Australia Day!
Happy Australia Day!! Today is one of the biggest holidays of the year, much like USA’s 4th of July. The only difference is Australia is not celebrating their independence since they never had to win it–they are purely celebrating the fact that they are Australians. There was quite a large celebration right here in Yorkey’s Knob. Thousands of people gathered at the beach for a free breakfast, a sand castle contest, face painting, and live music. Gordon, Tricia, and I were all up by 7:00 am, but Lana took some violent shaking before she literally rolled out of bed. We headed to the beach at about 8:00. It was fun, despite the fact that half the town was under the 6 inches of rain we got last night. It was the biggest rain they’ve had here in over a year, and that’s not hard to believe. It was just about the biggest rain I’ve ever seen in my life.
Yesterday was really nice too. Mark ended up staying over the night before, so he hung out with me while Lana had dance until noon. Then Tricia dropped Lana and me off at Cairns Central. I had to get a bunch of stuff such as a school bag, joggers (tennis shoes), togs (swim suit), and school books (pads of paper). The mall was really big! It was mostly clothing stores too. One thing I’ve noticed about Aussies, especially girls, is that everything they wear is trendy looking. While in the USA, we just dress in jeans and t-shirts more of the time, they hardly even wear t-shirts. A lot of girls wear skirts (a popular item right now is knee-length white frilly looking skirts) with Express or Wet Seal looking tops, and lots of jewelry. (a lot of it being quite eccentric) I know that there are a few girls who dress like that all the time in America, but here EVERYONE dresses like that all of the time. The guys always wear board shorts & t-shirts, and are usually really colorful. What’s really cool though, is that everything is pretty inexpensive. I mean, some stores are more expensive than others, especially stores that carry brands such as Roxy, Billabong, and Paul Frank, but you can buy an entire outfit for like $40 AUS in most stores. (That’s about $25 US.) It’s crazy… the only thing I can’t find cheap is jean shorts. Hardly any stores even sell them, and the ones that do sell them for about $65 - $85 AUS. ($40 - $60 US) Luckily I brought several pairs with me and I can borrow Lana’s too because we wear about the same size. (Which is weird since she’s super-skinny.)
When we finished shopping about 3 hours (and -$250) later, we took the bus home. The bus stop was right downtown, and it was the first time I’ve seen the downtown area in the daytime. It is a lot bigger than I thought and there were blocks and blocks or shops and businesses that I didn’t see when we were there a few days ago. It looked more like a big city this time around. The bus took about 25 minutes and dropped us off just 1 short block away from home, which was convenient since it started raining within seconds of us walking in the front door. We only had a little while home before we all (Gordon, Tricia, Lana, and myself) went to a goodbye party for a girl named Sian who is leaving for Sydney tomorrow for a year. I met a lot of people there, including several kids who go to my school & a few who don’t. At around 9:30 I started getting really tired (which would be the result of Mark, Lana, & me staying up til 2:00am the night before) so when all the kids went out to run around in the pouring rain, I took a nap on the couch.
Since I’ve been pretty much making this place sound like paradise, it’s about time I tell you the BAD things about living here. First of all, the mozzies (mosquitos) are terrible. I have big bites all over my legs and I have a couple buzzing around me as we speak. Gordon says that after you live here long enough they leave you alone, and that’s proven to be true considering that no one else has more than one or two. I bought a big bottle of bug spray at the grocery story today, so hopefully that will help. Another thing that is bad is the humidity. It hasn’t actually bothered me that much except my hair is always frizzy and it won’t hold any curl. I’ve been wearing it up a lot because it looks awful when I leave it down since I can’t do anything to it. The ants are bad too… when they aren’t biting your feet they are crawling all over the counter and on the food. They are those little tiny red ants too, so they are hard to kill. Those are the only bad things I can think of right now, but I’ll be sure to tell you if I think of anymore. (lol) I’m not really complaining at all because besides those few things, this place really is like Paradise. It’s absolutely wonderful and I wish you all could see it!! (Pictures coming next week–I PROMISE!)
Well I volunteered Lana and I to make dinner tonight, so we better start it because we are going to the movies to see ‘Chicago’ at 6:30. Oh, I got a cell phone today so for those of you who bought a calling card to call me with, you can call my mobile: 0402 520 851 That way you won’t miss me since I’m not really home a lot. Oh- I tried on my entire uniform today, and it’s really not that bad at all. It’s kind of cute and has that “school girl” look. I actually have a variety of things to wear. I can wear a short skirt, a knee-length skirt, a long skirt, or shorts (all blue) and I can wear either a white polo shirt (blue collar & school emblem) or a white blouse w/ a blue tie. My favorite combo is the short blue skirt and the white blouse w/ the tie. It sounds really ugly, but it’s not bad at all. I’ll send you pictures of me and Lana wearing them. (She’s in 10th grade though so she had different things to wear.) Alright, well I’m really going now. Have a great day everyone!
