We're in!

Hey everyone. Hope the weather in North America isn’t getting you down, if it is, come a pay us a visit. We’ve got a guestroom! Complete with a bed and sheets. No pillows yet but if you give us fair warning, we’ll see what we can find. This is Laura by the way. And I write like I speak, long winded.

So, we’ve been in Australia for over 2 weeks now. It seems like we’ve been traveling (i.e., living out of a suitcase) forever, but since we’re now in our own place, things are settling down quite a bit. Tim and I have both felt a little bit guilty in that we’re in such a new place where there’s so much adventure waiting around each corner, and meanwhile we’re taking on adventures such as hunting down cheap bath towels at local malls (grumpy, because we both hate malls). Honestly, by now I thought that I’d at least snorkled the Great Barrier Reef. I haven’t yet seen the ocean.

There are a number of rationalizations that we’ve come up with to justify our lack of extreme adventure so far. 1) If we were here visiting, it’d be a different story (we like to tell ourselves that). Traveling here kind of took the travel bug out of us momentarily since we knew that we’d be here for a while. 2) The Great Barrier Reef is pretty far away. Since arriving, I’ve realized that my perception of how big Australia actually is, was way off. It reminds me of the people that get off the Bluenose Ferry in Yarmouth, NS in the morning and think that they can bike to Halifax for lunch (that’s a good 3 hour drive by car, at least). So, with a lack of transportation other than the public system, we’ve really had to rethink where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. This will change with time as we get more comfortable and familiar with the many ways that we can travel here. Brisbane has an excellent bus system and has trains which travel north (Great Barrier Reef) and south (Gold Coast). It’s actually nice that we have the time to figure out the best ways to get around, it’ll help us know better how to get you around when you decide to come and visit us. 3) There might be some that argue that we like to read too much, that we’re perhaps a little on the boring side. It is true that a good book can keep me out of adventures way, and there’s an excellent 2^nd hand book store just down the street from where we live. There may be a good balance that we’ve got to figure out there. On to our non-extreme adventures in Brisbane.

So the first huge thing that has happened to us is that we’ve rented a house. It was the first place that we looked at and within a couple of days (stressful days) we’d convinced the landlords that we could be responsible tenants. I think that they might have thought we were a bit batty when we tied to explain our rationale for moving in the first place. There’s really no way to explain how it feels to try to rationalize our personal reasoning for moving here other than we felt quite vulnerable. The importance of telling you this is that we were shocked by the process of renting here. Either everything is done through an agent where you have to arrange appointments for viewing places, or you meet up with the owner of the place (if they don’t use agents) for viewing. After the viewing, you’re given an application form which asks basically for a personal history of your life as a renter, and such questions as salary and whether you plan on having kids, etc., it’s a whole lot of very personal information. I’d like to think that if I’ve decided to rent a place from someone, that it’s a given that I can afford it. Why does the landlord need to figure that out? How is it their business where my money comes from? I digress…So, next, you fill out the application and give it back to the agent/home owner and they call you to either tell you you’ve got the spot or, in our case, to arrange for a further interview. This may be the process that people in larger cities have to go through to rent, but given that Tim and I have never lived in a really big city, we were pretty unprepared to be scrutinized so closely. It certainly has something to do with the fact that it’s really not a tenants market here, therefore landlords can be very picky for the people that they want. And maybe we just fell upon really thorough landowners. Either way, we ended up getting the house that we wanted and it felt like we’d just passed a huge exam. We’ve got some pictures posted to show you how cool this spot is. It’s actually next to our landlords’ place so that could explain why we had such a process to go through, and they take really, really good care of their properties. We hope we can live up to their standards. I can hardly believe that I feel this way when we’re the ones that pay through the nose to live here.

So, it turns out that the landlords are actually very great and helpful people. Honestly, every single thing that we’ve wondered about, Craig (the husband of the couple) has a solution for. I mean EVERYTHING. It’s great, but I’m getting to the point where I’m now starting to keep my yap shut so that I don’t cause them to have to bend over any further backwards then they already have for us. Tim just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, I’ve yet to finsih it but basically the author talks about different kinds of people that influence trends in society. One type mentioned is the maven, they’re people that are full of information about everything, i.e., from where to get the cheapest bedsheets to traffic rules in Melbourne. This describes Craig to a T. It’s actually hard to get him to stop giving out useful information. So we’re glad to have him next door. Another useful resource is a lady across the street named Marcia. On the first day that we were here Craig mentioned to us that if we ever needed any information about busses (which we both need lots of help with) Marcia knows all the routes that we’d ever need to know. To give you an idea of just how friendly the folks are here, he just told me to go across the street and knock on her door if I ever needed bus information (think about that. Would you do it?). I did. And she helped. Not only that, she invited me in and we had a nice long chat. And it turns out that her daughter and granddaughter spent a year living in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 2006 on a teaching exchange. The mother taught at Priestman Elementary School and her daughter went to Fredericton High School. What are the chances of that? Marcia and her granddaughter Monique brought us over an apple cake yesterday because Monique wanted to meet “the Canadians”. The cake is amazing and we’re really glad for such great neighbors. We’re slowly coming on nodding and “how ya goin’” terms with the residents on our street as well. And I think I have made a real connection with the Korean lady at the foodmart down the street. She gave me change for laundry today and told me that it was her pleasure. Made me feel good inside.

