and always feels like we are lost. Also, we don't have a Roo Bar on our Holden so it makes it a little dangerous to be out there (particularly in the hazy dawn and dusk) because it's rumored that kangaroos are dumber than deer. They will see your car coming, pause and then hop right out into the front or side of your car.

Here's an example of a Roo Bar:

It's kind of like a push bar that you would see on trucks out in the country. Well, a push bar with headlights. And not only trucks have these, but cars as well. In fact, we are much in the minority for not having one. My best guess is that Budget Rent-a-Car doesn't want to encourage dangerous bush driving.

But anyway, I did drive Josh to work. Here is the proof (taken from my side of the car while trying not to slow down too much for fear of getting in trouble for taking pictures).

It's a big ol' structure out in the middle of nowhere (except for the OTHER power station right across the street).

And there was no need for the Roo Bar this morning since I only saw 3 dead kangaroos (though Josh did see one live one). But I much appreciated the sign as I left the parking lot reminding me that my mate's families would like me to drive safely.

I worked in the morning, worked out and before I knew it, it was time to pick Josh up from the bus stop (since he gets off at 2:30 on the weekends that he has to work). We have had a good time spending the evening just hanging out and I know that he is looking forward to only 4 more days of work until he gets a break.

Guessing Game

2009-05-09T05:37:00.005-04:00

Josh sent home this picture today. The steam turbine arrived at the plant today. It weighs 240 tons. Guess how many tires were on the trailer that hauled it to Dalby?

The safety glasses are part of the uniform. He really should have gotten Lasik before making the trip over. Apparently all the guys without glasses are issued safety glasses that look like Oakley sunglasses.

Also, I'm not sure how much "work" Josh is really doing out at this power station if he has time to pose for photo ops.

Thursday(s) Excitement

2009-05-06T18:04:00.006-04:00

On Thursday mornings, we get delivered our local newspaper. That's right - the newspaper only prints once a week. I'm talking SMALL town living here.

Here's what it looks like just after I've picked it up off of our yard.

It's very tightly rolled and then very tightly wrapped up with a saran-wrap like substance. My best guess is that they have some machine that does this though I do like to imagine some worker in the newspaper office rolling all the newspapers and then struggling with the saran wrap to get them securely protected.

And then you get the fun of unwinding it.

That's the newspaper completely unwrapped. And yet it stays curled up at the bottom.

So you have to use whatever you have lying around that's heavy enough to flatten it out.

I'm hoping by this afternoon that it's going to be flat enough to read.

Also THIS Thursday we got delivered our water cooler and our first water supply.

It's not plugged in yet since we seem to have a lack of electrical outlets in our house and thus I need to go by some more multiple-plugin strips. But yay! No more having to buy bottled water to drink.

Also, Thursdays is the day that the ice cream truck comes by. I haven't bought anything from it, but I have heard it is not your typical ice cream truck. Instead of just selling single treats, it sells boxes of treats. So you can go out and buy a whole week's worth of ice cream. I'm going to try it out one of these weeks!

Air Shipment

2009-05-06T05:19:00.006-04:00

I have plenty to write about, but they require that I actually get out of the house to take pictures. Which means that I don't take a 2 hour nap in the afternoon in order to make up for the 5 hours of sleep that I got last night. I'm aiming for getting out for some fresh air tomorrow.

But we did receive our air shipment Tuesday morning. Here is what it looked like prior to leaving Smyrna in our basement "apartment" (where I'll be staying if/when I make a trip home):

And here's what it looks like here in one of our spare rooms in Australia:

I've managed to make it into 2 of the 13 boxes (they are pretty well labeled). The first box was opened because I wanted to see how disorganized the boxes had gotten when they were searched in customs. The second box was opened because it had most of the DVDs, the extra DVD player and Josh's mini-mac in it.

In retrospect, we didn't pack very smartly (even though we had 500 lbs air and 5000 lbs sea for our taking). I don't need nearly all the clothes that are packed in those boxes since my outfit of choice lately has either been pajama pants/T-shirt/sweat shirt, workout clothes or jeans/t-shirt. And Josh basically only needs the clothes that we brought in the suitcases - he wears an uniform for 11 out of 14 days! And don't even get me started on the shoes! Oh, how horribly disillusioned I was in thinking that I would need all those heels. I am pretty happy that we packed books (comic books for Josh, novels for me) and brought all of our DVDs. We have a region free DVD provided by CH2M (and the aforementioned extra player that we brought) so we should have plenty to watch over the next year. And I'm glad that somewhere in there, there are extra linens and towels.

We got an email about a week ago when the shipping was finishing up in customs indicating that 2 of our shoes were not fit to make it through customs and that they either had to be treated or destroyed. It was $110 for both choices - the only difference being that if we opted for treated, then we'll have to go to Brisbane to pick them up. Josh choose treatment, but I think that I'm going to get some glares if they are both pairs of heels that could have easily stayed in the States. Maybe when I'm unpacking, I'll try to figure out which ones they are to try to mediate the situation.

Drive To/From Toowoomba

2009-05-05T06:48:00.006-04:00

As mentioned before, Saturday we drove to and from Toowoomba to get away from the small town living for a few hours (Toowoomba's population is about 100,000). Toowoomba is almost an hour's drive southeast of Dalby. I didn't take any pictures while in the city because (a) we were in a mall which was pretty close to what we have in the states (well, without any stores with names that I know - i.e. Gap, BR, J. Crew - and the fact that there is a grocery store as an anchor for the "mall") AND (b) I didn't want the punk/eurochick Aussie teenagers to think that I was a total square for taking pictures.

