A Dead Battery Puts a Halt on Roadtrips

Ok, here it is, finally the second installment of the New Zealand blog. So, where did I leave off?? We had just picked up the van (late, but none the less) and were finally on the road. It was great, we had some groovy driving tunes on, compliments of Snowy's wonderful roadtrip mixes, a delicious bag of homemade trail mix, and our map to get us to the first campsite. There were hardly any other cars on the road, once we finally got out of Christchurch ( a little confusing), and we were making great time. The only problem was we were making great time in the wrong direction, New Zealand doesn't have particularly clearly labeled road signs. By the time we realized our error it was about 7:30 pm, which gave us about an hour and a half to get to our campsite if we wanted to arrive with any natural light to guide us. We rolled into our campsite around ten in complete darkness. We had a book of conservation campsites, so they were all pretty cheap about $5 or $10 a night, but ours was free the first night because we were so late there was no one to pay. We turned off the "highway", which is really just two lanes, onto a long narrow road which seemed to be taking us to the middle of nowhere, and it was. We camped the first night in "the middle of nowhere" and we discovered in the morning however, that it was actually quite beautiful. After parking our van and strategically changing into pjs, we settled into our bed. We were very careful to make sure all the lights were turned off, because we didn't want to drain our battery. Snowy and I were both concerned about what we were going to do in our van with no computer or flashlights to read by (we weren't very prepared for camping), but as it turns out best friends can find lots of meaningless things to talk about. Oh, also part of not being prepared for camping meant we didn't have sleeping bags (someone, Con, was supposed to give us one but he forgot), sleeping the first night, well every night after that was the coldest I have ever been in my entire life. You might be asking why didn't they just buy a blanket the next day, many people did ask this and I told them "oh, there wasn't really anywhere to buy one, where we were was very rural", but the truth is we are just very cheap. So, anyways as I was shivering away that first night, constantly waking up, I heard at one point a very fast clicking noise that annoyed but then just stopped. I didn't think much of it until... we woke up around 10:30 about two hours later than we planned, panicked and hopped into the front seat to drive off, after turning the key in the ignition and nothing happening, I knew exactly what that annoying clicking was the night before, it was the sound of our car batteries' last effort before completely dying. My initial reaction was , "S**t, F***k," and any other profanity imaginable, but then we hoped someone there could jump us, but then we realized that most campers leave before 10:30 so there wasn't really anyone around so my reaction to that was "S**t, F***k,". We did finally find two people to jump start us, we had to literally run after them because they were on their way to go on a hike, but the jump was successful. To show our appreciation we offered them delicious homemade carrot muffins, but they were uninterested. We starting to understand why American travelers get a bad reputation.

Ok, i'm bored of writing this, I will write more tomorrow. Hopefully, you are waiting anxiously, here is a bit of a preview of what's to come tomorrow...sheep herding in a Popeye van.

Cheers,
Laura

Oz Open and the Begining of an Open Road Adventure

Snowy and I got back from NZ a little over a week ago and I have been meaning to update my blog and I have no excuse why it has taken so long, I just didn't do it. Anyways, I will first briefly give an account of working at the OZ Open. It was pretty full on for the two weeks I was working there, I worked about 60 hrs a week and did pretty much nothing outside of work. My job wasn't exactly exciting, I worked in Corporate Hospitality; this basically meant I prepared one of the dining rooms before each meal and showed the corporate guests to their seats then gave them water when they were leaving. Other people working in Corporate Hospitality actually got to work in Rod Laver Arena so they got to watch pretty much every match. So despite my job being less than thrilling, it was still an amazing experience and just being at the Open was exciting and there was a great positive energy. I also got to catch a couple of matches after work. Another bonus was that the dining room I was working in was adjacent to the practice court so I got to see some pretty impressive athletes training. The main lesson I took away from the Oz open was that Australians don't appreciate my chanting "USA USA" when Americans are victorious.

