How many Fulbrighters does it take to give directions?

To those of you who have had the pleasure of eating Mike's cookies--HAHAHA! He's baking some right now!!!! I get all the cookies! Tonight he's trying a twist of adding "desicated coconut" to the batter. (Australian unsweetened shredded coconut.) We weren't sure if the recipe could be improved upon, but the answer is yes, yes it can. WOW, those are some good cookies :o)

Yesterday we had a lovely adventure, a kind of which we have not had in quite some time. We were invited to an informal Fulbright gathering, so say goodbye to some old Fulbrighters and welcome in the new ones. Mike felt he should go, and I was invited, too, so we thought we'd have a pleasant trip out to Balmoral. We're also looking at a few apartments in that area, so thought we'd kill two birds with one stone.

Janet Flint, the crazy lady who picked us up at the airport with a TINY car, was hosting this shindig, and had sent directions. So, following said directions, we took the train north to the Chatswood station. We were then to catch the 257 bus to Balmoral Beach. We headed to the west side of the station, where all the bus stops are. We found the 256 and the 258 buses, but not 257. I asked a guy at the ticket stand, and he had no idea. We sat down in a typical posture of Australian resignation when suddenly I remember that the west side was NOT the only side with bus stops. We trotted off to the east side, only to see the backside of bus 257 departing. It was half an hour to the next bus.

We sat down and waited, and in half an hour, 257 came back. The ride began, and we began to notice that we were driven in a circle--down south and then back north almost to where we had started from before heading out east. We could've left from a complete different train station and cut 45 minutes off our trip! We finally entered into the town of Balmoral, and Mike, who was carefully watching the maps, said we should get off. We had a very pleasant 10 minute walk down through some beautiful residential areas with a gorgeous view of the open ocean. However, when we got to the bottom of the hill, we found that our end goal of our walk...was the same as the end goal of bus #257. !!! At least we knew where the bus stop to go home was......

Mike had been told that the party was at 1/66 Lower Almora. Unfortunately, there was no such place. I had a fit of the giggles, but the beach was right there, and why should I care if I never met some stuffy Fulbrighters? We took a walk out onto one peninsula where Mike saw a Fulbrighter he recognized. The guy waved at him, or so we thought--turns out he was waving at his baby daughter and didn't even recognize Mike. We had a few awkward moments with this guy--he did NOT get to be a Fulbrighter based on his social skills! Turns out the party was at 1/6 Lower Almora. Har. Convinced by this man's lack of social skills we decided the rest of the party would probably be a bust, and since he said it was almost over by now due to our circuitous bus ride, scrapped the whole thing. We had a lovely bowl of seafood chowder looking over the ocean.

After our soup, we decided to catch the 257 back, except to get off at the closer train station and save ourselves that 45 minutes. There was a bus driver who was on his break, but we knew he had to be Mr. 257. We were right; he flipped his sign to say "257 to Chatswood" and we eagerly stood by his door, waiting to climb back into some warmth. (Ocean breezes are a bit nippy at this time of year!) He saw us, pointed behind him, and DROVE OFF. He then went forward about 200 meters, turned left, went to a bus stop down a side street, picked up one passenger, and came back and made us board his bus ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET. I will never understand Australia.

Ah well. Tonight we had purple mashed potatoes. ! From purple sweet potatoes! I tried to get a picture of them, but they just looked foul on camera, when in person they're a lovely violet, not that far from the color of blueberries. I'm not sure where or why they grow, but Mike found them at the market last week. We'll probably have them again soon, if only for the amusement factor!

Tomorrow is Mike's bday and we're going out with some friends for Indian food. And then--Wednesday--TASMANIA! We'll take fresh camera batteries this time (unlike last) and will post some pictures of the true beauty of that island. It's not to be missed!

~Ruth Ann

We're done!

WE'RE DONE WITH OUR FIRST SEMESTER!!!!!
Ruth Ann and I had our juries this afternoon which means the semester is over! Overall they went fairly well. A lot of good things and, as always, some not quite so good things. All we have to do for the next month is work a bit at the library, practice and recharge our batteries. What did we do to celebrate this afternoon? We came home early and collapsed! Then we had kangaroo burgers and purple sweet potatoes for dinner. That's right, purple! Not only are we on the opposite side of the world with the opposite season, our food and everything else here is on the other side of the color wheel. I'm trying to be funny here, but I think I'm just tired.

