G'day Grocery Cart!

Good morning. Um, yes, that is a shopping cart in our living room. Why, you ask? Well, when you don't have a car, and you're tired of going to the grocery store nearly every day to buy things and try to figure out what's for dinner, then you make a menu plan for a few weeks along with a long shopping list, and you need to bring the cart home with you because you can't carry everything! Woolworths (called Woolies here...it's basically Safeway) is just across the park, so it's not like I hauled this thing very far. And I'll take it back today, especially because I want my money back.




Yes, money. You have to pay to get a shopping cart. You put a gold coin (either a $1 or $2 coin) in the slot in order to unlock it from the row of carts, and when you put it back, you can get your money back. I guess it's a good way to get people to not leave their carts all over parking lots and such. But it can sure be a pain when you don't have any change.

Grocery shopping here is kind of stressful. It always takes awhile to learn where everything is in a new store, and things here have different names. The other day I learned that cilantro is called coriander after a very confusing exchange with the produce man. Also, the selection is quite limited in many areas. In some ways, this is good. You don't stand in front of shelves of peanut butter or cereal trying to figure out which one is best. But in other areas, it's pretty frustrating. There are no black beans for sale in this country! Or all of the varieties of wholegrain pasta! But the Asian aisle is bountiful. You can get all sorts of curry pastes, Indian naan (bread) flavors, and rice. I'm not even going to talk about prices. You learn to just deal with it eventually (or else starve!).

Well, that is all for today. It's rainy and cold (as usual), so maybe it's a good day to clean my desk. Exciting, I know. Oh yeah, yesterday I updated my Shutterfly site, so if you're interested in lots more pictures of the things I mention in my blog entries, check out the link in the upper right corner. Enjoy!