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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!

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...