Show Me the Money!

I know-it's been awhile.  This week has been busy trying to get things for our apartment and going to some training for a volunteer program.  In other words, not much exciting has been happening.  But I thought you might find it interesting to see the currency here.  When I get a range of the paper bills, I'll do an entry about that, but today you get to hear about the coins.  I know my photograph isn't the greatest.  But they all have pictures of Queen Elizabeth II on one side.  On the other side, depending on which coin it is, there are pictures of kangaroos, a platypus, an echidna, a lyrebird, an Aboriginal tribal leader, or the coat of arms.


The top two are gold-colored, and they are the $2 coin and the $1 coin.  I find it strange that the $2 coin is so small.  I think it's smaller than a nickel, yet it's worth $2!  It's hard to keep track of them.  The big one with jagged edges is worth 50 cents.  That coin is huge!  The 20 cent piece is about the size of our quarter, and then they have a 10 cent and 5 cent piece.  There is no penny.  There is even talk of getting rid of the 5 cent piece.  They just round things up at the store.  You always end up with lots of change in your wallet, because the smallest paper money amount is the $5 bill.  The Australian and US dollar are somewhat close right now ($1 Aus=$1.07 US today), but this means if you came to visit us from the States, you would lose money.  We lost a few hundred dollars when we first moved here and had to convert some US currency to get us by until Zack's first Australian paycheck.  We could now transfer some of our Australian savings over to our US account and earn some money, but there are accounts here where we get 6% interest!  Anyway, that's your coin lesson for the day.

In other unrelated news, we got $50 back from the mattress girl.  I also found a store called Big W that is kind of like Walmart and another store called Spotlight that is kind of like a mix between Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Michael's or JoAnn's Fabrics.  Woohoo!  Tonight, we are going to a taping of The 7PM Project, which is a live news/entertainment show on every night here in Australia.  According to last night's commercial, a guy from Glee is going to be on tonight.  He's the kid in the wheelchair who likes the ditzy blonde girl; I don't watch the show enough to know anyone's name.  So it should be cool to see him.  And randomly, last night, we purchased one way plane tickets to Beijing for next March.  Jetstar Airlines was having a killer sale that ended at midnight, and we jumped on it.  We don't know when/how we'll be getting back to Melbourne yet, but we'll figure that out eventually.  The return tickets weren't very cheap (yet), and we figured we might want to stop in other cities/countries on the trip.  So, um yeah, I guess we're going to China next year!