Hello all,

Things have been warming up and we have had our first few hot days, but apparently it has been the wettest October in 35 years so needless to say there have been a fair share of grey days. When it is nice I try to do something with the day but sometimes all that happens is laying down in the sun for a few hours! Not so bad, really :)

This picture on the left is in downtown Melbourne at a place called Federation Square, kind of a public place for cultural happenings and big events in the city. There are a few buildings down there and they all have this type of architecture. There is a visitors center, lots of sitting space for a packed lunch, a few bars, restaurants, a movie theatre, big outside screen for big sporting events, some offices, and it is right across from the Flinders Street Station which is a large train/tram/subway station.

While I was out in the city the other day I also made a note to visit the "laneways" of the city. Basically alleys minus the creep. Melbourne is full of these little pedestrian streets and some of them have stores, restaurants, and bars, but most of them have graffiti. It is legal here to do street art but only in specified areas, and a lot of these laneways are fair game. Some of this art is amazing, and I found some pretty cool spots! Here are a few examples:

Today is the Melbourne cup, which is a horse race that is a national holiday. Everything stops for this one race, and most of the country puts a bet on. Some people think its great because they like horse racing and betting, but most people think its great because they get the day off. A lot of women go to the races and dress to the nines: fancy off the center hat, gloves, expensive dresses. Horse racing has a huge history in Australia and I guess I'm not really that into it but hey, I will take the Tuesday off! For all of you horse racing enthusiasts here is a link:

http://flemington.com.au/Melbourne-Cup-Carnival-2010.html

Breaking news! The Australian police force has just switched over from revolvers to semi-automatic pistols! Now I might be showing my red white and blue but is it just me or does it seem a bit late to be ushering in this technology that was invented over 100 years ago? In the country's defence, guns are not really legal here. You can own a firearm but getting the permit to do so is a hard process and you truly need a good reason to own one. Unlike the states where you can go and buy a gun at Walmart and get the permit at the same time. It is just interesting to think that if there was a shoot out before this "new" technology was introduced, the police would have to stop to reload each chamber after 6 or so shots....quite a disadvantage! Here is an article:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/vic-police-roll-out-semiautomatic-guns-20101014-16kmm.html

Halloween has come and gone and there was no celebrating for this lady! As most of you know Halloween is my favorite holiday and I usually prepare for months for my costume, but not many children here participate so the adult scene for costume wearing is even more slim. I got the chance to go trick or treating with some friends who have children so that was exciting, but only maybe one in ten houses were giving out candy! Maybe I had it good but I remember getting close to full pillow cases and hitting up every house on the block. It must be an American thing to still celebrate it, but I think it was a tradition from the Celtic culture to begin with. Either way, it ended up being a taste of what the up and coming holidays will be like! I'm eating turkey on Thanksgiving though you can bet on that!! I have more USA pride that I thought I did, imagine that.

I am joining a netball team. It is kind of like basketball, except the rules are a little bit different. The court is laid out more like soccer in regards to the positions being restricted to certain areas, and once you are in the shooting circle your guard has to be 3 feet away and you get basically a free shot. All one pointers, no such thing as a three pointer in netball. First time I saw it I laughed but after further study I have found it to be exciting and I am really excited for my first game tomorrow! The team I'll be playing for are the "Pumarettes", sponsored by Bryan's footie club the Pumas. I need to go get a marroon skirt today, and I have to admit playing in a skirt will be fun!

Thats all for now, hopefully your all doing well!

I finally made it into the ocean last weekend! It has been too chilly to take a dip for a while but it has gotten warm enough to bake a bit in the sun and then swim. This pic was taken at a beach about 15-20 minutes away from home here. Bryan was on his footy trip with some guys from his team so I thought I would go to the beach.
Not much is new, but going to the ocean was so refreshing I thought it deserved a post :)

New job :)

Its been a while since my last post...and those words seem to be the beginning of my posts! The biggest development is that I have a new job-I am now an employee of adidas! I work in the warehouse doing "picking and packing" which is really a way to say I put things from large boxes into little boxes for orders. We don't stay in the same spot every day and there is a variety of products I pack so it isn't slit-your-wrists-monotonous...just boring enough to let my mind wander. I get to wear whatever I want (besides anything with a brand name on it...) which is something new for me because I don't think I have ever had a job that wasn't customer service related. The overtime and weekend pay here is fantastic and to be honest I won't know what to do with myself when I get my paychecks! Largest I have ever had for sure. Its a refreshing change, but 6 AM comes early. I get off at 2 PM and so I have the rest of the day, until about 8 PM when I start getting granny-ishly tired. I can't make it through movies in the evening sometimes...maybe I'll take up knitting and talking to myself soon :)

This is Bryan and myself at his awards night at a club not too far away from our place-

He ended up getting "Best Team Man" which is a great honor for him, especially considering he was in the states for a good portion of the season.