But I was able to take some while we were driving there and back (Josh drove this trip since he hadn't driven in 2 weeks and figured that he might need some practice).

Here's the view:

It's pretty exciting, yeah?

Sporadically there are windmills in the fields and there are naturally houses along the way and I think that we even pass through 2 smaller-than-Dalby "towns" on the trip. But mainly, it's just grass and clouds and blue skies. Perfect reading and napping weather.

Anything to take my mind off of this -

Through Dalby the Warrego "highway" is 4 lanes (for the short 8 blocks), but once you get out of the town limits, it narrows down to 2 lanes. And it basically stays that way all the way into Toowoomba. Normally when Josh drives, I'm asking him politely if he would mind moving the car over just a bit to the right since it very clearly appears to me that we are driving in the dirt (I think that it's just the way that it feels). But when trucks approach, I just keep my fingers crossed that we are far enough to the left and that our side mirror doesn't get nicked and spin us around.

Once you start getting close to Toowoomba, you start entering the hills and mountains. The picture below was probably taken about 13 miles out from Toowoomba. Toowoomba sits right on the crest of the Great Dividing Range and so we go from plainslands to mountains in under an hour. These mountains are kind of like the Appalachians of Australia in the fact that they are more weathered and rolling than you would get with the Rockies. The whole area kind of reminds me of Chattanooga.

Anyway, we made it to Toowoomba safely, ate lunch, saw our movie and walked around the mall a bit (I bought books - I'm going through them like they are out of style), we left and Josh forget to look right first when turning out of the mall exit. He caught it in time, but it was a bit terrifying (it's on repeat in my head when I approach a turn - 'Look Right, look right, look right....).

On the way back to Dalby, we drove almost directly into the sun. I had my sunglasses so you know 'whatevs', but Josh kept having to adjust the visor so that he could see to drive (and avoid the oncoming trucks).

They do know how to put on a good sunset out here.

And then 10 minutes after that, the sun touched the horizon and everything was green and pink and purple.

04.05.2009

2009-05-04T06:27:00.004-04:00

My camera battery has died without me realizing it and so I can't pull any pictures off until I get it recharged. I'll do it first thing in the morning.

So you just get an update of the weekend without any pictures. Saturday, we drove to Toowoomba to see the X:Men: Origins movie. I had found where there was a cinema in this grand central shopping center which turned out to be kind of like a mall, but there was a grocery store and Target at one end. So you would be walking through the mall, but some people would be trying to get through with shopping carts full of groceries. It was very odd. Also, it was the first place that we have really been crowded in an Australia. I've done a little bit of research and I'm about 3/4 of the way through 'In a Sunburned Country', but there are about 20 million people in all of Australia. The land area of Australia is approximately 2.9 million square miles which is almost as large as the US (whose land area is 3.5 million square miles). Apparently that means that the population density of Australia is 6.4 people/sq mile....compared to the US's population density of 84 people/sq mile. So we had heard that there is plenty of space for everyone. However, about 2000 people decided to increase the population density of Toowoomba Saturday afternoon.

The movie was good (Josh could go into more detail on how they took extreme liberties with Deadpool's character in the 2nd half, but I enjoyed the movied regardless) and we walked around some and looked at the stores before heading back to Dalby for the night.

Sunday we woke up and goofed around a bit and then I made Josh go on a walk with me to town and back. He always agrees to it and almost seems excited about it (I think that it has something to do with that dumb bat tree), but once we get to Brumby's, get our bread and are on our way back, he starts complaining about how far it is and how long it has taken us (it's a little over a 3.1 mile walk round-trip). Luckily, we both made it back in one piece and we spent the rest of the day just chilling in the house. I had thought that maybe we would go to the Bunya Mountains yesterday, but we decided to save that for another "in-Dalby weekend".

Today I had to work so that's pretty much all I did all day. We did manage to talk to several of our family and friends this morning so that was pretty cool. It was Labour Day and so Josh was off and he spent the entire day just relaxing (though he did pull out the vacumn late in the afternoon). Just as a note on how public holidays are handled around here - I got up at 6:45 and turned on the hot water and the space heater and logged onto work. Around 7:15, I notice a few cars pulling up into the driveway across the street. And the guys had beer cans in their hands! They spent most of the day in the garage just sitting around listening/watching football(?). I'm not sure how long they made it though after starting that early in the morning.

Pictures of the drive to/from Toowoomba tomorrow!

Australian is funny - Part 3

2009-05-02T05:17:00.002-04:00

Brekky starts at 6AM okay?

And I hope that world-wide symbolism ensures that all readers can easily tell what Hungry Jack's REALLY is.

Kangaroo Sighting

2009-05-01T06:06:00.005-04:00

This afternoon/early evening, I made Josh drive out with me to Lake Broadwater. It's a conservation park about 30km (20ish minutes) southwest of Dalby. It marked a couple of firsts. It was the first time that I drove 110 km/hour on an Australian "highway" and it marked the first time that I saw a LIVE kangaroo out in it's natural habitat.

Here's Lake Broadwater:

According to the Dalby information website, when the lake is full it covers 350ha and you can ski on it. From what we saw, there is no way that anyone has waterskied for many years.

Can you see the white beady eyes in the dark picture above?

It's a kangaroo! This is the first one that we saw. It was over on the left side of the road and when I slowed down, it hopped right in front of our car and stayed over to the right side of the car for a couple of minutes just looking at us. It was about 20 feet from the right hand side of our car. It was AWESOME!

