Epic Fail and MORE mail!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I love this country.

T.I.A.

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

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.