We woke up early this morning as we were hoping that Julianne would have received my phone message last night and would be here at 8:30am so that we could use her car today. As it turned out, she didn't show up at that time. She did phone me later and told me that she had left her phone at work and she doesn't have an answering machine at home. She told me that we could use her car tomorrow. As it turns out, that will be good cuz we can have the car for the whole day as opposed to the half day we would have had the car today.
First on our list was to get the laundry done. Since we have to hang all our clothes, we have to start early in the morning. We were able to get three loads done today - even though our front loader takes over an hour to wash one load. We are using a eco-friendly detergent called 'Earth Choice' and it works really well. You have to buy a special soap here on the property because 'grey water' (recycled water) is used for washing clothes. I am not sure if the front loader is the reason why the clothes came out so white or if it's the soap or a combination of the two. It's weird watching the clothes wash, though, as the soap is low-sudsing and it doesn't look as if soap is being used at all. The reason that the front loading machine was installed here is that it takes way less water to do a wash and they are often in a water rationing mode here.
We spent most of the day working on our Princess Cruise blog - we are getting better at doing it without having to make corrections, but the only time we have been perfect is one day that had no photos. :-) We have completed 17 days now which is great - we will keep working on it every day. Mike and I agree that we don't have time for a job right now - we are too busy! :-)
For lunch today, we heated up two cans of soup - minestrone for me and moroccan lamb and couscous for Mike. When I tasted mine, the liquid part of the soup tasted horrible. When Mike tasted his, it was so spicy, even he couldn't handle it. We decided to throw them out and eat some Chunky soup instead. We are definitely having to try different brands here - sometimes the food tastes good (like what we're used to) and sometimes it's just off. Don't know why they just don't have all the foods I like here. :-)
We did take time this afternoon to watch one of our six movies that we rented at Blockbuster. We decided to watch a comedy called 'Are We There Yet?' It was about a single guy who falls for a single mom and ends up driving her kids from Oregon to Vancouver, B.C. to meet up with her there. It was an okay movie - we gave it a 6.0 - one of them typical kid movies where the single mom's kids don't like anyone who likes their mom, gives him a hard time, he wins them over, blah, blah, blah. But, it was better than last night's movie, 'About A Boy' which we gave a 4.5.
Since we had to eat our supper for lunch, we decided to go to the local convenience store which is also a take-away. After looking over the menu very carefully, I decided on a sausage roll, chico roll and chips (french fries - see, I'm talking Australian already :-) and Mike had fish and chips. All of the take-away was quite tasty. When you get chips over here, they often come sprinkled with chicken salt rather than regular salt. It tastes like they add chicken powder (like Bovril or Oxo in Canada) to salt - it's really tasty.
We spent the evening watching tv - yes, we do really like all the shows we watched. There's a new show called 'Glee' that I really like - about a glee club in a high school. Then we watched three hours of CSI - Miami, Vegas, and New York. All three of the episodes were connected to each other and so the stars of each show were on the shows of each other.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Today was a stay-at-home day, but it was still a busy day. Our day started with a call to our boys (and Terri-Ann and James :-) We used a great computer program called 'Skype' which allows us to see and hear whoever we call via the computer. We had emailed Terri-Ann yesterday to ask her if she could get on Skype today around 7pm her time. When she logged onto her computer and into Skype, we could tell and then were able to 'phone' her. Soon we were looking at her on our computer screen and then soon came Colin and Caleb into the screen. It was awesome to be able to see them and talk with them! We will definitely get a lot of use out of Skype when we are here and they are there.
It was so cute watching Colin sticking out his tongue and talking with him about school and his friend, Devon. Colin says he likes school which makes me happy since I always love to hear that a young child loves school. Hopefully that feeling will stick with him for a long time. He shared a french song with us (Bonjour Mes Amis) - one that I remember the girls singing when they were young and attending french immersion school. Caleb was trying to talk with us, too - thank goodness Mommy was there to translate for us. I asked Colin what he would like us to bring him from Australia and he said 'a train' - seems he is still really focused on trains, so I am going to have to do some serious looking in the next couple of weeks. :-)
The boys soon left our conversation to continue playing with Daddy and their grandpa (James' dad) and so Mike and I were able to have a long conversation with Terri-Ann. It was great to be able to see her and talk with her at the same time. We talked for over an hour and finally we had to say goodbye cuz we could see that Terri-Ann was tired and it was time for her to go and have a rest. James and his dad were going to put the boys down to bed, so Terri-Ann could go and just take care of herself.