What I think is even more exciting then working at the Open, is my recent trip to NZ. The morning after the Oz Open ended Snowy and I boarded an early flight to Christchurch. We had scheduled to pick up a wicked camper, but the only catch was we had to pick it up by 4 pm NZ time (2 hrs later then Oz time). For those of you that aren't familiar with Wicked Vans, they are probably the most "basic" (and that's putting it kindly) camper van accommodation you can get. They target backpackers and I think most of their clients are 20 something boys, just guessing by the crude pictures that are painted on the sides of most vans. Anyways, our flight got in around 3 pm NZ time, and unfortunately it took about 45 mins longer to get out of the airport, with customs and such, than we had planned. We called Wicked Campers as soon as we realized we were going to be late and there was no answer, which was not a good sign; we decided the best thing we could do would be to just go to the garage and hope there was someone there late to give us our van. In the taxi on the way there we considered the very likely possibility that we may be spending the night in Christchurch, which would be very bad for a couple of reasons: 1, we are cheap and wouldn't pay for accommodation, sleeping in parks isn't that dangerous right? 2, Not getting our van would put us a whole day behind our planned driving route and 3, We had already payed for the day's rental. Luckily, to our relief their was someone at the garage when we got there, but she was not very happy to see us. When we told her we were sorry we were late and that we were there to pick up a van her exact words were " Are you F***ing kidding me", no we were not kidding. We feared that she might out of spite give us this van that had paintings of people doing some rude things to subs on the side, but we fortunately got a van with the unoffensive popeye painted on the side. We got a very quick run down of the van, like how to convert our table into a bed, where the kitchen was (our trunk), and how to change a flat tire. It was about 6 minute tutorial and we were off on the open road, well a quick stop at the grocery store and the gas station and then we were on the open road. Snowy took the first shift of driving, and the only real confusion with driving on the opposite side of the car and the opposite side of the road was that when we tried to use our turn signal the windshield wipers went on instead.
This is just the first installment of hat will prove to be a very long blog about our NZ road trip.

Cheers,
Laura

I Like to Ride my Bicycle

After living in Melbourne for about a month, Snowy and I began to realize what a bike friendly (well kind of) City Melbourne is. At the very least a lot of people here get around by bike, plus we were finding we were spending at least $100 a week on taxis, so we set out on the task of finding two bicycles. Normally this wouldn't be a very difficult task, but we had some very specific criteria for our bikes; we wanted vintage bikes, that had to meet a certain degree of cuteness, and they also had to have a low price tag. What we discovered is cute, vintage bikes are very expensive and can sell for over $1,000. We were also bidding on e-bay so had to deal with the frustrations of constantly being out bid, by 50 cents. Finally, after about a month and half of searching we bought two bikes on e-bay with the buy it now function, both of which are adequately cute.
It was my job to pick up the first bicycle while Snowy was at work one day. I took a taxi to pick up the bike from the sellers house in North Carlton, a suburb that is about a ten minute drive from our house. The woman assured me over the phone that the bike was in great condition, except for a "little" squeaking and completely rideable, so I thought it would be no problem to ride the bike home. In hindsight I now see that it was pretty dumb to plan to ride the bike home, at noon when its 90 degrees outside and I know none of the road rules, but this was exactly what I had arranged to do. After paying the lady began my ride home, it wasn't but 45 seconds that I realized the tyres were completely flat and that I was basically riding home on metal rims. Also, the "little" squeaking was so loud and annoying that I could hear it while listening to my ipod with the volume turned all the way up. It wasn't a very pleasant ride, and it took about 20 minutes longer than it should have because I had to keep getting off my bike to walk since I didn't know the road rules and cars were honking at me, oh and I got lost. Now we just had to find another bike so Snowy and I could ride together.
We found another bike on ebay that was less than half the price and as it turns out was way nicer and didn't need any work, the only catch was that it had to be picked up in Noble Park. We knew that the train went there and that you can take bikes on the train, so Snowy went to pick it up while I was at work. She called me about an hour late telling me that she was lost in Noble Park, when I told some people they freaked out, telling me how dangerous Noble Park was ( apparently it's the ghetto of Melbourne), but Australian's have a bit of a jaded view of what a dangerous neighborhood is, and Noble Park is probably a safer neighborhood than where I lived last year in CT. The point is Snowy got the bike no problem, and now we ride everywhere and save hundreds on taxis. There have also only been minor mishaps while riding. Snowy almost crashed once when her tyres got stuck in the tram track, and my chain fell of once on the side of the road (I just threw a hissy fit until some man came and fixed it). The bike did cost a bit of a fortune to get it fixed and riding smoothly and I did hate it for that reason for a couple of days, but now all is good and I'm happily cruising around town.

