Music Australia Style

Meg and I are digging a couple cool radio stations over here that play a wide variety of stuff and most of it is pretty good. A few songs I'm liking:

"Steady as She Goes" by the Raconteurs
"Blackout!" by the Cloud Room
"Walking with a Ghost" by Tegan and Sara

They play cool mixes too. Stuff you (at least I) would never think of. Like "Come Together" by the Beatles overlayed with "Closer" by NIN, or NIN vs. the Ghostbusters theme.

the radio stations are Triple J and Triple R.

New pictures

Just an update: I added more pictures to the second gallery on our Australia page. They're just some more of my work and Jolene and Eleni.

There is a sweet old building next door to the one I work in. I think it would make a great apartment. See what you think:

Generator Room

-b

Footie, and other things

B and I watched some footie tonight. The season has just started and goes for several months. Hopefully we can go to a game in Melbourne sometime soon. For those of you who don't know footie is short for Australian Rules Football. It is not even close to football at home. There are more people on the field, no pads, and they can bounce the ball. We will have to elaborate sometime on this national pastime.

It was soooooo hot today, I wanted to melt. I think it got to 100, I went to Sarah's house for most of the day because their house can be cooler due to positioning in the sun. Later tonight we all went to the beach for dinner and let the girls swim in the kid pool. Jolene got her first mouthful of salt water. She didn't seem to mind it too much. It is almost midnight now but still very hot and muggy. I am thinking about sleeping in the living room where the window ac is located.

Tomorrow the Blackwoods are coming to Geelong. Ed is going to a planning time along with many of the other men (including Brandon and Josh). Us girls and the rest of the Blackwoods are going to go to the Pako festival, beach, and if it is really hot the mall. The Pako festival is a multi-cultural event featuring many different countries that display costumes, dancing styles, and food. I am looking forward to going, maybe we can stop by the American table and join in on some hiphop : -)

Good news!! I found a women's soccer league to play with and Brandon found an indoor league. What is really nice is that almost none of the games are on Sunday. We will keep you updated on the how it goes.

Meg

Some more catching up to do

Another negative photo I made recently



First thing first, the opening ceremony for the Olympics. There were three things that Brandon and I noticed as we watch the event unfold.

First, there seemed to be some strong pagan themes in the whole dance, artsy fartsy part of the production. Fire, red objects with abstract themes, some goddess type beings dancing around.

Second, did anyone notice the smurfs on stage? There were several different "ethnic" groups of smurfs. There were those lovely smurfs from hell that had fire spouting from their heads. Then there were the mutant smurfs with the giant cysts bouncing on top of their skulls, I think there was one more group but I forget right now.

Third, did anyone catch on to the music theme?? I felt as if I was at someone's wedding reception in the late 80's or 90's. YMCA was one of several songs played. The music didn't really seem to fit with the rest it. Maybe it was just us though, share your thoughts if you like.

----------------------------------------------------
So what is a week like for me (Meg that is). Monday's I go shopping for food in the city centre of Belmont (if you say downtown people will laugh at you, as I experienced). It is great because all of the shops are along one street so you park in the middle and walk up one side and then down the other and you are pretty much done. Monday night the guys get together and play volleyball. No girls allowed because we might cause one of the teams to lose. They are very competitive here. If you know me at all you will know what I think about this : -)

Tuesday nights for the next four weeks there is a evangelism class going on at the RTC (Reformed Theological College). Me and some others from church are going to that. I have heard many talks on evangelism but is always good to get a refresher and to hear different ideas. Brandon and I have been challenged lately on this issue. For homework I was supposed to think about the groups of people that we can witness to. As we started to read through the list we realized that things have changed a bit. For instance, we have no family here to talk to, I don't work, Brandon only works with Christians, right now we are not in any clubs. I guess God is really challenging us to think of new and different ways to meet people and to not get too comfortable hanging with Christians only. Really it is easy to be like this wherever you are, I think it just sticks our more for us since we moved to another continent. Right now we are just praying that God will use us in the church and bring people into our lives that need to hear the gospel. We will see what happens in the next several weeks.

I thought about joining a women's soccer league so that I could meet people. I talked to the coach of the division 1 team (they travel to Melbourne to compete). They said I could play with them (I was very excited), only to find out that all of their games are on Sundays (I was very sad at this point but not really surprised). I am thinking about still going to practice and just not participating in the games, we will see. If I don't play soccer I want to find some sport to play, I might go crazy otherwise. Will be keeping my eyes open for new sports.


Wednesday, we don't really have anything planned for these days

Thursday is our fellowship/Bible study night

Friday is clubbing night, hahaha just kidding :-) The weekends have been spent shopping for furniture, eating with friends, and traveling around the bay and to Melbourne. The Nelson's had us over for lunch today and then took us around the south end of Corio Bay. We say Swan Bay and also the ocean too. I will show you pics of the bay trip later.

I have gabbed enough for now.

