Next Chapter

Well, our time here in Australia has come to a close. It is hard to believe that four and a half months has already passed. It is hard to describe, but our time spent here seems to have been both short and long (if such a paradox is possible). The sunset photo on the left was taken from our apartment and is looking down the boardwalk we walked uncountable times.

Our time here has been filled with fantastic memories and we both feel very fortunate to have been afforded such an opportunity. We will miss the new friends we have made, our little home in the Docklands, the weekend outings, and the distinct Aussie culture. My experience at work is equally valued. I feel like I made an impact and my assistance was appreciated. I learned a lot from my time spent there as well.

We also look forward to returning to our home and are very appreciative for the Trceziak family for being able to house sit for us. Most of all we are excited to see all of you again! With little baby on the way and the holidays rapidly approaching, we have quite a few things to do before her arrival into this world.

Well, off to the airport! God bless, and we'll see you soon.

Mountain Top

Last week Jason's parents joined us in Australia and Saturday we attempted to check out Craig's Hut first-hand (The Man from Snowy River), which is a few hours from Melbourne. We made it up to the mountain, but were disappointed to find the dirt road to the hut was closed from a mudslide. We made the most of our day though and took a short hike/walk to the top of Mt. Buller, Victoria's most popular "ski field" where we had beautiful views of the valley below and the high country of where they shot some of the movies. We also watched several old & new cars that were in a rally speed by (which closed the road we needed to get back down on).

The next day we went to visit the native animals of Australia at Healesville Sanctuary, drove through the pretty hill country of the Dandenong mountains and stopped to feed these parrots including some other varieties and larger cockatoos.

This week has been a busy one with packing up our shipment to be picked up today and preparing to fly home next Thursday. Yesterday we had a fun last visit with the doctor and checked out baby again with an ultrasound before coming home--SHE's doing well (yes, they verified again that we're having a little girl:) and is in the 80th percentile already, yikes! This means she's about 4lbs right now and if she continues to grow at this pace, we could have an upper 8 pounder on our hands to deliver in two months! Let's hope she comes a week early:)

Just 2 weeks to go!

Hard to believe it, but we are now preparing to head back home. Mom and baby are doing well, just had another checkup with the doctor and all is normal. Next week is another ultrasound appointment, so that should be fun. Baby is really moving around. It is amazing when I watch Jill's belly with all the protrusions, lumps, and bumps that appear and disappear. It's been fun to try and speculate what's going on in there.

It was great to have Grant and Jessica come visit last week. They had a chance to see the sites around Melbourne as well as taking two drives in the greater area. The 28th was Grant's Birthday, and the 29th was Jessica's--so it was fun to celebrate with them.

Last weekend, we went to "Derby Day" as a part of the Melbourne Cup racing event. This is one of the yearly big events here in Melbourne. They have been having horse races for the last several days. Saturday was the day we attended. It was fun to see everyone dressed in their finest. The ladies wore lots of hats or headpieces, and the men were all in suits and ties. The races were great too. The down side was that it rained very heavily, and we had to find some more seats and fight with the weather the rest of the day. We saw one chap make a slip-and-slide out of a tarp in the vacant general admission area. All these races culminate to the race for the Melbourne cup that we watched on TV Tuesday. My favorite, Americain, won! Too bad I don't know anything about betting (or punting as they call it here).

Mom and Dad are flying in tomorrow. We're excited to show them around. I've posted several new photos at the end of the album in the photo section-linked HERE.

Warmer days of early Spring

During Mom & Dad's stay, while Jason was at work during the week, we checked out a variety of parks and older buildings of the city, and took a tour of Rod Laver Arena, where tennis' Australian Open is played. On Friday we went to see Mary Poppins at the theater and really enjoyed the production. On the weekend we visited the Werribee Mansion--here's a pic of the grand estate at Werribee Park. It was built by two Scottish brothers in the mid 1800s and was the largest home of its kind in Victoria at the time. It looks more English probably because they built it for the wife of the younger brother who was from England. They employed around 400 staff at one time, and it is now owned by the Victoria Parks Dept. and was free to walk through--beautiful!

The next day we golfed at the Anglesea Golf Course where there were quite a few kangaroos just hanging out along each hole. You can see they were pretty tame and didn't seem to mind us being too close to them by this pic of Jason swinging away just a few yards from one. We golfed with a coworker of Jason's and my parents. As my belly's getting too big, I just finished out Mom's holes by doing her chipping and putting.

