all about sydney

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I promise to make up for it. Heres what we have been up to for the last few weeks.

First, on our way out of OZ we went to Sydney for a few days. Over all feelings... way to expensive and crowded for our liking, but still fun to see. Expensive like $56 to park for 3 hours in the city and mostly toll roads, not our favorite.

Day 1: we went to the beaches in search of surf and ended up in Manly.

Day 2: we headed out to the Blue Mountains. BEAUTIFUL. A great hour and a half drive inland from our hotel was great and the mountains are something else. Think a tropical grand canyon.

Day 3: we went into the city to meet an old teammate of mine who now lives in here. It was great to catch up with her and see the opera house and stuff.

pics of sydney

i am running out of time to do good posts (internet is really expensive here), so i will try to catch up at some point. as for our sydney area pictures, i put them all in our picasa album, so go here to see them all. http://picasaweb.google.com/kellyaida

and we're off

We packed up our house, sold off the car, closed the bank account and said our goodbyes to all the wonderful people here. what a bittersweet moment. We loved our little house and the great people we were able to meet, but there is still so much left of this adventure, its hard not to get excited for that. we spent our last night with our great friends the bakers for a final dinner. considering thats where we go several times a week, it was only fitting. (Thank you so much Kent, Georgia and India! You guys are the best!) After several hours with them, it was back home to check the bed one last time for deadly, flesh eating spiders (a total of 5 made it in to our house, but none were lucky enough to make it out.)

And what a better way to spend the last hour of our time here than with the Bakers at a delicious chocolate shop and some fantastic chocolate fondue. So yummy. Not to mention their lil baby had her first taste of chocolate. She looked confused at first but was soon salivating for some great belgium chocolate (who could blame her).

its thanksgiving here too

I love this holiday and the last thing I wanted to do is skip it!! And what a better way to spend it than with all the great friends we were so thankful to have met here. So we had to introduce the true feast to our Ozzie friends. Heres to the Bakers, Grangers and Ryan and Sarah for joining us for a great evening. And no one cared that it was actually a roasted chicken and a turkey breast roll. yummy.

thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

thank you so much for all the love that has poured in. we are so excited and so appreciative to all of you who sent us love and encouragement. Its a bit terrifying, but non the less super exciting. heres a few details.

how far along? 13 weeks

due date? may 8
sick? yes, and it sucks. hence the reason for no fun posts

predictions? im thinking boy, but who knows

where will we be? portland

As for life here, it is still good. we ony have about 2 more weeks left in Adelaide. from here we go to Sydney for 5 days, and then off to NZ for 6 weeks. i can not believe how fast this adventure has gone. it seems like not to long ago we were packing all our bags just to get here. and now we are packing them to go. so weird. this has been the best experience and im sure this isnt the last OZ has seen of us.

Heres some pics of our weekend trip to Victor Harbor and port elliot with our good friends the Bakers

baby india baker. soo cute

buggin'

so we have been having quite a few bugs show up in our humble abode recently. i knew coming here it was inevitable because oz has the most bugs of anywhere, and turns out that most of them are deadly. apparently they like warm weather, good beaches and sunshine too! first we have these things called carpet beetles. they arent supposed to bite or anything, they are just very annoying! i have no idea where they come from, so i cant stop them at the source like ants. but they are everywhere and they fly! i have found them in our room, the living room, the bathroom, kitchen, everything. so we keep our eye out, vaccuum frequently (which is only the tube of a vaccuum so it takes forever on my hands and knees) and kill everyone we find.

then, last night as we go to our room for bed we find this GIANT spider on our wall. i was hoping to never even see a spider here, but on the wall above our bed made for a sleepless night. i took a picture as evidence of the big bug, mostly just for bragging rights. but let me go back to this weekend when we were talking about 2 of the worst spiders in oz with some of our friends. the ones they mentioned were the red back and a white-tip, or white-tail. I thought i would google these two spiders when i got up this morning just so i know what to look for, and to hopefully disregard the big spider as one that could eat my flesh. lucky for us, thats exactly what it was!! a huge white tailed spider probably chasing after the stupid beetles. not to mention that our bed sits on the floor and now any hope of a good nights sleep is out the window!

and how did these bugs get in you ask? well the front and back doors dont go all the way down to the ground. there is easily a good 1/2 inch at the bottom of every door in our house. so talk about free range!

