Lending a helping hand

I'll have to find a picture to post here - perhaps the picture of the cake we made? Let me explain. My friend Tennille works for Victoria University in a program that counsels and teaches life skills to high risk teenagers, those that have been neglected and/or abused. Technically their job is to re-engage disconnected youths, which let me tell you, is a lot harder than it sounds. She has a huge heart and it's a wonderful thing that she does. Last week, her students were "graduating" from the program and because this is most likely the only sort of ceremony celebrating any accomplishments they've had, she wanted to make it special. So she came over with a huge tray of cakes that she had baked and we spent the evening constructing the name of her program (TOTeM - standing for The One and The Many) spelled out in cake, with the help of wooden skewers of course. Then came the frosting. Of course we needed to do it in the program colors so we had nearly all of it bright blue with one letter in bright red. There were some errors along the way so the kitchen was littered with pieces of cake in various stages of frosting. When we finally finished and stood back to survey our work, the cakes looked great but the kitchen looked like Cookie Monster and Elmo had met a terrible end. Actually getting it to the ceremony was another thing. We had to anchor these cakes on two large boards so we could transport it. You should've seen the looks I got from the early morning commuters when they glanced over to see me balancing a huge T O T at chest level. Luckily they made it in one piece and still tasted good.

I spent the day with Tennille at the school preparing memory books and certificates, finding kind words to say about students I hadn't yet met, and getting the room they had rented ready for the event. The students began to arrive, some with family in tow and this was a major step for all of these students. Often the family is not very involved with them which is how they ended up in this program. To watch how their faces glowed when Tennille and her colleague Sam stood up and spoke about each individual person was so inspiring! How often can you say let alone witness the fact that you can help change a person's life? It definitely made me feel grateful for the wonderful family and environment I grew up in, that's for sure! So fingers crossed that this is the first step of the rest of their lives and in such a positive direction.

St Kilda Evening

Last weekend, I met up with my lovely Scottish friend Ruth who I met in Tasmania to go explore St Kilda. St Kilda is a town right outside Melbourne on the Bay with a wonderful beach and feel to it. It's been cleaned up in recent years and is now one of the more expensive places to live because it's so close to the city, has a lively night life, bars, cafes and a beach! We made our way down to the beach and were enjoying people watching - all kinds of people enjoying themselves in the warm weather. A guy broke out his tin whistle and started playing, which was soulful and great to listen to. Then 3 guys came down with bongo drums and started playing. After about 15 minutes, the guy with the tin whistle came over and they all started playing together. Then a group of Argentinian tourists came down with a tambourine and they joined in singing and dancing. It was just so wonderful to watch all these strangers come together to just enjoy music on a beautiful beach.

We continued on for tapas outside and to a pub for a few beers while listening to a band. The area is wonderful with a creative edge and a diverse group of people. They have open air markets along the esplanade on Sundays, so I need to hit that up next weekend!

Night markets and barbies

As I hear tales of snow and ice from back home, our backyard barbecue the other night just keeps sounding better and better. It was a perfect night with lots of great food and great company. My cookies were a hit, or rather Betty Crocker's cookies were a hit. Our guests left full and with their lunch all ready for the next day. They got the food, we kept the untouched beers. I thought it was a fair trade.

Last night we ventured to the night markets in Melbourne which are great and not at all like the night markets in Thailand. They're only on Wednesdays for a several months during the summer. There's a live band that plays, beer vendors, food vendors of every variety you could think of, and stalls of merchandise. They have everything from scary witches that cackle and then take off at a dead run in mid-air, to wall aquariums, to jewelry, to licorice stalls, and lots of other things. So people wander around with their beers, examining merchandise, bopping along to the music while they shop. Really so much fun!

