More Keys in Australia

For a couple of weeks in January, we weren't the only Keys in Australia! Zack's dad and stepmom came to visit and go to the Australian Open, and we had fun showing them around our new home. The picture to the left is the welcome table I had ready for them at our place when they arrived. You can see their personalized Cokes. I also made an Aussie themed dinner with kangaroo kebobs, lamb cutlets, chips with sour cream and chili sauce, salad, rolls, and vanilla slice for dessert. Yummy.

On one of the weekends, we headed out to the Yarra Valley region to visit some wineries. Instead of doing the major big ones, we hit up some of the smaller ones in Seville. It was nice to get personalized attention and not fight the crowds, and we enjoyed a platter of cheese and meats in the sunshine after our wine tasting at Seville Estate.

Zack's dad and Vickie posing with the Wine Dogs book-open to a page that looks like Molly!

This dog lives at the winery, and she's featured in a book of other winery dogs. I had fun playing with her and practicing taking pictures with my new lens (a Christmas present from the Keys-thanks!).

Lots more blog posts to come...check back daily!

Why My Mom is Cooler than Your Mom

Because even though I'm 33 years old and live on a different continent, she sends me care packages and random things like this in the mail!

The Australian Open

Can you tell that it is summer here? So hot!

Woohoo-my computer is FINALLY fixed! I'm not even going to go into the things I had to do to get it to work; I'm just happy it does. Anyway, back to the blogging. For two weeks in January, the Australian Open was the focus of Melbourne and much of the world. Zack's dad and stepmom flew into town and enjoyed several days of tennis. I joined them on Tuesday of the first week with a grounds pass, which allows you to see several matches on various courts throughout the day.

Dokic (Australian) and her Russian opponent wore the same outfit! The Aussie won. 

I'm not sure I've ever actually watched a full match of tennis. I pretty much knew the rules and how the game worked, but I've never sat down and really paid attention. I'll admit; I got kind of hooked! There were many late nights over the next week and a half as I stayed up to watch the ends of matches on television.

Players would stop and sign these giant tennis balls after their matches.

I've never been to a tennis tournament, but the Australian Open seemed extremely well organized and executed. The ball kids were especially impressive; you could tell they had been carefully trained. The crowds were fun, shouting "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" and leading slow motion and extra-fast waves. But when the tennis players played, people were so quiet! 

On Tuesday evening, Zack joined us after work at the Rod Laver Arena to watch the evening matches between Aussie favorite Lleyton Hewitt and a German guy and then Serena Williams versus an Austrian. Hewitt's match lasted nearly four hours; we were exhausted just watching it! But he won in the end.

Some of these serves are around 200 km/hour (123 miles/hour)!

Lleyton Hewitt wins his match after nearly four hours!

It was a warm summer night, and after spending all day sweating in the sun, I was tired by midnight. But I was excited to stay and see Serena Williams. She is a beast! Seriously, she is built like a man-so muscular and strong. She's actually won the Australian Open a few times (not this year). But she easily beat her opponent in the first set on the night we were there, so we headed home to get to bed at nearly 2 am!

Overall, the Australian Open was pretty cool, and it was a neat to be a part of the action. I'm glad Melbourne hosts such a major event and that tickets weren't too difficult to get. I've definitely learned to understand and appreciate tennis much more.

When My Computer is Fixed...

The Australian mail service continues to be unimpressive (though the ladies at the post office are very nice). I still have not received the disk from Apple so I can reinstall my hard drive and this computer will work on a regular basis. At the moment, it is allowing me to type, but if I even try to open iPhoto, I know the whole thing will freeze up. Yesterday, I couldn't even get the computer to turn on. The Apple office that sent the disk is located in Tasmania; I wish I could just hop on the overnight ferry and go get it myself! Alas, I must wait. They tell me it will be here by tomorrow at the latest.

When my computer is fixed, here are the entries I need to catch up on (you are eagerly looking forward to these, right?):

-Australian Open
-Big Day Out
-Zack's parents' visit (Great Ocean Road)
-Australia Day
-my birthday
-boat ride down the Yarra River
-the rest of my Uluru trip

I hate falling behind, but such is life. I hope to be up and running again soon!

Uluru in the Rain

Well, since my computer's still not working, I'll start the Uluru posts I've been saving for awhile. This one has been in draft form for awhile, so maybe it'll upload and hold you over until I get things up and running again. I know you've all been missing my posts terribly-hahaha! 

After my parents and brother and sister-in-law left in mid-November, my sister Morgan stayed an extra week in Australia. We took a short trip to Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, which is a huge sandstone formation in the middle of the Outback. It's over 1000 feet high and two miles long, and it's pretty darn famous.

No, Uluru does not usually have a big cloud over it!

Anyway, we checked the weather report before leaving, and it said there would be rain showers. Now, you have to understand, this rock is in the middle of the desert. Yulara (the "city" that Uluru is in) regularly reaches temperatures near 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) during the day at this time of year. So we packed mostly shorts and tank tops, threw a pair of pants and a raincoat in our suitcases for the rain shower we expected would pass through quickly to cool us off, and called it good. Little did we know we would be wearing the same thing for three days straight and that the rain would never really stop.

Morgan says, "What is up with the rain in the desert?"

We got there on November 20. As we were landing, the thing that struck me was the bright red color of the dirt. I'd say it is even redder than Moab, Utah, and that's pretty red! Also, I was surprised at all of the plants, bushes, and short trees that covered the land. I thought it would be more barren.

