No longer homeless!

I’ve been here for a for three weeks and am still finding excited and new things. For the living situation, I moved into the house with the two brothers and the mom. The mom was out of town for another week so it was really chill with the three of us in the house. Another roommate moved in who was a nice guy from Saudi Arabia. The day Cole moved in downstairs things turned upside down! Cole wasn’t the only one to move in; A baby moved into the house!!! The brother’s sister came to visit and turns out ‘visiting’ means she and her 10 month old son were staying for a month, leaving for a month, and coming back for a month. The next day the mom came home and the house was an animal farm! I talked to the brother/landlord and he was very understanding of the whole situation. In a few days Cole and I packed our bags and moved into a castle!

This is the Castle! We have to share a room otherwise rent is out of this roof (and it’s a tall building!), but now it’s much cheaper than the first place. It is dorm style lodging. There’s an upstairs and a downstairs hall filled with rooms on either side (about 20 or so). The place has a total of six bathrooms. The rest of the castle includes a sitting room, a living room with four couches, a dining room, and a kitchen. The kitchen is like Noah’s Arc and everything comes in sets of two: two sinks, two dishwashers, two stoves, and two ovens. Then, we have a room filled with fridges and a freezer.  All of this is only 1/3 of the castle! The family that owns the castle lives in the other 2/3. I hope to get a tour of the other side before we leave! That side has the porch and the bell tower and the garden!

My life has been filled with exotic animals. I took a tour to Healesville sanctuary where I saw all of the local animals including kangaroo, wallabies, dingoes, bats, parrots, ect. The next weekend I saw a possum in the park. My normal instinct was to see how close I could get. Only about two feet away, we stared at each other until I reached out to touch it on it’s back! I got some fur but it ran up the tree in terror. Possums are much cuter here. They do not have the beady eyes or the naked tail. This last weekend I took a tour to Phillip Island. We saw pelicans be fed fish, surfed down the sand dunes (pronounces “junes” here), and watched little penguins sail into shore and maneuver to there nest stopping to pick twigs and grasses along the way. ADORABLE!

Even though I’m still in an English speaking land, the language barrier is ridiculous! Doona is a comforter, jumper is a sweatshirt, spanner is a wrench, singlet is a tank top, and so on. If you want the whole list, check out http://www.statsci.org/smyth/ozus.html . Sometimes it sounds like we’re speaking different languages. It’s not just us Americans who can’t understand the Aussies, but many Australian can’t understand us too. I’ve also been trying to get the Australian accent down. Whenever I try it, I start speaking in a British accent by the second sentence. I’ve resorted to watching YouTube videos and repeating after the Aussies in hopes of getting better.