After our chat on Skype, Mike and I began putting my journal from our cruise and the photos online. We had no idea that it was going to take so long. I thought it was just going to be a matter of cut and paste, but it has turned out to be so much more. What we have decided to do since this is a one-off journal (just about our thirty day cruise from San Francisco to Sydney) is to write the journal backwards starting with the day of arrival in Sydney. When it is completed, the journal will then run from our first day to our last as when you write a blog, the latest entry is at the top. We first have to upload the photos which means we have to go through all the photos that we took on that day (sometimes there are over a hundred or more per day). Then, we have to write captions under each of the photos that we have chosen. Then, we copy and paste my journal from the computer. Then, we have to publish it and see where we need to adjust the formatting. And just when we think we have it down pat, something happens and we have to spend a lot more time fixing an entry.
We spent most of today working on it 'til almost 7pm, stopping only for lunch and supper and a few games of cribbage. So far, we have only completed seven days which means that we have 23 days to go. It's going to be great once it's done and I want to print it out when we get back to Canada and make it into a book, but it's going to be a very time consuming exercise. Good thing we have all the time in the world right now, eh? :-)
We watched a video after supper tonight called 'About a Boy' starring Hugh Grant. I am glad that we only paid 99 cents to rent it from Blockbuster. We did end up watching it right through just to see how it ended, but it's not that interesting a movie. It's amazing how you can read the back of a dvd case and think it sounds really good and then it turns out not to be. Anyway, we have five more dvds to watch from Blockbuster, so we are hoping that they are better than this one was.
After the movie was over, we turned on the tv to watch 'Criminal Minds'. It's one of our favourite shows. Last night, after watching another tv show (Lie to Me), we talked again about how we don't want to watch tv just for the sake of watching it. That show is okay, but it's not one that we really like, so we have renewed our plan to only watch tv if it's something we really want to watch. I feel like I wasted my time last night watching that show and I don't want to do that. There are other things we can do like playing games and reading that would be a much better use of our time.
It was so cute watching Colin sticking out his tongue and talking with him about school and his friend, Devon. Colin says he likes school which makes me happy since I always love to hear that a young child loves school. Hopefully that feeling will stick with him for a long time. He shared a french song with us (Bonjour Mes Amis) - one that I remember the girls singing when they were young and attending french immersion school. Caleb was trying to talk with us, too - thank goodness Mommy was there to translate for us. I asked Colin what he would like us to bring him from Australia and he said 'a train' - seems he is still really focused on trains, so I am going to have to do some serious looking in the next couple of weeks. :-)
The boys soon left our conversation to continue playing with Daddy and their grandpa (James' dad) and so Mike and I were able to have a long conversation with Terri-Ann. It was great to be able to see her and talk with her at the same time. We talked for over an hour and finally we had to say goodbye cuz we could see that Terri-Ann was tired and it was time for her to go and have a rest. James and his dad were going to put the boys down to bed, so Terri-Ann could go and just take care of herself.
After our chat on Skype, Mike and I began putting my journal from our cruise and the photos online. We had no idea that it was going to take so long. I thought it was just going to be a matter of cut and paste, but it has turned out to be so much more. What we have decided to do since this is a one-off journal (just about our thirty day cruise from San Francisco to Sydney) is to write the journal backwards starting with the day of arrival in Sydney. When it is completed, the journal will then run from our first day to our last as when you write a blog, the latest entry is at the top. We first have to upload the photos which means we have to go through all the photos that we took on that day (sometimes there are over a hundred or more per day). Then, we have to write captions under each of the photos that we have chosen. Then, we copy and paste my journal from the computer. Then, we have to publish it and see where we need to adjust the formatting. And just when we think we have it down pat, something happens and we have to spend a lot more time fixing an entry.
We spent most of today working on it 'til almost 7pm, stopping only for lunch and supper and a few games of cribbage. So far, we have only completed seven days which means that we have 23 days to go. It's going to be great once it's done and I want to print it out when we get back to Canada and make it into a book, but it's going to be a very time consuming exercise. Good thing we have all the time in the world right now, eh? :-)
We watched a video after supper tonight called 'About a Boy' starring Hugh Grant. I am glad that we only paid 99 cents to rent it from Blockbuster. We did end up watching it right through just to see how it ended, but it's not that interesting a movie. It's amazing how you can read the back of a dvd case and think it sounds really good and then it turns out not to be. Anyway, we have five more dvds to watch from Blockbuster, so we are hoping that they are better than this one was.
