More cleaning & gardening

I made tacos for dinner last night and both boys ate them without a fuss!  Leslie was quite happy about that, and the fact that she didn't have to cook.  I was just happy everything had turned out and that Aleksander had liked them.  Magnus doesn't seem to like much of anything, so I wasn't worried about him.  Not sure what I'll try next, maybe fajitas...they seem pretty easy.

I cleaned the house again this morning and then around 11:45am Leslie took me back to her late father-in-law's house to finish up the gardening/yard work.  The bins from last week had been emptied so I was free to fill them up again, this time mostly with lawn clippings and leaves.  Mowing the lawn was not a treat.  It's apparently ant infested and I kept having to stop and brush ants off me every couple minutes.  Plus, just knowing there have been ants crawling up your legs (thankfully I was wearing pants) makes you feel as if they're all over you - sometimes they had made it all the way up my legs and sometimes it was my imagination.  Anyway, by about 3pm I had filled both the bins back up so I texted Leslie and she asked if I could walk back because she was baking banana bread.  As most of you know, I'm directionally challenged, so I wasn't sure if that was such a good idea, but I told her if she gave me directions I'd give it a shot.  Thankfully we'd driven there twice before, so, with her directions and my memory, I was able to make it back without any major mishaps.   Torrey, one of the Pastors at church called last night and invited me to a BBQ celebration after the baptisms on Sunday.  Hopefully I can at least make the service, but I'd love to go to the BBQ as well.  I had yesterday off so I'm not sure if I could have most of Sunday off as well or not.  I think Dorthy and her husband are watching the boys on Sunday, so I would think it shouldn't be a problem, but who knows.

In other news, I finished my first book and thought that in light of my interest in random facts and my present residence in Australia, that this book might be a good read.

Becoming More Australian: A guide to the quirks of life down under

I'll be sure to pass along any good facts I come across.  So far all they've talked about is how the Aussie's love thongs (flip-flops) and some Aussie slang terms.  I knew there was a reason I'd chosen Australia - our love of flip flops made us kindred spirits...

Nothing too exciting

Well, I've now been away from home for a month...  Not too much going on here, so I've been slacking a bit on the blogging.  I've just been cleaning at Leslie's - still no offers on her house, so we keep trying.  At the moment it looks like I'll be staying here until at least the 23rd.  The boys have school break next Monday until almost the beginning of May when their new school term starts.  Since they'll be on break she said she could use an extra pair of hands (yippee) and when they go away over Easter she said I could watch the house for them.  So, although I have no job yet, I'm still not really having to spend any money on accommodation, and very little on food, so I certainly can't complain.  Since I don't have much new to share with you all, in terms of things I've seen or done, I thought I'd share some of the insightful little oddities I've noticed here.  And by odd, I simply mean different than Western PA.

• There are no set standards for serving sizes of foods.  I learned this by watching part of some random documentary type show on TV.  It's pretty crazy actually, and I don't know how people diet in this country if you can't even figure out how many calories they've eaten. 
• While we're on the subject of calories, they don't measure food consumption in calories, but in kilojoules.  
• In my experience, almost 85% of Adelaidians (I think I just made that word up) say "Hello" to the bus driver upon entering and say "Thank you" as they exit.  They're so polite!

Well, that's the only ones that come to mind - but if I think of any more I'll be sure to share them with you all :)

Nearing One Month in Oz

Yesterday morning we got up and cleaned the house quickly before Leslie and the boys headed off to French lessons.  The realtor showed up at 10:30am I headed off to the library for a bit only to find out it doesn’t open on Saturday until 11am.  So I walked back to the square and sat on a park bench to read until I could get into the library.  Had about 20 minutes to check some emails and post my last blog post before I had to head back to close up the house at 11:30 when the open house was over.  Apparently there were about 4 families that came, but none seemed interested.  Around 2pm we headed off to the Saint Ignatius 2014 Festival, or as Leslie and the boys describe it, the school fete.  I guess that’s what they call them in the UK.  The fete was pretty normal school festival stuff; donated clothes, toys, and books for sale, food vendors and carnival rides.  One nice thing was that they had live music all afternoon.  The secondary school (which would be our high school) is very artsy I guess, so the band played quite a few songs, they had some student choirs and solos, then after the Family Mass there was a live band (made up of some of the parents I think they said).  The kids seemed to really enjoy it, but since I didn’t really know anyone and it was mostly geared towards kids, it wasn’t that fun.  There are worse ways to spend an afternoon though, so I certainly can’t complain.  We stayed until the fireworks, which were short, but pretty good.