A cool feature of our house is our alarm clock. It’s the chorus of birds that seem to greet the sunrise with eagerness every single morning. It’s a crazy way to wake up. They start around 5am and peak in volume around 6:30am. Some birds sound like our friend Baxter is sitting outside of our window whistling up a tune, others are your more standard bird calls. It’s amazing. I hope we don’t get so used to it that we start to sleep through it because it’s great to be out of bed so early and not to have to rely on some buzzer or bad pop radio to rouse us out of good sleep.

So, on Sundays there are a number of huge fruit and vegetable markets within close distance to us. Craig and Trish (the landlords) regularly get to a specific one early on Sunday mornings and asked if we’d like to go with them today. When they said early, I was thinking about how empty the Fredericton market is when Tim and I hit it up at 9:00 in the morning. These two are troopers and leave the house at 5:30am. No word of a lie.

So we got up and went with them on Sunday morning. It was great. So much food that we love and for such reasonable prices. And grown locally. I am telling you…For people like Tim and I for which food is so important, and equally having it grown well, knowing who grew it, and having farmers paid fair price for it, this place is like a dream. I’ll say it again, the food here is worth the trip. Seriously. So come.

Later in the morning we decided to check out the local Salvation Army church. Both Tim and I have known about the focus on social action that seems to be intimately intertwined within church policy at the Sally Anne, so we thought it would be an interesting venture. And it was. For those who’re well versed in church life, the majority of their music was provided not by a crusty old organist or trendy new worship band, but by a very lively brass section in uniform. I kid you not. It was enough to make me want to crack out my junior high trombone just to get that stageband feeling once again. Just to be a part of the club. They also were very fond of the old hymns of whose high notes only the most seasoned of church ladies can reach. Just like the old days for me. They (and I mean everyone from the people in the pews to the pastors of the church) appear to be actively involved in feeding people and looking at poverty in compassionate and thoughtful ways. We felt pretty comfortable there and are looking forward to getting to know people better and seeing what’s really going on.

This afternoon we were visited by a colleague of Tim’s who just moved from New Zealand with her 3 kids (her husband will be here in a couple of weeks). They were a blast to have around, I’m the eternal kid at heart. I actually still really like playing hide and seek and it’s just so much fun to see the amazement on the faces of kids when they figure stuff out…We identified birds with a field guide (yup, I’m a geek) and they were so good at it. They were a whirlwind though, and in the end when they were leaving I just felt such pity for Lisa (the mom). They were WIRED. Monday (i.e., kids in school and daycare) couldn’t come soon enough for her. I wonder what parenting is really like…

I almost forgot about our most extreme non-adventure yet. With the move into the new house we had to find furniture to at least give us a place to sit down. We’d bought a bed and had it delivered, a fridge too, but things like couches and chairs we decided to go second hand with so as to save our bank. So last week I scoped out the Salvation Army store near where our motel was for furniture, etc. I was able to snag some great stuff for very little $, relatively speaking. The only thing was that we didn’t really have a way to get anything to our new place. So on Thursday, Tim and I bit the bullet and rented a Ute. What’s a Ute? It’s a utility vehicle of course, or what we in North America would call a truck. Here they call what we call a truck, a Ute, and what we would call a utility vehicle (à la sport utility vehicle) a 4 wheel drive. And they take their 4 wheel drives quite seriously. We’ve seen a number here that have something like an exhaust pipe that leads from under the vehicle up to somewhere on the roof, this is so that if they should ever encounter water higher than their hood (i.e., in the middle of a river) then they could keep driving. Makes sense really.

So, we rented a Ute. We decided that Tim would drive and put just a bit of extra insurance on it, just in case. All Utes for hire (for rent) here are manual transmission, so I was glad that we both at least knew how to drive this kind of vehicle, although everything is controlled by the left hand in this case. I actually never got out of the passengers seat, and Tim, although he had a few butterflies in his basket, handled the driving very well. We’d made a smart move by waiting until 10 in the morning to head out so as to avoid rush hour, but still there was enough traffic on the road to keep us following a pack of some sort. By the end of the day we’d decided that we could handle driving in Brisbane, even in a manual. And it was nice to be able to go where we wanted to go without having to check to see what bus we had to catch or wait for years for a cabbie. So next weekend I think we’re going to rent another vehicle and try to find a Tropical Fruit Park. Apparently there are a few down south. It should be fun. Oh. I should mention, the temperature on Thursday when we were moving all of the furniture was recorded at 41 degrees Celsius. We definitely had a few cranky moments between the 2 of us.

So, they have French fry vending machines here in Australia and it makes me wonder what the world is really coming to. And, how do French fry vending machines really work? I envision a big vat of warm oil within a glowing vending machine where old potatoes get dipped upon the machine receiving the proper amount of change. Yuk. Don’t do it Canada!

Love to everyone, please keep in touch.