Got our permanent residence!!!! What more can I say...
Will be off to NZ in about 2 weeks (give or take a few days) so that our visa can be issued (as it was an off shore application).
Now just the container, and we start making more history :-).
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
1 month and counting
Well, no photos today - and it almost feels like a 'well, it has been so many days since my last confession' post :-).
Our 1st month anniversary came and it went - how time flies when you are having fun - or is it when you are older - I forget :-).
It was a pretty uneventful week, church on Sunday (went to the same one we visited the previous Sunday), potato cakes for lunch in Civic Park in Warragul (quite yummie - the potato cakes that is, although they are deep fried, so too many of them will definitely clog up those arteries!, you buy them from the fish and chips shop, basically thinly sliced potatoes in a batter that is deep fried), and then we had some people over for a barbie, which is Aussie for barbeque. (Yup, you cannot call grilling meat on a gas burner thing a braai!) Geoff "met" the husband on the church bass players email list on the internet, and they had to come to our side of the world (from about 3 hours away) for something, so they decided to come and meet us face to face. Was nice to have visitors!
Geoff was off to Mt Gambier for yesterday and today, and they ended up driving all the way there (about 7 hours drive from our place) as the travel agent got her dates mixed up and she booked their flights for the wrong day! So meetings booked and everything, postponing wasn't really an option, and they hit the road. He phoned a short while ago, is now stuck in the traffic in the night time road works on the freeway, so it is going to end up being closer to an 8 hour drive for the day back home!
The kids and I visited another homeschooling family (well, the mom and her 4 kids) today for a while - she invited some of her friends so that I can meet some more people - and the one couple that joined in is from South Africa. Well - the wife is, and the hubby is a New Zealander that lived in Dundee (he speaks fluent Afrikaans, so he lived there for a very long time). They met, then moved to New Zealand and also Norway, and they have now been in Australia for a few years. It is really funny to hear someone with this strong NZ/Aus accent to all of a sudden speak Afrikaans like a real boertjie :-).
And then tonight I had a young Irish lad on our doorstep, he is here on a 1 year working visa, they work on the farms etc, and now and then they hit the road in a van and go sell paintings in the suburbs or smaller towns. He is about 25 I would say, and had a lovely accent (you just have to love the Irish accent!), and we chatted a bit before he was on his way - after obviously not selling any paintings to a household that cannot even afford to buy a lounge suite at this stage of the race haha. I still mentioned to him that it is so different here - in SA I would never ever open my front door (that doesn' t have a security gate, mind you!) at 8pm at night if someone rings the bell, and it is only the kids and myself at home.
Well, before this post gets too long and boring with no pictures to look at, I will end it here. But I'll be back - soon - with more pics!
Our 1st month anniversary came and it went - how time flies when you are having fun - or is it when you are older - I forget :-).
It was a pretty uneventful week, church on Sunday (went to the same one we visited the previous Sunday), potato cakes for lunch in Civic Park in Warragul (quite yummie - the potato cakes that is, although they are deep fried, so too many of them will definitely clog up those arteries!, you buy them from the fish and chips shop, basically thinly sliced potatoes in a batter that is deep fried), and then we had some people over for a barbie, which is Aussie for barbeque. (Yup, you cannot call grilling meat on a gas burner thing a braai!) Geoff "met" the husband on the church bass players email list on the internet, and they had to come to our side of the world (from about 3 hours away) for something, so they decided to come and meet us face to face. Was nice to have visitors!
Geoff was off to Mt Gambier for yesterday and today, and they ended up driving all the way there (about 7 hours drive from our place) as the travel agent got her dates mixed up and she booked their flights for the wrong day! So meetings booked and everything, postponing wasn't really an option, and they hit the road. He phoned a short while ago, is now stuck in the traffic in the night time road works on the freeway, so it is going to end up being closer to an 8 hour drive for the day back home!
The kids and I visited another homeschooling family (well, the mom and her 4 kids) today for a while - she invited some of her friends so that I can meet some more people - and the one couple that joined in is from South Africa. Well - the wife is, and the hubby is a New Zealander that lived in Dundee (he speaks fluent Afrikaans, so he lived there for a very long time). They met, then moved to New Zealand and also Norway, and they have now been in Australia for a few years. It is really funny to hear someone with this strong NZ/Aus accent to all of a sudden speak Afrikaans like a real boertjie :-).
And then tonight I had a young Irish lad on our doorstep, he is here on a 1 year working visa, they work on the farms etc, and now and then they hit the road in a van and go sell paintings in the suburbs or smaller towns. He is about 25 I would say, and had a lovely accent (you just have to love the Irish accent!), and we chatted a bit before he was on his way - after obviously not selling any paintings to a household that cannot even afford to buy a lounge suite at this stage of the race haha. I still mentioned to him that it is so different here - in SA I would never ever open my front door (that doesn' t have a security gate, mind you!) at 8pm at night if someone rings the bell, and it is only the kids and myself at home.
Well, before this post gets too long and boring with no pictures to look at, I will end it here. But I'll be back - soon - with more pics!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Parks and swooping birds
If you have children, you have to love this country. Check out this park! Excellently maintained (I haven't seen one park with overgrown grass or weeds, or any broken play equipment!), decent toilets, and they have that squishie gym type stuff on the ground around some of the equipment where it is likely that a child may trip and fall. The rest is surrounded by mulch to make a fall softer.This is Epic Park in Moe (about 20 minutes from our house on the Princes freeway towards the East). The kids and I met with a new homeschooling friend (K) and her children there for lunch today, and we had such a good time that it ended up being a whole day outing - we only left there at about 4.45! Needless to say two households had a very basic meal tonight for dinner, as time sortof caught up with us - and I didn't even take any meat out of the freezer before we left.
Now for the swooping birds part of the post....
Gian got 'swooped' (a common term here, as it seems to be a common experience) - meaning a bird came down and 'swooped' at him. The culprit was apparently a butcher bird, and according to K they are not usually the swooping ones, but this one obviously learnt some bad habits from his neighbours! Apparently it is quite a scary experience, as they come at you from behind, and they make a pecking sound with their beaks, and then they go for your head! Poor Gian got the fright of his life, ran to me like the wind, and after he calmed down he decided to walk around stick in hand for self defence :-). Must say - that was a first for me too!
Other than that the three of us have rosy cheeks tonight, as we didn't expect to 'kuier' for so long, and it was quite cold and overcast - so all three of us got a bit sunburnt.
Oh - learnt an Aussie expression - if you call someone an obnoxious pill, it is someone who is unpleasant, and 'hard to swallow'. :-) And another dinner/tea/supper lesson.... if you have your hot meal in the middle of the day over lunchtime, it is also called dinner. So not only is supper actually called dinner, lunch can also be dinner :-). Now go chew on that one!
Till next time... when we will hopefully have wireless internet that is more consistent than having to use a USB modem that works off cell phone towers! One downside of living in a very fast growing area is that the number of new homes quickly outgrow the adsl port capacity of the telephone exchange - which is what happened to us - so no super fast and lots of bandwidth ADSL for this home just yet (what a blow to this huge video sermon files downloading family!). So - we have a wireless broadband company coming tomorrow morning to see whether we have a clear line of sight to one of their towers - which could mean we would have second best at least.
Which reminds me of something else - in Aus the government is committed to everyone getting good broadband internet access, so if you live in the sticks and you don't have access to broadband internet of the same standard as those living in metro areas, the government will subsidise you to get sattelite internet, and it will end up costing you the same as normal ADSL - cool hey? Unfortunately we don't qualify, as we should be able to get wireless - but I thought it was cool nevertheless.
And that is all from me today folks, til next time....
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