Nov 2006

Pumpkin in a Can? Marshmellows on Sweet potatoes? Australians eat pumpkin everything, but putting it in a can, well that's just crazy. I explained to them that eating the pulpy stringy stuff that you try to get rid of when carving a pumpkin, is just not going to happen. So I'm still not convinced about pumpkin, but we managed to make them fall in love with candied yams.
Prior to the day we decided to have Thanksgiving, Meribeth and I planned out all the dishes we would make. Little did we know that Australia doesn't carry have the ingredients needed to make a Thanksgiving dinner.
Meribeth and our friend Louie went grocery shopping for the event and they had spent about 2 hours trying to find all the ingredients needed to make the meals. Everything is different. Marshmellows are kind of flat and very surgery. As mentioned before pumpkin pie was out because they don't have it in a can. Mayonaise that actually tasted like mayonaise was very hard to find. They didn't have banana pudding for a banana cream pie. Their turkeys are not over 8lbs. The Aussies were shocked when we told them that we have turkeys that are about 25 lbs.
After the shopping we had set to work to make the dinner. We made mashed potatoes, candied yams, ham, turkey, broccoli salad, corn and green been casserole, deviled eggs, fruit salad, rolls, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and we bought apple pie.
We worked from 10 am in the morning until about 5 pm. It turned out great. We had about 15 people altogether.
After everyone arrived and the food was ready we had everyone in the kitchen and Meribeth said thank you to everyone for everything they have done for us. The speech ended in tears and it was a very touching moment.
We all helped ourselves and dug in. Overall it was a very great event, and if anything we left footprints in the Aussies tummies, and they will never forget Thanksgiving in November again. I think we may have started a new tradition here. I am very excited to make some dishes for our family Thanksgiving next year.

Well these last two weeks have been pretty crazy. it's been very hard being away from home when something like this happens. I think most people that read this know that my grandfather passed away. Prior to going I had taken it into consideration that it could happen, but there was no way to prepare for myself when it actually did.
To hear about my grandpa while he was at home was heartbreaking. Wondering what is happening, how he is doing, how he is feeling, is there really anything I can do if I was there. Dealing with losing someone so close to you is the hardest thing in the world, actually being on a different part of the planet when someting like that does happen is the absolute worst.
I am so grateful for this experience and being in another country for 6 months. I am experiencing things that I probably never will again. It is truly amazing. But there is no substitute for family and being there in times of need. Dealing with the guilt of not being there for my grandpa and the rest of the family is soo hard. But I will work through it just like everyone else dealing with losing grandpa. He truly was amazing and touched everyone that he came across.

So the day I've been talking about since before I got to Australia finally came... We made our way up the Australia Zoo (Better known as the Steve Irwin Zoo).
We booked two seats on the Croc Express, which is a bus ride that leaves from Brisbane and takes you up to the zoo.
Two of our friends Wannie and Grunter decdided to go with us. They offered to give us a ride but we had already signed up and paid for the bus. So we met them up there.
The zoo was a pretty cool experience. We made are way around the park for a little while until the shows started.
The first show was about snakes. they brought out a snake that must have been about 20 feet long. It took 3 people to carry it out and it was over 200 pounds. It was insane. There are pictures on my yahoo photos.
After the snakes they brought out birds. They had mostly parrots, but also eagles and cockatoos. It was pretty cool watching the birds fly around like crazy.
Next they brought out the crocodile. The crocodile show is not as exciting as you would think it is going to be but it's still fun to watch. They only bring out one crocodile and they just feed him meet. you get to watch him jump up and get the meet but that is about the extent of it. The crocdile we saw was named Graham annd he was about 12 feet long.
After we walked out we saw a corner where people were taking pictures with snakes and Meribeth said we should do that. I said haha right. Then we watched a little more and I said okay I'll try. So we got in line. I was so nervous. the snake was about 10 feet long. It wrapped around me and meribeth. There are pictures in my yahoo. so that was a crazy experience I never saw myself doing!
After that we roamed around and saw more crocodiles, wombats, kangaroos, koalas, dingos, tasmanian devils, gigantice tortoises.
Before we left we stopped in and saw the memorial. It was pretty sad. There were tons of shirts that were written on everywhere and signs. It was cool to see. I took some video of it as well.
We saw a baby wombat walk around with her mom. That was soo cute. We have lots of pictures and video of the place.
So it was time to leave and we decided to get a ride back with our friends instead of taking the bus back.
So we stopped at the gas station and I decided to try one of the new cookie dough kit kats. It tasted absolutely nothing like cookie dough. But wow was it good! There was caramel in it and soemthing else and all the regular stuff inside a kit kat! It was amazing! haha. so I'm pretty excited to try the other candy bars that they have that we don't!
So that was pretty much our day at the zoo. The animals are cool and it was weird being in the place where they held the memorial for steve irwin. Looks a lot different in person.