We bid them farewell early last week, and had a warm week after they left. Desi and Steve and Jason's other coworkers threw me a baby shower on Wednesday which was very nice. Baby got lots of cute pink clothes and other thoughtful items. Friday was a scorcher and record-breaker in Melbourne, topping off at 84 degrees. I went to the beach with Desi and Megan and her kids but got quite burned on my legs as I failed to put on suntan lotion early enough. I guess this part of the world has the highest rate of skin cancer due to the hole in the ozone and their lack of sunscreen use. Lesson learned! That night, Jason met me down at St. Kilda beach where we had dinner, saw a movie, then went back to the beach an hour after sunset to check out the mini penguins coming back in from their daily swim. They were very cute, but hard to capture on camera as you can't use flash photography and they moved around quite a bit.

Last of the highlights, but certainly not the least: Jason went surfing on Sunday! His coworkers and son took him out and taught him in the cold waters of a beach in Torquay. That's right, it's a beach just down the way from Bells Beach, where the world surfing championships are held every April! Not to worry though, the waves were much smaller compared to those (I was worrying at first when he said where we were going). He had a great time and I recorded the feat from the sunny beach (though I wish I could have been out there--after baby comes maybe!). He did awesome and seemed to be a quick learner! They wore full wet-suits and for the most part stayed warm except for the feet which went numb after about a half-hour into it. Jason had a blast, but I think I would enjoy it more in the warm waters of, say, Hawaii :).

Well, that's all for now--Grant & Jessica fly in this morning, and we'll tell you about the adventures with them soon!

Tasmania

This last weekend we spent some time in Tasmania. It seemed so strange that I was going to visit what seemed to be such a far off place when I was a kid thumbing through encyclopedias (I know, I wasn't normal). Home of the Tasmanian Devil and the Tasmanian Tiger (supposidly extinct, but the northern part of the island continues to rumor sightings to this day). Jill's parents flew in on Friday and we all few out on Saturday. It was a quick flight. We arranged another marathon tour to try and pack as much into three days as possible. Saturday we drove up the east coast. Highlights of Saturday were a little town called Richmond, finding shells on the beaches, and roast pork at a pub. Sunday we did a morning hike at our B&B, visited Launceston's Cataract Gorge (where we took the photo below of the wallaby baby in mamma's pouch), and toured the Platypus House at Beauty Point.

May I take a moment to pause and reflect on the platypus. Such an amazing animal (this is why I did a report on them for Mr. Honeywell in the 4th grade)! They are one of only two mammals that lay eggs. They have fur and a tail like a beaver, webbed feed and a bill like a duck, walk on land like a crocodile, and males have venomous spurs on their hind legs. Fascinating... just fascinating.

Monday, we drove down through the center of the island on the Heritage Highway. There were numerous towns that have original buildings from the early to mid 1800s. Apparently, Tasmania was the main location of early settlements in Australia. Another interesting feature of Tassie is that it seems like most every structure of historical significance was built by convicts. There was one town that told a brief statement of the individual convicts on bricks in their sidewalks. These statements had the boat they traveled over on, their name, crime and sentence like this:

The Enterprise, 1845

John Brown

Stole a pocket watch

15 years

A much different time, and not such a different place. Oh, and we saw road kill everywhere! In fact, it was highly recommended that you don't drive during dusk and dawn because your odds of hitting a creature was very high, hence the reason for the somewhat difficult to interpret sign shown above--is the kangaroo lifting the car or car striking the kangaroo? This one on the right is quite interesting--we were a bit worried at first; what would the speedo check involve? What if you didn't bring your speedo with you on this trip?

Well that is all for now... until next time!

Beginning of October

Last week we had Brett & Angela with us visiting, and they had some great adventures and a taste of the varying weather here in Melbourne. We had beautiful weather last weekend and rode Puffing Billy, an old train, through some beautiful countryside on Saturday and drove through the Dandenong hills in the afternoon. On Sunday we drove out to Healesville to check out a large craft market that was happening there that day and visited the animals at the Healesville Sanctuary in the afternoon. It was the best taste of spring/summer weather that is just around the corner.

During the week, we saw this old ship from our balcony sail through the harbor. It was quite interesting to see the contrast of and old, beautiful ship with the new, fancy boats right next to one another.