We're leaving for Tasmania this coming wednesday. We've learned our lesson and are only bringing carry on luggage. Now they'll have to lose us with our bag! We have our trip all booked and ready to go. We're hitting most of the same spots we did in the last trip: Saturday Hobart market, Fantastic seafood, Cradle Mtns. Luckely I turn 25 before we go so the rental car will be much cheaper.

Well, I'm going sleep.

~Mike

I saw Jesus in the sky today...

We are almost done with our semester and are enjoying our free time immensely! Yesterday we slept in late and had a two and a half hour nap. Today we went back to one of our favorite bushwalks which we haven't had time to hike in some weeks. We had just started on our trek when we noticed a skywriter. I haven't seen one of those in forever, and in hopes of witnessing a romantic wedding proposal or such, we settled ourselves on a bench to watch. Alas, it was only a religious experience! The word "Jesus" appeared upside down in the sky as we were reminded that He Saves. Apparently, though, Es are very hard on a skywriter, as it looked like one of those computer generated words to prevent computer spam. !!!!
We just bought tickets to go back to Tasmania!!!!!! We'll be heading down June 28 (day after Mike's birthday) and spending 4 days there. We're planning to spend 3 days in Cradle Mountain with our heated mattress pads and then back to Hobart for the cutest arts and crafts market we've found yet. I'm warning you, though, we may not come back!
~Ruth Ann

Hail the Queen of England -'cause she gives us more holidays!!

Today is one of the many holidays we get due to Queen Elizabeth. Today is her official birthday! Yay! Her unofficial birthday (the day she was actually born on) was sometime in March. Never fear though, we were able to send her birthday wishes via a website. We got a response back saying "The Queen wishes her technical employees to thank us for our birthday wishes." We're fans of the Queen due to all the holidays we get because of her. A day off now and again is pretty nice.

We've had a car for the last few days. We were performing a concert down in Jervis Bay about three hours south of Sydney. There were four of us playing for a fund raiser for the Woodwind department at the Con. The Con saw fit to rent a car to the group to drive down there. Due to circumstances, neither of the Australian members of our group could be at the rental place when we picked the car up. This meant the legally only Ruth Ann and I could drive. Now, I drove a bit in Tasmania and did OK, but driving in downtown Sydney scared me. Luckily we got it Saturday morning when traffic was low and made it out of the downtown area. Hertz had initially misbooked the car so it looked like we might not get one. The only other one we could have was a new(ish) Nissan something-or-other. Guillaume, our very French Hertz clerk, compared our car (equally) to a Mercedes so we were pretty pleased after we made sure it was an automatic transmission. Neither Ruth Ann nor I drive stick shift very well and having the gear shift on the left side would have been too much!

We decided to take advantage of having a car to run some errands. We went to Target and got a little heater/fan combo. His name is Zippy and joins our ventilation system of one other little fan (who's name is Hoppy). We also went to the grocery store and stocked up on all the essentials now that we didn't have to carry them back on the train. We got a 10 Kilogram bag of rice(22lbs) so we'll never run out now!

We had to give it back this morning. It was nice to have a car for a bit. It's good we had to give it back now instead of after driving it around more: to refill the tank, it would have cost us $75! It sort of makes U.S. gas prices look not so bad.

We go back to 'school' tomorrow. It is now the study vacation which means no classes or anything. We do have to go into work. Other than that we just have to get ready for our juries next week. After that we have nothing for 5 weeks! We going to Tasmania at some point during those weeks.

Now that we have them loaded, here are several pictures from Tasmania. The first two are of Tasmanian devils at the Tasmanian Devil park. The Ranger went into the devil pen and picked one up by the tail. It snuggled down into her arms and let us pet it!!






The next one is of a wallaby we saw out in the wild. He was on the side of the road and we got up close. All he did was look sleepily at us and scratch himself.




The last pictures is of Port Arthur, the former prison colony.



~Mike

Hm...

Is it a bad sign when you can SEE your BREATH in your APARTMENT?!?!?!

~Ruth Ann