A Few of my Favourite Things

First off, Tim Tams.  These are a cookie, or as the Aussies would say, a biscuit like an Oreo on chocolate crack.  It is two chocolate biscuits with a chocolate filling in between, and then dipped in chocolate.  They are so amazing.

A close second in the chocolate world is Cadbury Marbled chocolate.  This is a mix of milk and white chocolate marbled together, with a hazel nut praline filling, which is fabulously soft, but not creamy.

I have also found a new soda to enjoy.  It has a variety of names, but it is sort of like carbonated lemonade.  Sadly it doesn’t have caffeine and does have calories, unlike the must missed diet Pepsi, but it is still quite enjoyable.

Meat pies it turns out are also amazing.  They have a million types, but I am a traditional girl and like the beef pies.  They are pretty much beef and gravy in a pie shell.  They make a great, and cheap, lunch when you forget yours at home.

I have also discovered a love of roasted sweet potatoes.  Now I can’t say whether this is a pallet change, or if the Australian sweet potatoes are better.  I do know that I have not developed a love roasted pumpkin, it still grosses me out.

Along the non-food lines, the weather here is unbelievably beautiful.  We are now in what is considered fall, which means 80 to 85 degree sunny and not so humid days.  This is the type of weather where you feel like a part of your soul might be dying as you sit inside, and then you remember there are several months of it to follow, and you realize that this might just be paradise.

Also the hats here are fabulous.  Everyone has a hat!  I need to get a hat, preferably pink with some sort of kangaroo on it.

I have a new Australian TV show addiction.  It’s called Dance Academy, and it is a really overly dramatic soap opera about a group of 18ish year olds studying to be professional dancers.  It is on every day too!  What’s not to love?

BBQ’s.  I have been to 4 BBQ’s since last Thursday.  The Australians, being the social beings they are, just invite people over, or to the beach and you all bring your own food, and just hang out with people while you eat.

The people here have been so warm and accepting. It helps everything be more of the glorious sort of adventure, and less like the movie Behind Enemy lines. J

Exceeding the posted limit

In Australia most roads have a speed limit of 60 or 80 KPH, at least around town.  They also have speed cameras.  If you get caught by one of these cameras going 1 kilometer about the speed limit, they post you a ticket.  Don’t worry I have not received one of these (even with my new zoom-zoom Mazda 2).  So then you may ask why am I telling you about speed cameras?  Well, I am irritated that these cameras leave no room for human error; they have no margin and no human compassion or mercy.  What happens if they put one on the bottom of a hill, or you get distracted for just a second?  There is no person to whom you can explain your mistake you are just punished. I don’t think this would usually be so striking to me, but having just moved countries, and switched jobs I have made a lot of mistakes, and I am so thankful for the mercy that I have received. 

For instance, a few weeks ago I moved out of my host home.  I loved staying with my host family, but I felt it was time to move out so that I could start what will be my normal life.  So I found a house share situation and I moved.  2 days after I moved in, one of the two housemates moved out, leaving me with one housemate who was never there.  In the two weeks I lived there, I saw him once.  Now when you consider the fact that there was no pre existing relationship, it just made the house seem empty, but not empty enough where I felt like it was mine, and that I had free reign of the place. So I moved out.  I appreciated that he understood that it was not a good place for me, and that Leah, my new housemate, kept faith that I wouldn’t do the same thing to her. Now I am living in a house that I love, with a housemate whom I consider to be a friend.  I am close to work and I am in town, so I am close to everything I need. In moments like these I am thankful for mercy and the chance to fix my mistakes. 

I also can’t help but wonder if there is some sort of speed limit on life. In the last month I have moved twice, bought a bicycle, and a car.  In the past 2 months I have started a new job and moved countries.  Yet somehow I feel like I have been here forever.  I feel like it has been ages since I have seen my friends and family, and I miss them terribly.  A part of me feels like I am home, and another part feels like home is a million miles away.  I feel like there have been so many changes in my life, and like my feet aren’t really grounded anywhere.  I can’t help but wonder if it is possible to move too quickly, and to violate some sort of internal speed limit, I can’t help but wonder if I can go to fast and accidently run into a wall.  Sometimes when I wake up it feels like I have, like my system can’t handle another emotion, but my engine still seems to run and get me through.

I was running errands the other day, and I took the scenic route home.  Literally the street is named something or another scenic drive.  As a drove, I wondered what it would mean to take the scenic drive in life.  I think that many Australians have mastered that.  There is just a different pace to life here.  It is really hard to try and explain. It is not that everyone is late for things, or that things don’t happen in an efficient manner.  It is just that people seem to go about life differently.  They are early to bed and early to rise.  Most of the shops close at noon on Saturday until Monday morning. Things just move differently. Some people say it is the weather, some the sea air, and others say it is just because Bundy is a country town.  I like the pace they have set here, and I hop that I am making sure to slow down and enjoy the experience, not going so fast as to miss out.

Red Solo Cup

So I have decided that it is a funny thing to be living in a foreign country. 

The particularly funny thing about Australia, is that you don’t always remember until you look over to the car next to you and think “Why is a dog driving that car!?!?!” or any number of similarly ridiculous thoughts.   It is an exhausting thing though, when all the little things take thought.  Things that used to be simple, like making chocolate chip cookies, are suddenly a major math equation.

While all of these adjustments make for the adventure, I think the funniest part so far for me, has been how fascinated people are by me, and American culture.  In Australia they broadcast most of the major US television shows, movies and music.  For many people, this is the only real exposure they get to American culture, which is a little horrifying really.

For smaller kids, like the grade 5 who I was talking to yesterday, this means that everyone in America is famous.  She was so disappointed to find out that I didn’t know any celebrities.  My junior high aged kids all think I sound like various different movie stars, I think being compared to Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory is my favourtie thus far.

For the teenagers, they do not understand why in so many TV shows American teenagers are drinking.  I have had many questions from adults and teenagers about  the culture of alcohol in the United States.  Like whether or not they ID people, what is our drinking age, what are our drinking and driving laws, and why college kids in the US drink so much.  My particular favorite question was whether red solo cups are actually used.  Because in all the movies and TV shows, and now songs, all the parties use red Solo cups, and people want to know if we really do.

I hope that I can fairly represent normal Americans, but it is very strange to explain our culture, and our media.  I have even had people ask me about why we have so many elections, or why it takes our government so long to make decisions.

Perhaps the really strange part is that to them I am such a novelty.  People have so many questions.  People will come up in restaurants and ask me where I am from.  That and the newspaper interviewed me just because I am American.

Yep, living in a foreign country is a funny thing.