Vacation fun and almost home!

Hello my dedicated readers!

I'm back from my vacay and finishing out my last week of work! Travelling was AMAZING!

I snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef, rode through the Rainforest, cruised the Whitsundays, toured Brisbane, surfed in Surfers Paradise,canoodled with a koala, saw a crocodile feed, hiked through the Blue Mountains and saw the Three Sisters, ferried across Sydney Harbour and wandered through fabulous Sydney and met tons of great people along the way!

I'm excited for home, but I wish I had months left to travel this vast country (and continent). My bags are nearly packed (minus a few still yet to buy souveniors). Let's all cross our fingers that they aren't more than 50 pounds each or it's bye bye Tim Tams.

Can't wait to see you all! Lots of love! Pictures will be posted probably when I'm home and have internet on my laptop again. For now though, here is a pic of me surfing!

P.S. Yes, UHO readers, I will be in to work first thing Monday morning because I am b-r-o-k-e!

Working on my Aussie tan!

Hiya!

Not much time as my internet card is about to expire, but I thought I'd pop in for a quick update!

Wednesday I slept on the beach and explored Cairns.
Thursday I snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef (that is until I remembered that I am TERRIFIED of the water and fish swimming at me so I panicked and swam back to shore) and slept on Green Island.
Friday I took the Kuranda Scenic Railway up the mountains through the rainforest. Sat next to some lovely Swiss tourists. They loved me.
Friday night took a looooooong looooooong bus from Cairns to Paradise, also known as Airlie Beach.
Saturday (today) I am in the most beautiful place on Earth. The Whitsundays are a thousand times better than Cairns and I never want to leave. I laid near the water all day and watched the sail boats drift along on the turquoise water. Bliss.
Taking a short cruise to Daydream Island tomorrow morning then to Hamilton Island to fly to Brisbane.

Oh yeah, on the loooong overnight bus journey, I didn't sleep a wink because the weirdo next to me kept rocking wildly in my direction....it was so weird and super annoying. All better now though because I'm in paradise.

Miss you all! See you in a few weeks!!! Can't wait! Pictures of the past few weeks will be uploaded when I get back to Melbourne next Sunday. Til then, just google it!

Steph

P.S. Word on the street is that Target sells Tim Tams. Someone check this out for me?

The Countdown Begins

Hello hello!

You may have noticed recently that this blog is lacking something and it's certainly not wit or charm. It's pictures! Here is the thing- I have internet at my new place, but their wireless isn't secure and so my laptop won't let me connect. I can't be bothered loading all of my pics onto their computer to transfer, so until I come up with another solution, you sadly won't get to see the things that I see-for a while, at least.

I'm still able to use my words though, so I can at least tell you how things are. Here is a breakdown of last weekend.

Friday- Went with the substitute family to the city to see the Christmas windows at Myer (think ZCMI). They were cute, but certainly no old-school ZCMI full candy windows.

Saturday- Went to the city for some attempted shopping. Didn't end up buying anything, but had fun wandering the shops along Bridge Rd. I met up afterwards at Chinatown with Kate and Tom for (Tom says) the best dumplings in Melbourne. They were tasty (don't know about the best), but they were cheap! $7 for 18 dumplings, woohoo! After that I had to head back to the 'burbs because the buses near my place don't run frequently or late....that sucks. Oh yeah, and on the hour long walk from the bus stop to my place- it started pouring...and I wear glasses. That was a crappy combo.

Sunday- Zalie (new roomie) threw another BBQ. This time it was at someone else's house. It was pretty fun. Good company, good food- I guess one can't really ask for more.

This week is my last week at work. I leave for my vacation starting Wednesday! So excited!

It will go like this- Cairns, Whitsundays, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne.I get back on the 13th, have one last week at work, then I'm home! Excited about that, too!

Not sure what the internet situation will be like on my vacay, but I will try to get a few pics or updates in there.

Hope everyone is enjoying a lovely Thanksgiving! No tofurkey for me this year. :(

Hi All!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post! I know you all are just glued to your computer screens...I won't keep you waiting any longer.