It was obviously a fun evening!
Delicious food as well - and I also ate calamari for the first time and LOVED it.

This is a picture of Bryan and his nephew Aiden at Bryan's brother's birthday get together. It was a great time, and Bryan loves every chance he gets to hang out with Aiden.

I have been watching the show "deadwood" obsessively, and I know I'm a little late to discover it but I am loving the wild west theme. I highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys HBO shows. The next goal is to buy the 7th season of the Sopranos so I can finally wrap that up! I almost don't want to because it's such a good show but alas, all good things do come to an end as well.

I am going to be starting piano lessons from a guy who attends Bryan's mother's church. He's a 19 year old kid who is going to school for teaching music, and I'm looking for something to work on and develop so it seems to be perfect. The price is right as well, and I will have access to the church so I can practice. I am excited to start again but I guess I haven't had piano lessons since I was little so it will be exciting to see where I am at musically in that department. Maybe I can convince my mother to send me my viola...I would much prefer to take lessons for that but it might be worth it just to buy one down here. Who knows!

Applying to schools have been going well for me but I forgot how much work it was! Lots of time and jumping through hoops. It's all working towards something I really want so it is worth it.

I hope all is well with everybody and I LOVE YOU ALL! !

XXXOO!

Such is Life!

I woke up fairly early this morning and after taking Bryan to the train to head off to work I couldn't fall back asleep so here you find me updating my blog!

This past weekend I went to the dandenong market and enjoyed the fresh vegetables and fruits as well as all the other trinkets you would find at a market, like WWE shirts and hair extensions :) There were tons of little touristy things I wanted to send everybody back home but alas, I need to find a better paying job before that happens! My favorite item I ran across was this little Ned Kelly keychain. Basically Ned Kelly is one of Australia's national heroes that embodies a sense of national pride, and most Australians feel that way that I've spoken to about him. But - he is famous for killing cops and being an outlaw. He is shown here in his famous cast iron suit from his "last stand." Stickin' it to the man, for the most part. Wrongfully discriminated against for being Irish and making his way through life as a peasant not allowing the broken law system to step on him...or mass cop killer? YOU DECIDE! :)

http://www.ironoutlaw.com/index.html


Either way, a plush doll keychain of this guy is cute, suprising, and hilarious at the same time. Oh yeah, and Johnny Cash wrote a song about him as well. Interesting piece of Aussie culture.

After the market I headed off to the orchid show and was in heaven for about an hour and a half. It took all my might to resist from buying a plant at the end of the show. Something about these flowers just makes me happy to be around them. Beautiful. Now the montage of gorgeous plants :)

There are HEAPS of more orchid pics on my facebook site if you are so inclined!

After that lovely morning I went to Bryan's last footie game of the year and they did end up coming short. It was a good game and we thought they had it until the last few minutes of the game. They went hard and gave it all they had, so now its preparation for next year! There are a few more functions on at the club to wrap up the year before cricket season starts so Im sure you will hear about them. Here is a pic of Bryan with his coach and president of Lyndale Football Club!

Spring is coming!

So this is how big Australia is in comparison to the states. The difference is that we have water on the interior, and not the worlds hottest desert :) The explorers here thought there was a vast interior lake or some sort of body of water capable of supporting farming and a stable population, and many of them died trying to look for it. Never thought Australia was that large!

This is my work place! In the food court in the mall, Im usually behind the counter there servin' up your hot dishes and tasty drinks. Im getting pretty good at making coffees and now I actually know the difference between them all! A little coffee lesson for the curious:

Flat white = espresso + steamed milk no froth

Short black = epsresso shot

Long black = espresso + hot water

Cappucino = espresso + steamed milk lots of froth and some chocolate dusting

Latte = espresso + steamed milk only a few centimeters of froth and no chocolate dusting

Basically no drip coffee over here! I miss my crappy kum and go coffee sometimes. Most of the time I just drink chai lattes, which are pre-packaged just add milk sort of deals. Delicious though. A coffee from Magpie would be great as well, how ironic!