Today, Sunday is my full day off so I decided to go to church, and I’d told Hussein if I was able to make it to church we could go for lunch afterwards.  While watching the news this morning there was a blurb in the sports section about a Pittsburgh Pirates fan who caught a fly ball in his tub of popcorn.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  It was so totally random, they don’t even really have baseball here – but the Pirates made the news anyway.  So I was ready for church, and thought I had plenty of time to catch a bus into town in time only to find out that the buses don’t really run all that often, and don’t start running until much later in the day.  So long story short, after waiting for a while and then walking to a bus stop on a main street,  I wasn’t able to catch the bus into town in time for church.  But, the bus stop I ended up waiting at was right outside the North Adelaide Baptist Church, so I went there instead.  It was very…. unBaptist, at least that’s how it seemed to me.  The pastor wore a rob, and it was very much high church.   I did enjoy the one group prayer we said though – not 100% sure I agree with all the theology of it (I’m still working through that, but here it is):

“Gracious God, we thank you that broken bread brings wholeness, that wine poured out replenishes, and that time spent with the Risen Christ brings acceptance and life.  We thank you for this community of faith, which nurtures and sustains us, and we remember those who, for whatever reason cannot be with us today.  May your gifts of love transform and enliven us, that we may live lives of thanksgiving.  May your presence among us provoke such longing for you that we will never be satisfied until the whole world knows your justice, your mercy, and your peace.”

After the sermon, the next bus was leaving the stop at 11:20 so I knew I could make it into town after church in time to meet Hossein for lunch.  As I was standing there waiting for the bus this lovely, older woman, named Beverly, asked if I had just been in church and was waiting for the bus.  I told her I was and she said she’d take me into town.  She dropped me right outside the church and I was able to catch the last few minutes of their sermon.   I was able to catch up with Torrey, Amir, and Maryam again and ended up sitting and talking for about an hour with Don, a gentleman from South Africa who is an ESL teacher, and Parry (I asked her to tell me her name twice and I’m pretty sure that’s what she said), a fantastic older woman who also does some ESL teaching.  I think she’s retired now, so she just does teaching at the church English classes and babysits her granddaughter.  Don has 2 teenage sons, the older son actually graduate last year from a high school in Gawler.  I think he said they live near Gawler with their mum.  Hossein and I headed off to Chinatown for some lunch, I can’t remember exactly what we had, he promised me it was tasty and he was right.  I don’t usually like Chinese food, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it was Chinese; it could have been Laotian or Vietnamese for all I know.  After lunch we headed out for a walk in the park.  We ended up stumbling upon police tape at one part of the river (there’s a path along the Torren River), and couldn’t figure out why, so we walked in the opposite direction and decided to cross the bridge and try the other side.  By the time we got back to that spot on the river (on the opposite side) they were pulling a body out of the water!  A gentleman nearby said they found the body this morning under the bridge up the river.  So I guess I’ll have to watch the news and see what happened.  I headed back to Leslie’s to get my computer, planning on just going to the N. Adelaide library since I thought it closed at 5pm, only to find out it’s not open on Sunday at all.  So, I caught the bus back to town…  That was my afternoon; still not sure what will happen next week, if I’ll stay at Leslie’s or go back to the hostel.  Hopefully we can figure that out early on this week so if necessary I can prebook my stay at the hostel.  Hope all is well back home and the Pirates are winning!