Thought I'd switch it up a bit and put the picture on the right for a change. Hope it doesn't throw anyone off :)

Wine tasting

Since I got behind, I figured I would just post from here on out. Yesterday, my friend Keith had the day off work and decided he would be my tour guide. After some questions about things that I liked and was interested in, it was decided we'd go wine tasting. I'm sure that's shocking to most of you. We had an early start with a 9AM pickup time and we were off. Well actually, we had a minor detour in the house because the night before, as I was vacuuming, I accidentally unearthed yet ANOTHER gigantic spider while home alone. I believe my panicked and incoherent text message to Tanya said, "Vacuuming. BIG spider. Me scream and scare dogs. Help!" After I watched him crawl towards one wall, I got out the big can of insect killer and sprayed liberally, and obviously from a distance. The spider seemed to tuck his many legs under him and turn into just a large black ball. I was thinking there was no way it could survive such an offensive as I had just launched, but was wary. I waited a few moments, but he didn't move and I continued with my vacuuming. So please imagine my panic when I returned a few moments later to find him missing with just a nice clean spot in the middle of the foam that was SUPPOSED to be an insect killer. I managed to find him again and launched a secondary attack, this time with success. Of course, I wouldn't go near it to pick it up and throw it away, and even Tanya who is used to these kinds of things, wouldn't when she got home either. It was rather large and scary. So that was Keith's first task of the day before wine tasting.

I digress. Off to the vineyards on a nice warm day, and our first stop was De Bertoli vineyards at 10AM. This area of Australia is specifically known for it's sparkling wines, chardonnays and pinot noirs. As we were driving into the vineyard with rows of grapes, I noticed rose bushes in front of every row of grapes and some of the rows had a small sign hammered to it identifying the kind of grapes that were being grown. I mentioned to Keith that these were pinot grapes on our left, and you should've seen his face. He thought I could tell what kind of grapes they were just from looking, and you could instantly see the fear that his expertise in the area had gone right out the window. I played along for a bit, but then told him about the signs and that I was clearly a better reader than distant grape definer. In case you were wondering, the rose bushes are an organic way to see if there's a problem with the soil or bugs, and it doesn't hurt that they're pretty and smell good either!

One of the vineyards we stopped at was Chandon, and it reminded me very much of Napa. Here we had a nice pairing of wines with cheeses that were out of this world (see above picture)! A purely Australian invention is the red sparkling wine. Now I thought I would hate it, but I actually loved it so I would recommend that everyone give it a try if you find one in your local liquor store. Several vineyards later, we stopped for lunch at the Yering Station Vineyard, the oldest in Victoria which had this amazing view, and we had an even better meal. With one more stop before heading back to Melbourne, we savored every last taste. Course I was giggly and trying to find a dance radio station on the way home, but that's the way all good wine tastings should go in my opinion!

Oaks Day

Still catching up on my posts, so Oaks Day was indeed nearly two weeks ago. Shame on me. Anyway, traditionally Oaks Day was the ladies day at the races, where all the women dolled themselves up in beautiful dresses and outrageous hats, placed some bets, had a few cocktails and enjoyed the races. In more recent times, gentleman, in their infinite wisdom and single-minded thinking, have figured out that ladies day at the races meant it was full of beautiful women dressed out in their evening best during the day and they tend to be consuming alcoholic beverages all day, and saw this to their advantage. So in this day and age, it's a 50/50 mix of both now.

About a dozen of us girls dressed up, made lunches, brought snacks, picnic blankets, our own alcoholic beverages and made a day of it. It was so much fun! The day begins with finding your own stretch of grass to put down your blankets and daintily sit so you don't mess up the dress you've spent two weeks looking for and or inadvertently expose yourself to the jockeys dashing by on their horses. Of course the day begins around 10AM when you have your first beverage and look at the various ladies, discuss to pros and cons of their outfit choices, take sneaky pictures of the truly hideous ones, and observe the clusters of gentleman in their suits. As the day progresses, people scream louder for the horses, bounce up and down, the people watching turns into oggling and the once separated boys from the girls becomes a mish mash of people, making it hard to find where your homebase picnic blanket is. It's definitely an experience everyone should have. After the 7th race, you pack up the rest of your belongings, take you and your severely sun burnt friends and dash to the pub where the mixing continues. You meet lots of people and generally have a great night!

And there you have it - my first Oaks Day completed.

Overdue Updates

OK, I realize I have neglected my blog since landing in Tasmania two weeks ago and so much has gone on since then! So I will post in bits so as not to overwhelm anyone and inadvertently cause anyone's eyes to cross. The picture is one I took on one of my first hikes in Tasmania!

