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:
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
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 nation
al 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! :)
