Family Day

Pullin' our Pizza out of the oven............it was YUMMY!

This is Miss Carol's cousin Margret. We celebrated her birthday today :0) Today I met Miss Carol's other cousin Marg and her children/family. She celebrated her 69th birthday today, so we went over to have a lunch snack and sticky treats.....quite a spread! Her husband Heinz was a nice "bloke" to speak with too! It was nice to put a face with names of people I've heard of before. Marg and Barb's mum is a sister to Miss Carol's father, which is the connection I have with Australia. Having family all over the world is great!

Zoe worked on her studies today, so she didn't come with us. After we got back about 1:30ish, she and I went for the pizza toppings and made the home-made dough for our Cafe' Italiano dinner. While in Italy she went for pizza making lessons for the locals, so she knew JUST how to make it. It was D-licious!

While we waited for our dough to rise, we went to see the movie, What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas. It was a nice girlie "feel good" movie.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain; AGAIN....this afternoon we saw the sun for the first time since the day I got here last Tuesday!

Fact #1: Gum Trees are called Gum because when they get really soggy or when limbs grow below the main limbs, WATCH OUT, they are likely to FALL out of the tree without notice! So BESIDES all the radiation and poisonous creatures, I NOW have to worry about FALLING GUM TREE BRANCHES!

It's Friday!

So, I've been here basically one full work week. Zoe and I left work at 1pm; she had a Principal's meeting and I went shopping. The shopping center was really great....it was a one story mall with lots of neat stores. I BOUGHT A HAT. I'll post a picture of me in it next week when I'm back with the kids. HOPEFULLY it will stop raining soon, although there are supposed to be heavy rains all weekend, yuck.

Tonight I met Zoe's childhood friend, Kylie. She is an assistant principal, a "deputy" they call them at a school near Zoe. We went to an Irish Pub for dinner and I had fish and chips; my FAVORITE :0) Zoe is in the white jacket next to me, and Kylie is on the other side. It was funny hearing her impression of "Americans." You know....the stuck up snobby type who act like they own the world.......those are the kinds I NEVER hope to be related to! We'll all meet up again next week.

Observation #2: Toilets have 2 buttons. The small one for "small" flushes, and a larger one for, well, ya know.....the more larger deposits! HA! One way to conserve water I suppose.

Sports Day

Ok Gary, here you go.....a picture of the sign I talked about yesterday.

Today we had Sports Day. It was really fun, even though we had to stop short because of the rain. The kids will do their sprints next week sometime. Their PE teachers don't work full time, (along with music, art, and any special area teachers), because the union doesn't want them to ruin their voices working with the kids. Can you imagine!?!

Also, I learned that Queensland, where I am, has NO OZONE LAYER! So, the skin cancer rate here is one of the highest in the WORLD! I was totally freaked out about getting radiation posioning today.....I didn't have a hat. I felt I was being fried and could "feel" the sun rays going into my brain. I was really freaked out when one of the teachers told me about it today. (This is why there is a no hat, no play rule at school for the kids.) I'm going to buy one tomorrow.

Day 1 in the Schools

Today I went with Zoe to work......it wasn't much different from my own school socio-economic wise. There are Aborigines that attend the school, which we obviously don't have in the States. Behaviorally, kids are kids it seems; no matter where they live in the world! The teachers seem to be a bit more laid back than we are at Cedar Hill. Tomorrow is sports day, so it will be fun to see the kids participating in agility track and field events; shot put, high jump, long jump, running races, etc. At Cedar Hill we don't want kids to feel bad about not coming in first, so we don't give out ribbons. Tomorrow, they'll divide the school into thirds, and pass out ribbins to the individuals who win certain events, and to the group that earns the most points overall......similar to an olympics. I'm excited to see that!

Jet lag hasn't been that bad. I went to bed last night at 5:45, but woke up at 2am today.....dozing off and on until 5:45 when I got ready for "work." It's 6:30pm right now, so I'm doing better than yesterday, but I'm getting tired fast!

Driving home today I saw a sign that said to watch out for Koala's, similar to a deer crossing. I'm keeping my eyes in the trees, maybe I'll see one in the wild, how cool would that be?!?

That's it for Day 2........I'm having fun!

I Made It :0)

This is Bobby the pup......such a SWEET HEART!


A Rainbow Lorikeet......There are loads of them flying around!



Their Backyard....a pool's on the other side :0)




After a 4.5 hour flight to LA, and then a 9 hour layover to visit my friend Tina, THEN, my almost 14 hour flight to Australia, I made it! I am in Brisbane! Zoe and her mum met me at the airport and brought me home. I've been looking through brochures of things to do for the next 2 weeks, and have it pretty much planned out. I went to the market today to buy some food with Barb, Zoe's mum. We had a great lunch outside......the weather is PERFECT! They have the most beautiful garden. I've seen all kinds of birds today.......they are all different colors and sound as if I'm in a rain forest! (Although I am only imagining what a rain forest sounds like because I've never been in one.)

I'm trying to stay up as late as possible today.......there is a 14 hour time difference, but my body isn't too off at the moment.......we'll see how long that lasts!

Well.....not too exciting today. I just wanted to post that I'm here, and all is well. I'm super excited about what's to come.......this is just the beginning of my adventure; I'm sure!

Sending my love from DOWN UNDER.........funny how gravity works :=)

WE'RE GOING TO AUSTRALIA!!!

You read that right. Steph and I are heading "Down Under" for 3 to 4 weeks and we're both incredibly excited. Although she's quite the jet setter, this will be my first trip out of the country (I'm not counting that day trip to Canada on Canada Day when the whole country was shut down!).

Steph's leaving today for Brisbane. Her step mom has some relatives who live there and she'll be staying with them for a couple of weeks. Zoe is the principal at a school outside of Brisbane and Steph's been tossing around the idea of teaching aboard, so this is a great opportunity to get her feet wet. I'll be arriving on the Melbourne scene June 1st for some solo exploring; maybe renting a motorcycle to tour the coastline. Then we'll meet up in Brisbane on the 7th for a few days before rounding out the trip in Sydney. We say farewell to Australia on the19th. It should be an awesome trip.

I thought it would be very Web 2.0 of me to create a travel blog of our experiences so friends and family could keep tabs on us and see that we're still kickin' it. Feel free to comment on any of the posts. Until next time, hooroo, mates.