After the movie was over, we turned on the tv to watch 'Criminal Minds'. It's one of our favourite shows. Last night, after watching another tv show (Lie to Me), we talked again about how we don't want to watch tv just for the sake of watching it. That show is okay, but it's not one that we really like, so we have renewed our plan to only watch tv if it's something we really want to watch. I feel like I wasted my time last night watching that show and I don't want to do that. There are other things we can do like playing games and reading that would be a much better use of our time.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Well another busy day - well, a busy mid-day at least. We took ages to get ready and when it was around 11am I was ready to leave. I was planning on phoning Terri-Ann to talk to my boys when Mike said it was after 8pm in Orangeville. I told him it was only 7pm and then I realized the mistake I had made: Queensland does not do Daylight Savings Time, so although Orangeville is 16 hours behind Sydney, it's only 15 hours behind Hervey Bay. So, by the time we would have gotten to the phone booth, Colin and Caleb would have been asleep. Sheesh! :-) So, we went to the phone booth anyway and were going to call Krystal and Jennifer to see how they were doing. When we got there, there was a man using a concrete saw to cut through concrete on a renovation job being done right next to the phone booth. So, off we went towards town.
Our first stop was at the library - we wanted to get library cards and I wanted to find out whether they had a book club. I enjoyed the one I used to belong to in Bolton and I was hoping that I could join one here. We got our cards with no problem using our driver's licenses as I.D. I talked with one of the librarians about the book club. They actually have a number of book clubs, but only one that meets at the library. The woman told me that that book club was full, but that if I emailed her, she could tell me about other clubs in town. There is a 'book chat', but that's just people getting together over a 'cuppa' (cup of tea) and sharing with each other good books that each have read. I prefer to read a book and then get together to discuss it. So, I will email this woman tomorrow and find out about the other book clubs and then contact them and find out about the February book since I won't be here in December and January. Before we left the library, we borrowed seven dvds which we can have for three weeks.
Our next stop was to Blockbuster's Video to get a card from them. Again we used our driver's licenses and our rental agreement from the granny flat and we were issued a card. We then rented 6 movies - they are only 99 cents on Tuesdays and they are good for a week. We didn't rent any new releases as we would have had to return them tomorrow and we wanted to stay home tomorrow. Besides, there wasn't much in the new releases that interested us - and what did interest us, we had already seen (mostly on the planes we have travelled on in the past while).
Loaded down with our 13 videos, we walked home. I find that it's much easier to walk to town than home. :-) One thing is that we went a different way getting to town and it was more flat than the way we came home. And by the time we had walked to town and then all around town, we were tired and it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other by the time we were almost home. My feet were sore and I couldn't wait to get my shoes off. On the way to town, the sun was shining and there was a beautiful strong breeze blowing. By the time we came home (at 3pm), the sun was shining even stronger (it reached 33C today) and there was less breeze, so we were sweating really well on our way home. I love the heat, but I love the breeze with the heat even better. :-)
We spent the rest of the evening after dinner watching the dvd of the first season of the tv show 'MASH'. Mike and I used to both watch it when we were teenagers and we really enjoy watching it. We watched 7 episodes and it was really nice to 'go back in time' and just relax after our busy day in town. We are doing a lot of walking here in Hervey Bay on the days we don't have Julianne's car and, although it hurts our feet, we really do enjoy walking and feel that if we keep doing it, our feet won't hurt so much after a while.
Now, you think we would be losing weight (and maybe we are with all this walking we are doing), but we are also enjoying a very nice Australian cookie that we love - Tim Tams. They are two cookies with chocolate in between them and then they are covered with chocolate as well. They are sooooooooooooo delicious and they are sooooooooo hard to resist. But, tonight, we finished them all up and we won't buy anymore, so hopefully, the walking will do its job and we can get back into our pre-cruise clothes. :-)
Our first stop was at the library - we wanted to get library cards and I wanted to find out whether they had a book club. I enjoyed the one I used to belong to in Bolton and I was hoping that I could join one here. We got our cards with no problem using our driver's licenses as I.D. I talked with one of the librarians about the book club. They actually have a number of book clubs, but only one that meets at the library. The woman told me that that book club was full, but that if I emailed her, she could tell me about other clubs in town. There is a 'book chat', but that's just people getting together over a 'cuppa' (cup of tea) and sharing with each other good books that each have read. I prefer to read a book and then get together to discuss it. So, I will email this woman tomorrow and find out about the other book clubs and then contact them and find out about the February book since I won't be here in December and January. Before we left the library, we borrowed seven dvds which we can have for three weeks.
Our next stop was to Blockbuster's Video to get a card from them. Again we used our driver's licenses and our rental agreement from the granny flat and we were issued a card. We then rented 6 movies - they are only 99 cents on Tuesdays and they are good for a week. We didn't rent any new releases as we would have had to return them tomorrow and we wanted to stay home tomorrow. Besides, there wasn't much in the new releases that interested us - and what did interest us, we had already seen (mostly on the planes we have travelled on in the past while).