So first I will just do a summary of the rest of my Tasmanian adventure and below is a link to just a few pictures of my trip if you're interested. Tasmania was wonderful and completely diverse. You can go from climbing 30 meter sand dunes to hiking through rain forests to waterfalls in the space of a few hours. I did loads of hiking while I was there and absolutely loved it because you could really separate yourself from everyone and feel like you claimed a piece of the earth just for you. It was really quite magical. Some of the hikes were really challenging and some were not so challenging, but all were beautiful. Coming back down from Wineglass Bay, I became the cheerleader for everyone who was still climbing and even though they smiled at me, I'm sure many people were thinking "Shut up. I still have a lot farther to climb. I hate you." It didn't bother me because I knew once they got up to that view, all the sweat and cursing was worth it and they in turn would become cheerleaders to others on their way down as well.

Wildlife was abundant. We saw lots and lots of wallabies and kangaroos, and quite a few wombats. We also had our kitchen crashed by a possum with her baby clinging on to her back - they look nothing like the US possums. These ones are big and fluffy and a dark brown and black color. One of my favorite animals was the echidna which is sort of like a cross between a porcupine and a platypus and they were in abundance. And we saw quite a large tiger snake which of course, was extremely poisonous. In fact, there are only three snakes in Tasmania all of which are poisonous. One night, we climbed out onto these rocks on the ocean at dusk, waiting until it was dark. Then we began to hear calls and hear splashing. The calls were from baby penguins stashed in the bush and in the rock crevasses and the splashing were their devoted parents climbing these rocks to feed them. Quite an amazing experience!

Anyway, it was a great experience and I met lots of great people who I've stayed in touch with and have met up with back here in Melbourne.

For a few Tassie pictures, click here

Lovely Launceston

I have made it to the town of Launceston in Tasmania, and it's already been adventurous. Tasmania has a total population of under half a million, approximately 100,000 of which live in Launceston. The scenery was beautiful as we flew in and disembarked from the plane. Launceston Airport is quite small, so I was looking for baggage claim signs and was a bit confused when I didn't see any. So I walked around the airport (took 3 minutes total) until I noticed a small group of people gathered around an exit. Finally several small trolleys appeared with bags on them. We had to stand back as a fruit and vegetable sniffing dog climbed on top of of the luggage to find possible contraband, and then we were allowed to find our own luggage.

To make the trip economical, I got a room above a pub, which I figured was fine since I was only there one night. Unfortunately, the problem with having a room above a pub is that they're not open until the socially acceptable drinking time of around noon. So I trudged with my backpack many blocks to sit down, have some coffee and a delicious breakfast. As I was leaving and struggling to throw my backpack on, a lady came up to me and offered me a ride wherever I was going so I didn't have to walk with my bag. How nice is that?? I declined the offer, but sometimes it's enough just to have been asked.

After dropping off my bag, I went for a hike to Cataract Gorge which was very beautiful. The walk to the first basin was relatively easy and scenic. Then there was a huge climb to the very top which was invigorating to say the least, passing by wild peacocks (Mom, I still have nightmares) and a wallaby with a joey in her pouch. Not a soul around and it was very peaceful, though I briefly wondered why I was the only fool around making this hike. About half-way up, I realized I would've given one of my appendages for the hiking boots I coveted in 8th grade, as they now could've served an actual purpose other than an early 90's fashion statement. Upon reaching the top, I was startled to find a man up there without his shirt on since I thought I was alone. I jumped and told him that he had scared me, as he tried to cover up his chest with his shirt in a sort of endearingly teenage-girl kind of way. "Oh come on, it's not THAT bad, is it?" he says. Oops. The view was breathtaking though (of the mountains and water, not the fellow hiker I managed to insult in 1.5 seconds flat) and I picked my way carefully back down the mountain.