I had another check-up this week, and all is going smoothly with baby. She continues to get bigger as fewer of my clothes are fitting. My parents are flying in today, and we're headed to Tasmania tomorrow to check the island out--it is supposedly similar to New Zealand and very pretty, though much smaller.

More Driving Adventures!

Sorry guys, it's been a while since we last updated you. This past weekend we did a bit of driving to warm-up for our New Zealand 1500 mile, 6 day campervan marathon starting this weekend!

Anyway, we drove through the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, along the southern coast of Victoria to Wilsons Promontory National Park. After shipping our tent and sleeping bags over here, we thought we should use them at least once, so we camped near the beach about an hour from the park. It was a beautiful setting and we took a stroll along the beach before heading to bed--it was so peaceful and still, something we haven't really seen here at night yet! During the night we heard all sorts of frogs, birds, and other wildlife. The next morning we continued on our way and drove to the park where we saw more wildlife (see new pictures and videos) and took a few short hikes before continuing on back home. On the way back we drove through Gippsland, beautiful green countryside of rolling hills and cattle ranches. We kept thinking, this is gorgeous--we couldn't think of any place like it back in the States.

The past few weeks have been pretty busy, and filled with plans to make sure we're all geared up for our New Zealand adventure that begins tomorrow! We nailed down sites to see and a driving route through both islands--we'll be on the road for an average of 5 hours/day, so needless to say it'll be a whirlwind and will give us only a brief look at this pretty country. All of the recommendations we read said we'd need about 4 weeks to do what we're doing in 7 days, so we'll see what we think at the end of the trip! We'll have a campervan with a fridge full of food for the week, plenty of driving cds, each other (and baby!) and the open road!

Oh, here's a recent pic of the growing baby--she's getting bigger! The website that updates us said she's probably just over a pound and around 12 inches long already, about the size of an ear of corn:)

The Museum & St. Kilda

Well, it's been another week and while we had some nice days earlier on, it's cloudy & rainy today, Saturday. Jason had a bug go through him this week, but he's feeling almost 100% better and ready to graduate from a liquid diet today and he's in at work until noon. It should be much nicer tomorrow, so we may head out for a drive and check off one of them from our list.

Yesterday I ventured into town, searching for some fabric to make a few little baby dresses from the pattern set I bought from a vintage fabric/crafty store last week. I stopped by a cute, hard-to-find French vintage haberdashery store I'd heard about (buttons & other notions for crafting), an expensive designer fabric store (didn't buy my fabric there:), a very interesting old fabric store that had been there 50 years and gone through floods without a single cleaning (I'd heard about this, and verified it as I noticed several spools of fabric that had almost become a part of the concrete floor they didn't care to pick up). Interesting. Then I came upon LinCraft--a JoAnn's type store where I found several awesome deals on cute fabric and finishings for my projects. I sure hope we're having a little girl!

Last Saturday, Jason worked a bit in the morning and then we headed to the Melbourne Museum to check out the Titanic exhibit. We walked through the museum, then watched the Titanic Imax production showing how their new equipment allowed them to go further into the ship wreckage than before. After that we walked through the exhibit where they had lots of information about a variety of famous passengers who were on the voyage, the difference between each class on the ship, and lots of recovered items which was pretty amazing as they first went down to the wreckage 73 years after it sank. The first class ticket was the equivalent of $112,000 today, while the third class ticket (and nicer accommodations than 3rd class on other ships) was equal to $1000--quite a difference! We were handed boarding tickets when we went into the exhibit with the name and background information of one of the passengers on the voyage. It helped you get a feel for what they were experiencing. At the end, we could look on the passenger list and were able to see if our passengers survived.

On Sunday, we ventured to St. Kilda. We rode the Yarra Tram service, which was very convenient. Sundays also includes a super saver fare, so it is also affordable.

St. Kilda is a part of Melbourne that was known for it's beaches and entertainment at the turn of the century. One of the main features is Luna Park, which reminded Jason a lot of Riverfront Park in Spokane. It had a complete wooden hand carved carousel and numerous rides you would expect to see at a county fairgrounds. This is the place with one of the world's oldest wooden roller coasters. The beaches back in the day used to be packed. This was where you would spend a summer afternoon on the weekend. Sunday was a bit chilly, but there were still lots of walkers, bikers, and skateboarders around. There were all sorts of hand made crafts available from about forty vendors at the St. Kilda Sunday market along the beach selling items such as jewelry, ceramics, paintings, leather, souvenir trinkets, stuffed animals, hats, and clothing.