The walking "trail" around the rock.

Morgan and I got our rental car and headed out in the rain. Yes, rain. Lots of it. Never-ending (seriously). And it was kind of chilly. But we were in the middle of nowhere, and darn it, we were still going to walk around the rock. So we did the six mile hike in the pouring rain. At some points, we literally had to wade through knee-deep water. But it was worth it. There were hundreds of waterfalls pouring down Uluru, and it was amazing. Apparently only 3% of people get to see Uluru in the rain, so we were lucky. Over the next few days, we didn't always feel that way, but I'll admit it was pretty incredible. And from some searches I've done, some of the pictures we were able to get are pretty rare. My good camera actually got so wet it stopped working for awhile (yikes!), so some of these are actually phone pictures or taken with Morgan's little point and shoot camera.

If you happened upon my blog somehow and want to steal some pictures, please don't. :)

The Aboriginal people still own and live on this land. We actually saw a couple of Aboriginal kids playing around the rock, running barefoot down the path and under a fence (they can go wherever they want!). The visitor's centre had all sorts of interesting information about the history of the land, the food and tools of the Aboriginal people, and their beliefs about Uluru. This is a picture of some rock engravings we found while on our walk.

Green trees in the Outback-who knew?

After our walk, we set up camp in the back of our car (thank goodness we got an upgrade to an SUV!), since the campground at Ayers Rock Resort was flooded. We cooked up some chili and tried to stay dry. Ayers Rock Resort is really the only manmade thing that you can find in the vicinity of Uluru. It's a complex with a campground, cabins, fancier accommodation options, a few touristy stores, a post office, gas station, medical centre, grocery store, a couple of restaurants, etc. The campground was $36 a night (ripoff), but at least we could warm up in the showers and dry a load of soaking wet clothes.

It rained all night, but we slept decently well in the back of the SUV. In the morning, we put on the same pants and raincoats and headed out for our next adventure. Stay tuned for more!

Pranked

My Macbook Pro is not working so well right now. Luckily, I purchased the Apple Care Protection Plan when I bought it a couple of years ago, so it's covered, but I'm waiting on a disk to come in the mail so I can reinstall the entire operating system. Fun. That's why the blog has been quiet lately, and while I'm able to write this post at the moment, I definitely won't be attempting to attach pictures. That's just asking too much.

Zack's dad and stepmom Vickie are in town, and we've been busy driving down the Great Ocean Road and enjoying the Australian Open. There will be posts with pictures when my computer works! In the meanwhile, I'll tell you an amusing story about something that happened to me while I was running home from the gym today.

I was running along St Kilda Beach, excited about almost being home, when a guy standing in front of his car (with the hood up) stopped me. I pulled my headphones out of my ears and he repeated his question, "Do you know much about cars?" I answered, "No, not really...just how to check the oil." Then he asked me to touch this one tube near the engine while he "turned it over." He walked to the side of the car, I touched the tube, and white smoke started puffing out of the engine area. He asked, "What did you do?" and told me to try it again.  Again, white smoke came out, but I kind of knew it was something he was doing over on the side of the car that was causing it.

At this point, two simultaneous thoughts went through my head. 1. This is a prank of some sort. 2. This guy is trying to get me to "break" his car and then he's going to try to blame me and make me pay! He kept saying things like, "You're causing this" and "You have some sort of bad car karma." He told me to do it again, and I told him to do whatever he was doing on the side of the car without me touching the tube. He said that he was just "leaning on the car." At this point, I wasn't going to "incriminate" myself further, so I kind of just stared at him and didn't touch the tube.

Finally he kind of started laughing and revealed that the whole thing was being filmed for PrankTV, a show on ABC or something. He pointed out a few big video cameras in the nearby bushes and had me sign a waiver to be on television. I don't think they'll actually use footage of me, because my reaction wasn't that exciting or extreme, but who knows? It won't be aired until March or April, and I'm sure I'll never actually see the show, but it's amusing to think about anyway.

I watched from a distance for a little while he pranked other people who passed by. He really pumped out the smoke for one guy, who actually took off running (I think he thought the car was going to blow up!). Anyway, that was my entertaining occurrence for the day. It's funny that I was so oblivious to the large cameras that weren't too far away.

Well, my computer has already frozen up twice and had to be restarted four times while writing this post, so I'm going to quit while I can. Hopefully the disk to fix it comes tomorrow!

Cool Coke Cans

The Coca-Cola Company in Australia has been running a new ad campaign lately, where they urge you to "Share a Coke with ______". They've picked 150 of the most common Australian first names and put them on Coke bottles. Zack has one, even though it's spelled "Zach." It's fun to see them on the shelves on the store and find names of people you know, including Justin, Dave, Victoria, etc. There's even a Facebook page dedicated to this ad campaign, complete with individualized songs for each name you can find on a can.

Some of the more interesting (supposedly common) names include Callum, Fadi, Lachlan, Rhys, and Wen. Of course, even with all of those, there is no "Share a Coke with Aubree" can! But before Christmas, you were able to go to a kiosk in Sydney and create your own personalized little Coke can for free. So when Zack was there for work, he got one made for me. Hooray! I think I will keep it forever. How many years until Coke goes bad?!

In late January, they'll be adding 50 more names, including "Bree" and "Audrey." Hey, that's getting closer to Aubree, right? :)