Time of my Life

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.