We are going to head off to the library right now to check out some travel books for our jaunt to New Zealand in a few weeks.

Ballarat

Last weekend was a 2 day weekend that I didn't have to spend working, so Jill planned a trip for us to Ballarat. This is a town about an hour and a half away from Melbourne. We left town shortly after I got off work and ate a quick bite. Driving in Australia is always an adventure. Jill's navigation and my intuition (Jill says) got us to the Sovereign Hill Lodge around 6:00. Our room was a cozy and complete with heat (one of the features on the brochure - our room had radiant heat to be specific) and a flat panel TV. We caught a little bit of a Clark Griswold's family vacation to Wally World before we hit the hay.

The wind was howling all night and the radiator was creaking from thermal expansion. A little rough sleeping, but that didn't matter - we were about to be transported back into time! We ate our continental breakfast (complete with plum jelly and Vegemite) and looked at the clock - the Sovereign Hill park wasn't open just yet. So, we ventured into town. It is pretty neat, with heaps (a little Australian lingo for you) of old buildings and interesting shops. We found another interesting wool and yarn shop. We were heading back to the park and we got a call. Two of my co-workers (one with his wife) decided to come out to make a visit that day too. We met up with them at the front and spent the morning with them.

Sovereign Hill (see our pictures here) is a living museum, complete with actors and staff that replicate what it was like in the town of Ballarat over 100 years ago. They have demonstrations, crafts, and food that is all period correct. Here are a few of the things we saw/did: a tour on how gold is found and collected above ground, a below ground mine tour, the red-coats and musket demonstrations, how lollies (sweets) are made, how gold is refined and poured into a bar, stage coaches, candle making, blacksmith, tinsmith, bowling, wheel wrighting, and some theatre demonstrations. It is a lot to do - so much that we couldn't do it all in one day.

Sunday was a special day at Soverign Hill and because we spent 2 nights at the lodge (2nd night was half off), we got to have 2 day passes for the price of 1. It was Steam Day! What is steam day you ask? It is the day that they brought in all sorts of different steam powered vehicles and demonstrations. I posted a few in the videos section and you'll have to watch them to see what I mean. It was very cool, and we couldn't have timed it better - except for the weather which rained and drizzled on us most of the day. The other highlight was that I got a chance to pan for gold. I was successful - I found about 12 flakes! The the guy showing us how to pan said it was worth about $5. We took our newly found fortunes as license to visit the bakery and spent it on pasties, scones, cookies, and sweet breads to take home. Mmmm.

This is getting long, so I better wrap it up... This last weekend was fun too. We experienced our first "Footy" game. Australian rules football is an interesting sport. It is kind of a cross between football, rugby, volleyball, and soccer. Jill picked us up some scarfs to wear to the game that have the colors of our favorite teams in Melbourne on them (Jason-the Essendon Bombers, and Jill-the Western Bulldogs). We probably should have chosen to wear the scarves of the teams were were actually watching though, it was the St. Kilda Saints vs the Richmond Tigers. Ah well, we didn't get that many odd looks our way. Yesterday was a fun day too, we ventured south with a co-worker and hit a few balls at a driving range. I got some pointers from him that I'll need to practice and Jill won a little putting competition we had. We came back and stopped at the Victorian market which has all the souvenir loot that one could ever hope to want to take away from a visit to Australia. We attended church last night and had another great service.

Phew... sorry for making you read all of that. We'll try not to store up so much information in a single sitting.

Jilly got a haircut!

Well, this is my first real blog post. Ever. Exciting! Not much usually happens that is very exciting over the weekdays. Usually the typical work/eat/sleep cycle. However, I came home yesterday and I was greeted by my beautiful wife and her new haircut!

Jill says this is the first time she has had bangs in years. The last time was when she was 3 years old. She isn't to sure about them yet, but I think they are just lovely (another popular Aussie word).

In other news, I figured out how to add you to a blog email list. So when we make a post - it emails you automatically. If you'd like to be on the list, just let us know and we'll add you. This way you won't need to constantly watch our blog to see if we post anything new.