A New Year, a New Blog...well not really a new blog I'm just going to actually update it regularly

It has been over two months since I last wrote in my blog, and despite pleas from my parents to continue writing I didn't actually believe anyone was following it, but enough people have appealed to me to continue chronicling my adventure down under, so here goes.
As I have wrote in previous blogs I am living in a suburb of Melbourne called Richmond. Laura and I are so lucky to live here because we had no idea Richmond was the best suburb (not that I'm bias now) when we first moved here. It's very close to the city, about a ten minute tram ride, and convenient to get to all of the other Melbourne suburbs. Richmond doesn't really have a stereotype as much as some of the other suburbs, for example we aren't all hipsters here, and there is a great neighborhood feel. We are living in a great little town house with a beautiful back garden where on nice days we enjoy a late breakfast or afternoon tea. I will put up pictures soon. We also just got tv in the house last week, so Laura and I camped out on the futon for a couple of days. I know its a little sick, and we really aren't that addicted to tv we had just been deprived for months.
As for work, we are both working as waitresses at a Greek restaurant in Richmond called Salona. It's the best Greek food in Melbourne so if you ever find yourself in Melbourne be sure to drop in for a leisurely dinner. We have come in for dinner and found ourselves still there sipping on wine 3 or 4 hours later. We love working at the restaurant, and have been so fortunate that the big Greek family that makes up the restaurant have welcomed us so warmly into their families, and now call us their American cousins and they swear we were Greek in a past life. Having them throughout the Holidays made it much easier when we were missing our friends and families from back home. I am also still working at the clothing shop, but only have two days left because I will be working at the Australian Open. I will be working as a Corporate Hospitality specialist, but still am not entirely sure what that entails, I just know it will be very long days for two weeks straight.
So much has also been going on in the past month or maybe even two since I last made an entry, but a lot of these things deserve their own post. For example, Laura and I both bought bikes to cruise around Melbourne this summer and that has been an adventure in itself. We also recently went on a wine tasting in the Yarra Valley ( a Christmas present from Mommy and Daddy, thanks). I will write about these in more detail another time. Again, sorry for the delay, but check more regularly for updates I will be better about it in the New Year.
Cheers,
Laura

A New Home in Melbourne

So things in Melbourne are going FANTASTIC!!! We have moved into a new apartment,its actually a two storey town house. We lucked out because the rent is less than we were paying before, it's one thousand times nicer than our old place, our roommate had a bed for us to use, and our roommate a (33 yr old guy) leaves every week for work and is only here on the weekends. Work has also been going really well and I'm starting to pick up more hours. I also found out I got the job with the Australian Open; I will be working in Corporate Hospitality in January during the two weeks of the Open.

In other news, we have been going to some free shows that are part of the Fringe Festival. It's a three week festival of emerging artists, and there are all different kinds of performances from comedy, to music, to dance etc. Today October first marks the beginning of my being a vegetarian, Laura is doing it as well, but Lindsay had no interest. We will see how long it lasts, we are shooting for at least a month. Also as we become more settled Laura and I are trying to take more dance classes and hopefully soon we will have set schedule.
Now that I have Internet access in my house I will try to update my blog weekly and possibly bi-weekly.