Let's start with last Wednesday- I moved! Woohoo! Finally I am at of the spider-infested hell hole with the loon on the stripper pole (oh wait- did I not mention that my old roommate put a stripper pole in her kitchen? Classy, that one...)! I now live with a rambunctious family of four in lower Templestowe. Harder to get to everywhere I need to go, but I actually love going home at the end of the day, which is a drastic and pleasant change.

When Friday rolled around I couldn't wait for work to end so I could go to my happiest destination ever. The beach? No. Shopping? Not really. Costco? Yes! Oh, Costco, how I love thee.
My new family made my year and brought me along on their monthly shopping trip to heaven. It was fantastic and just like I remembered from so long ago.....

I wandered the isles in a blissful daze, snacked on the freebies, and bought myself a giant tub of peanut butter- extra chunk. Mmmm. After shopping, we made the necessary stop at the food court. It was a tough call between fresh yum yum pizza and frozen yogurt. In the end, I chose the frozen yogurt because it went better with my peanut butter! Mmmm.

After downing our Costco delicacies, I abandoned the fam to go off in search of Kate, who was meeting me just a few minutes away at the Docklands. Kate and I had plans to meet up with a group of people whom we had never met and go ice skating (also in the Docklands). Well, we did meet some people, but after grabbing some dinner (yes, people, I was still hungry) and scoping out the rinky-dink ice rink, we decided to abandon ship for some shopping instead.

Since it was Friday (late night shopping til get this- 9pm! haha. ridiculous), we thought we'd do some browsing...well, apparently late night shopping meant nothing to these people because they closed up early. So instead we just hoofed it back to Southbank (where Kate lives and my new bus to Templestowe departs). Since the bus system to my new place is even worse, I had to just abandon her there to catch the last bus home. Lame, I know.

Saturday and Sunday were spent relaxing, doing some reading, and sleeping. I think the food I ate had a baaaad effect on me. You live and you learn. I finished reading the new Dan Brown (can't remember the title...). People, don't bother with it. It was good then it was boring, then good again, then LAME! The ending was P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C. I've started Freakanomics now. Much better!

Not sure what's on tab for the weekend. Friday probably sleep. Saturday heading into the city to hang out with Kate and Tom and go for dumplings (Tom says the best in the world). Sunday probably more relaxing and enjoying the 35+ weather. That is celsius people.

Last night my roomie and I made cookies with orange flavoured m&ms! Tasty! The batter was better than the cookie, but still delicious.

Also, family, get excited. There was a sale on Tim Tams, so I bought you a box of each variety- like 10. Haha. Yay!

Oh, and a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Angela today (tomorrow for you)!!!

Sovereign Hill and the races!

City by Night

Races

Kate and I

Tom and Kate
Flemington

Southern Cross Station

School

Houses

Shop

Making Boiled Lollies

Finished product. mmmm.

Mines

Making stuff

Mines

Moab!

Real fire!

Sleeping on the job.

Sovereign Hill!

Shops

Gold panning

Old time musicians

The military is in town.

Sovereign Hill

View

On the train ride to Ballarat

If I were a bettin' gal....

Another day, another dollar- spent, that is.


Aside from the ridiculous heat (finally!) this weekend had some fascinator shopping, horse racing, winning horse picking, and the beginnings of a nice Australian tan in store for me.


Friday night I bused it into the city to meet up with Kate (other Utah intern/now employed) and her friend/temporary roommate Tom. We met up at DFO (new favorite outlet shopping place) in search of Fascinators (for us, not Tom) for the Races.

**Insert explanation on the Celebration That Stops A Nation- The Melbourne Cup Carnival horse racing thing is Australia's version of the Kentucky Derby, Ascot, etc....***

As an animal lover, I'm not into the horse racing thing. I am, however, very much into the cute dress and funny hat watching thing. As much as I love DFO, there actually wasn't a great, or any, fascinator selection, so I ended up choosing a giant black cloth flower thing, which went quite well with my entirely non-cup outfit.

After some shopping, we headed out in search of dinner. I decided that I finally wanted to eat at one of the restaurants in the cute little laneways that I always walk down. Well, we did eat in the laneway, but at a chain place, not a cute little cafe. Lack of cutsy cafe aside, the food was AMAZING! So so good. I thought that Lord of the Fries was my favorite veggie burger making shop. I was wrong, so wrong. Grill'd is actually where it's at. I ended up with the 'Bombay Bliss' complete with Tatziki, roasted red pepper, and delicious chickpea patty. Soooooo yum. I think I will bring one of these home with me on the airplane.