So Saturday we had another game and we lost again. We're not doing so good. Finally we got everyone to come to training. Saturday night I went to work and then we went over to our friends Brewster and Louies house and drank with a bunch of friends. We had a great time but Meribeth had too great of a time because she passed out in the bathroom and they had to pick the lock to get her out and carry her to a bed. Haha it was hilarious! Don't worry mom it wasn't me! Sunday I worked and then Monday we had practice.
So we were planning a trip to Moreton bay but it didn't work out because we waited to long to book it. So we decided to go for a surfing lesson. The deal was you pay $70 and the guy picks you up and drives you to the beach then gives you lessons for 2.5 hours, feeds you lunch and then you get anouther 2.5 hours of surfing in. We couldn't wait!
So we walk to the location that he was going to pick us up at 8:30 this morning. He was right on time. So we pick up the other 3 girls and head out. There was one girl from South Australia called Adelaide and two were visiting from North West Australia at a place called Darwin. They were all nice.
So we take off for an hour drive north to a beach, god knows what the name of it was because all the names are crazy here. Anyhow, we get there and he gives us a lesson on the beach on how to get on the board and how to catch a wave and all that good important stuff! sounds great. So we jump in ready to ride the waves. We started with waves that already broke so the ones that are white. It was frustrating at first but then I started to stand up and it got more and more exciting. I crashed really hard a few times. One time I stopped rolled under the surf board and when I came back up the board smacked me in the head. Man did that hurt!
It was time to break for lunch. he supplied us with lunch we had sandwhiches and fruit and a these cheesie chips that were just like cheetos. We hung out for a little bit and headed back out to the water.
I couldn't wait to get back out there and try some more waves. I was planning on when I was going to buy a surfboard and trying to figure out when I can fit some more practice in. things were going great.
So he thought that it was time to try unbroken waves or green waves. That would require us to paddle out pass the waves so we can catch them before they break. Apparently, he thought we were ready for that and boy was he wrong!!!
I pass the first few waves and that was it. it was sooo hard. I kept getting knocked off this monstrous board that was about 9 feet long. when the waves got big we were supposed to hold on to our board and roll underneath it. Well the first time I did it, the board hit me smack in the face. so I thought wow is this stupid, then when you try and roll back on top of it you can't get back on. so I try to get out there for about 20 minutes, trying to paddle, roll, and just get through the waves. He finally comes over and helps me and I get out to where I need to be. At this point there is no way in hell, I'm going to try and surf a wave just to end up right where I started! So I sit there for a minute why anyone thinks this is fun, when a gigantic wave knocked me off my board! Then another one came and I just ended up getting drug back in. So i was exhausted and beat up so I tried a few small waves and then took a break on the beach.
I decided to go out a few more times, but the waves had traumatized me and I was exhausted from constantly getting hit and beat from the waves. Meanwhile while we're all out there trying to do this, our instructor decided he did his job and he went out and surfed. So the first time I sat on the beach this little girl about 4 said are you all finished? I said no I'm just taking a break. She talked to me for a few minutes and then walked away. I went back for a while and then came out for another rest. The little girl came back again and said are you having another sit down? I said yes surfing is hard. So she decided I was her new friend and we had a great ol' time pouring water on my head and buring our feet.
I told the little girl I had to go and she was pretty sad about that. She said okay I live at 16 woodburrow street you can visit me there. I told the little girl it was not a very good idea to tell people where you live.