Now during my early morning stroll through the town, I was inspired by some of the creative store names or accomanying designs I came across and though I'd share a few here with you:

• Fone Zone - selling phones, obviously
• Charcoal Chicken - this featured a chicked who was well-endowed in the breast department crossing her fishnet covered legs seductively with a wave of her wing
• Balls 'N Bumpers - sports store
• Den of Antiquity - thought that was clever
• Hatton & Laws - despite this sounding like a reputable albeit expensive law firm, it's actually a pharmacy
• Wombat - surprisingly this store does not sell wombats, but women's clothing
• Holy Sheet! - selling bed linens (or manchester re: previous post)
  
• The Sheep is Back - knitted apparel
• And finally, a personal favorite of mine: Peter Less though this was all run together in lowercase so it looked like peterless - this was quite obviously a real estate agent who was enormous and therefore not teased as a child because of his name

Here's hoping the weather holds for the week!

Heading further down under

Tomorrow I'm off to discover Tasmania for about a week. I've heard that it's absolutely beautiful, and I'm looking forward to seeing a Tasmanian devil (cute little guy on the left), and trying to see a Tasmanian tiger (the more dog-like than tiger-like creature to the right). Unfortunately the tiger is presumed extinct since this was the last known one to be photographed since 1933. But my camera will be ready for any and all sightings of creatures! I was buying a book on Tasmania today and the lady said, "Oh Tassie. I absolutely love it there. One of the most beautiful spots in the world." I nodded and told her I was very excited to go. "How are you getting there?" I told her I was flying. "Are you single or married?" Interesting leap from the previous question about transport, but whatever, and confirmed I was single. "Oh, you really should've taken the boat. You'd find lots of guys that way. I used to do it with my girlfriends all the time. It was a blast!" Huh. Well needless to say, my plans haven't changed and I'm still making the short flight to the town of Launceston tomorrow.

The week hasn't been too eventful, thus the empty blog, although I did manage to flood the laundry room AND kitchen yesterday, which is not as easy to accomplish as one might initially think. Between that and the dog looking at me pitiably because we had to put her on a diet and she apparently dislikes the new and expensive dog food, that about sums it up! Oh yes, and I learned that the term "Manchester" does not refer to the city in northern England like I had thought, but instead refers to bed linen. I have no idea why. I stopped asking those kinds of questions weeks ago.

Casual observations

Since I haven't done much that's exciting enough to write about in the past week, I thought I would just pass on some casual observations I've made during my time here:

1.) Having come from the "Windy City," I must say that I have never been to a place as windy as Melbourne, although it's not consistent. Some days I feel as though I can easily be blown back to the US. It's just not something people comment on when coming here.

2.) Turkey is not commonly consumed here. Lots of chicken and TONS of red meat. You can find it, but for sliced deli turkey for example, it costs about $12/pound. Egg whites unheard of in terms of omelettes and certainly not turkey bacon.

3.) Only some people have i-pod's here so CD's are still being purchased in full swing. My video i-pod is quite a novelty that people really enjoy playing with. I can't remember the last time I even bought a CD!

4.) XXXX is a beer and not anything else your imagination may conjure up

5.) Highways here can often be named, for example, Highway 1 down the Queensland Coast is named the Bruce Highway

6.) When getting into a taxi by yourself or with friends, not only is it not uncommon to sit in the front with your taxi driver, it's encouraged and considered normal. So it looks like you're driving around with your buddy. A buddy that charges you, but a buddy nonetheless. Makes it hard to tell if cabs are occupied when flagging one down.

And correction, the gigantic spider mentioned in the previous post WAS a huntsman spider, but not fully grown, thank GOD!

Spider terror

OK, those of you who know me well, know how I feel about spiders. I'm sure my mother can remember my tears as she was sweeping the corners of our garage of spider webs when one dangled close to her face. And those were like daddy long legs or something. Please take a look at the guest we had in our house last night. Then please imagine my reaction. Heart palpitations, cold sweat, enlarged pupils, and some very sad whimpering followed upon this discovery. Brave Tanya said, "Oh that's not SO big! Wait until you see a huntsman!" No thank you. She asked me to take off my flip flop so she could kill it and I wouldn't give it to her, ran into my bedroom and closed the door until I heard the tell-tale WHACK WHACK WHACK sign. Once I deemed it safe to emerge from behind a closed door and determined that it was indeed dead, I went in for a closer look - well, at a respectful distance of at least 1-2 feet. I've never seen a spider that size in a house before, and hope I won't again. Just writing this has given me goosebumps. Later, we noticed Daisy, the cocker spaniel, munching on something. I pointed this out to Tanya who went to investigate and we discovered she was chewing on a gigantic snail like a piece of gum. Needless to say, my nerves were a bit frayed after the spider incident and I may or may not have made some passing comments about the wildlife in Australia coming into the house. It was pointed out that perhaps spiders and snails weren't EXACTLY considered wildlife. You be the judge....