It was pretty late after dinner, so I bid farewell to Tom and Kate and went off to catch my bus back to the crappy suburbs.

The next morning I was up bright and early to ready myself for the races. Dress. Giant flower. Contacts. Sunscreen. Done. Once back to the city, I met up again with Tom and Kate to catch the train to Flemington, where the races are held. It was so much fun to see everyone, young and old, dressed to the nines (except me, of course) with their hilariously outrageous head gear.

It was even better to see all of the girls in their ridiculously high heels that they could barely walk in! Idiots. I was perfectly happy in my less attractive, but less fashionable yellow wedges.

Once at the races, we scoped out a spot to lay out our picnic gear and re-sunscreen up for the day. We found a spot on the lawn right next to the track and made ourselves comfortable for a looooong day baking in the sun. At this point it was about 11am, 30 degrees (about 90F) and not a cloud in the sky. I could feel the sweat droplets running down my back. Yuck.

As the races started, Tom and Kate analyzed the horse book thingy deciding on who to waste their money on. I picked horses, too, just not to put what little money is left in my bank account on. The irony? I totally would have come out on top! Bah. Such is life. I thought it was fun to pick the winning horse anyway, and nine times out of ten my horse was in the top three! I am that good. My secret? It's all in the name. You know how they say high-powered people have strong names? So do horses. You don't ever see a horse named snuggles busting ass to win the race, do you? Exactly.

After the main race of the day, Emirates Stakes, (All-American won!) we decided to head back to the city. Lovely Tom and Kate invited me back to theirs for some dinner. I really lucked out on this one. Tom, a baker, lives with his brother, a master chef. Stephanie, say hello to 10 extra kilos. We chatted for a while about politics, rabbits, and healthcare in America then Tom made us the most delicious dish ever. Noodles with yummy sauce. Mushrooms. Leafy greens. Fried Tofu. Tom is my new favorite.

AND he lives in the most amazing apartment in the city which is close to everything. If you're reading this- Please Tom, let me live with you! Haha. Oh well, I guess it's enough that I can hang out there. After dinner, we watched and laughed at the hilarously old Independence Day. So old. So funny. Oh, Will Smith.

After a while I had to catch my bus back to, once again, the crappy crappy suburbs. Spending the whole day in the sun made me sleepy, so I took the opportunity to sleep in this morning. It was lovely. Til I got out of bed and saw a little baby spider crawling near my pillow. Great....

And that pretty much brings me to now. Haven't decided what my plans for this week and next weekend are, so the next blog will be a giant surprise! Lucky you.

Hope everyone is doing well! Happy Birthday to Peter and Angela! Save me cake. Thanks Mom for the pictures! And Dad, keep a look out (or tell Deanna to) for a text message from yours truly!

xoxoxoxoxoxo


3 weeks til my travels! Eeeeeep! Can't wait!!

Gold Rush Down Under

Hi All!

Hope everyone had a fantastic Halloween! Thanks to Liz for skype showing me the giant cauldron of candy that I'm missing out on eating. :( I guess it just means double candy consumption next year.

My Halloween was spent exploring good old Regional Victoria. My adventure began at Southern Cross station in the city. Very cool train station. After a stop at the candy station (it was Halloween, I had to) I boarded my train headed for Ballarat ( about 1.5 hrs north-ish of Melbourne).

As the train headed out of the city I enjoyed seeing the cites from a new view. Favorite view heading out? Costco! That's right people, Australia is enjoying Costco, too. Seeing Costco makes me feel at home and nostaglic for many a Saturday morning spent with Dad eating freebies and buying me cereal. :)

I was shocked and pleased to see that the Australian countryside is beautiful! Green, rolling hills covered in trees. Amazing! Some bits reminded me a bit of an Aussie version of Logan....lots of cows.

By the time we pulled into Ballarat station I was getting pretty ancy! One hour and 27 minutes later, I boarded a bus in central Ballarat headed for Sovereign Hill. Sovereign is like a historical buffs version of Disneyland, I imagine. The hundreds of tourists and I enjoyed it very much.

