Oz:
So one thing that first struck me about Australia is how much it is like the US. It starts at the big shopping malls, the big stores, the poorly built houses and ends at the big wasteful cars and lack of interest in other countries (at least as far as I have noticed in the news). Of course there are parts that are very british: school uniforms even at public schools, the presence of black tea at almost every occasion (you have to be careful, cause if they ask you if you want tea, it automatically means black tea) and different words and the accent. Of course the dialect isn't 100% british, but depending who you talk to, their English can sound very british. So to the weird words/expressions they have:
thongs = flip-flops
boot = trunk of the car
arvo = afternoon
dinner = supper
capsicum = pepper
togs = general term for swimwear
singlet = tank top/ wife beater
fortnight = two weeks
to be keen = to be interested/excited/eager
rubbish = garbage
lollies = candy
push bike = bike
mobile phone = cellphone
They don't say g'day anymore, at least never when they're speaking normaly. Well I also haven't met any real "country" person, so someone that is from the less populated areas of Australia; the Australia everyone thinks about when they hear "Australia" :)
Altogether they like shortening names with a "y" sound. So Brisbane is Brisy/Brisie (don't quite know how they spell it). Football is footy, mosquito is mosy and of course that continues when it comes to nicknames, however I still have successfully prevented them (or at least most of them) from calling me Suzy (or any variation of it).
Of course there are also weird Aussie foods, or combinations:
-A cookie called a tim-tam. It is a soft chocolate dough that is covered in chocolate, so basically a chocolate bomb. But that isn't all of it, see there's something even better: a tim-tam-slam. It's when you bite off one corner and then the other corner diagonal of it and take a cup of hot chocolate, use the tim-tam as a straw and suck up the hot chocolate till you notice that the tim-tam is starting to melt and is just filled with hot chocolate and then quickly slam it into your mouth. It is sooooo lovely (lovely being another word that I can finally say here without sounding like someone from an old fashioned movie) and the ultimate chocolate bomb :)
-they put beets on their sandwiches/hamburgers
-vegemite: I actually still haven't tried it, since I've often heard from different people how gross or weird tasting it is. However it is on my list to try before I leave.
That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll be adding a few new things to every blog post, after all I've only seen a small fraction of Australia up to now :)
My fourth week:
As some of my dear facebook friends may have read, on the weekend of the 14th I watched the sun rise. The occasion was actually the birthday of one guy from church. He was supposed to go to this lookout with one of his friends and we (the few young adults that were crazy enough to get up at 3am for this) were going to surprise him. The only problem of this whole thing was that in the end we were only 6 people and the birthday guy didn't even come because of various reasons. But it still was totally worth it. When we got there it was still dark enough to see the stars (I can now find the south star :D ). Then the stars slowly faded and the sun slowly began to rise. It was so beautiful to see the colors develop and I must say I don't understand how people can see such beauty and not be filled with awe and wonder for God. After hanging out there for around 2 hours we went to Mooloolaba to eat breakfast together. Then I quickly went home, got changed and went to the morning service. In the end of the service I was so dead tired I could barely stand. I should maybe mention that on saturday night I was at a women's event at church and didn't get back till 11pm. And that wasn't even it: for some disturbing reason I was so hyper I just couldn't fall asleep, so I probably only slept 2-3 hours that night. But when I came back from the morning service I also barely slept, so by the end of the day (which took a while, since after the evening service I went to the young adults house party) I was so tired and hyper, also through the copious amounts of coffee, that I managed to hold a monologue for most of the drive home. Luckly the driver was equally tired and can thus barely remember a word I said :)
But it was an awesome weekend, like all of my weekends up to now.
Here some pictures from the sunrise adventure:
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| the sky getting lighter... |
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| and lighter... |
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| and lighter |
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| it was really cold, thus the scarf around my head :) |
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| now all of the stars are gone |
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| the beautiful glasshouse mountains |
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| the sun is almost there... |
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| tadaaaa :D |
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| the group of people that were there with me (and yes I especially picked a picture where you can't quite see them, since I don't think any of them would like pictures of the morning in the internet, since we all look like we just rolled out of bed :) |
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| "second" sunrise |
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| on the walk down to the car |
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| the bush in Australia |
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| me holding the sun |
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| the beach in Mooloolaba |
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| my lovely (and rather overpriced) breakfast :) |
Summary of my first month:
I must say I can't quite believe that I've already been here for a month. The weeks have really passed in a blur, especially the week days. This leads to me usually not being able to answer anything intellligible to the question "how was your week?" because the week just passes so quickly I can barely remember what I did when. The only way I can keep track of time is through the weekends, though that also is helping too much anymore as the pace picks up. So I've resorted to counting the weeks on my fingers or just looking on the calender on my phone :)
I feel like I'm in the right place, especially because of the amazing people in the young adults group in church. They really make me feel so welcome and appreciated. I already know now that I will miss them really badly, but I am trying not to think of that, since I'll still be here for 9 months.
So much from me :)
Pease and Love,
Susan
P.S.(in case you're wondering why this post is called "the lovely land of oz" it is because Oz is another name for australia. I don't think they're really referring to "the wizard of oz"-Oz, but I still have yet to figure it quite out. The only sense it makes to me is that Australians call themselves/are called "aussies" which could also be written/pronounced "ozzies" (especially if you pronounce the "o" the way the aussies do) thus Oz would make sense) :)
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