Oct 2006

So for my birthday we all went out, then Monday night I had practice, then Tuesday night our neighbors made us dinner. We hung out with our neighbors pretty much all night and they bought me card and some flowers for my birthday. so that was really nice. They're a little crazy but they're good people.
Saturday we had our first game, we lost 2-1. the team was not very good, so this should be interesting. We only have 8 players rostered and 2 can't be there this weekend, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. But hey if it doesn't work out than it is just more time to travel. So we'll see. I'm not sure how it's going to go. We offered to help coach the A3 team which is older ladies that our still good and we're going to hit them grounders and coach the bases for them and stuff. This weekend I coach the A3 team at 12 have a game at 4 and then I rush to work by 6:15, so this should be interesting. I already screwed up my availability before I even started working. oh well!
Meribeth got a job. She is going to be working at a cafe called Spoons which is across the courtyard from my cafe. So that will be fun. There are a few bars in between our cafe's so we'll probably meet up for drinks when we work friday and saturday nights.
We tried going out last night but the buses never came, I guess there isn't much to do around here on Wednesday nights anyways. Part of me stops and thinks why did I leave my car, my friends, and tons of stuff to do every night to come over here. Haha but it's an experience and I'm having a good time.
Meribeth and I went hiking the other day. Oh it was awful. The bus ride took forever, and we went up to hike and apparently all the hikes worth doing were at a different location but we were too far to go to those ones. So we went anyways on one of the other hikes. It was pretty for about 2 minutes and then it was just boring. We turned around and walked back because it was all the same stuff. All we really saw was a wild turkey. Haha we laughed about it though. It was funny.
hmm what else? I held a baby wallaby at the softball fields. This lady takes in all types of animals that are hurt and can't take care of themselves. Well she found an orphaned wallaby (which is a kangaroo but smaller and with a smaller head), and she brought it to the field in a backpack, she said it's like a pouch to him so he didn't mind. She took it out and we all got to hold it. So that was fun.
this week we're going to go over to a house with little kids in it and we're going to carve pumpkins with them. So that should be fun. They've never done it before. Hope we can find pumpkins easily.
Well not much going on in the next couple of days as far as excitement. We have games saturday and sunday and I work all weekend. i'm pretty excited to start working, I think we'll meet some people too so that will be fun.
I am going to have like 3 hours were I have to wait for a friend to get off work tomorrow so I'll try and find internet somewhere over there.

Well I started a job today. i'm officially a waitress. Who needs experience? Haha. So I go in today for a "work trial." The owner tells some guy to show me around the place. He is Canadian and studying here. So he shows me where you get the food and the drinks and bring it to the tables. You don't have your own tables you just go get the food when the chef rings the bell. After about 10 minutes of being shown around the cafe and 2 minutes of reading over the menu, they give me a writing pad and an apron and send me on my way! I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Guess I faked it pretty well though because I got hired. I dropped a few forks and mis wrote a few orders, but no orders got screwed up and they just asked me what I meant. Things went pretty well I guess. So now I'm a waitress. Funny...
Anyways, so today we went down the coast to some beaches. THey are soooo beautiful over here. Water is crystal clear. We saw giant lizards by the beach. Got hit on by some old man that wanted to go to lunch with us. haha. We had some ice cream. I bought a really cute sweatshirt that says Australia and has the cities written on it. Brewster took us, she is great. Does so much for us.
More funny sayings mom...Stuffed up means made a mistake. They call a car trunk a boot. hmm I had a few more but I can never remember. I'll remember. Brewster the lady that helps us so much had a python in her yard last night. 5ft long. I said wow, so that's not just Australians trying to scare Americans. There have been a few giant bugs in the house. That is taking some time to get used to. Luckily Meribeth is brave enough to kill them.
Oh ya we went to a chocolate factory today, but it was actually just a little stop over here that you can buy things. I was a little disappointed...oh well. White Chocolate is pretty popular over here so that's exciting. We took a picture with a whole rugby team today. We made their day. haha, they were so excited to take a picture, more came running up behind them to be in the picture. So funny. We're having a great time here. once we got over the fact that we are going to have a real life here and there isn't always going to be something great and exciting, adn we have to get jobs, we are doing better. The softball people are just great and we love going to play. Can't wait for the game tomorrow!
Sunday Meribeth and I are going hiking. We found Brisbane forest park with lots of trails, so that will be fun. I'm going to wear my new Byron Bay hat! Can't wait. Should be some exciting trails. Then Monday is my birthday, so we'll probably go to dinner or something, not sure. Anyways, we're doing great. Julie is keeping me posted with all the sad depressing things going on...Thanks Julie! SO if anyone has some good things to write about feel free. Hope everyone gets better or stays healthy. I hope grandpa is doing well. Let him know how things are going and tell him I love him!! I'm goiong to jump in the shower because I smell like food. Internet has been acting up so I might not be on for a few days. I'm also coaching for their U16 team so that should be fun. Okay lov eyou all. Goodbye!
Tomorrow our game is at 10 am. I'm pitching, so this should be interesting.