Cheers,
Laura

One Month in Melbourne

It's been quite a long time since I last updated my blog so I will try to catch everyone up with a recap of what I have been up to over the last month.
Lindsay and arrived in Melbourne in early August where we proceeded to spend the first two weeks here sleeping on the floor of a friends apartment and searching daily, with no luck, for an apartment. Right when things were really looking grim we found a fully furnished two bedroom apartment for a good price in a great neighborhood. We met the "landlord" Kevin or perhaps his name is David as that was who the e-mail I received was from. He was a pretty odd guy and it was a bit unsettling that there were large knives in the back courtyard when we came to look at the property, but at this point we really couldn't be choosey. We arranged to meet him the next day to give him, in cash, the first 4 weeks rent. We arrived with $1,300 cash and a lease that I wrote earlier that morning; the whole transaction seemed pretty sketchy and we became especially nervous when he took our money and told us he was going to make copies of the keys for us. Lindsay was especially having a heart attack during the fifteen minutes in the kitchen considering all the possibilities of how we were just scammed, and this man whose name might have been David or Kevin had walked out with 1/2 of all the money we had left in our accounts. Luckily, DavidKevin came back and we were handed the keys to our cottage.
The apartment did come fully furnished, but there were still a few items we needed to pick up to make it a little more liveable. We were told there was an Ikea in Richmond (the suburb we live in) and considering Richmond isn't all that large it seemed realistic to walk there. It would have been very reasonable to walk there had two different sets of people not given us directions in the opposite direction of Ikea, so it ended up taking us over an hour to walk there. Our new additions to our cottage helped a bit but there is really only so much that can be done to improve a cottage that has had no updates in the past 30 years without a full renovation. The first week in the cottage we were a little scared when nightime fell, but more than scared we were just freezing because there is no heat in our apartment. There is also a long hallway that reminds me of the scene in the Shining when the twins are all chopped into little pieces. Our lease is only for six weeks so we figure in that time we can find something more suitable for long term.
Now that the apartment problem was solved I had the task of finding a job so that I could actually pay my rent. I handed my resume out anywhere in Richmond that said they were hiring and the next day a retail store called Boo Radley called me back for an interview. I later found out from some Australian girls that I was very lucky to get a retail job with no experience. I have only worked two days so far but in October I will start working more regularly, and I think the main reason they hired me was because they need someone to cover every shift over the Christmas holiday and I told them I have no friends or family here so it wouldn't be a problem for me at all.
Lindsay and I have also been having fun as well since we arrived in Melbourne. We have seen 3 good movies: Coraline in 3-D, Inglorious Basterds, and the September Issue, but we can only go to the movies on discount days because regular priced movies are $20!! We went to an Australian Football game and saw the first ranked team play the last ranked team so it wasn't the most thrilling game but still really fun. AFL is similar to rugby and American football but the players don't wear any padding, play never really stops, and they object seems to be to just cream the guy with the ball. The finals are just starting now and Victorians are really into their footy so it will be fun to follow the games. Lindsay and I also went to the Taste of Melbourne and got to eat some of the best food we have had since being in Australia. At the food show we also got to go to a free wine tasting and a free Scotch master class. I found that I love wine, which I already knew, and I really don't like scotch, especially not drinking 6 glasses full of it.
Other good things that have happened are...Laura Snow (my best friend from College) came and she is living with us too. She already has a job working as a bartender and she has an interview for a retail job on the same street I work. I also really want to find a job for the evenings to have a little extra money, but also because right now Laura and I have opposite work schedules.Another thing Laura and I have been up to is looking for a rehearsal space so we can start dancing and choreographing again.
We have been up to lots of other things as well, but if I wrote them all this would be a ridiculously long post. I will try to update more frequently.

Cheers,
Laura

Home Sweet Home

So I know in my last post I said we were homeless, well technically we weren't homeless we were staying with Adriane and Jenny (two girls from Conn studying here) and their apt was right in the middle of the City so that was very convenient. Furthermore, we really aren't homeless in any capacity anymore because we found an apartment!!! Right when things were looking pretty grim for us we found not just an apartment, but a fully furnished cottage in Richmond. Richmond wasn't our first choice of suburbs, but it is ideally located one train stop from the CBD and it's in walking distance to Melbourne Park and all the stadiums, which will be very convenient for me if I get the job with the Australian Open I applied for. Another added bonus is that our landlord let us sign a 6 week lease, so if we find something better we are free to move. The only major downside to our apartment is that there is no heat and it is always ten degrees colder inside than it is outside and considering it's the middle of winter here so that means it's freezing inside. We took a trip to Ikea and spruced it up a bit and we have actually really been enjoying our little cottage. We have been keeping ourselves pretty busy in Melbourne and I will soon update the blog with all of the fun things we have been doing. I just wanted for now to make sure everyone knows we have a home and not to worry.
Cheers,
Laura