First official entry

Okay so this is my first official entry. The rest have been emails that I copied and pasted. so I have a lot to write.

Funny story I forgot to tell you guys about. We met these two girls from New York that were staying in our room in the hostel. They were really cool so we decided to go sightseeing with them. Meribeth and I went to breakfast fully dressed and left the hostel to go to the IEP office. The girls were going to go upstairs after breakfast and get dressed so they can meet up with us. Well the girls show up at the office and one of the girls was wearing the exact same outfit as me. Pink skirt with a black tanktop and a black zip up sweater. I couldn't believe it since she saw me wearing it before I left. haha it was funny though and we laughed about it all day.

As far as softball goes, the girls are great. There are 3 teams that we practice with, A1, A2, and A3. A1's are the best and that will be our team. The girls are decent and we should have a lot of fun. i've been playing outfield and it looks like that's where I'm staying when I'm not pitching. It should be okay though because the teams should be pretty good, so I'll get a lot of balls. I've had a few pitching lessons and the girls seem to be doing pretty good. i had 2 more girls come up today and ask for lessons. It might be hard though because Meribeth and I want to move closer to the city which means farther from the field. We will see...
So today it happened, my first major encounter with their crazy wildlife here. We came home from practice and I walked into the kitchen to make a sandwich and a spider the size of a small country came crawling out towards me. I ran and leaped out of the kitchen to escape and the thing came running after me! What kind of spider keeps chasing you?? I screamed bloody murder and can you believe not one knock on the door to see if we were okay. Believe me they heard it, you can hear everything in this place. Anyways, Meribeth was brave enough to grab her shoe and start pounding on the thing. It finally died and it is sitting on our kitchen floor under a shoe because we don't want to get close to it. IT really was the size of like a peanut butter jar lid. Never seen any spider so big outside of a cage. If they get any bigger I'm getting on the next plane home!!
So, so far the animals I have seen outside of the wildlife park is an owl, wallaby's, cockatoos and other birds, possums, a gigantic spider, a gecko, and we have a very noisy fruit bat living in our back yard. We have a small mango tree and we think he eats off that. One of the girls I give lessons to, said she plays with the fruit bats and their friendly. I said that's cool come make friends with ours so he leaves our house.
The same girl got sooo excited when a goose came around the field. She said wow we don't see those very often. Out of all the things they have around here, she gets excited about a goose. It's so funny the differences between there and here.
Hmmm, lets see, the major differences... They write their date with the day first than the month. So October 5th is 5/10/2006. We're all confused. They use mostly military time here also, so we look at the date and minus 12 from the time. haha it takes us 10 minutes to figure out the time and day. no j/k but it does take a second look.
Obviously they drive on the other side. Scariest thing too when you see someone in the drivers seat knitting, or looking towards the back seat.
My favorite is when they talk they say things like I need to have a sleep, or I'm going for a shop. It makes me laugh. I said what's up to our coach the other day and she said up? nothing's up. haha. Apparently, that's not said over here. When we were giving lessons yesterday we saw a bunch of guys come down and play cricket. What a crazy sport that is. We're going to go to a match soon, the season starts up soon I guess, So that will be exciting. I'll take pictures.
There buses are pretty easy. We just get on the bus and ask the driver what to do. haha. They're all very nice so it's easy to do that. We can't understand the maps at all. They make me feel like we went to a country that didn't speak english. We always figure it out though and the buses are really nice, and they seem pretty new.
Tomorrow we're heading out to Byron bay, which I heard is one place we just can't miss. It should be a good time. We're taking the Canadian with us. Around the field we're known as the Yankees or the Yanks. Can't say I've ever been called that in my lifetime. But it's fun. So it's the three yankees and a canadian. I wouldn't be suprised if they don't know our names. haha. It's all in good fun though.
My mom and Julie have been calling me everynight on skype. It's an internet phone you can call people on for free. I can't say I've been in the best of moods when they call, but it's always right after our 20 mile hike from the bus stop back to the house and I've been looking for jobs the last few days. so it's been a little frustrating. We'll find jobs though and perhaps a new place to live. so far we're having a good time.
Well I guess I've rambled on long enough and I've told a lot of you all of this anyways. feel free to email if you have any questions or want to know about anything.