The Americans Are Gone

Another week where I don't have to write :) Read Jess' blogs to see what we've been up to:

Potato Scallops and Zucchini Balls

Cat in the Furnace and Budgie Smugglers

Dolphin, dolphin, dolphin, dolphin...eel...Love Your Kingdom!

And to add to Jess last post, the video she references in the title is called 'Animal Beatbox' and it won Tropfest this year. 

The best part about technology is that all the Tropfest videos are put on YouTube so I can share my favorites with you here....Ok, so I really liked about half of them, they just do such a good job, so watch and enjoy, the bottom two are the serious ones (Mom I think Missing You will really get to you).


Bird Therapy:

Silencer:

The Applicant:

Y2Gay:

The Maestro:

Missing Her:

The Americans Arrive

Well, this past weekend began the arrival of Americans with Andrew and I traveling to Melbourne to meet up with Jess and her friend Erin for the weekend. Luckily because of this it means I don't have to write about this past weekend because she has done it all for me. Read these three posts from her blog to see what we've been up to:

Melbourne is pronounced "Melbin" by the Aussies

A Flat White with Breakfast? Yes please!

Koalas are stoned all the time

The only real difference is that while Erin and Jess headed off on their wine tour, Andrew and I headed off to figure out where our rental car went to. We soon discovered that, sadly as it turns out, the car was not stolen but towed but the city. When we parked the night before it was dark and I didn't look closely at whether there was a sign being covered by the tree we parked underneath, all I saw was that the parking cost didn't start again until 10am on Monday, sleep in for us. What we missed was the sign at the top that said there was no parking from 6:30am-10am otherwise cars would be towed.

Once we realized that towing was the fate of our rental we knew we had to get it back and pay whatever fine came with it, this is why it turns out we were unlucky that it was not stolen. To simply get the car out of the impound lot we were charged $322. When we got into the car we saw that the police were nice enough to give us a $119 ticket before having the car towed for parking where we shouldn't. Since there really is nothing we can do in a city that isn't ours we've had to suck it up and agree we will never drive in Melbourne again.

Getting back to work has been a more of a hardship as I was thrown straight into Orientation Tuesday morning followed closely by Enrolment starting on Wednesday and running through to next Friday. This means that about 7 hours of my work days are spent outside of the office and I have to sneak in when I can to try and get some of my normal workload out of the way. Needless to say this weekend could not come soon enough.

Andrew went over to Damon's to play poker on Friday night which means Coops and I got the house to ourselves to relax and watch some trashy movies, although I got hooked into Iron Man on tv so that was pretty good.

Saturday I had to run up to campus as soon as I got up to get security to let me in to my office because we are running an airport meet and greet service for our new international students right now and the person picking up the students this weekend didn't realize he didn't have enough cab vouchers to give to the students. After that adventure I signed up for Medicare, the Australian medical system (in case you haven't heard the very exciting news, I got my official letter from the government the other day and I have been granted the first part of my residency. I am now a temporary permanent resident, which gives me everything a resident can have, it's just temporary for the next 2 years to make sure Andrew and I are actually in a committed relationship. )

After the excitement of the Medicare Office (oh the fun) Andrew and I headed into the city for some actual fun with the Multicultural Festival. We made an attempt at meeting up with a few people but in the end went it alone because everyone kept getting lost. The festival has gotten bigger since last year block off part of a main road and traveling across the street into one of the other main squares in the city. Just as last year we went around splitting dishes for a variety of places:

 

I'm not sure what everything was but we had spicy banana and polenta from Ghana, some delicious Macedonian meat on a stick, Russian meat dumplings and a bunch of other things we can't remember. And just like last year after two hours we were done with the crowds and high tailed it home where there was a lot more space and less people. It's always good fun though so I doubt we'll ever stop going, too much good food.

Jess and Erin will be with us Wednesday night and I am so excited to show them around. In preparation we did a bit of gardening, by 'we' I, of course, mean Andrew as I can't seem to keep anything alive. He has even managed to get our first peach. Next Monday there should be another good blog from both Jess and I so keep an eye out.

Andrew working in the veggie garden

Our first peach

Bit of a struggle

It's been busy and not busy all at the same time these past two weeks. We haven't been doing too much, a bit of swimming in the river with the pup, some hikes up Mount Taylor, a lot of bbq's and lots and lots of house work.

Last weekend I had a model shoot with this model Dani that I know, we had lots of fun and the photos are really great, you can see some of on my photoblog.

We also got to take Coopa down to the river to swim with Luigi. Coopa is still slightly unsure of swimming, it didn't help that Luigi accidentally kept pushing him under as he tried to swim next to Coopa. They both did well though and the humans greatly enjoyed some relief from the heat.

Wednesday was Australia Day. This year Andrew and I decided that we weren't going to trek into the city on Tuesday for the Australia Day concert. We had a lot of fun last year but it was slightly marred by all the underage drunk kids running around, after hearing that this year the police detained 71 underage kids at the concert we were glad we didn't go. Instead we stayed in our nice air conditioned house and watch some of the concert on tv. On Australia Day we had some friends over for a bbq before heading down to the river to swim, it was so hot and that was the best idea. Even after the river we spent the rest of the day hiding in the shade and I had to sit there and feed Coopa ice cubes.

Paul's older brother came over from New Zealand earlier this week for Paul's 60th birthday so Wednesday night we had another bbq. To go along with the family theme we had dinner Thursday night at the Walker's on Paul's birthday and Friday was the big night. We went out to this fancy restaurant called D'Browes. It was very large and delicious, between the appetizers and dessert that Andrew and I shared plus our massive meals we happily rolled out of the restaurant.

Saturday night we continued the family trend further with yet another bbq at our place. More eating, some relaxing on our deck and it was all capped off by a very tasty crepe dish that I made all by myself (I made crepes! It was amazing! They were delicious!).

Sunday I got up early and drove to Bungendore, a country town about 45 minutes outside of Canberra on the way to the coast. I went there to help out the ACT Rescue and Foster (ARF) charity. They rescue dogs that will be euthanized at the pound, fosters them after they have done temperament tests to make sure that they are dogs that can be re homed and then begin the process of finding them a new family. At the show ARF had a tent where they were selling some merchandise such as t-shirts, calendars, drink bottles and other various objects to benefit the non-profit. We spent the day playing with one of the foster dogs Milo, as it turns out he was adopted later that day.

Towards the end of the day they had a pet parade and dog 'races' right behind where our tent is so we got to see all the cute pups go by, there are some photos of that on my blog as well.

And that was the past two weeks down here. Much more excitement to come after a long weekend in Melbourne with my sister!!! Yay!