Australia

This trip has been very fun and very educational. I thought I would share a few things that I thought were interesting. It has been fun to learn the different words that they use for words. Some of my favorites are:

Bathroom or restroom: Toilet
Car trunk: The boot
Mosquito's: Muzzy
Garbage: Rubbish
How are you?: How you going?
Thank you: No worries
McDonalds: Mackers
Breakfast: Brekky
Sunglasses: Sunnies
Thank you: Ta

This is a picture of a little store a few houses down the street from where Michelle lives. There are these little stores in all of the neighborhoods. They have milk, eggs, butter, ice cream, and candy, anything you would need to borrow from your neighbor. These little stores remind me so much of South America.

The school system is very interesting. The kids start going to school in here when they are 3, of course it is like preschool, it is called 3 year kinder and 4 year kinder. Then when they go to kindergarten it is called prep. They can go to any school in the city they want to go to. Every school has a uniform, each uniform is different for each school. Some of the uniforms are cute and some are pretty hideous. Here is a picture of my cute nephew Brady with his friend Bella in their uniforms. All of the schools here start at 9:00 am and go to 3:30 pm. There are no school buses taking the kids to and from school. The parents have to take their kids to school or when the kids are old enough they use public transportation. When the kids are in seventh grade they then go to Secondary collage. They will go to the secondary collage until they graduate. The secondary collages specialize in certain areas so the kids can chose where they want to go. Most kids in middle income and up families go to private schools which cost anywhere from $8,000.00 to $11,000.00 a year for the privilege to attend the schools. Because the sun is very hot here each child has to wear a hat anytime they go outside when they are school. The school year starts the last week of January and goes until mid December. They have a two week break after the end of each quarter and a month break for summer vacation.

I have always loved going to cemeteries and reading the headstones. I really love to go to cemeteries in different countries. It was very interesting to see how they have their dead buried. Most of the graves look like these but there are a few that look like the graves in the US. A lot of the graves that looked like they were Italian or Greek, had pictures of the deceased.

Brighton Beach

Today we went to Brighton Beach. You can see the cute houses that
people own and use to store their beach stuff and for changing their clothes when at the beach.
These beaches houses are icons here in Melbourne.
They originated in the early 1940’s for people to change on the beach. I read online
that they sell for over $200,000.00 for each house. As we were walking along the
beach I noticed that there were a ton of sea shells all over the place. I have never seen
so many shells on the beach ever before at any of the other beaches that I have ever been to.
My kids would be in seventh heaven on this beach.

The Otway Fly

As we traveled this weekend we also went to an area called the Otway Ranges. This is an area that is a rain forest. The foliage was absolutely breath taking. We drove over a little hill and the whole drive was in the same kind of foliage as you can see in the pictures. The pictures really don't do the area justice. We went to an area called The Otway Fly, a rain forest with amazing plants and trees. There was a walk way that took us up into the trees. We got to the tower and went up as high as the eucalyptus trees. It reminded me a lot of the redwood forest that we saw a couple of years ago, minus the redwood trees. I read a sign at the Otway fly that talked about the Koori an aboriginal tribe that lived in the area. They lived in these beautiful forests. If I was an Aborigine I would defiantly chose this area to live instead of the outback. This area is close to the ocean just a few miles away from The Great Ocean Road, which is what the road on the coast is called. This is such a beautiful place it is hard to imagine that just on the other side of the hill is the ocean on one side and on the other side of the hill there is a draught with very dry died land.

The Twelve Apostles

On our little excursion this weekend we went down to the bay and drove along the coast line. It was so beautiful!! The weather was perfect and it wasn't too windy. We stayed in a cute little beach town called Port Campbell in a great beach house. The coastline where we were was made of limestone. The waves come from Antarctica and the Australian coast line is the first land that the waves hit. Because the waves are so strong it erodes the limestone and it leaves these many different formations. The Twelve apostles were so beautiful. There used to be twelve but because of erosion there were only eight pillars left. We also saw several arches made by erosion and another place called The Bay of Islands. We learned that there were several ships the wrecked in this area about a hundred and fifty years ago. A ship named the Loch Ard sunk in June of 1878, there were 54 people on board but only two survived. We think that were must some kind of a reef around that part of the coast because of all the ships that sunk.

Look Dad a Koala!!