And then we saw 4 more! Unfortunately, the picture above was the best picture that we could get. The camera was really blurry (I think from the car), the light was really bad and our zoom wasn't cooperating. But trust me, they are the cutest creatures. They don't look like giant rats at all. Apparently the ones that we saw are the smallest ones that Josh has seen. They were probably only 4 feet tall when standing on their back paws and Josh says that the ones out by work were more around 6 feet tall (the dead ones I saw looked bigger too). Maybe there's a difference in the species.

The sunset over the Downs was beautiful (as always). I'm just glad that our car didn't break down 30km from home out with the kangaroos.

And then I drove home going 110 km/hour in pitch-black darkness.

30.40.2009

2009-04-30T05:59:00.003-04:00

There have been no confirmed cases of the swine flu in Australia yet (though Josh is claiming that he has it), but after seeing the following on the news today, I'm not sure if I'm in a safe place or not:

http://livenews.com.au/news/elderly-man-attacked-at-by-vermin-at-miceinfested-nursing-home/2009/4/30/204653

[If the link doesn't work, then let me just paraphrase that there is apparently the Darling Downs is experiencing a mice plague and that one unfortunate man in a nursing home was eaten at by one of these mice. I believe that he lived, but I don't think that just a little nibble. Oh - and that nursing home was here in Dalby.]

A MICE PLAGUE? Are you kidding me? I'm going to work on keeping the house REALLY clean, hoping that the elevation keeps them out and staying out of the rooms that we don't use.

In other, happier news, Josh got off work today at 2:30 and started his long weekend. He's scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday off, but will also have Monday off because of a public holiday (Labour Day). I'll be working on Friday and Monday, so I'm not exactly sure what he'll be up to while I'm working, but I imagine it'll be a lot of sleep and playing on the computer, PSP and DS. He's excited about the time off, but I don't think that it's really adjusting him to having to work 11 days straight.

where the winds come sweeping down the plains

2009-04-28T22:13:00.008-04:00

Josh and I are from the same small town. And the town that he was born in is even smaller than the town that we grew up in. So we really had no lofty city folk attitude on moving to Dalby, because.....hello, we're home-grown small town people.

But when you can run just 1/4 of mile from your home and this is all you see, you start to realize that you aren't in Georgia anymore.

My mom had asked what the countryside looked like and as of right now, I only have pictures of what it looks like in Dalby immediate (hopefully this weekend I'll get some from the bush and from Toowoomba area). I compared it to the US midwest because it's really, really flat and there are a lot of fields. But the trees kind of throw that off, right?

When I went running, there was this pretty heather growing all on one side of a particular road. It was really pretty, but I was careful to run directly in the middle of the road for fear of a not meeting a creature slithering out of all that grass.

And there are sporadic cactuses (cacti?) in fields. I'm used to the typical cactus in the desert so to see one in a field that I'm sure is used to keep horses, it just seems odd.

But mostly in Dalby, there are fields.

Lots and lots of fields.

And apparently, my fear of meeting creatures unknown whilst out running is not unfounded since I came across this about 2 streets over from my house. Obviously this one is dead, but where there's 1, there's a million.

The 1950's called - they want their women back.

2009-04-27T05:46:00.004-04:00

When we agreed to move down under, I never knew that it meant that we were going to travel back in time.

Though, I doubt that in the 50's, it was this easy to get connected to the world.

Also, when I asked for the dishwasher to be fixed, I never meant for this to happen:

It doesn't bother Josh though since he says that he HAS an Australian dishwasher.

Weekend in Review - 25.04 and 26.04 2009

2009-04-26T06:13:00.002-04:00

Josh had Saturday off from work because of ANZAC day which is a national public holiday. Basically it is the same as Memorial Day back in the states (was created to honor the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps members who fought in WWI), but seems to be held in a much-higher standard here. Everyone town has a dawn ceremony and a parade - when I watched the news, there were 10,000 people who had camped out at the Brisbane war memorial for the dawn service.

Here is Dalby's war memorial and park. I took this picture on Tuesday. When we made it down to the city, this area was crowded with people. We couldn't really understand what was being said over the microphone (take a harsh accent and magnify it) so we didn't hang around long. It seemed that most everyone was coming and going as wanted.

So basically we used the holiday to catch up on our sleep. We slept in that morning, talked to both sets of parents and then headed out on a walk. I wanted to show Josh the walking path along the creek and let him see what I had been doing for the past week. He enjoyed the walk, but was a little over it by the end (we were out about 1.5 hours). Anyway, it was cool to see a lot of the nature that we wouldn't get to see otherwise.

As an example, I give you exhibit A.

As we were walking along the creek, we heard really cool bird sounds that we have never heard before (there's one bird here that sounds like windchimes), but we also kept hearing this sound like an animal dying up in ahead. And then we came upon this:

At first, I was like 'What are those weird things hanging from the trees?' Josh was almost immediately sure that they were bats. I told him that I have never heard of bats hanging out in the public out in the sun like that.

But sure enough, they were bats. Hundreds and hundreds of bats.

I'm not quite sure what the deal is. There were seriously about 200 hundred of them hanging over these 3 trees. And it wasn't just like those little, gray bats back home in Georgia that fly over your pool as the sun is going down in the summer. These are big black bats that more than likely turn into vampires when the moon is just right.

I found it seriously creepy and wanted to keep walking. Josh could have sat there for hours watching them. He kept wanting them to fly towards us so that he could get an idea of how big they were. I told him that was crazy talk.

Eventually, I got him to keep walking and we made it into town (and to the memorial). On our way out, we stopped at Brumby's, the local bakery, and got a delicious Apple Danish type creation and a wildberry teacake. We will definitely be making more stops at Brumby's soon.