Babysitting the twins

I had such a lazy morning.  After not sleeping well for so long, even after having my own little apartment I did finally get some sleep last night.  Knowing I didn’t actually have any plans until 2pm I just laid around a lot of the morning.  I did have some things to do online, so I finally made it to the North Adelaide library to use the internet.  I applied for 4 more jobs and finally sent my bank statement to the cell phone company.  As I was getting ready to leave I decided to ask if there was a way I could get a library card, even though I don’t actually live here.  All the channels on TV here are pretty lousy, at least from what I can tell.  Everything seems like a soap opera!  At the hostel I just read the newspaper, but here I’ve got nothing so I end up flipping channels all evening because the most interesting things on are documentaries on China’s Debt or some other such random topic.  The woman was very nice and told me that I most definitely could get a card and since it was just a temporary card I was limited to 5 items at a time.  So I found a travel stories book and headed back to Leslie’s.

Watching the boys at school again this afternoon was easy.  They had a bit of a meltdown in the car on the way home again.  I think running around on the playground with the other kids for 45 minutes just gets them too wound up.  Don't get me wrong, her boys are pretty cute (just sometimes not very well behaved).  She had me listen to their reading homework the other night and it was so cute.  Although we all speak English, we all pronounce things differently.  Leslie is from the UK, but the boys have a mixture of Australian and British English and then, of course, I have American English.  Listening to them trying to pronounce certain words and trying to help them read certain words was a bit humorous to me.  Anyway, back to today.  I started chopping up the chicken for dinner and by the time I was done she was ready to go, which was good, because I wasn’t very comfortable rummaging around in her kitchen looking for things with her still home.  The meal turned out pretty well.  I went into the family room to tell them dinner was on the table and it was getting cold.  They gave me a brief glance and then went back to watching TV.  No skin off my nose, I went back to the kitchen and ate.  Aleksander wandered in as I was finishing and seemed pretty happy about the meal choice.  As soon as he sat down though he realized the TV was still on, so he said he was going to eat in the family room.  I asked if that was ok and he said he just had to get a plate to set his bowl on.  Leslie doesn’t strike me as all that strict, so I told him to be careful not to make a mess and let him go.  Magnus wasn’t showing up and I had a feeling he might not – he doesn’t seem to like to eat, so I took his food in to him.  I get the feeling there’s just no pleasing Magnus.  I don’t think he’s liked a thing we’ve had for dinner all week.  He did eat most of the pasta, I told him to just eat around the broccoli if he didn’t like it.  Watching TV while eating definitely made them both eat much slower, but Aleksander ate all his and Magnus never seems to eat all his dinner, so I wasn’t going to stress over it.

I somehow managed to tear them away from the TV long enough to get them both to do their reading for the evening, partially because I wasn’t going to let them watch a movie until they had done their reading.  Had a close call when it came time to pick a movie, but thankfully they did end up agreeing on one before someone threw a temper tantrum.  It was 7:30pm, which is usually when they’re to be in bed, but Leslie had told them they could watch a movie and they told me she always lets them watch the whole thing.  Leslie said to make it easy on myself, so I crossed my fingers and hoped they fall asleep on the couch.  She came home around 8:30 and the boys were still watching their movie.  We talked for a bit and then she said I was free to go.  I did not expect it to go that easily.  So, thank you all for your prayers, they definitely helped.  We’re going to a school festival after open house tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes.

Gardening Day

Well, yesterday afternoon was interesting...  Watching the boys during Leslie's parent-teacher conference was super easy, because I literally just watched while they played on the play ground with their friends.  They can behave when they want to and weren't too bad until she made them share an ice cream cup instead of getting their own.  Then shortly after we got home Magnus threw a huge tantrum so Aleksander and I played with Legos and toy cars until it was dinner time.  Leslie's friend came over shortly after dinner so Leslie asked me to get the boys ready for bed, and then eventually to put them to bed.  I've watched her try to get the boys to bed for a few nights now and knew it was impossible.  She can't even get them to do what she says!!  Thankfully they rescued me after a bit because they knew it was a lost cause.  After cleaning up the kitchen I was free to go - it was about 8:30 and we'd put them in bed at about 7:30 and they still weren't asleep (or close to it).  I can only imagine what Friday night will be like when I'm on my own.  At least they won't have school the next day so it won't be as big of a deal if they don't get to sleep on time.  