If you get the chance, you should all google it. Let's start at the beginning....quick walk through of the gold rush history of Ballarat then a few steps later and BAM! I fell into the 1800s and I loved it!

First on the agenda? Hope bakery for a Miners biscuit, otherwise known to us year 2000s as an oatmeal cookie. Yummmmy. After another round of sugar rush, I wandered the streets stopping off at the metal works shop, the library, the hotel, the candle shop, the bowling alley, the bank, the local grocers, the funeral shop, the fire station, the cloth shop, and I think that was mostly it...I then wandered up the next street through houses, gardens, giggled at some sheep and chooks, made a pit stop at the little girls room (indoors. flushing toilets. not authentic) and then wandered down to watch some goofballs pan for gold.

Later I watched a guy separate and pour lots and lots of GOLD! Oooo aaaahhhh. Didn't get to take any home. Then I walked about the Chinese camps and learned about how much harder they had it, watched a REAL fire emergency (!), then went deep down into the earth to mine some gold of my own (okay, not really, I wish).

On the trolley ride to the center of the earth I noticed (before it turned pitch black) that the man sat in front of me had a Moab, Utah hat on. Typically I don't announce these things, but I was curious. I tapped him on the shoulder and told him how I just happened to be from Utah. He and his wife explained they were geologists and had done a tour to Moab. Small world!

Deep in the mines I learned about how the other half, the cave dwellers, live. Cold. Humid. Dark. Dangerously. Many a man lost their lives (or limbs) trying to make a buck. Personally, I prefer my job above ground.

After re-surfacing I went to my all time FAVORITE stop ever. The lollie-making demonstration! Lollies, to you non-Aussies is another word for candy. No matter the word, I love it! I watched in awe as the boy tugged and poured and mixed and rolled until the final product- raspberry boiled lollies. Mmmm. Sadly, there was no taste test at the end. We poor saps just have to buy our own.

Oh! Oh! I forgot. I bought something. Soap. Coal tar, to be exact. After smelling all the fruity ones, I decided to go for the black one labeled "coal tar" and you know what? It was my favorite. It smells exactly like I remember my grandma's house smelling like. So I pluncked down the 1 pound 50 for it (we are in 1800's OZ and we are still under British rule, after all).

After about 5 hours and another stop in the lollie shop (only to look, not to eat) I decided to call it a day. I walked slowly towards the exit, contemplating whether or not to hide out in one of the tents until everyone had left and then reappear with Sovereign Hill all to myself....but since I'm not writing this from jail, I clearly decided to just go home.

Typically, this would be the end of the post....not in Ballarat! What happened next? The bus ride. The creepy creepy bus ride. Thank you to whomever left me alone on the bus with the creep-o bus driver who thought it would be fun to hit on me (Conversation- "Are you going to the train station?" "I'd go anywhere for you, honey." "Uh, so you are going there then?") Ugh. Vomit.

It gets better....he pulls up to a stop 5 minutes early, so his creepier than creepy bus driver with a pony tail buddy strolls over and decides he'd like to chat me up, too. Next words out of my mouth- "You know, I think I'll just get out here and see a bit of Ballarat." "No, why would you want to do that? Are you sure" "Oh, yes, I'm positive."

Ugh, more vomit. Once I had escaped the bus drivers, it didn't get much better. Ballarat is a dive. A scummy dive with lots of mullet-wearing techo-listening goth-dressing weirdos. NOT the highlight of my trip. Needless to say I made a bee-line for the train station and just in time to catch the 4 o'clock train back to proper civilization!

Back in the city I finally discover DFO, their version of outlet shopping. Sadly, I discovered it 15 minutes before closing time (remember things close at retirement home-times here). But don't you worry, DFO, I will be back to spend the remainder of the little money that I have left.

I had planned on catching up with some people for some old-fashioned Halloween fun, but I was wiped out after a day playing in a different century. So it was off to bed for me!

OH wait, side story--I witnessed this in the city.

Girl sitting on bench with obvious fake cut on head with fake blood dripping down and then on clothes.
Enter boy who was clearly a moron.
Boy to girl in all seriousness- "Are you okay!?!? Do you need help!?!
Girl- "I'm fine."
Boy- "Are you sure!?!"
Girl- "Yes, I'm positive....."