Once we got home, we both feel asleep (maybe the jet lag is catching up). We hung around the house most of the afternoon - my major accomplishment was getting the ADSL set up, so now we can both be on a computer right next to each other. Around 4:30, we went for a drive out to the power station so that I could know where it was and so that Josh could show me what the bush looks like. That's seriously what they call going out to the power station - going out to the bush. It was really beautiful, but unfortunately, my camera battery died and needed to be recharged so I haven't taken any pictures yet. No worries - there'll be plenty of time to get some.

Also, some might be wondering about the official ROO count. As it stands:
Josh - 3
Rebecca - 0
Dead on the side of the road - 2

I was highly disappointed that we drove 30 minutes out and 30 minutes back and didn't even see a single jump mark. However, I remain optimistic that if it's that's easy to hit a kangaroo, then eventually I will see one.

Today (Sunday), Josh had to go back to work so it was another 4:00(ish) wakeup. Since I didn't have to work, I went back to bed (after talking to Beth/Scott), did laundry and dishes, played on the computer, went for a run, took a bath and read my book until time to pick up Josh (don't be jealous of how completely awesome my Sunday was). On weekends that he has to work, Josh gets off at 2:30, so I got to pick him up at 3 from the park so it's not going to be so hard on me, but I think that a 4:10 wake-up is a 4:10 wake-up and Josh was still pretty exhausted. Luckily, it meant more time for us to hang out which I always enjoy. Only 4 more days of work for him and he's off for a much-anticipated 3-day weekend.

As for me, I'm just going to try to avoid the bat tree as much as possible over the next 4 days.

Australian is Funny - Part 2

2009-04-25T05:48:00.005-04:00

As seen on the top of our rubbish bin.

Sorry for the no-post yesterday (and the lame one today). By 8:00 last night, I still had some work to be done and all I was thinking about was crawling into bed. Luckily, we got to sleep in until 6:30 (!) today. We went for a walk so I'll post some pics from that tomorrow (when Josh is back at work) and we drove out to the power station so that I would know how to get there in case of emergency and so I could have my first roo sighting. I'll have an update on that tomorrow as well.

23.04.2009 - Bullet Style

2009-04-23T06:11:00.000-04:00

No run/walk today (so no real pictures other than the TV one below) because I had mid-morning coffee with some other girls (Kathy and Sharlane). Kathy is American and has been here since January. They will be here until everything is go (at least as long as us). Sharlane is Australian, but they relocated from Perth. I was gone during the break that I would have taken for a run and so I needed to get more work done when I got back.

Sharlane has the loveliest accent, but she seems to like our American ones. Her little boy, Mitchell, is 3 and he was telling me all about Scooby-Doo and I only understood about 1/4 of what he was saying. Imagine a 3-year-old mumbling. Now imagine a 3-year-old mumbling with a strong accent. I just nodded my head, smiled and said 'Yeah?','Really?' and 'That's so neat.' over and over again. It seemed to work.

Josh caught the bus today. Hooray. But is voice is still basically gone. He alternates between sounding like a prepubescent boy and a 60-year-old man who has smoked his whole life. I'm going to try to talk him into letting me take a video of him talking.

Josh has to work this weekend which actually works out better because Saturday is a national holiday and so he gets it off. Those poor schmucks on A Shift get the weekend off and can't use the holiday later.

Official kangaroo sighting count - Josh 3, Rebecca 0. I might have to start taking some drives out in the countryside.

Is there anything good on the telly?

2009-04-23T05:36:00.005-04:00

Chances are if you are in my house, then the answer is no.

Those who know me might be clued into the fact that I like TV. It's not that I have-to, have-to watch it, but I'm one of those people that really appreciate the inventor of the DVR. On a Monday, you can record Gossip Girl AND J&K+8 AND How I Met Your Mother AND The Hills AND not get fussed at by your husband that you are wasting your life away watching crap TV (he does love HIMYM). You can simply wait until he's preoccupied with something else (the 360, computer, cleaning) and just catch up on everything you've recorded in the past week really fast!

Let's just say that this year in the almost Outback is going to make me appreciate those American rainy Saturdays where all you have to do is stay in the house.

We have 5 TV channels. Okay, really we have about 15 actual channels. But it's really just a ploy to make you think that you have more channels because REALLY you only get 5 broadcasts and they just decide to repeat them on some of the stations. It's all very strange really and I can't quite figure it out.

Luckily, I have already figured out the best times TO turn on the tube. See below.

Obviously, I turn it on at 5:30 in the morning once I get back from dropping Josh off and log on to check into work. Otherwise I would be crawling back into bed. Because getting up at 4:45 every morning? Seriously overrated.

The Today show listed is just like the Today show that we have back in the States. Almost. I actually like it even more than the American one. They do report on real news, but they also seem to play more practical jokes on each other. Also, at the end of every hour they have their "Hollywood Gossip Guy" come on with the latest juice. AND like every hour and a half they do a countdown of the 'most clicked' on the internet - some sort of rating of what everyone is watching on YouTube. And while I do want to hear the real news, it's also just plain funny to see them scare the co-host with a fake crocodile.

And then naturally, if I'm around, I might switch it on at noon. Not so much to watch, but more to just listen. It gets awfully quiet in this house and it's nice to hear American voices every so often.

What I don't get is what you see listed at 2:30 and 11:00 and what was actually playing at 5:00 when I took this picture - High Definition which actually stands for High Definition Demonstration. For an hour 4 to 5 times a day, all that plays on several stations is a video of pleasant looking mountains and rivers and people bicycling and flowers all dubbed over with music. It is the weirdest thing. And the kicker is that we are pulling straight cable from the wall so we're not even watching in high-def. Everything looks blurry and fuzzy. And it's on 8 channels! So everytime you flip, you keep getting the same thing over and over again!

