MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS

Jenolan Caves - Last Part of The Blue Mountain Area Series

Unfortunately, after working a couple of days on the above posting, my text and photos all turned to gobbledy gook after logging off and logging back into the site. So, it looks like I will have to recreate it sometime next week. Ugh!

In the meantime, I have a few thoughts and impressions I wanted to share with you about life in Australia as I see it. This will be all over the place, so bear with me.

Driving in Australia

Well, last night I finally did it! I drove home from the club where we went for dinner and to play the pokies. I actually had a couple of strikes against me; number one - it was night time so it was dark and number two - Juliet's car is a stick shift and it has been years since I have driven a stick shift. My very first car, a beautiful blue Mustang, was a shift stick......but that is another story. I actually did pretty good with the clutch and gas, only stalling the car once in the middle of the intersection. I think the car was in third gear, rather than first gear. It is not only difficult to remember to drive in the LEFT lane, but you have to use your LEFT hand to shift! It was terrifying but we made it home in one piece. I'm sure Scott was relieved. Hopefully I will do better next time.

Grocery Carts

I was sitting at the outdoor shopping center one day and was watching a lady pushing a shopping cart - it was going sideways and I thought it was too bad she had a broken shopping cart - they can be so hard to push when that happens. I noticed a few other carts going sideways and asked Juliet about it. Who would have guessed that their shopping carts go backwards, forwards and sideways! The next time we went in the grocery store, I got a cart and started pushing it sideways, this way and that way, just like a kid! Juliet wanted to know what I was doing. It's like discovering a new toy.

Easter Egg Coloring

Juliet has never colored eggs for Easter before - that is not a tradition here, so I brought over a couple of boxes of Paas Egg Coloring Kits. The only problem is that the eggs you buy in Australia are all brown eggs; rather difficult to color. So we have been looking at different supermarkets trying to find white eggs. When you go to the supermarket looking for eggs, they are not in the refrigerated section; they just have them on one of the shelves. Well, we finally found some white eggs! We had to buy biodynamic, organic, free range eggs in order to get white eggs - $10.49 a dozen! The most expensive eggs I've ever colored. Can't wait now for Easter weekend.

Stores

Many of the stores or shops are the same as in America; here is a listing of just a few: Target, K-Mart, Borders Books, KFC, Krispy Kreme, Gloria Jeans, Toys R Us, Pizza Hut, Subway, McDonalds. McCafe is the coffee part of McDonalds and offers breakfast items along with baked goods.

Today we are going to Sydney for a fun, adventure packed weekend in Sydney!