First Days in Melbourne

Front of Josh's House

Josh and Emily at Josh's House

Sunday morning we woke up we went to church with Polly, Jim and the kids. The church reminded me of my church at home. It was nice to be back at church since we hadn't gone to any services our entire trip. After church we went to my mom's cousin (Cynthia's) house and had a delicious lunch. We ate sausages, quiche, salad, homemade cheesecake and various other goodies. Cynthia is a wonderful cook. We learned a lot about the poisonous snakes in Australia from Cynthia's husband, Darren. We also saw my second cousins who I haven't seen in almost 20 years. After lunch we ran some errands with Jim and went back to Polly's where we lounged around and played with the little ones for the rest of the day.

Kyra

Monday morning was eventful. We slept in and had breakfast in the morning. I've gotten really into Weetbix since I have been in Australia, so I had that for breakfast. We played with the kids in the morning and then Emily came over and Liz and I went with her to Chadstone. Chadstone is said to be the biggest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere. We spent some time exploring it, had lunch, and then went and bought some hot water bottles. A hot water bottle is a rubber bag that is filled with really hot water and then closed. The rubber heats up, so it is like a heating bad. Liz is officially obsessed with hot water bottles. Almost every night, Liz would fill it up and carry it around with her. She decided she had to have some to take home so she bought about four of them at the mall. Its funny though, because I'm not sure if she'll use hot water bottles when she gets home. We've noticed that Australians don't like to use heating or air conditioning. When its cold a hot water bottle is an essential item because you don't have much heat. In the U.S. people use heat more often, so I'm not sure they would be used as much. Australians were shocked whenever we told them that there were no hot water bottles in the U.S.

After Chadstone we headed over to Josh's place. When he got home from school we headed to the store to get some food for dinner. We also bought some necessary items that we would need for our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. It ended up being difficult to find everything we needed. Australian super markets only have turkeys during Christmas, so it took us a while to find one. We ended up getting a frozen one and deciding to defrost it over the next several days. The grocery store didn't have any stuffing, and the clerks looked at us like we were crazy when we asked for pumpkin in a can. We walked back to Josh's and watched some episodes of Underbelly. The show is about crime in Melbourne from 1994-2004 when over 30 people were killed in a gang war. The show is based on the true story and was really addictive. We ate dinner and then went with Emily, Josh and Tara (Emily's sister) to their Monday night netball game.

Emily Shooting in Netball

Netball is an Australian woman's sport similar to basketball, except there is no dribbling and a shorter net. Emily and Tara joined a community team that plays every Monday night, so we got to go and watch them play. It was a good game, but Emily's team lost in the end. We got some good footage of the game. Since the players can only hold the ball for three seconds, they have to think really fast on their feet. It was a cool to see a different sport being played.