Thank goodness for the internet and DVDs.

22.04.2009

2009-04-22T06:26:00.001-04:00

It's about 8:30 at night and I am exhausted. I think that the last few nights of less than 7 hours of less than par sleep is catching up to me. So this will have to be a quick (and probably boring post). The day started off well. Josh made it up in time and we got him on the bus. I came back home and was able to get over 9 hours of work in. While I was here, the plumber came back and fixed-fixed our water so I was able to start doing laundry (since I didn't want to wash our clothes in hot).

After I finished working, I thought that I should go out and enjoy the day a bit so I went for a run/walk. A run because I am aiming to be a runner again and a walk because I know what the extra weight and recently healed broken toe mean to me running. Again, it was beautiful outside.

Roo went with me and I took a few pictures (specifically for Sydney and Olivia). This is one of the posts that tells you how high the creek has gotten when it floods and supposedly tells you whether it's safe to cross the bridge to the left of the picture that crosses over the creek.

The creek is all the way behind those trees. I'm pretty sure that if the creek rises up to 2.0 m way back here, then I'm not going to leaving my house, much less wondering if I can drive my car across the bridge.

Also, Roo stalked some birds in a sanctuary that I passed during the walk portion. I apologize that he just looks like a big brown blob.

We see these birds all over the place, but I have had a hard time getting a picture of one. We have one that seems to like to hang out on our fence, but as soon as I grab my camera, he flys away.

Josh calls them penguin birds. That makes me happy.

So I got back to the house around 4 only to discover that while we had lights and air con (broken, but still) - none of the outlets were working. I went and looked at the fuse box, but didn't see any that were off. So I proceeded to get ready to go to town and made it to Big W and Woolworths for just a few things before going to the park around 5:15.

I was enjoying reading my book until the bus came at 5:35 and no Josh got off. So I waited in the car for about 10 more minutes and then decided to come home to see if he would show up here. About 2 minutes after I pull up, he's coming in the front door. Apparently, he JUST missed the busses and had to get a ride with another guy who lives out here. So, I put him in charge of trying to figure out what was wrong with the outlets. It turns out the dishwasher uses too much power and trips the circuits. I'm not real sure what the point of a dishwasher is if you can't use it without shutting everything else off.

So dinner, show and Josh is in bed already. He lost his voice today and apparently the guys are giving him a hard time - something about sounding a bit prepubescent. I'm rushing to write this
so that I can clean up the kitchen and get his shirts in the dryer (he finally got more than 1 shirt today). Maybe, just maybe I'll have a chance to look at one more work issue before I pass out.

No one ever said that it was ALWAYS going to be glamourous!

Australian is Funny

2009-04-21T16:23:00.001-04:00

We bought some face washers, yeah?

21.04.2009

2009-04-21T02:21:00.006-04:00

As predicted by yesterday's post, Josh did wake up at 4:10 while I manage to stay in bed until the much more decent hour of 4:45am. We loaded him up and got him to the bus with plenty of time to spare. I think that he's going to have quite the stories to tell based on the men that ride the bus.

I came back home and logged on to work for about 5 hours or so. I think that it is going well so far. I basically catch everyone in the last 2 - 3 hours (or 0.50 hour for the early birds) of their day, so we'll see if I need to start staying up later to try to grab anyone at the beginning of the day.

Then I took a break and headed out for a run/walk while the air was still relatively cool. Down the street next to ours is the golf course. It took me 6 minutes to walk there. Here it is. I liked how green and quiet it was.

I've only played golf once (on our Alaska vacation last summer), but maybe we will have to take it up. Only if we can borrow others' clubs, of course.

Right across from the golf course is where the walking/biking trail starts that runs along the creek. This is Myall Creek. Kinda spooky, right? I have no clue what lies underneath that brown, murky water, but all I could imagine was coming face to face with a crocodile. Anyway, I was more interested in running along the path over to the left of the picture.

So I ran for about 10 minutes into town where I stopped to take this picture. For the past 3 days, I have been cracking up because I had no idea why someone in Australia would name their hotel this. Now, knowing the name of the creek, it's obvious that the 'M' in the sign is suppose to work double-duty for both words, but to me, forever more this hotel will be Motel Y'all.

Then I ran just 2 or 3 minutes more and hit the cultural part of town. Below is the Dalby Bowls Center. It's bowling, but with suspicious rules. Josh and I watched some of it on the telly in Brisbane, but couldn't figure out the object.

Right next door is a Anzac memorial park of which I took a picture, but decided to save until Saturday (Anzac Day). Behind the park is the pool. I did take a picture of this, but it really didn't do it justice. As you can see, there is a little kiddie play area in the front, but if you peek behind the mushrooms, you can catch a glimpse of the 8-lane, 50-meter pool. Off to the right of the picture is a grandstand of seats. It's pretty nice for such a small town. The only sad part is that it closes this Sunday for winter and doesn't reopen until September 6th.

But no worries, because right on the other side of the pool is the Dalby Croquet Club and I'm pretty sure that they don't stop playing croquet in the winter. I'm not real sure what it takes to belong to the Croquet Club (or Bowls Center for that matter), but perhaps I should be looking into it.