We also just got word that we are going to have some visitors arriving. Grant and Jessica have booked a visit October 26th - November 1st. It will be fun to celebrate their birthdays with them. Brett and Angela also booked their tickets. They will be staying September 26th - October 5th. They can help us celebrate our anniversary. Guests! Wahoo! Now we just have to get our parents out here...

This weekend we are going to spend a few nights at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. It is a reconstructed gold mining town from the 1850's. We wanted to get out of town this weekend because the intersection right by our apartment is going to be shut down. Traffic and getting around is going to be painful. Not to mention the footy games this weekend.

That is all for now! We'll keep you posted when we return.

Weekend Excursions

This weekend was a fun one, though Jason had to work on Saturday. We bought a memory foam mattress topper for our bed on Saturday night at Costco as my shoulders and hips were hurting from side-sleeping in our very firm bed here. I'm now past 4 months along, where you're not supposed to sleep on your back anymore, and our friends highly recommended theirs so I thought it would be a good idea. Well, it's pretty nice to say the least! So far, Jason's back isn't bothered by it, and it's helped keep the bed from being cluttered with pillows around me, and waking Jason every 30 min with my tossing & turning, so two wins! It will also welcome you nicely the next time you come to visit J&J's B&B:)

On Sunday we ventured into the Dandenongs. We took a short road trip into the foothills of this pretty mountain range which gave us a nice view of the city and Port Phillip Bay and winded us through a few quaint little towns. Sassafras was our favorite, with fun shops and a yummy lunch at Flippin' Pancakes, a cozy, Bavarian-style sweet & savory pancake house just outside of town. On our way back down into the city, we stopped for a short hike to a very small waterfall through a fern & gum tree forest. It was so nice to breathe the fresh mountain air. Most of the trees' bark was falling off, leaving a smooth trunk which was very interesting. Not sure why this happens, but all of these trees were in various stages of it.

We drove back into the city along the beach through St. Kilda, which looked like a really fun place to come back & visit, especially in the warmer Spring months. It had a couple of cute piers with restaurants along the beach and an amusement park across from the water. We've also heard that this is where the mini penguins come out at dusk from swimming during the day. We still have to check that out--we'll keep you posted.

We arrived back at home in time to head to the church down the pier that meets in the upstairs of a brew pub. It's called City on a Hill, and reminds me a bit of New Community, the church I went to during college in Spokane. Jason and I were thinking, "Okay, as this is a younger, city church, we'll probably hear a broad 'Jesus loves you' message with little meat and focus on the Word," but we were pleasantly surprised with a clear, challenging message. It was on the first part of Colossians 3 where Paul urges the Christians in Colosse to live their lives to please the Lord, putting to death the earthly ways they used to walk in & struggle with and instead clothe themselves with the attributes of Christ as they are new creations in Him. The pastor brought up the quote from Brennan Manning which says, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today are Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." He challenged us to think about something that we're struggling with that isn't Christlike, put it to death and allow God to change us to be more like His Son. It was rich to focus on how we're choosing to live this life he's given us.

It's been fun to skype with family & friends this week--how amazing it is that we can keep in touch in this way for free.
Goodnight for now!

A little background

It was requested that we post why we're in Australia (good idea Katie!) and for how long, so here's the scoop!

Jason was given this opportunity through Boeing in mid-May to come to Melbourne with a team of folks. They're helping the Boeing Australia plant work on getting their production up to speed and somewhat back on track with the composite parts they supply for the 787. We actually found out that we're pregnant two days before we found out about this trip so had a lot of excitement that week! I was just beginning to think I had 9 months to wrap up my job with REI, then this opportunity came up and we narrowed it down to about a month & a half for me to wrap-up. We knew I wanted to stay home with the baby, thus the reason for not taking a long leave. It was sad to leave my great coworkers at REI, but how could you turn this down?

So we're here for 4 1/2 months total, coming back in mid-November as I'll be about 7 1/2 months along then and the airlines have restrictions on how late in your pregnancy you can fly (I guess they don't want to deliver any babies on planes!). The rest of his team is here for about 6 months, so we were thankful Boeing was flexible with him for needing to leave early. As the seasons are opposite those in the Northwest, it's their winter here right now which is a bit sad--we were just gearing up for summer when we left Seattle! Oh well, we should see some warmer days in October and November, when it's their spring. It's at least a pretty, sunny day here today, but a bit chilly!