Loaded down with our 13 videos, we walked home. I find that it's much easier to walk to town than home. :-) One thing is that we went a different way getting to town and it was more flat than the way we came home. And by the time we had walked to town and then all around town, we were tired and it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other by the time we were almost home. My feet were sore and I couldn't wait to get my shoes off. On the way to town, the sun was shining and there was a beautiful strong breeze blowing. By the time we came home (at 3pm), the sun was shining even stronger (it reached 33C today) and there was less breeze, so we were sweating really well on our way home. I love the heat, but I love the breeze with the heat even better. :-)
We spent the rest of the evening after dinner watching the dvd of the first season of the tv show 'MASH'. Mike and I used to both watch it when we were teenagers and we really enjoy watching it. We watched 7 episodes and it was really nice to 'go back in time' and just relax after our busy day in town. We are doing a lot of walking here in Hervey Bay on the days we don't have Julianne's car and, although it hurts our feet, we really do enjoy walking and feel that if we keep doing it, our feet won't hurt so much after a while.
Now, you think we would be losing weight (and maybe we are with all this walking we are doing), but we are also enjoying a very nice Australian cookie that we love - Tim Tams. They are two cookies with chocolate in between them and then they are covered with chocolate as well. They are sooooooooooooo delicious and they are sooooooooo hard to resist. But, tonight, we finished them all up and we won't buy anymore, so hopefully, the walking will do its job and we can get back into our pre-cruise clothes. :-)
Monday, November 16, 2009
Today was another perfect day - oh wait - yesterday was perfect - so...today must be beautiful. :-) We have seen a few clouds, but they always seem to be surrounding the city rather than over it. Today I told Mike that I was getting bored of a blue sky every day. ;-)
We borrowed Julianne's car today to do a few errands and our first stop was to Dundowran to see the house that we love and to see how much traffic there would be in the morning in that area around school time. As it turned out, we got there too late as the students were already in school. We did take a second look at the outside of the house and I still love it. We also took a drive around the neighbourhood and found a house for sale by the owner. We phoned the number on the sign out the front and made an appointment to go and see the house. It turns out that the house is quite nice - four bedrooms, family room, lounge room, kitchen, dining room, but no shed. Also the kitchen wasn't quite as big as the other house we like just around the corner. The price sure was right, but we are going to wait and see if this other house comes down in price since they have to leave here by the beginning of January.
After we had seen this house, we went back for another look at the house we like and while we were sitting there, the woman who owns the house (Noelle) came out and asked us if we wanted another look inside. I said 'yes' since I couldn't remember some things about it. I still love it and hope that it's THE house - of course, if it's not, I know that something better will come along. Noelle and I had a great chat about our situation and her situation, so now it will just be a matter of wait and see.
Our next stop was the Department of Motor Vehicles. We have exciting news! We got our Queensland driver's licenses today and they are good for five years! We were so thrilled to be able to both get them. We knew Mike could based on the different kinds of identification he had, but we weren't sure if they would use two passports for me (I have a Canadian and an Australian passport). The lady at the counter checked out both of them and said that they would work just fine. Of course, our photos on our licenses aren't that good, but who has nice driver's license photos. :-)
After that, it was just a rush of visiting different stores: Sam's warehouse to pick up sheets and a laundry basket and to look at furniture on sale just to see their quality; then, to a variety of electronic stores to try and find a cord for Mike's shaver (no luck); River's, to try and find a church shirt or two for Mike (no luck there - mostly long-sleeved shirts on sale and we were looking for short-sleeved ones); Big W to buy a fly swatter and night light (for the bathroom to see in the middle of the night as it's really dark out here at night); Woolworth's to get some more groceries. Near there, we went to a butcher's to buy some meat. When we were there the other day, I noticed that they sold boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $9.99 a kg and that is a good price here. Australians love their butchers and this one will be getting a lot of our business, I think, as their prices are really good, they are really nice people and their meats look really fresh.
After picking up Julianne and dropping us off at our place, we spent the rest of the day just hanging out at home: playing cards, on the computer, reading and a little tv watching. Gee, it's nice to be able to relax every once in a while. ;-)
We borrowed Julianne's car today to do a few errands and our first stop was to Dundowran to see the house that we love and to see how much traffic there would be in the morning in that area around school time. As it turned out, we got there too late as the students were already in school. We did take a second look at the outside of the house and I still love it. We also took a drive around the neighbourhood and found a house for sale by the owner. We phoned the number on the sign out the front and made an appointment to go and see the house. It turns out that the house is quite nice - four bedrooms, family room, lounge room, kitchen, dining room, but no shed. Also the kitchen wasn't quite as big as the other house we like just around the corner. The price sure was right, but we are going to wait and see if this other house comes down in price since they have to leave here by the beginning of January.
After we had seen this house, we went back for another look at the house we like and while we were sitting there, the woman who owns the house (Noelle) came out and asked us if we wanted another look inside. I said 'yes' since I couldn't remember some things about it. I still love it and hope that it's THE house - of course, if it's not, I know that something better will come along. Noelle and I had a great chat about our situation and her situation, so now it will just be a matter of wait and see.