And then I just turn around 180 degrees from this picture and you can see the Big W. The Big W is in Dalby ShoppingWorld which is at the end of the main street of Dalby. I decided not to head over to the main street to take pictures because (a) I'm trying to keep these posts shorter and (b) I'm aiming not to run out of things to blog about. Anyway, you probably can't tell, but Big W's slogan is 'We Sell for Less'. Yeah - that's right. It's just a smaller Walmart.

And there's the creek and the pathway again so I decided to run home. I did come across this odd grouping.

I thought it was weird to find 4 different birds just kind of chilling together. Though I suppose that they are all of the duck-like species.

Also, that big one down there. Big enough to take my leg off if he had wanted to. Seriously, I walked WAY around the pathway to avoid contact with him. Look at his scary goose/duck leg - you could eat that!

And then I came across this tree and took a picture because I've only seen fake trees that look like this.

So I got home and took a shower (since I don't want to become one of those stay-at-home people who feel like they don't have to get around just because they stay at home all day), at lunch and worked some more. The guy(s) came around to check on the problems with the house, but the one guy told me that he was waiting to hear from someone else about the air con units (his words, not mine) and the other plumber guy replaced the water pump to make the water come out more forceful, but discovered that our switch was broken. Meaning the switch that determines whether we use town water or tank water. And by tank water, I mean water from that big rainwater collection tank out in our front yard. Yeah - that could explain why we were getting grass in our ice water. He left at 5 with promises to be back in the morning with the part to fix everything.

Which was fine with me since I needed to leave soon to get Josh anyway. I made it over to the park at 5:30 and he was just getting off the bus. I took a picture of his work outfit because though I think that he is incredibly manly coming home from building a power plant, those shirts that they have to wear are hideous! It's an Australian standard though so at least he fits in.

And wouldn't you know it? He saw a dang kangaroo on the ride home today! And all I've seen are birds that can swallow an appendage. His comments were that it just like a big, dumb, overgrown deer, but I'm sure that it was much cuter than that. He was tired after a long day of work. He had a induction meeting and safety briefing right when he got there - apparently, they went over all of the toxious plants that you should not touch. He worked side-by-side with the other Cablematic guy out there and appears to be learning a lot really quickly. I asked him how impressive the plant was and he said that it was pretty amazing. He did mention that he doesn't like walking the plant because there are cranes everywhere and you have to keep looking up to make sure that no one is going to drop anything on you.

After he got home, we had a good 2 hours of seeing each other before he had to head off to sleep again. So our first day of a routine seemed to go fairly well. I didn't get too bored or lonely (not with all the work I have to do) and I think that Josh is feeling better about the job now that he's gotten a day out there under his feet. So we're ready to do it again!

20.04.2009

2009-04-20T07:25:00.002-04:00

I have to get to bed because apparently I am in charge of taking Josh down to the bus stop in the morning. He is getting up at 4:10 am to catch the 5:30 bus. I will be getting up much closer to 5:00 am.

So, Josh woke up feeling much better this morning. We still made the drive into Toowoomba just to make sure that there was nothing seriously wrong with him and there wasn't. The doctor prescribed something similar to Tylenol and we drove back. It was like driving from LaGrange to Atlanta for a 15 minute meeting and then driving back.

After we got back into Dalby, I talked Josh into running errands with me. We managed to get our local phone line hooked up and should have DSL within the next week (I'm running on a mobile broadband modem now). I just have to wait for the WI-FI modem to get here. We went to the Big W (read: Walmart) to get stuff for the house, to Sam Dick's (an electronics store) to buy a converter and TV for the bedroom and to Woolworth's (a grocery store - not a drugstore like I thought). At Big W, we ran into James, the other guy from Josh's office who made it into town today. We were happy to see another expat.

Back home, I managed to get some work done so that I couldn't call it a complete waste of the day and we just hung out. Josh went to bed around 8 and I told him that I would follow soon, but I guess that was a lie. I have got to quit doing so many post with that many pictures!

#3 Charthom Place

2009-04-20T06:06:00.005-04:00

That's our new address for the next year - #3 Charthom Place, Dalby, QLD 4405. It's a brand-new, 4-bedroom, 2-bath house. But don't be impressed, it's not quite what you would find back in the States. Here it is:

It's yellow so Beth would like it.

I think that it kind of looks like a double-wide...thus Josh likes it.

Most of the houses around here are built on stilts because when it rains in Queensland, it pours (though the state has been in a drought for over 20 years). And when it pours, it floods. And when it floods, it moves houses on slabs around so everything gets messed up. So now, they build them on adjustable stilts so if the flood does move the house around a little bit, they can just adjust the stilt up or down. Apparently, the fact that it is built up also helps keep the vermin out (for which I am immensely grateful).

Also, that sky in the pictures above....not doctored at all. Gorgeous, right?

Here's from our front door:

Living room complete with loveseat, chair, TV and my sweet husband who feels well enough to put together the shelving system we bought for the bathroom. Also, the kitchen table in the background with all of my stuff on it. See, I actually AM working over here.

And here's the kitchen as taken from the kitchen table. Standard.

Here's the first of our air conditioners (up high). We have 2. This one is broken since the left indicator light is blinking which means that we haven't turned it on for fear of creating a fire in the house. It has been hot the past 2 days.

This is part of our backyard as taken from the french doors that you could see from the front door picture (3 up). There is a nice covered deck which is great because otherwise I don't think that we could enjoy the outdoors. Have I mentioned how hot it is?

Here's the other part of our fenced in yard. It runs along the back of our house. I think that it would be perfect for a dog!

Back inside, here is a boring picture. It's taken looking down the hallway from the kitchen/living room. See, you can just see a piece of the brown loveseat sticking out to the left. Anyway, there are 3 doors on the right (2 guest bedrooms and a bath) and 2 doors on the right (a guest bedroom and the master bedroom).