It's been a while since I wrote. Not much has been happening that has been horribly exciting...
Last night I got called into work. Usually Tuesdays are pretty slow so we only had two waitresses a cook and a drink maker. Well apparently, there was a U2 concert that night as well and I think all 45,000 people going to the concert decided to eat in our little courtyard of restaraunts. We have about 40 tables in our place and every table was taken. And we only had 2 waitresses! Luckily the owner of the store came back in but she still only could just run the cash register. So between the 2 of us we handled all the tables. Holy crap, what an experience. Luckily people were nice and understanding. It's a good thing we don't work off tips here. If we were over there, we would have had some angry people. WE made more in two hours than we make all day long on any day. It was absolutely ridiculous. Merbieth's restaraunt does it al ittle different, they have a chef cook all the food for the day and then put in in the refridgerator and it just gets heated up. yuck! Well anyways, they comompletely ran out of food. haha. Oh man what a night...
Other than that we have pretty much been working a lot and hanging around Brisbane. I'm going to go to Southbank which is the man made beach in the middle of brisbane. It's my day off. Next week I think we'll go for a trip somewhere. That will be fun.
It poured down rain here on Saturday. Like I've never seen before. It's unbelievable, it's like a waterfall. you're soaked in about 20 seconds. so the rest of the games got cancelled. Then we had practice on Monday and it decided to rain just as we finished so we walked home in the pouring down rain. haha it was funny though, we laughed the whole way home.
We went to dreamworld last week. I got to hold a koala bear. He was so soft and gentle, just sat tehre and looked at the camera. It was really cute. There were koalas everywhere. I pet the kangaroos and all that too. It was fun. There amusement parks don't compare in the slightest to ours though. they had one good ride, teh rest sucked and they hurt. Their roller coasters and stuff here jerk the hell out of you. We were soar the next day from it.
we moved into our new house on Friday. It's nice. We still have our own rooms, we have full time internet, t.v. a dvd player. So it's nice. it's all fully furnished too. We live with a German guy and Korean guy but they pretty much don't ever come out of their rooms. I've seen one guy twice and the other guy comes out every once in a while and talks. so it kind of feels like it's our own house. The location is so much better, we can catch buses anytime, there's a beach nearby, just a better place, so we're very happy with that.
softball isn't going that well but it's okay. It's fun, but we go to practice and the team never shows up. We're not very good so we lose our games. teh people are great and we have a good time with them. Just a lot of drama and stuff too.
It's getting pretty hot here. It's pretty humid too. I've basically decided that no where in the world can compare with California weather.
There are bugs everywhere here too. Cockroaches crawl around like ants in some places. It's disgusting. We had to jump over like 6 yesterday walking down the street. some of them fly too!!! Man it's definitely making me face my fears, haha. We have to go downstairs under the house to use the wash. Oh it's disgusting, I feel like I'm just going to put my face into a spider web with a huge spider.
Outside our house we have a tree that attracts bats, so tehre are tons of bats flying around outside, I feel like I'm going to a haunted house that you see on t.v. They're ugly little suckers too and tehy really do hang upside down on the trees. The worst part is hearing them fly, you can actually hear their wings flap. Oh it's gross.
no cute animals around. haha.
well I guess that's it for now. I'll write more later when I can think so some more stuff. I'll keep you posted about our next big adventure too. We've recruited two more people to go skydiving with us too!
Time for the beach, Love you all!