We went out to dinner with some friends to Jaipur Palace - the most amazing Indian food! It is such a treat to eat here - everything is so delicious and flavorful. Best. The bloke on the bottom left hand corner is Leigh, one of Bryans good friends. He just moved up to Queensland for sugar cane farming and was back for the weekend so it was nice to see him again. We had a good chat about farming and believe it or not prices of acres in Queensland vs. Iowa...more expensive in Iowa but we decided it was becuase of soil quality. Might have something to do with the lack of deadly snakes as well. Apparently the sugar cane fields are full of brown snakes - and some of these farmers walk around with no shoes. Crazy ozzies.

Bryan's last footie game is this weekend and it should be a good one. The team match up is good and they are expected to win. One of the guys on the team is playing his 300th game with the club - a HUGE feat considering there are only 16 games in a season. Not many players reach this goal - I think Bryan said one bloke did it before this guy in the club history. A rare sight in the league thats for sure.

Thats it for now! I will keep you all updated! XXOO

Long overdue!

This is Bryan and I with a few mates at a Cricket Club function in the first few days I was here.

Hello friends and family!

I have been meaning to start a blog for some time now, and that is probably why the procrastination has been a record high! I will give you all a run down of how my journey has been so far and then hopefully keep up with this so I can keep you all updated!

So! Arrived here on June 17th, had to deal with some serious jet lag even though I thought I had it figured out this time. It didn't take long but the first few days down here are always on the delusional side. I got to watch Bryan play footie for the first time, and let me tell you Australian Rules Football is the most hardcore, fast paced, give it all you've got sport I have ever watched. Apparently the USA has a team as well that comes over once a year to play. I reckon that if you got any of the NFL players to have a go at this game, they would be wrecked. For all you folks that would like to see the national teams here and a bit of explanation of how much Ozzies love this game here is a link to a youtube video that pretty much sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hqosNvv5E

Every Saturday that I don't work I take Bryan to the game and have a few beers, chat it up with the other people watching the game and then stick around for a couple more beers after the game and listen to the chatter about who played the "best and fairest". Not many other players have girlfriends my age, and if they do they don't really come to the games on a regular basis so I mostly hang out with the women of the older players who have kids who are teenagers. Its a great way to spend a Saturday, even if the weather isn't that nice. Here is a pic of B during the first game I got to watch...go Lyndale!

Here is a pic of him playing for the Dandenong Dolphins, an intermural basketball team that plays each Wednesday. His good mate, Damien, plays on the team as well.

Bryan is an apprentice doing what they call "roof plumbing" here, basically gutter work and anything that has pipes in your roof like air conditioning and heating. He has to apprentice for 3 years and then he receives a certificate and is fully qualified. It is hard work for him - he gets up most mornings at 5 and catches a train around 6 then gets home around 4 or 5 at night. After that there is some sort of sports practice a majority of days, so he is fairly busy! The only true day off he has is Sunday, so we like to just lounge in bed and watch a handful of movies on those days, or like today I update my family on whats going on and he plays World of Warcraft! This job he is in might not be the best right now, but when he is qualified he will be making good money and have a variety of directions he could take his career to choose from. It is a good career, just as long as you can put up with the first few years as the under dog. He enjoys working with his hands now, even though they usually come back with cuts on them.

My friend from elementary school in Chicago, Erin Loughlin, came down and visited me again from Canberra before she left for home. She was here for about a week and that was lovely. Here is a pic of us at Luna Park at St. Kilda Beach when we got to catch up in January. She was down here doing work for 10 months for her hospitality management degree at Carbondale. It was great that I could see her two times when I was here!

I had a day in the city to go visit dad, which was nice. We went to a nice Italian restaurant and caught up. Before I met up with him I had the chance to see some artifacts from the Titanic at the Melbourne Museum! As some of you know I have been obsessed with the Titanic since I was in the first grade or something like that, and have held a special place in my heart for all things Titanic. Having the chance to see things salvaged from off of the ship herself, well I guess the only way to put it was that I literally nearly shed a few tears. I was like a kid in a candy store. I guess it was something I had always wanted to do, and finally being able to lay my eyes on pieces of the hull, chandeliers, sinks, clothing, and all sorts of things that I recognized from pictures in books, made me feel so happy! What a great experience. Oh yeah, the rest of the museum was good too :).