Another boring picture. This is the guest bedroom on the left. The bed is not made up because Josh wouldn't let me go in there since the room was so hot. The blinds are shut because that's the front of the house and we face west so it makes the house...hot. I'll make up the bed in the morning when the house cools down into the teens (see, I'm getting this celsius thing). Anyway, the other 2 guest bedrooms look just like this except they have no furniture in them.

This is the guest bathroom. Check out that bathtub. Nice, right? I will be testing that out sooner rather than later. There is also a sink opposite the tub. The toilet is separate. Apparently, across the way, there are 4 guys sharing the same house layout. I don't know how they are doing it.

Here's our laundry room. We have a washer and a dryer and a sink.

We however, do not have vent out on the dryer so if I run something really wet in the dryer, it turns that little bitty room into a steam room. Thus, I had to use this today -

That, my friends, is a clothesline. And apparently widely used around here (you might have noticed the one out yonder in the picture from our deck). That little spot of land gets tons of sun so my guess is that I might be going green and hanging more things out than I dry. I just don't think that I can bring myself to hang our delicates out for all the neighbors to see.

Back inside next to the laundry room (remember, the last door on the left from the kitchen) is the master bedroom. If you were confused about what bedroom is the master (well, other than the fact that it has an ensuite), you could tell from the evidence of the 2nd air conditioning unit in here

What you can't see in this picture is the pail and towel underneath the air conditioner catching the water dripping from it because you guessed it - this one is broken too. Apparently, we are not suppose to run this one either due to the indoor water dripping, but I would back on a plane to the states if we weren't running it. Someone was suppose to come out today to look at it. Hopefully they will make it tomorrow.

Here is our closet. LOVE.

There are 3 piles of dirty clothes on the floor only because there is a slight issue with the washer. I wouldn't say it's broken, but I can only wash with hot water right now. Otherwise, the laundry room floor gets flooded. Again, someone is suppose to be out today.

For the last picture from inside the house, here is our master bath. It's not spectacular, but it does have pretty awesome heating lamps. Because as much as I complain about how hot it gets, it is actually pretty chilly walking on tile at 5:30 in the morning.

Okay, last 2 pictures. Here is the garage. It's nice and wide especially since we only have 1 car. That door in the garage up to the left leads out to where the clothes line is and the door into the laundry room and back of the house.

Our car is a Holden. I have never heard of it before, but I kind of think that the emblem is cool. It drives well. As well as it can for having a steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

2009-04-19T04:07:00.005-04:00

This will have to be a catch-up blog post since we have been traveling since Wednesday and I haven't been able to get online and catch up on all of my thoughts and actions over the past few days. We are finally back online in Dalby with the help of Dodo Mobile Broadband. We have a limited number of hours to use over the next 90 days so we are just relying on this to get us through the next couple of weeks until we can get actual phone service and DSL to our home.

So, the flights went well on Wednesday. Once we got to the airport in Atlanta, we found out that because Australia requires that everyone traveling there have a Visa, you have to have an actual agent check you in rather than just the online kiosk. I started to freak a little bit when we got in the line for international since it seemed not to be moving at all and we had a little less than 1.5 hours before our flight took off. Luckily, I noticed a medallion/business class check-in for international. Finally, my silver status on Delta actually did something (since I never seem to get upgraded on those flights back and forth to DCA). We were able to check in smoothly, say goodbye to my family and make it to the gate with time to spare.

We stayed up the entire flight from ATL to LAX. We both watched 'Yes, Man' on the back of seat screens and since we were in business class, decided that we should probably partake in the free dinner (even though neither one of us were hungry from having had lunch with my parents and aunt so late). We landed at LAX at 7:30 pm local (11:30 EST). Once there, we had to leave our arrival terminal and go check in at the Quantas terminal to get our boarding passes. It was there that we found out that our carry-on baggage can't be more than 7kg (~16 lbs). Uh, yeah - all 4 of ours were at least 10 kgs. So we tried to consolidate as much as possible into one of the roll-abroads and just paid $34 to check it as an additional bag. As it was, the other 3 carry-ons were still at least 8 kgs each, but the lady was nice enough to let us go ahead. So we went through security again and headed to our gate to wait out the rest of the 4 hour layover. I played some PSP, Josh read a comic book, we both drank Starbucks and started a new DVD series (Freaks and Geeks). You can tell that Roo enjoyed watching the DVD just as much as us.

The plane ride from LAX to Brisbane took off at 2:30 am EST Thursday. Unfortunately, we were in economy for this portion of the trip, but at least we were able to get just 2 seats together so it meant that there wouldn't be a window-seater constantly crawling over the 2 of us (as it was, I had to scoot over Josh throughout the flight). By this point, we were both really tired and couldn't avoid taking a brief nap for the first part of the flight. My guess is that we slept about 45 minutes to an hour. I woke up to the smell of dinner being served. After dinner, they pass out snack bags and turn off all the lights and then the plane stays that way for about another 12 hours. I've been on an overnight flight before and I think that it's kind of weird and creepy. It's completely dark and the flight attendants just walk through the aisles with their flashlights shining on the pitcher of water that they have. Josh fell back asleep, but I was good and stayed up and played the DS and watched Slumdog Millionaire. Once it was over, I was TI-RED so I put on my eyeshades and fell asleep as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep quite as readily as Josh so I probably only slept about 3-4 hours of the entire 14 hour flight. Josh estimates that he got about 5-6 good hours of sleep.