Our next stop was the Department of Motor Vehicles. We have exciting news! We got our Queensland driver's licenses today and they are good for five years! We were so thrilled to be able to both get them. We knew Mike could based on the different kinds of identification he had, but we weren't sure if they would use two passports for me (I have a Canadian and an Australian passport). The lady at the counter checked out both of them and said that they would work just fine. Of course, our photos on our licenses aren't that good, but who has nice driver's license photos. :-)
After that, it was just a rush of visiting different stores: Sam's warehouse to pick up sheets and a laundry basket and to look at furniture on sale just to see their quality; then, to a variety of electronic stores to try and find a cord for Mike's shaver (no luck); River's, to try and find a church shirt or two for Mike (no luck there - mostly long-sleeved shirts on sale and we were looking for short-sleeved ones); Big W to buy a fly swatter and night light (for the bathroom to see in the middle of the night as it's really dark out here at night); Woolworth's to get some more groceries. Near there, we went to a butcher's to buy some meat. When we were there the other day, I noticed that they sold boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $9.99 a kg and that is a good price here. Australians love their butchers and this one will be getting a lot of our business, I think, as their prices are really good, they are really nice people and their meats look really fresh.
After picking up Julianne and dropping us off at our place, we spent the rest of the day just hanging out at home: playing cards, on the computer, reading and a little tv watching. Gee, it's nice to be able to relax every once in a while. ;-)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Today is Sunday and as Sunday is supposed to be a 'day of rest', that is exactly what we did. We were up at 7:30am to get ready for church as it started at 9am. We are only a 15 minute walk from the chapel and so we left at about 8:35am so that we could be there with 10 minutes to spare. When we were seated and there was about five minutes left until the meeting was going to start, one of the counsellors got up and asked for reverence. As soon as he said that, you could have heard a pin drop and it was like that until the meeting started. Usually, in most wards we have been in, there would still have been a little chattering, but not here.
There were only two speakers today as the counsellor who was conducting the meeting asked his son (who had just received his graduation diploma from seminary) to bear his testimony. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face when his dad said he would be doing it before the first talk. :-) It was a typical youth testimony - short and mostly about being thankful he had gone through seminary and gratefulness for his seminary teacher. The first speaker, Sue Coates, is in the Relief Society presidency and she spoke about the Proclamation of the Family - about how important it is to remain close to your family. The second speaker, Brother Carr, spoke about his spiritual experiences over his life - he was baptized into the church, went away from it for a number of years, and then became active again after one of his sons became ill.
Sunday School was taught by Trudy Yuginovich - the lesson was about doing your family history. She talked about how it's up to us to use the resources/tools that the church provides to start/continue/complete your genealogy. It's something that I have been thinking about doing for ages and now that I am planning on supply teaching instead of full-time teaching, I am thinking that this will be the perfect time to input all the information I do have into the church program and then continue on with it. In fact, my dad's cousin, John Leggo, lives in Sydney and my mom has asked me to get what I can from him regarding my dad's side of the family. I have spoken to John and we are going to meet up in the week before we head back to Canada this time so that I can get a copy of what he has.
Relief Society was taught by Nerida Sweeney - she taught a lesson about Joseph Smith and the feelings he had as he taught the Saints the things they needed to know. She is a good teacher (just like Rosalea was last week) and it's great to be in those kinds of lessons. Joseph Smith is one of my heroes not only because of what he did in restoring the gospel to the earth, but also because he was persecuted so much and yet he kept going in the face of adversity. One thing I learned in this week's lesson about him was that he loved the children and they loved him. He seemed to treat them with respect and showed them that he cared about them.
Chris and Chris gave us a ride home, although we would have walked home if they had not offered. It was another beautiful day today (or was it another perfect day today? :-) Mike says he can't remember from one day to the next if it's a beautiful day or a perfect day that day (the motto here in Queensland is 'Beautiful one day, Perfect the next'. :-) The rest of today we have just been hanging around our place playing cards, making shopping lists, and planning what we are going to be doing tomorrow since Julianne is loaning us her car again. I love Sundays!!! :-)
There were only two speakers today as the counsellor who was conducting the meeting asked his son (who had just received his graduation diploma from seminary) to bear his testimony. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face when his dad said he would be doing it before the first talk. :-) It was a typical youth testimony - short and mostly about being thankful he had gone through seminary and gratefulness for his seminary teacher. The first speaker, Sue Coates, is in the Relief Society presidency and she spoke about the Proclamation of the Family - about how important it is to remain close to your family. The second speaker, Brother Carr, spoke about his spiritual experiences over his life - he was baptized into the church, went away from it for a number of years, and then became active again after one of his sons became ill.
