We've been keeping busy since the last posting...
We finally got furniture to go in our very bare place, but unfortunately it's all white to go along with our white walls and cream carpet. We need some color to liven up the place, stat!
We found the furniture on Craig's List and got a great deal on a couch, table, chairs,
tv and
tv stand. We also were able to find a guy with a truck that helped us load it all up and haul it across town.
It's surreal having a
tv again, because we've been without one for quite some time. We get a few basic channels for free, and oddly enough they show a LOT of American shows. On the first night we hooked up the
tv, we watched Home Improvement (how old is that show!?), Friends, The
Simpsons, House, and The Unit. (Yeah, we didn't have much of a productive evening...)
Jen also splurged and purchased a lap top so she can get her creative juices flowing again and start updating her portfolio, create websites, and anything else she might have the urge to magically design. It took us a few days to figure out the
internet situation over here because it's very different than in the US. They charge by the amount of MB you download/upload in a month so
depending on what you are using the
internet for, it could get pretty expensive. Everyone wanted us to sign a 2 year contract which would obviously not work for us, so we did some more research and found a pay-as-you-go
internet solution and now we are finally up and running with email access in our very own place. No more treks to
internet cafes!
We are both signed up with
Skype, so if you haven't already downloaded it, you should and then we can talk for FREE! (
skype.com) And if you have a camera built into your computer, you can actually see our smiling faces!
We've begun to meet more people out and about and I made contact with the Sydney Jaycees (a young professionals group I was involved with in Atlanta) and we attended a happy hour of theirs this past Thursday. It was a good group of people (though some were only in their early 20s) but we still had a good time. A few of them even threw us an
impromptu housewarming party and invited themselves (7 of them) to our new pad. Very friendly people, these Australians!
On Friday evening we went to see Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical at the theatre located in the casino. It was great! If you never heard of it before, it's based an older movie about drag queens driving through the desert of Australia to get to Alice Springs, the town right in the middle of the country where Ayres Rock is. So you can only imagine the costumes involved in a musical about drag queens!
This evening we are going to a Hawaiian Pool Party which we were invited to attend w/ one of the Jaycees we met. We spent part of the day collecting flowers off the ground throughout our neighborhood so we can make our own leis. (We have to be thrifty these days!!) We walked around with a plastic bag and collected tons of
frangi pani flowers. We decided we were only a few steps away from being bums collecting
recyclables from trash cans. Hopefully we won't get that desperate!!
Still nothing on the job front, but some of the people we met at the Jaycees event said they would try to help us out. Unfortunately we've heard repeatedly that we probably won't find anything until after the holidays. We've kind of come to terms with that and are trying to enjoy the lack of responsibilities while we can! It won't be every week that we can go to the beach all day on a Tuesday!
xoxo,
K&J
