A Bonzer Time

Why you should come to Australia! Check out this video.

Valentine's Day officially has meaning to me!  As of February 14th, I've been here one full month! How awesome is that?! (ha - and you all thought I met someone).

However, this 2nd month has been one of the most exciting and yet scariest times of my life. The roads and grocery store no longer scare me, but finding myself and learning more about who I am...that has been the scary part!

But, speaking of scary...I did almost get into my first bingle (Translation: "car accident"). No, it wasn't in a roundabout or turning into on-coming traffic (although I've done that too). It was much more intense than that. One thing you may not know about me is, when I moved out of Florida, I moved out because of the roaches. Yes. The ones that fly, the ones that live in pretty palm trees, the ones that literally make you climb on top of a table and scream like death is near.

I'll live with spiders, snakes, furry rats, but not roaches. Especially not the most hated roach of all - the German Roach, which I discovered, followed me to the other side of the world.

There I am, successfully driving down the street enjoying a breath-taking summer day when out of the corner of my eye I saw something run across the passenger side floor. Then my eyes met with his. He froze. I froze. It was him. The German! With one eye, I quickly looked to the seat next to me while my mind was chanting, "they're here! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!" With one hand on the wheel, I grabbed the only possibly weapon, my grocery list.  Then with one bend forward and a blood curling scream, I smashed him! Success! I won. I was victorious!

Remembering I was still driving, I continued on my journey glancing down every once in awhile to enjoy my grossed-out victory. However, there was one particular quality I forgot those things posses - they fake death really well. How do I know that? You guessed it, he was gone. The faker is still out there just waiting to plan out his next attack.

Enough about bugs...how about fish?

I had a fish swim past me while I was swimming laps in the pool the other day. That was truly an answer to prayer...not the fish, but the pool. One thing I quickly learned when I got here was that the $17/month I was paying for a gym membership in the States equals $17/WEEK here. So my options were to get flabby or find free ways to stay in shape. So, with my passion for swimming, I prayed that I'd find a free way to swim. With nothing but a big, free, open ocean in front of me, the sound of waves, currents, and small sharks made swimming laps feel slightly unappealing. 

So, I began accepting that I was just going to have to learn how to enjoy working out on dry land. But, driving along the coast back to our flat one day, Kelly told me about a rock pool that most of the beaches have. The city pumps in ocean water into this protected pool that sits right on the ocean. YEA! It was a miracle. The smallest things of my life are being taken care of.

Someone told me me they liked my accent. 

I wanted to quickly correct them and explain that it wasn't me that had an accent, but it was them that had the accent. I wanted to say, "We speak very plainly. You're the one with the cool swing on the end of each word you say." But I was in line at a barby (Translation: "Barbeque") and to prevent stopping up the entire que to the snags (Translation: "line to the sausages"), I smiled and kindly said, "Thank you."

It's funny what comes out of my mouth that doesn't make sense here...

I suggested to Drew, our business manager, "that wasn't a 911, so we can do that later." As soon as I said it, I realized that Australian's don't have 911. So, I paused, then corrected myself and said, "000." That's the the 3 most important emergency numbers to know. (Thanks Dad for quizzing me on that before you left. Very helpful.)

I'm also learning that my Bath and Body fragrances are very foreign here. I walked into an auditorium a few weeks ago and these guys in front of me said, "What is that sugary, cake smell?" Busted. It was my Special Edition Vanilla Yuletide Pear. In the States, the response would be more like, "Oh, what is that delicious Bath and Body fragrance I smell? I think it's the new special edition fragrance Yuletide Pear. How wonderful. You smell really good!"

It looks as though I have a few things to teach these Aussies.

PHOTO OPS!

The tall and cute Joel Houston at our C3 Conference. 

(This was where I wore my "cake" fragrance. Awesome!)

My super cool boss about to rock the stage at C3!

Kelly and I at the cafe downstairs under our flat. We went and splurged on breakfast.

Look!  The cockatoos are wild and all over the place!

I must say, all in all, having a BONZER time!

(Translation: I'm having a great time!)