So this morning I cleaned up the house and then she took me an empty house (I think it was her father-in-law's home, but he passed away) to do some gardening/yard work.  There was a lemon tree and some bushes that needed trimmed, grass to mow, the place is pretty sad looking since no one is there.  I could have gotten so much accomplished, but all the stuff I cut down or weeded had to fit into these 2 trash cans!  I stuffed them so full I'm not sure how they're going to get it all out.  The lemon tree smelled so nice, but it had these super sharp jaggers and I kept pricking myself while trying to get as much into the trash cans as possible.  Thankfully it was much cooler today and mostly overcast, so it was perfect gardening weather. After I was half way through the day I realized I should have taken some before and after pictures for the blog, but by then my hands were so dirty and I had no before picture.  It looked pretty good when I was done, but I'll probably go back next week, after they pick up the trash cans, to finish mowing and raking up some leaves.  It was a pretty good day, and I'll take that over watching kids any day :)  

A morning off

I had the morning off again today because I have to be back at Leslie's house by 2:30pm so I can go with her to the boys school.  She has a parent-teacher conference and needs me to watch the boys during it.  She told me last night that on Friday night I'll have the boys because she's going out with a friend.  So, I'll have to cook them dinner.  With some help from the internet and some FB friends I've got a few options, so I'll run those by her tonight and see what she says.

Hossein met me at the library this morning for coffee, since he's off work this week, so we sat and talked for a bit before he headed off to an appointment.  I'm sure anyone in ear shot thought we were crazy because the topics were so random.  We talked about drugs in Iran and he told me about how they have four different police there as well.  There are tons of informants for the one police group, so you never know who to trust.  Ayatollah is bad and so is his government, you can bribe anyone.  He said most Iranians actually like Americans, they don't like our government, but they like us.  I tried explaining the differences between races, matches and games (in terms of sports) so that was interesting. For only starting to learn English 6 months ago he does pretty well.  We only had to use his iPhone dictionary a few times when he couldn't think of a word in English or I couldn't think of a synonym he understood in English.  From what he said his roommates are mostly Persian as well, so he doesn't get too much practice speaking English I guess.

Well, I'd better wrap this up and catch my bus.  Hopefully my first time watching the boys goes well this afternoon.  I'm really not looking forward to Friday night because I've seen how much trouble she has getting them to go to bed every night....  Hopefully they behave for me :)  In parting I thought I'd share this song with you all.  My Aunt Gayle introduced it to me years ago and it was stuck in my head last night when I couldn't sleep.  Such a great song and the second verse has definitely been me on this Australian adventure....

Lots of cleaning...

I spent the whole day yesterday (Monday) cleaning the house.  She's very clean, so it wasn't hard.  Wet dusting all the trip and baseboards.  Cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, including taking everything out of the cupboards and wiping them down.  You work 4 hours for 1 night, so I worked all day to "pay" for Sunday night and last night.

I haven't had to cook yet, or watch the boys, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.  I worked for about 3 hours this morning doing some last minute cleaning because the open house is today.  At about 11am she said she couldn't think of anything else for me to do, so I was free to go.  The owners aren't allowed to be at the home during an open house in Australia.  Anyway, she did say that I should start thinking of things so I could cook.  Trying not to be a worry wart about that, but it's such an open-ended thing.  Does she have a recipe and the ingredients or do I need to go find all that on my own?  Do the boys need to like what I'm making? I can think of things to make, but I don't know if she has the stuff or a recipe for me to follow.  I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  The last 2 meals she has made were fantastic!  She's actually a very good cook.

So I caught the free city bus into town and am back at my lovely library to answer emails and apply to more jobs.  Still not a peep about any of the other jobs I've applied for in the last week.  I applied for 3 more this afternoon, so we'll see what happens.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to stay with Leslie after the 14th (I think that's an option) or if I want to go back to the hostel.  There are definite perks to both, and since the boys will be on school holiday from the 14th to the 29th I'm not sure if I want to be around for that or not :)   Plus, I feel like I'm a bit tied up, in terms of jobs, since I'm not totally free to come and go as I please so I couldn't really start work until after the 14th.  The hostel said the week of Easter is usually pretty busy, so I need to decide quickly if I want to book a room or risk not getting one there.  I guess it's not totally a risk, I could probably stay with Leslie and I'm sure Mr. M and his wife would let me come early, but I don't want to go too early.  More decisions....practice makes perfect, right?