"We all have our strengths. Mine is finding my way around cities, while yours is talking to Jevohva Witnesses." - Tom, while talking to Myla.
Short post tonight as it is late and I need to help with dinner. It was a very stressful morning this morning trying to get my Aussie teaching license sorted out. I think it will work out. Tom spent the morning getting my phone working so now I have a mobile number!!! 04 9078 2334. I also walked down to the post and mailed my first letter. Nice lady told me I did a good job filling out the evelope. She said that Aussies often put the return address on the back of the envelope rather than the top left corner. While Tom and I were working on the paperwork, the garbage man came! That has ALWAYS been a fascination for my kids. You should have heard them yelling to each other in the house "The garbage truck is here!" After lunch we went to a big mall to get a sim card for Tom's phone. We are using a different service for his phone so that between our two phones we will have optimum coverage. Then... What else should you do when it is 4:00, the sun in shining, and you live in Australia? Go to the beach! So off we went exploring different beaches. They all had really high surf so we ended up going back to the one we went to yesterday. Instead of a lot of water and sand play the kids collected shells and played with a crab. I bought a sun beach umbrella for $20 at Aldi (I love Aldi! We had those stores back in Germany too) so we blended in a little more with the locals this time! On the way home we saw a pelican sitting on top of a street lamp. Wished I could have taken a picture. It looked rediculous as the pelican was about 2 or 3 times bigger than the light!
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"What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it." - Juliette Binoche
What a fantastic day! After a lovely Skype chat with Bron and her family this morning, Olin and I walked to town to take care of my Working With Children Check and my NSW drivers' license. I love these walks with him. He usually walks about 5 meters behind me and gets lost in his own little world. While I walk lost in mine. He wants to come. It is good time for us together. I had to go to the NSW Service Center toget my Working with Children Check. The New South Wales Service Center is a government office that takes care of everything you might need from the government. They do it right. They are pleasant, competent, and genuinly seem to want to help you. They helped me get my Working with Children Check and a NSW drivers' license - which I don't need but wanted to get anyway just to make things easier. After lunch our family went to the beach in Terrigal. We went to particular beach that Brett recommended and it was awesome. Low surf, lots of kids, and plenty of places to park. We played in the water and sand, and basically had the kind of experience you think of when you think of 'living in Australia.' After we got back home we contacted our community sponsor, Luke. So Brett and Bron have picked two people to be my sponsors. One is a community sponsor - who helps our family adjust to the out-of-school Australia. The other is a school sponor - who helps me adjust to teaching in an Aussie school. They chose well! Luke was just what we needed today. He has been on exchange himself, so he is familiar with the kinds of needs of people experiencing what we are experiencing. The last two major hurdles that we need to cross are purchasing a car and getting phones. He had great advice on how to tackle both of them. Tomorrow I think we will head back into town and go to Vodafone to get Aussie lines. And, hopefully by the end of the night tonight, we'll have a good idea of the type of vehicle we want to purchase. Thank you Luke! Some random things from today:
"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all." - Helen Keller
Today's adventure was an excursion on the local bus line to pick up our car rental. We probably should have called Luke, our community sponsor to help us get there, but we thought we'd challenge ourselves and try to figure it out ourselves. Rather than going through all the minute details, I'll just say that we spent almost 2 hours touring the neiborhoods between North Gosford and Tumbi Umbi and walked a lot to get to the car rental location only to find that it had moved locations 3 months ago back to a place that was near a stop we had reached after about 30 minutes of travel. Augh! Some positives were that I packed a lunch (thanks Bron for the sandwhich makings), we got to explore the area and all the neighborhoods in a relaxed no-stress way - by bus. And the kids didn't complain. I thank the ants for that. While we walked from bus stop to bus stop to figure out which line we needed to take to get back to Tuggerah (the new location of the rental) there were piles of ants in the dust that the kids played with. In the end we got our rental. We decided that Tom should do most of the town driving as he used to live in South Africa and understands how to drive on the 'other' side of the street. Thankfully he was driving, because if I had been driving when the police pulled us over I think I would have peed my pants. Turns out the Aussie police do really random breathalyzer tests and we just happened to be the ones to pass the cop when he was free. He approached the car, asked for Tom's license, asked him if he'd had any alcohol to drink, and then had him count to 5 slowly into an orange machine/wand thing. He then put away the orange breathalyzer, thanked Tom, and told him to have a good day. He then got in his car pulled out from behind us, and promptly pulled over the next car he pulled up behind. Some positives about the day: We got our bank cards. We have a car. Tom re-learned how to drive on the left side of the street. We learned to navigate the bus system. And we learned the lorikeets like apple cores! I also figured out the extra paperwork I need to get my Working With Children Check for my Aussie Teaching license and will get that all finished tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we will contact Luke about ideas he might have concerning buying a car and we are treating ourselves to the beach!!! "I LOVE this bug!"- Alta
Our first day in Australia has been fantastic! We were picked up at the Sydney Airport by the Coast Wide Airport Transfers, and were driven by a nice talkative man that encouraged us to root for the Swans - an Australian Rules Football team. It is warm and humid here with some overcast skies, but WARM and that is just what I needed. The driver dropped us off at the house and while we waited for Bron's friend Lesley and her husband Chris to meet us to deliver the house key, we explored our new home. Tom and I sat on the front step and listened to all the different foreign bird sounds while Olin and Alta explored the backyard. It didn't take long before Alta learned that a little lizard lives through the crawl space door at the back of the house, and for Olin to discover a whole lot of little ants trying to carry away a beetle that was fighting for it's life to get away. We had a lovely chat with Lesley and Chris. She brought home-made scones (pronounced 'scons') and brought jam and home made whipped cream to put on top. Super yummy! After their visit, we decided to walk to the Woolworths grocery store. What a fun way to introduce ourselves to our local area. We found a playground, listened to wonderful lorikeets, discovered a cemetery with graves from the mid 1800s, and discovered that Gosford is hilly! We also discovered that our kids are going to be learning how to navigate more urban areas as well learning about Australia. Every piece of trash was a treasure. Every flower was something to pick. Olin tried to give us walking sticks - which works just fine on the trails in Alaska, but just looked odd in the suburb-like environment of Gosford. And both kids just couldn't cross the streets fast enough. Both kids are in the shower now and Tom and I have cracked some nice cold Australian beers - compliments of Lesley and Chris. We are going to chill around the house to finish our day before we tackle the train and bus system tomorrow on our way to pick up our rental car. Some memorable quotes for the day: "Hey Olin come look! Our first cockroach! Well, dieing cockroach." - Tom "Alta, please don't put your finger down the lizard hole." - Myla "I love Australia" (said at least 4 times within the course of 2 hours.) - Alta "Olin, put the stick down." - Myla, "It's not a stick, Mom. It's eucalyptus bark!" - Olin "Wow, look at that spider!" - Alta "Mom, can I go ask the girl across the street if she wants to play?" - Olin "Ok, new rule. Just look at it. No more picking things up." - Tom "Please don't stop when you cross the street." - Myla "Look BOTH ways when you cross the street! Cars are coming from a different direction than at home." - Myla |
AuthorThe Liljemark's enjoy exploring the world. This blog chronicles our adventures. Archives
December 2017
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