Bryan had his 28th birthday party at the footie club and it was a mexican themed party. Needless to say it was a little dissapointing seeing the Australian take on a Mexican costume. Not many Mexicans in this part of the world so what can you expect? A lot of sombreros and ponchos, and lots of tequila shots. I went as a spanish dancer so that was fun, I was basically the only girl dressed up but had a ball anyways - fake eyelashes and all! Bryan loved the party and had a great time so it was well worth hiring the costumes.

I have discovered that being in a city means that I have the luxury of things that used to be very far away from where I live. Music concerts, museums, all those sorts of things. I had the chance to see Karnivool again in July, a band that Bryan and I went to go see in Minneapolis when he was in the states a few months ago. It is Bryan's favorite band, but since he works long hours and gets up early in the morning I went with a cricket mate of his so it was nice that I could still go even though he was too knackered. So far I have tickets to Dead Letter Circus, another great Ozzie band, Gorillaz, and the Australian Ballet which is actually next weekend. I haven't seen a ballet since I was IN ballet in Chicago, so it will be a nice change of pace to get some culture and classical music back into my system.

I have a job at the Red Balloon Cafe at the Parkmore shopping center just up the road from where Bryan lives. It is a great location and it is easy work. I make $16/hr which isn't the best wage here, but for me it's amazing raking in $550 a week! I work basically full time and serve hot food at a counter and make the occasional sandwich. My co-workers are lovely people, and its some of the only female conversation I get to have so far so I enjoy it as much as I can. What the job has been proving to be useful for though is aiding me in learning the slang and proper interaction. Culture shock has been interesting because I thought it wasn't going to be there really at all, but when I visited before I was in a social scene with people my age and a few beers were usually involved so how can that go wrong? So now at work I interact with a large variety of people and am slowly learning the way people interact in this country, which is different to Americans! One thing that I love is the affection complete strangers show to each other in word usage. They call you "dahls" - short for darling, "love", and "mate". Things like that are so small, but put you at ease. Adorable, really. A lot of people are interested in where I come from and are surprised that I am in Keysborough, considering it is kind of a run-down suburb, not the kind of place you would expect to meet an American. They all want to tell me about what they know about the states and which family members of theirs have visited there, very chatty people.

I have a state of Victoria licence! I have been able to drive Bryan's car so I am now familiar with driving on the left side of the road, along with round abouts and all the other things here. I was very nervous at first but now I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. Sometimes I do go to the wrong side of the car to get into the drivers seat though :) I think the most challenging aspect is the rural to city driving styles, besides the whole other side of the road thing.

What I have realized this trip down under is that this year will be a year of me finding what I really want and need to have a happy and fulfilled life. I am learning that I need to finish school in order to have a meaningful career. I need to be stimulated at work, every day. My brain needs to be used in ways that make me excited or it makes for quite a dull day. Being here and working a full time job is different than being in Decorah and just working. It feels less lacking there, I'm not sure why. Probably because I still had comforts of home, family, and familiar places. Here it is just black and white. I have no connections to get into a job here, no residual friends to have meaningful conversation with, nobody to chit chat biology with, no friends interested in science like I am. It really makes me see how much I need that in my life, daily. What a luxury to be living in the same house as my step-father John! This also means that if I want to finish my degree I will be in the states for a year or more at the end of my stay here. Bryan encourages my quest for finding my passion and thinks that everybody needs to have one, and I realize that it is science! I wish I already had a degree and knowledge under my belt, but my place is here for now and I need this time to be with Bryan before anything else is done with my degree. I have also found that I miss playing the viola quite a bit, and I think I will pick it back up when I am around it again. Besides knowing you are good at something, there is a calming sense to playing the Viola for me, even Piano and Organ as well. No musical instruments here for the time being though!

The chronology of events in my life and the consequences of the sequence they have taken are becoming apparent to me, both in a positive and negative light. Being away from home previously has never quite impacted me the way this has. I am on my own in a new hemisphere making my own life with the person I love. It is such a sense of freedom which is amazingly great but at the same time terrifying. I am learning who I am and what I want in life, and for some reason I'm starting to feel like an adult :)

I will keep you guys updated and feel free to comment! LOVE YOU ALL!
XXXOOO