olympian welcome

all the olympians have been on a country wide "welcome home" tour to all the major cities. Adelaide turned out to be today, so i hoped on the tram and met justin in down town. they did a parade through the city center and ended at Victoria Sq, which is only 2 blocks from justin's work. after they had their little talking and stuff, all the olympians came down to sign autographs and stuff. being the big sucker that i am for anyone "famous", had to join in with all the little school kids, who should have been in class, to get some pics. I felt a bit awkward standing 2 feet above everyone else in the mob, and being pushed by these little munchkins, of which im pretty sure i could have taken out had i moved at all. not to mention the little brat who was yelling at me for pushing!! i mean where is the respect for your elders son. aside all the mayhem, i was able to snag a few pics with our fav athletes from the games that made it out.

this is steven hooker. he won the gold medal in the pole vault. it turned out to be a huge thing because oz has not won a gold medal in anything track and field in 40 years! he was a rockstar amongst the ausies, so we had to get a pic. this next one is justin and Linda MacKenzie. she was on the olympic gold medal for the womens 4x200m freestyle relay team in swimming, and they were truely the underdog. they pulled out an amazing win at the last second to defeat the americans and snagged a world record. this guys is Brenton Rickard, also on the swim team, he came away with 2 silvers. one in the 4x100 medley relay and one in mens 200m breaststroke.

weekend getaway

This past weekend we flew out to Brisbane (pronounced bris-bin), which is on the east side of the country about half way up, and headed north to the sunshine coast. its an area about an hour north and stretches for about an hour of beaches north of that. we stayed the first night in Noosa Heads, the north part of the sunshine coast, which is alot like the Carmel of Oz. Very nice, expensive and beautiful. We stayed in a cheap, excentric backpaker for the first night and then the rest in a condo traded down in Caloundra, which is at the very south of the Sunshine Coast. We had a blast enjoying the warm weather, sunshine, surf, beaches and all the cool stuff that part of Oz has to offer. We hiked around the Noosa Head, took a tour to Fraser Island, hiked around the Glasshouse Mountains, Justin surfed, and generally just soaked up the sun! What can I say, it was fabulous. Heres a few picks from the trip.

Noosa Heads

Dickey Beach-

named after the S.S. Dickey that ran ashore in 1893

Glasshouse Mountains

Fraser Island-

is the biggest sand island in the world. all the plants growing on it grow in sand, which is amazing considering its a rain forest and the creeks make no sound because there are no rocks. all the water on the island is fresh and crystal clear.

The Colored Sands

AFL Finals

its the footy finals here and our local team made it into the first round. justins newest addiction is watching these games, so we had to go. it turned out to be a blast! what a fun game! its the best of soccer, football, and rugby all in one. to score, you have to kick the ball between the middle 2 posts for 6 points, or throught the outside goals for 1 point, and you can either kick the ball ahead, or pass it backwards. all while trying to dodge the giant guy running at you full speed who wants nothing m ore than to throw you to the ground. fabulous!

english to oz dictionary

we joked that we needed to get a translation dictionary before we headed here so we could understand what on earth the Ozies were saying. here are some of my favorites so far.

• dodgie = kind of like sketchy or questionable. mostly used in sentences like "the weather is looking a bit dodgie" or "that part of town is a bit dodgie"
• Kiwi = those from New Zealand.
• Footy = football, but not American. this refers to Ausie Rules Football (AFL). its like rugby, soccer and football all into one. this is the main pro sport in OZ
• Rugby league/ rugby union- these are two different leagues with different rules, but i cant remember which is which, but dont confuse them because to people here they are so different.
• Football= soccer. simple.
• Mate- yea, they really say this all the time. "thats my mate", "thanks mate", "no worries mate", seriously all the time.
• brilliant- no translation neccesary, but they say this all the time! its great!
• Booking= a reservation. they are so common here. we have been turned down a few times because we didnt have a bookings and this was at little cafe type places.
• Tomato Sauce- justins favorite = Ketchup. and they certainly dont use it like we do back home. justin feels jipped when he has to ask for packets and they give him one.
• "easy as"= very simple. they say this all the time and i always get stuck waiting for them to finish. im like "easy as WHAT? finish the thought people!" in NZ they say "sweet as" and for the longest time i could not figure out why they were saying sweet ass, what could it possibly mean? now i know.
• heaps= alot, but i giggle everytime someone says it. it sounds so funny to me.
• Chips = not Lays, but french fries.

im sure ill have more, but this is a good start