All I know is that it was the longest plane ride EVER. I've told several people that as much as I am looking forward to having them come visit, I will never lie about how long that plane ride takes. The first time that I woke up from a good sleep, I looked over at Josh (who was awake at the time) and he says 'We're about halfway there.' It had already been 6.5 hours and we were only halfway there?!? It was definitely hard. And I haven't been happier to see land than when we were going down to land in Brisbane.

So we land in Brisbane at 6:30 am Friday morning local (about 4:3o pm Thursday afternoon in Atlanta) and are all the way down to the lines for Customs when I realize that I've left our camera (in the camera bag) on the plane. I'm just lucky that I have a husband who loves me since we had to walk all the way back down the terminal to the plane only to be told that the camera had been found and was sent to baggage services where we could pick it up. Oops. So we walk ALL the way back down to Customs only to discover that it appears that there were 2 or 3 other planes that landed at the same time as ours and all of those passengers had to go through customs as well. Nice, right? So we get through the first lines where we have to show the immigration officers our passports and prove that we have a reason/Visa to be in Australia. It was a long line, but it went smoothly. Then we were able to pick up our camera and luggage and stood in another long line that put us through the Customs x-rays. Again, the line was long, but everything went smoothly. In all, it took us about 2.5 hours from the time we landed to get out to a taxi.
From the airport, we went straight to a hotel in Brisbane so that we could try to recover from the flight some prior to the drive to Dalby on Saturday. It was a nice gesture on the part of Josh's company and in retrospect, a great idea. We were able to get on the internet some Friday morning and talk to our families prior to heading out the 'The Coffee Club' for breakfast, a brief walk on the river, showers and unfortunately naps. We were really trying to be good about not sleeping until nighttime on Friday, but we were exhausted. Luckily,we woke up in time for dinner and were able to make it out to La Dolce Vita for some food prior to heading back to the hotel for more sleep. Josh feel asleep around 8 pm and I followed at 8:30 and we both slept pretty solidly through until 5 am (though we didn't get up until 7).

Dave, the site services manager from CH2M, came and got us around 9:30, took us to breakfast and we started on the trip to Dalby. We arrived around 12:30, got to see our house and car (a Holden Commodore, thank you very much) and went shopping downtown fairly quickly since everything closes at 5 or prior on Saturday and basically nothing except churches and bars are open on Sunday. I have tons and tons to write about Dalby and the house, but I think that I can parse those out into smaller posts. We are in a brand new 4-bedroom house (no trailer!), but it's hardly what you would expect in America. I'll post pics in a later post. We are settling in and were concerned about the lack of communication when we couldn't get the internet working last night, but have luckily gotten set up and I'm at least feeling a little better about our decision to come here. :)

Now, here's where the bad and unplanned news comes into play. Josh was scheduled to report to work tomorrow (Monday) morning, but he woke up this morning with a slight sore throat. We went into town to try to get the internet working and to check on a few things regarding the house (i.e. the main air conditioner not working and the cold water to the washer appearing to be clogged). During that trip, he started to experience aches and pains. Once back home, he went straight to bed and has basically been there all day. He's running a high fever, has thrown up once and seems to have all the symptoms of the flu. We emailed his manager (who stopped by last night) and he came by late this afternoon and left us with contact info and directions to a clinic in Toowoomba since he has heard that it's hard to get great if any medical service in Dalby. He also left his GPS and cell phone so that if we have any issues, we won't be stranded. It was a wonderful gesture. So, if Josh still isn't feel well in the morning, I'll be driving us an hour away to see if we can get him fixed up quickly (and yes, I have driven briefly - I just keep repeating in my head 'stay left, stay left, stay left'. The hardest part is turning on the blinker and not the windshield wipers.). So keep us in your thoughts since we completely weren't planning for this.

I'll update with another post tomorrow. I figure if I can get in a good enough habit of posting at least once a day, then it'll become second nature.

Heading Down Under

2009-02-07T20:39:00.005-05:00

My manager talked to the Vice-President of Operations yesterday about my proposal to "work remotely" from Australia. It went surprisingly well. While we were more worried about trying to convince the VP that my job is actually done more productively when not bothered by constant interruptions and meetings, what we probably should have been concerned with were the legal aspects of me living out of the country and still working for the company. Apparently, it can't just be treated as if I'm just visiting Josh and happening to do work. Huh, who knew? Our human resources woman is going to figure out what to do with me (most likely treat me as an independent contractor with some increase in salary to account for employer FICA/Medicare that I'll have to pay when we get back) and we'll hopefully get it all settled this coming week.

Just having that conversation out of the way takes a huge load off my shoulders. I might have kind of, just a little bit freaked out on the phone with Josh this past Tuesday (I was in Arlington) and cried for a good 30 minutes. Even just 5 days ago, there seemed to be a billion things that needed to be done and that we didn't have details on. Since then, we have figured out (from the Site Services manager) what exactly comes in the furnished house in Australia, discussed renting our house options with Beth and Scott, started the process of getting our roof fixed (it takes moving out the country to do that???), received Josh's passport, started our 2008 tax return, sent in my passport for renewal and took a visit to Wachovia today to get Josh added onto my accounts. There are now only about a million things left on the list to take care of in the next 7ish weeks.

Along with those items include making it home to see family. We are actually in LaGrange this weekend and next week we have a trip planned for Rochester to see Moesha (booked about 2 weeks before we found out about Australia). With an upcoming wedding and a new baby due, we want to see everyone as much as possible. It'll be easy for me since I'll be coming back to the States every so often, but Josh is basically staying abroad for the entire year. Luckily, it seems that everyone wants to make a trip to Australia!