Sandy Point Adventures

Last weekend, we headed south to a beautiful place called Sandy Point to have a cousin's reunion for the weekend. It was so much fun! Got to meet the rest of Tanya's cousins and 11 camped out in a house. There was lots of food (TONS!), drinks, laughter, many games played, karaoke, movies watched, and sitting around the kitchen table chatting. It was making me homesick for my own family and certainly looking forward to our family reunion at the Outer Banks next summer. I've got some great ideas for games! The weather was cool to begin with, but of course, the day we left it was an absolutely spectacular day so we drove the two hours home with the windows down singing pop songs at the top of our lungs. It was a great weekend!

Sydney Adventures

The delay in posting this has more to do with my recovery from Sydney than laziness - well a bit of both I think. Last weekend I journeyed to Sydney to see my friend Alex who lives there, and my good friend Erica from Boston who was in Sydney for work. I had almost forgotten how absolutely beautiful Sydney is and how much I loved it! We had fantastic weather and even better company.

Sydney is located on the Harbor and there is plenty to do on all sides of it. The public transportation is easy and varied - boat, bus, train. The city is clean and easier to navigate than European cities because like the US, it's newer and the streets are more grid-like. And of course, such recognizable landmarks like the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House.

Alex and I traveled to Watson's Bay and within 20 minutes of being by the Opera House, we were at this beautiful part of Sydney having fish and chips on the beach looking out over the Sydney skyline. Then we climbed up to these really dramatic cliffs, met about 15 American college girls happily studying in Australia and just took in the view.

The next day, Erica and I had lunch on Darling Harbor and then went to meet some of her friends in Bondi Beach. We sidled into this swanky bar Icebergs that overlooked the beach and had an interesting night there to say the least. We started out sitting right across from Joey Fatone from 'Nsync with even our 18 year old waiter commenting that time hadn't been kind to him. Ouch. 308 bottles of wine later, we were doing some great people watching in rotating chairs and making observations to one another probably too loudly, and crashing into the person sitting next to us during the rotation. Let's just say the evening continued in a similar fashion in different locations with the observations getting louder and the crashes getting more dramatic, although without the help of the swinging chairs.

We finished off our trip with a long walk all around Sydney to see basically everything else before Erica headed off to Bangkok and I limped south to colder Melbourne, to air out my liver and recover quietly. Still working on it....

Grand Final Weekend

This weekend was one that seemed quite familiar to me. The AFL (Australian Football League) had their Grand Final on Saturday, which had the attitude and traditions of the Superbowl. We got together at a friends house filled with family and young ones, lots of food, lots to drink and several TV's all over the house to watch Geelong and Port Adelaide play. I have to say it wasn't the most exciting game ever to watch because Geelong just pounded Port Adelaide, to the point that all the papers told of Port Adelaide's humiliation and shameful performance. You couldn't help feeling quite badly for them, especially the chilly reception they got for their homecoming. But Geelong fans were out in full fashion and so excited because it was the first thing they'd won in 44 years. Victorians were happy that the trophy was once again in their state and following this, the Melbourne team won the National Rugby League championship, so there is lots to celebrate down here!

And oh yeah! Killed my first venomous spider in the house this week. And by me I mean I waited for Tanya to come home, and by killed I mean we sprayed it to death at a distance of 2 feet. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. I'm off to Sydney in a few days to see friends and the weather's supposed to be fantastic! Lucky me!