We had a wonderful road trip this weekend to the bay. We drove through some fun countryside. As we drove I was hoping to see a kangaroo and a koala as we drove. We would pass Kangaroo and koala crossing sings and I would getso excited thinking we would come across them as we drove. Travis told me that the kangaroos come out at night and during the morning. Unfortunately when we went through these areas it was not during those times. I felt like I was in Yellowstone looking for a bear the whole time we were in kangaroo country. We did however come across a bunch of koalas hanging out in the eucalyptus trees as we drove along the coast. They were so cute and much smaller than I thought they would be. Unfortunately we didn't get the greatest shot of the koala but it was very cool to see them in their natural habitat.

Queen Victoria Market

We had a great day today. We went into the city to the Queen Victoria Market. It is set up like a flee market in a huge warehouse type building. Most of the building was filled with typical flee market stuff clothes, souvenirs, etc. It was a great place to shop with great deals. There was half of the market filled with food. Any kind of food you could think of. It was so fun to see all of the different things there were to buy. We were able to watch an Aborigine making a boomerang. We talked to him for awhile and he told us about what some of the symbols meant. He played the didgeridoo for us and he also told us about the all of the different aborigines items that he had there to sell and what they were used for. We learned that there are over 500 different aboriginal dialects in Australia. It was so fun talking to him and getting a little history lesson.

We went to one of Michelle's family favorite places, The Pitch and Put. It is a miniature golf course a perfect place to take the kids. There are 9 holes that are not that far apart, with each hole being a par 3. We all had a great time. Cute little Blake was so excited to golf, he talked about it all day long. He ran from each hole having a blast. It was so fun to go there just to watch him get so excited. Tomorrow we are going to go on a little road trip to the Great Ocean road to see the Twelve Apostles.

We Made It To Melbourne

Finally, after a fourteen hour flight from LA we made it to Australia. The flight was not too bad it was much better than I thought it would be. The airplane was awesome, there were TV screens for each person on the seats, that was very helpful to pass the time. The airlines made sure that we weren't hungry, they were constantly giving out snacks and meals. When we were landing the people next to us that had a window seat said that they could see the fires burning. We are able to see a haze in the sky from the fires but it doesn't smell like smoke here. The newspapers, magazines, TV,etc. are all reporting about the fires. It is so sad to see all of the devastation that the fires have caused here. Michelle wanted to take us to a real neat little city but the whole city burned down in the fires. The countryside here in Australia looks just like a thought it would. There are tons of eucalyptus tress everywhere. Because Australia has been in a drought for five years there are very a lot of restrictions with water so most of the foliage here looks dead. I can just imagine how gorgeous the foliage would be if there was no drought and everything would be green and lush. The Aussies are very GREEN. They have to put signs in their yards if they are watering to say that they are using stored rain water so no one will turn them into the authorities for using water. There is a noise ordinance after 10:00 pm and because of that Michelle is not allowed to use her air conditioner because it makes too much noise and her neighbor complained to the authorities. I was very worried that it would be too hot to even stand it with the air off at night, but even though it is very hot during the day the nights get cool. We open up the windows and have fans going and it is just perfect.

The kids here are all in school. they just started a new school year the first of February. It seems so weird to have the kids going to school during the summer. All of the kids wear uniforms to school. Each school has a different uniform for their school, from Kindergarten up through high school. I have been surprised to see how many grandparents are helping take care of the children here. It is also surprising for me to see that the fathers are so involved with their children. All of the stores except the restaurants close around 5:00pm except for Thursdays when the stores are open until 9:00 pm. The parents are home from work at a reasonable time and then the families are off doing activities together. Since my only experience with other countries is Latin America, where the father and the mothers do not do things together with the children, it seems very different to me to see so many families together.

The first day we were here we went into the city of Melbourne. It is a really beautiful city with a mixture of old and new architecture. It reminds us of Chicago

Holt Christmas/Valentines Party

A few years ago Bill and I had the Holt's over for an adult Christmas dinner party. We had a great time and decided to continue the tradition. The next year we went to Heather and Chad's. This year we went to Beth and Brad's. The only problem was we couldn't get together any weekend in December. So it ended up happening in January and turned into a Valentine's Day party.




We had a yummy dinner, played the M&M game(very fun)and exchanged gift cards. It was so fun to just hang out without any distractions. Beth gave us a cute gift bag with fun Valentine gifts. We had so much fun, we decided that we would turn the Christmas party into a Valentine party. Beth and Brad it was a huge success!!!