Apparently, I forgot to add sleep to my to do list in Australia. The last three nights I have barely slept. There is an American upstairs and I don't think he sleeps. I can hear him up all the time. Two nights ago there was very weird noises outside our house. We're not sure what it was. It sounded like a dog running around outside the house, up the stairs, and in the backyard. It was pretty freaky. Than last night it sounded like someone was hammering consistently for about 2 hours before I finally got used to it and fell asleep. So our house is not too exciting at the moment.
Last night poured. It sounded like the roof was going to cave in. I'm not sure how much of that was because the rain was so hard and how much of it is because our house doesn't seem all that sturdy. Haha oh what an experience we are going to have here.
It was nice and sunny today though. We again went job searching. I printed my resume out again after I changed it a few times and was all prepared to hand it out when I realized I left my old cell phone number from the states on it. So needless to say I didn't send many out today. We'll figure something out though. I'm emailing the Subway by my house because I at least have experience. Kind of awkward when you're 24 with almost a masters and you're applying at Subway. Haha it's fun though.
We have practice tonight, we got a new coach. He is from Cairns and it sounds like he'll be pretty good, so I'm excited about that. Bri (The Canadian) is going to stay at our house tonight, since we're close to the field. That will be nice to have company. We really need to meet some friends.
well guess i don't have much more to say. Just keeping in touch. This weekend we plan on going hiking and Friday hopefully we'll do something fun too. So that should be good. I'll write after we play a game.

On Friday October 6th, we took a bus down to Byron Bay. We left at 11:30 and it was about a 2 hour and 45 minute bus ride. The ride was really pretty. It was so green and there were a million trees.
We got into Byron Bay about 2:15 and went straight to the hostel to put our stuff down. We couldn't check in until 6 so we went for a walk around the town. Byron bay is a small little hippieish town but it's very touristy. Anyways, we walked around the shops, stopped by the beach, and got something to eat.
The stores were really cute little beach shops but man were they expensive. It was pretty ridiculous. So we decided to to go the beach. The beach was beautiful but pretty quiet. We hung out there for a while but we didn't have bathing suits so we went back up to walk around.
We had kebabs for dinner. They are so good. They are like pitas. The bbq sauce and ketchup and everything here is pretty gross though. just a tip if you ever visit here. They don't have ketchup they use actual tomato sauce. It tastes like pasta sauce on your french fries. Gross!
After dinner we checked into our hostel took showers and got ready to go out. Well we were ready to go at like 7 which is a little early for the bars even in a party town. So we went to the bottle shop (liquor store) and got some bottles of wine. We started playing kings (which is a drinking card game). Some Australian guys next to us had no idea what we were doing so we taught them how to play. We got pretty drunk doing that then we decided to go to a bar. It was called Cheeky monkey and everyone in the town seemed to go to this bar. MTV had a reality show taped here. Anyways, we hung out with those guys for most of the night. They were pretty fun. The bar had tables on their dance floor so you had to dance up on the tables. Friday night was a lot of fun.
Saturday morning was not so fun. haha. We drank a little too much. But we got up and went straight to the beach. We walked all the way to the other side which looks like it's 5 minutes but is actually like a 30 minute walk. We couldn't believe it. But it was absolutely beautiful. There was a place you could walk up and look over the whole beach. On the right of the beach was a ton of trees and a lighthouse on top of the hill. The water was clear.
Bri (The Canadian) has never been in the ocean so we took her in the ocean. The three of us went wave jumping and just hung out. There was a pretty big crab in the water with us. I ran to get my camera but it wiggled it's butt into the sand before I got back. We laid in the sun for a little while. Bri got pretty burnt on her chest and back. Meribeth and I were just a little red in a few places we must not have rubbed sun screen on.
We got ready to go out again and we headed out to find an ATM. We walked towards the ATM by the bottle shop and Meribeht went to use the ATM. Right above the ATM were two pretty big spiders...Not as big as the monster in the house, but still big. So of course I screamed and told Meribeth to watch out. haha. So some guy that stopped right before going in the shop came out and said don't worry, and he grabbed the spiders down. From there he started talking to us and his friend came out and we all decided to go to dinner together. We ended up hanging out with them Saturday night and then went to breakfast with them on Sunday. They were really fun. Two guys from New Castle which is like an hour from Sydney. We talked a lot about the differences between languages and countries. I love that they say heaps here all the time. not really a word you hear in the states.
All in all it was a great weekend. Probably not too exciting to read about, but we had an awesome time!!! Can't way to see where we go next. one of the ladies that helps us out a lot has Friday off so she wants to take us somehere for the day. We just have to figure out where...

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.