Meg

Pics

Picture links where you don't have to sign in to Kodak Gallery:

Australia

So much to tell

We have internet at home now!!! You don't realize how dependent you are until it is not really available.

Well I am trying to figure out how to update you all on what has been going on, perhaps small segments will work the best over the course of a few days.

The church family has been great to us. They bought groceries for us before we even got to the house. Many have brought over a meal or invited us to their homes. The cool thing about moving somewhere totally different is that as soon as you find Christians you immediately connect with them and are welcomed into a family. God has been good to us.

We prayed about our luggage before we left...not a single suitcase was lost!!! We got through customs very easily ( having a baby helps) except for Brandon being detained due to his airsoft gun.

We bought a car last week. I was very happy about this since I am not able to drive the Hart's car due to insurance purposes. Our car is a 89' with a body kit and rims. The car is very nice on the inside and out which is a shock seeing it is a 89. Rust is almost nonexistent down here. The only rust we would get is from the salt water/air combo and since we don't live directly on the ocean we are ok.

The people we bought the car from are very nice. He is dealing with cancer and they are going to a Jehovah Witnesses temple (is that what they call it?). When we went to pick up the car we talked for about an hour with them about this and that. When we left she gave us some homemade jam. I guess that was to seal the deal :-)

Sarah McEwen ( a fellow American) has been great. She has taken me all over the place and shown me where the cheap fruit is, opshops, etc.
She and I have recently been discussing the order in which meals are had here. There is quite a chart to figure out..I think this is how it goes

breakfast
morning tea ( like afternoon tea except you would serve more savories) (I don't know how to spell savories correctly, in fact I'm not even sure if this is what they are saying but that is what it sounds like)

brunch ( a more filling meal compared to the morning tea)
lunch ( what we would think it is )
afternoon tea ( like morning tea except you have more sweets)
tea (what we would call dinner or supper )
supper ( a meal but light and usually no meat is served)


I still don't have it completely figured out. I think I will just ask people to come over and eat with us. They can fill in the blanks : -)


I have put some new albums up at our Kodak gallery site. They are entitled Moving to Oz part 1 and 2.

Enjoy!

Meg




p.s. some more things that are different


1. You can't say spank or spanking because it has some bad meanings. Instead you have to say smack. So I would say "Jolene needs a smack" or "Jolene you are going to get smacked when we get home". Sounds so much better doesn't it!!!!

2. For awhile I have noticed that mums (moms) will say to their kids "come here 'name of child' doll". So I would say "come here Jolene doll". But they are not actually saying DOLL. It is spelled darl and is short for darling. It still sounds like doll to me though : -0

3. When looking to rent a house they advertise per week but you pay per month.

4. Gas is petrol, but they also have auto gas which is more crude but some cars can still run on it. Some cars have two tanks, one for petrol and another for the autogas. Autogas is about 0.50/ L and petrol is about 1.20/L.

5. They are not airplanes but aeroplanes. Cars don't have tires but tyres. You don't change your child diaper, it is called a nappie. Really if you want to sound a little aussie just shorten the word and put ie at the end.

Hello from the other hemisphere

Hi all,
well we have begun to settle in to our new life. The church family has made us very welcome here. They provided us with meals for this first week and have taken me shopping since I can't drive right now.

We are going to start looking for a car tomorrow morning. We have three that are in the price range, whether or not they are reliable is yet to be seen.

You would think that an English speaking country would not be all that different from our own but that is not the case. Below are some of the major difference that I have noticed so far aside from the obvious ones like driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

1. No one has a dryer, everyone hangs their laundry outside. I did this the first time on Monday and the clothes were dry in a few hours, not bad.

2. All their outlets have switches on them so you can turn them on and off. By outlets I mean the ones that are close to the floor where you would plug in a light or something.

3. Cars are small and most people only have one. At home Brandon and I had three, we were spoiled.

4. Every house has a fence in the front yard and the back. This I can see is going to make it very hard to get to know the neighbors. I have only seen one of the neighbors so far and that was for 5 minutes. The fences in the back are usually 7-8 feet high and are solid. No talking through the fence!

5. Shops close early. Most of the shops in Belmont open around 9am and close by 5:30pm! This is really hard to get used to. There is no such thing as a 24hr store.

6. Gas is really, really expensive. It cost us almost $75 to fill up the Harts little station wagon.

7. Door knobs. Their door knobs are probably about 1 1/2 feet higher on the door than our at home. It makes me feel like a little kid every time I open a door.

8. When driving only the side streets have names. At an intersection you won't see the street name your on and then the one that is intersecting, just the one you are intersecting with. It makes it hard to find your way sometimes.

It is very nice here right now. Around 65 and sunny. We are only 10 minutes from the bay which is very beautiful. You can walk up a hill and look out across the bay to see some "mountains", boats, palm tress and if it is clear, Melbourne. We will try to post some pics when we have some more time.

Well I guess this is all for now. I want to go check some magazines and books out. Write more soon!

Meg