Sunday School was taught by Trudy Yuginovich - the lesson was about doing your family history. She talked about how it's up to us to use the resources/tools that the church provides to start/continue/complete your genealogy. It's something that I have been thinking about doing for ages and now that I am planning on supply teaching instead of full-time teaching, I am thinking that this will be the perfect time to input all the information I do have into the church program and then continue on with it. In fact, my dad's cousin, John Leggo, lives in Sydney and my mom has asked me to get what I can from him regarding my dad's side of the family. I have spoken to John and we are going to meet up in the week before we head back to Canada this time so that I can get a copy of what he has.
Relief Society was taught by Nerida Sweeney - she taught a lesson about Joseph Smith and the feelings he had as he taught the Saints the things they needed to know. She is a good teacher (just like Rosalea was last week) and it's great to be in those kinds of lessons. Joseph Smith is one of my heroes not only because of what he did in restoring the gospel to the earth, but also because he was persecuted so much and yet he kept going in the face of adversity. One thing I learned in this week's lesson about him was that he loved the children and they loved him. He seemed to treat them with respect and showed them that he cared about them.
Chris and Chris gave us a ride home, although we would have walked home if they had not offered. It was another beautiful day today (or was it another perfect day today? :-) Mike says he can't remember from one day to the next if it's a beautiful day or a perfect day that day (the motto here in Queensland is 'Beautiful one day, Perfect the next'. :-) The rest of today we have just been hanging around our place playing cards, making shopping lists, and planning what we are going to be doing tomorrow since Julianne is loaning us her car again. I love Sundays!!! :-)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
This morning, I went to a Relief Society Homemaking meeting. There were 20 sisters in attendance which I thought was a really good turnout since the whole branch only has about 75 members. We were in a tiny room so we were all sitting quite close together in a circle. The sisters first shared their Christmas celebration tradition; then one sister, Lynn, asked if we could all introduce ourselves as she didn't know many of the sisters (she is in Primary so she doesn't get to mingle with the sisters on Sunday) and so we all did that. Two of the sisters in the circle realized that they had gone to Primary together many years ago when they had been in the same ward, so they got to chatting afterwards. Next, some of the sisters shared some Christmas crafts that they had brought with them. I am not into crafts, but there were some cute ideas that I could use for my classes when I get back to teaching. I am going to talk to the sister that shared them tomorrow to see if I can borrow them and write down how I would make them. We ended the meeting by singing some Christmas carols. The Relief Society President, Leanne Rostedt, told us that she was supposed to show us how to make a gingerbread house, but that she had had a horrible week and so hadn't had a chance to get all the stuff together to do that. I got a chance to know some more names of the sisters in the branch, so that was nice.
Later in the afternoon, Chris and Chris (our 'landlords') asked us if we would like to go swimming at the beach - they often go of an afternoon - so we jumped at the chance as we have been here over a week and have not been once to swim in the beautiful ocean water. The time was about 3pm and so by the time we got there, it would have been about 3:15pm. There were a lot of waves this time - the past two times we have been here, we hadn't experienced that, so it was nice to be in the water and be able to 'body surf' - the waves weren't that big, but it was still nicer than still water. The amazing thing that we noticed was that the water was so warm - Mike even commented that it was warmer than most people keep their swimming pools. The weird thing, though, was that there were pockets of cold water which really took me by surprise when I came upon them. Mike and Chris started chatting about airplanes and his wife, Chris, and I started talking about her family. We stayed in the water for about 45 minutes just chatting from one subject to the next. The only down side for me was that I kept getting salt water in my mouth (it's hard to talk and keep your mouth closed at the same time) and I kept gagging. One time I even brought up a noodle or two from lunch (yeah, I know, yuck!) and that's just how I felt as I was gagging. I hope to get in the water a few more times before we head back to Canada.
When we got home, and after we changed, we walked down to McDonald's - we thought we would support the charity of McHappy Day today - for every Big Mac that was bought, McDonald's would give $1 to Ronald McDonald House. We love Big Macs, but don't like to eat them that often since they are so unhealthy, so this way we felt we could eat them and feel good abour our choice since we were supporting a good cause. :-) The good thing, too, was that we had to walk 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back and so we got in some good exercise to counteract the fatty calories we consumed when eating the Big Mac. ;-)
When we got home, Mike watched a show he likes here called 'Mythbusters' - the hosts of the show try and replicate old wives tales and myths to see if they can be 'confirmed', are 'plausible' or are 'busted' (not possible). One such experiment they did in tonight's show was using this red dust that they use to make fires for special effects in movies/tv and burning it in a bucket that is sitting on ice. The myth was that when the burning powder contacts the ice, that it would cause an explosion. The hosts had worked in special effects for many years and didn't think this was plausible. Much to their amazement, when the fire in the bucket got hot enough, it melted the bottom of the bucket and when the fire hit the ice, there was a HUGE explosion. So, this was 'myth confirmed'. While Mike was watching that, I wrote some emails to try and catch up on my correspondence.
