Week 4

We've officially been here one month! I think it's finally beginning to feel like "home." It will never of course be home, but it is starting to feel like we at least belong here. When we go downtown, my nose isn't stuck in the map, I know how to get to my classes, and I know what most of the foods are when we go to the grocery.

Cooking here is another story. Karl decided to throw a BBQ on Sunday for his gridiron (American football) team, so we bought ingredients for BBQ chicken wings, broccoli casserole, and chocolate chip cookies (other people brought a few things, too.) Well, Karl cooked the first two dishes and they went pretty well because most of the measurements are in large proportions like cups or pounds. My cookie recipe, on the otherhand, calls for 1/4 teaspoon, tablespoons, and what not. Now, what makes this difficult is the fact that the only measuring device our kitchen has is a cup measurer. In addition to my ingredient guesswork, the chocolate chips I bought were milk chocolate buttons, which are much creamier and bigger. As you might suppose, the batter didn't taste too normal, but that wasn't a bad thing really. The bad thing came when I tried to bake the cookies in our microwave on a plastic plate on convection. I don't know what possessed me to think a blue plastic plate would work well in an oven besides the fact that it still looks like a microwave. I was just glad most of the building was not home, so no one besides Karl had to watch my pick blue plastic off of the metal microwave tray I thought I had ruined and throw away perfectly good cookie batter. This story also invovles other ways in which I ruined the cookie batter-leaving me with only 40 cookies when the recipe says it makes 100- but I won't bore you with the details:)

In other news, I convinced Karl to go see a preview of the Australian Ballet's performance season. It was free and at an outside amphitheater, so he didn't object too much. It was lovely! The company performed eight selections, most of them were a pas a deux from famous ballets. We went with our Canadian friends, Carol and Melissa. I'm going to the ballet again on Friday night with Darrel and Karen, but since it now costs $75, Karl is not going. $75 is the student price for La Sylphide, so I think we're going to have really good seats. I think this because in the brochure I got at the preview, it says you can get tickets for $29. If I go again, I'll be booking the reservations:) Then, on Saturday, Karl, me, and another Canadian friend, Claire, are going to see Mamma Mia, the musical. I'm very excited!!! Our next artistic experience will hopefully be Cirque de Soleil in early May, but because those tickets are quite expensive, we'll have to see what kind of job Karl gets, and how much money we spend in Tasmania.

Yes, you read right, Karl and I, along with Carol and Melissa, are going to camping in Tasmania for 5 days! It will be quite hilarious I'm sure. We're renting a car for the first time (they drive on the other side here and have tons of roundabouts, which are a free for all version of stopsigns with a circular median in the middle.) Because of Karl and Melissa's jobless status, they are the travel agents and have booked the flight and car rentals. It will be very interesting to say the least.

Well, I will close with a few humorous differences that Karl and I have experienced so far. For starters, while showers are a daily ritual, putting on deodorant is not for everyone. A ripe smell daily accosts our noses. They still say whilst and learnt here rather than while or learned. It just sounds funny. Most non-college students were uniforms, and they wear them even in the city as they travel in packs during school hours. They're really cute, though, because they look they've walked out of a history book with their sweaters, checked dresses, and knee high white socks. It's so quaint! The light switches or lack thereof also challenges me. The lights switches in our bedroom are so tiny and they flip down for lights on and up for lights off. So confusing. What's funnier is me when I'm in the kitchen or, better yet, when I'm in the shower and the movement sensored lights turn off! On more than one occasion I've had to jump up and down and wave my hands over my head to get the lights to come back on. Such a funny country!

Next week I plan on telling you all how Karl has a work VISA, but as I've been planning on doing that for 3 weeks now, no promises. We think we resolved all the problems this morning, but who knows?

Love,
Britt