Royal Melbourne Show

Yesterday we took Tanya's 6 year old stepbrother Patrick to the Royal Melbourne Show. This is not so much a show as a huge fair that they set up annually for only 10 days. The size and popularity of this annual event begs the question, why only ten days? Happily this coincides with a week of school vacation, so there were numerous teenagers dressed in questionable outfits (not to mention hairdos) considering the outside temperature, lining up for the fairground roller coasters and haunted houses. We had a great time with Patrick! There were lots of rides and attractions for the younger kids too. Some of the highlights - and lowlights - were a dramatic face painting of Spiderman, the circus presentation, learning how to juggle, watching a live sheep give birth (?! - we fielded some questions after that), petting baby animals, finding myself as the only adult on a child roller coaster, watching a contest that we could only gather was a cow beauty pageant, admiring the sheep dogs herding, the log chopping contest, fairy floss (cotton candy) and lots of rides. Patrick had so much fun and on occasion, a very educational experience. At the end of the day is a mad rush for the show bag pavilion. Show bags are basically giant goody bags that you need to purchase as a momento of your time at the Royal Melbourne Show. Needless to say, we were exhausted after the day and in complete awe of people who attempted this day with more than one child in tow. I was definitely missing my nieces and nephews though and knew this was something they would all love. Well, minus the sheep giving birth thing. And speaking of, happy birthday to my youngest nephew and godson Ryan who's 3 today! With the time difference, he's 3 here anyway!

Sausage rolls

It's been a week of adjustments and figuring out how things work. You can imagine that when Tanya was showing me how to turn the oven on, I was quite horrified to learn that you needed to crawl INTO the oven head first with a lit match, while keeping one hand on the gas release button. I kept imagining her coming home from work and I'd be eyebrowless with a new receding hairline. I was mentioning my hesitation at climbing into the oven with a match to Tanya's friend Mel who subsequently bought me a loooong gas lighter so I could give it a try at more of an arms length away. Needless to say, it's not something I've attempted yet. But I am getting quite skillfull at hanging clothes on the clothesline. Now you may think this would be simple, but there's definitely an art to it. Think about it! All your wash on display for people to see? So you learn how to strategically hide the undies behind a bed sheet and things like that. Australia is very environmentally conscious so most people don't have clothes dryers, or use them sparingly - something I hadn't even considered before! There's also been a draught for a few years so everyone is on water restrictions. So that means you watch the amount of water you use for absolutely everything from brushing your teeth to washing dishes. You kind of just wait until the dishes pile up to a decent amount so you can fill the sink with soapy water and do them all at one time instead of using more water doing them along the way. Also, there's really no rinsing of the dishes once they've been washed in the sink full of soapy water. That's the thing I'm having the hardest time getting used to and I can't imagine how their dishes and glasses don't have the soap residue taste, but honestly they don't!

This week Tanya taught me how to make a really popular Australian snack - sausage rolls! When I was in New Zealand two years ago, we were given sausage rolls after a white water rafting trip and when I asked what they were and that I'd never had them before, about 20 heads whipped around with their mouths hanging open. Course it would've been funnier if their mouths hadn't been full of sausage roll at that moment. The time had come to learn how to make them instead of just enjoying them. We rolled up our sleeves and dived right in and I must say, the end result was delicious. Tanya uses her mother's recipe and it's famous among her friends. We brought them to a party we went to on Saturday night and she didn't even make it through half the crowd before all 50 of them were gone. I think we'll find more excuses to make them soon enough and I'll definitely be bringing the recipe home with me!

And finally, happy birthday to my little brother Cullen who's celebrating the best way he can imagine - at the Bears game!

Aussie Rules

After 20+ hours on a plane, I've made it to Australia and shockingly with all my luggage, despite having to disassemble my large suitcase in LA in front of a rather large group of future plane mates. My lovely friend Tanya was kind enough to pick me up and make me feel right at home in her place. She helped me sort out an Australian mobile and internet at her house in about 24 hours, and that helped with feeling a bit more settled. So no rest for the wicked apparently! I've been out all 3 nights I've been here, and we managed to score tickets to the Aussie Rules semi-final match at the very cool MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). The Kangaroos took on Hawthorne and I learned that Aussie Rules is a tough game to watch, let alone to play. But it's such an exciting sport and after approximately 3,000 questions to Tanya's very patient brother and cousin, I seemed to be getting the hang of it. I believe the patience of the boys was mostly due to the fact that their team (the Kangaroos) stayed in the lead the whole game and ended up winning in the end, so this was followed by much celebration. This week is about getting over the jet lag, learning more slang, and looking for a job. For now, back to Australian Idol reruns....