After that show, Mike and I changed positions, and I watched a favourite British show of mine that is on tv here called 'The Bill' and Mike did some work on the computer. I had first seen 'The Bill' on a visit to Australia many years ago and I really like it. It's your typical 'cop show' which is my favourite type of tv show. I have always loved cop/detective shows even as a teenager. I used to watch 'Mannix', 'Ironside', 'Hawaii Five-O, 'Streets of San Francisco', 'Adam-12' - shows like that when I was younger and this has carried on over the years. My favourite shows today are ones like 'Law and Order', 'CSI', and 'Criminal Minds'.
Later in the afternoon, Chris and Chris (our 'landlords') asked us if we would like to go swimming at the beach - they often go of an afternoon - so we jumped at the chance as we have been here over a week and have not been once to swim in the beautiful ocean water. The time was about 3pm and so by the time we got there, it would have been about 3:15pm. There were a lot of waves this time - the past two times we have been here, we hadn't experienced that, so it was nice to be in the water and be able to 'body surf' - the waves weren't that big, but it was still nicer than still water. The amazing thing that we noticed was that the water was so warm - Mike even commented that it was warmer than most people keep their swimming pools. The weird thing, though, was that there were pockets of cold water which really took me by surprise when I came upon them. Mike and Chris started chatting about airplanes and his wife, Chris, and I started talking about her family. We stayed in the water for about 45 minutes just chatting from one subject to the next. The only down side for me was that I kept getting salt water in my mouth (it's hard to talk and keep your mouth closed at the same time) and I kept gagging. One time I even brought up a noodle or two from lunch (yeah, I know, yuck!) and that's just how I felt as I was gagging. I hope to get in the water a few more times before we head back to Canada.
When we got home, and after we changed, we walked down to McDonald's - we thought we would support the charity of McHappy Day today - for every Big Mac that was bought, McDonald's would give $1 to Ronald McDonald House. We love Big Macs, but don't like to eat them that often since they are so unhealthy, so this way we felt we could eat them and feel good abour our choice since we were supporting a good cause. :-) The good thing, too, was that we had to walk 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back and so we got in some good exercise to counteract the fatty calories we consumed when eating the Big Mac. ;-)
When we got home, Mike watched a show he likes here called 'Mythbusters' - the hosts of the show try and replicate old wives tales and myths to see if they can be 'confirmed', are 'plausible' or are 'busted' (not possible). One such experiment they did in tonight's show was using this red dust that they use to make fires for special effects in movies/tv and burning it in a bucket that is sitting on ice. The myth was that when the burning powder contacts the ice, that it would cause an explosion. The hosts had worked in special effects for many years and didn't think this was plausible. Much to their amazement, when the fire in the bucket got hot enough, it melted the bottom of the bucket and when the fire hit the ice, there was a HUGE explosion. So, this was 'myth confirmed'. While Mike was watching that, I wrote some emails to try and catch up on my correspondence.
After that show, Mike and I changed positions, and I watched a favourite British show of mine that is on tv here called 'The Bill' and Mike did some work on the computer. I had first seen 'The Bill' on a visit to Australia many years ago and I really like it. It's your typical 'cop show' which is my favourite type of tv show. I have always loved cop/detective shows even as a teenager. I used to watch 'Mannix', 'Ironside', 'Hawaii Five-O, 'Streets of San Francisco', 'Adam-12' - shows like that when I was younger and this has carried on over the years. My favourite shows today are ones like 'Law and Order', 'CSI', and 'Criminal Minds'.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Whew, my feet are really killing me tonight! We went for a VERY long walk today!! Mike needed a haircut and so, after asking our 'landlords' for recommendations, we headed off downtown. When we got back home, Mike went on our gps program to figure out how far we had walked and it was 4km there and 4km back. And, not to mention, but there were a number of hills mixed in there as well. Somehow, on the way down, I didn't notice the downhills, so I was surprised when we came home and had to walk up a number of hills. :-)
When we got to the barber, we found him sitting in a chair and he didn't even get up when we came in. After telling him that Mike wanted a haircut, he got up and walked into the area where he actually cut the hair. He was an older gentleman (about 70) and once he got Mike in the chair, he started up a good chat - turns out he has been here 30 years and quite likes it here. I thought he did an okay job on Mike's hair - it's not what we're used to back in Canada, but for $12. here, you can't complain too much as the average men's haircut is $20. Just as an aside, the taxes are included in everything you buy here and there is no tipping.