So there you have it! It's a beautiful city, and we're just getting our feet wet exploring the surrounding areas--many more excursions to cross off our list!

Weekend Adventures

Well, this weekend was an interesting one! Last Friday I ventured out in the car by myself for the first time--I only drove in the countryside on our way out to the Great Ocean Road, so this was a little different! I just went to Costco down the road, but it was city driving including getting out of our parking garage and parking at Costco. Thankfully, all went well! On Friday night, we headed to Tom's apartment with everyone for tacos and to watch the last Friday July fireworks session just outside of our condo in the Docklands Harbor.

Saturday we ventured to the Healesville Sanctuary with the Ericksons, about an hour & 1/2 outside of Melbourne. There we saw kangaroos, a wombat, dingos, emus, birds of prey, a duckbill platypus (which Jason was thrilled about), a Tasmanian devil, snakes, pelicans with huge pink beaks, koalas and huge bats all in their typical habitats.

We ate lunch there and not too long after I threw up for the first time during my pregnancy. Later when we arrived at home, I threw up again and didn't feel very good, lacking energy into Sunday. Here's a pic of the tray of liquids Jason prepared for me:) So I came down with a little bug and am regaining my strength after doing liquids and bland foods.

We laid low on Sunday and didn't make it to church or the museum as we planned, but Jason went out for an errand and came back with a little stuffed wombat for me--it was my favorite animal at the sanctuary:) my hunny's so sweet!

Jason and I went to dinner last night and confirmed another Australian phenomenon with eating out--they usually don't let you take your leftovers with you as hardly any of the restaurants have a 'license' to do it. I'm not sure if the cost of this insurance is astronomically high, but we've had to wolf down the rest of our meal (mainly mine:) on several occasions which has left a bad taste about those restaurants, and last night when we ate at a Thai restaurant, I asked if we could "take away" our leftovers before ordering. Our waitress said yes, but Jason had to sign a waiver before we left basically saying we wouldn't sue them if we got sick. Pretty crazy!

First Thoughts

Today we received our shipment! We've been here nearly 3 weeks and expected it to come sooner, but it had to go through customs to make sure we weren't importing any diseases. I didn't pack very well, so was very thankful to get the rest of my clothes and other shoes! It came around 10am and I worked on unpacking it then had some lunch and got on the free City Circle tram to head to Carlton, a cute neighborhood just North of downtown to exchange a pair of shoes for the right size and check out a maternity shop I hadn't been to. As I'm now 17 weeks along, my clothes (especially pants) are starting not to fit--my tummy's getting bigger! I already bought a comfy wool skirt that's stretchy and has a stretchy waistband and wore that today--so nice! I didn't find anything at the shop, but talked to the nice lady who worked there for awhile. Maybe when I'm in more of a need for tops, I'll go back. The other maternity shops I've visited have had mainly fancy work clothes (usually in black & gray) so it was nice to see some more casual stuff. It's funny, because I don't think we sound so different, at least when we say "hi", but the shop sales people are constantly double-taking when we talk and saying something like, "that's an interesting accent, where are you from?" I think it's funny because they have so many American TV shows broadcast on their channels and a ton of our songs on the radio, but usually don't know where we're from--maybe we just talk differently:)

Baby was moving around today--I've noticed it a bit usually in the morning, very subtle; kind of like a flutter very quickly, and as I had Jason put his hand on my tummy, he felt it for the first time! When we had the ultrasound 3 weeks ago, baby had hiccups, so it was fun to see how active he/she is. Janelle said usually they're asleep, so it was neat to see movement.

Jason got home from work around 4pm like usual and got to work getting the computer set up for us, so we can start skype-ing! Then we headed to a new Indian restaurant that just opened up on the bottom floor of our condo. It was very good--at first we were the only ones in the restaurant, so we had about five different people greet us, show us to our table, pour water, take our drink order and lay our napkins in our laps--very friendly! We arrived at 5:45pm and the Australians seem to eat later than we do--7pm and on, so it's not unusual for us to be the only folks in a restaurant at first--it's kind of intimidating though. We have noticed that none of the restaurants will bring your check when you're finished with your meal until you ask for it. You could be done with your dessert for 15-20 minutes and they still won't come until you call them over--so funny! I guess they assume you just want to talk & relax.

Well, that's all for now!