That's all for now! Hope you all have set aside some candy for me to eat when I get home! Til next time!

Pics of St. Kilda goodness!

Here are the pics from my tasty weekend adventure. Enjoy calorie free!

Packages from Mom! (minus the candy corn because I ate it...haha)
Mmmm hot cocoa!

Port Melbourne

St. Kilda beach.

Beach!

Cool community veggie garden!!

Luna Park!

Ooooooo aaaaahhhhhh.

I basically ate the whole left row.

St. Kilda. :)

Awww, cute little ducklings!

Albert Park

St. Patricks cathedral, maybe??

Halloween decor! Sweet!

Mom is fabulous- everyone else needs to step it up!

Guess what came in the mail today!?! More packages from America! Woohoo!

Thanks to my lovely mother, I had an afternoon feast of hot cocoa and candy corn. Mmmm mmmm good.

Thanks, Mom, for the lifetime supply of hot cocoa (I'll go through it in a day though, it's that good) and the Halloween candy corn (I've already eaten half the bag....)

Dad, especially, you had better get it together. I know you can't work your iPhone or text or send emails or post comments to my blog, but I know you know how to send your favorite daughter packages! At this rate, you had better send me a pony or something.....

Love you Mom ( let's just wait and see about the rest of you...)!

I ate too much in St. Kilda.

Hiya!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend. I know I did!

However, let's just start with the fact that just now I was itching my neck and something came off on my finger. What could it be but, yes, a baby spider. My room is being taken over!!! Every night now I find another baby spider crawling on my bed. Seriously people, just clean this room once in a century! Geez.

Anyway, back to non-scary stuff.

City day went like this- Queen Vic Market to City Baths to Smith St. to Brunswick St. to Fitzroy Gardens to Flinders St. to Albert Park to St. Kilda to Luna Park to Acland St. to Port Melbourne to lost in Port Melbourne to bus back to city to Flinders St. again to Fed Square to Melbourne Central to Home.

Got all that!? Yes- big day! Sooo much walking, by the end of it I couldn't even bend my knees! Ouch.

Queen Vic was lively as usual. Brunswick and Smith St.s had AMAZING vintage clothing shops (yet I still couldn't afford them. haha). Not sure what the City Baths were even about- do people bathe there? I don't get it..... Albert Park was...pretty? However, too much walking made me annoyed so I didn't enjoy it too much. St. Kilda was...like Santa Monica sort of. Beach. fun. sun. with Luna Park (think Lagoon).

Oh, but Acland St. (reason why I hoofed it the 3+ miles from the city to St. Kilda). YUM YUM YUM! Bakeries, delicious bakeries everywhere! Acland St. is what I imagine my heaven will be like.

I made the mistake, however, of picking the first bakery I found. Next time I'll do the walk down and be more choose-y because let me tell you- walking a few miles in a sugar coma is not the most fun I've ever had.

After eating my own weight in sweets, I wandered back down the beach path and found my way to Port Melbourne. I figured I'd just find a familiar street and walk back up to the city, but it didn't really work out that way.... I got slightly lost and it was getting late and the streets were increasingly empty, so I hopped on a bus headed back to the city (turns out I was only 2 stops from the Aquarium-area!).

Anywho, after miles and miles of walking and walking, I was pretty wiped out and my Halloween socks were starting to smell (thanks again, Mom!) so I wandered my way back to where my bus comes. It was after 7pm at this point, so the shops were closing up anyway.

Generally I'm not a fan of the bus ride back, but I'd never had such an enjoyable ride. :)

I haven't uploaded the pics from this weekend yet, so you all will just have to wait patiently.

On another note- I made rolo cookies on Sunday and they were DELICIOUS! I ate some, I fed some to my new friends, and I took the rest to work today. So far nobody has stopped at just one-- good sign!

Oh! Oh! I've booked my Down Under travels! Five weeks and counting!! Eeeep!

Cairns- Great Barrier Reef- Whitsunday Islands- Brisbane- Australia Zoo- Gold Coast- Surfers Paradise- Sydney. Can't wait!!!