After that, we walked over to Coles (one of the two big supermarkets here) to grab a few things we were running out of) and then to Big W (like Walmart) to get a few things that we needed around here (pegs, tea towels, dish cloths, hangars, toothpaste). Our last stop before walking home was a stop at Hungry Jack's (Burger King) to get an ice-cream 'for the road'. :-) It only costs 50c and so that's a cheap treat.
I bought the pegs because I now have to hang all my clothes on the line once they are washed. Very few people dry their clothes in a dryer over here as the weather is so warm all the time and the cost of electricity is quite expensive. I am a bit of a slow hanger upper when it comes to this, but I am sure that I will be able to do it faster the more experience I get. Mike actually hung our stuff up yesterday as the clothes line that is up outside our granny flat is really high and I can't reach it. Our clothes were dry really fast - it was amazing to me how quickly they did.
After we arrived home, Julianne came by with a tv and dvd player - she had called me in the morning before our walk to tell me that she had two tvs and asked us would we like one plus a dvd player to use while we are here. We jumped at the chance simply because sometimes we are so tired in the evening and just want to veg in front of the tv. She also told us that Blockbuster has a $1 per video special on Tuesday nights, so we are going to have 'Video Nights' every Tuesday - I am sure we can find something to rent for that price.
One thing that I have to get used to here is having to turn off all the switches on the plugs after we finish using them. The voltage is 220 volts here and so all the outlets have an on/off switch on them. This is because of the high voltage, but also to conserve power. So, for instance, when we are not watching tv, we turn the switch off and that stops the small power draw for the instant on feature.
After dinner, we did watch a little tv - when we were at Ruth's in Sydney, she had some dvds of a program called 'Midsommer Murders' - it's a british detective show - and we quite like them - tonight they had an episode of that on tv. There are five stations here that you can get 'free to air' as they call it. SBS is a multicultural station (like Omni TV in Toronto), ABC1 is a public broadcasting station (like TVO in Toronto) and Channels 7, 9, and 10 would be your regular tv stations (like ABC, CBS, and NBC). It would be easy to watch tv all the time if we wanted, but we decided tonight to only watch tv when we really liked a program - not to have it running all the time.
When we got to the barber, we found him sitting in a chair and he didn't even get up when we came in. After telling him that Mike wanted a haircut, he got up and walked into the area where he actually cut the hair. He was an older gentleman (about 70) and once he got Mike in the chair, he started up a good chat - turns out he has been here 30 years and quite likes it here. I thought he did an okay job on Mike's hair - it's not what we're used to back in Canada, but for $12. here, you can't complain too much as the average men's haircut is $20. Just as an aside, the taxes are included in everything you buy here and there is no tipping.
After that, we walked over to Coles (one of the two big supermarkets here) to grab a few things we were running out of) and then to Big W (like Walmart) to get a few things that we needed around here (pegs, tea towels, dish cloths, hangars, toothpaste). Our last stop before walking home was a stop at Hungry Jack's (Burger King) to get an ice-cream 'for the road'. :-) It only costs 50c and so that's a cheap treat.
I bought the pegs because I now have to hang all my clothes on the line once they are washed. Very few people dry their clothes in a dryer over here as the weather is so warm all the time and the cost of electricity is quite expensive. I am a bit of a slow hanger upper when it comes to this, but I am sure that I will be able to do it faster the more experience I get. Mike actually hung our stuff up yesterday as the clothes line that is up outside our granny flat is really high and I can't reach it. Our clothes were dry really fast - it was amazing to me how quickly they did.
After we arrived home, Julianne came by with a tv and dvd player - she had called me in the morning before our walk to tell me that she had two tvs and asked us would we like one plus a dvd player to use while we are here. We jumped at the chance simply because sometimes we are so tired in the evening and just want to veg in front of the tv. She also told us that Blockbuster has a $1 per video special on Tuesday nights, so we are going to have 'Video Nights' every Tuesday - I am sure we can find something to rent for that price.
One thing that I have to get used to here is having to turn off all the switches on the plugs after we finish using them. The voltage is 220 volts here and so all the outlets have an on/off switch on them. This is because of the high voltage, but also to conserve power. So, for instance, when we are not watching tv, we turn the switch off and that stops the small power draw for the instant on feature.
After dinner, we did watch a little tv - when we were at Ruth's in Sydney, she had some dvds of a program called 'Midsommer Murders' - it's a british detective show - and we quite like them - tonight they had an episode of that on tv. There are five stations here that you can get 'free to air' as they call it. SBS is a multicultural station (like Omni TV in Toronto), ABC1 is a public broadcasting station (like TVO in Toronto) and Channels 7, 9, and 10 would be your regular tv stations (like ABC, CBS, and NBC). It would be easy to watch tv all the time if we wanted, but we decided tonight to only watch tv when we really liked a program - not to have it running all the time.
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