The end...sry friends =(

Alright Blog Followers, I have some sad news...I'm surrendering blogging. =( I'm so sorry to disappoint you but I just can't keep up and I'm still so far behind. Since my last post I've been up to soo much that I don't even know where to begin. I'm even behind at posting pictures...Also, Jayme's computer broke and she had to send it home so we're sharing now which leaves less time for blogging...so it's a combination of everything really.
I lose my internet in my apartment in a week anyway so it would have happened sooner or later...But when I get home I'll see about typing up my 'bed side' journal and posting that. Sorry for the disappointing news, but please know that I'm having too much fun and taking too many pictures. (Which is another reason I have no time to blog.) Can't wait to see you all in a month! Take care. Cheers!

Somewhere in Between

Monday 2/15
Enjoyed a long morning run, worked late at SO, and then met up with the gang at the Woolshed next door =)

Tuesday 2/16
Worked, grocery shopped, and made a wonderful dinner. Hung out with Caty, Timmy, Jamie down the road at a restaurant/bar then went for an evening run.

Wednesday 2/17
Ben and I broke up. Survived work by slacking off all day, and got some nice pics of the sunset at Glenelg. Went to the Sunset Bar with everyone after work. Enjoyed my free drinks and the company of my new friends. Learned how to play pool Aussie style and then headed home…

Thursday 2/18
Woke up, eyes still a bit swollen (sexy)…such in a daze I remember thinking, did that really happen yesterday??? Survived what seemed like the longest day at SO and then it was the WEEKEND!
Jayme had intentions to head to the beach after work but got lazy and decided that the invite to join Dan and Simon for dinner instead. We ended up going to the Havelock and I had my very first chicken schnitzel-pretty good actually-and then headed home.

Sorry this week was a bit boring to read, for those of you keeping up but I promise it’ll get better;) Miss you all and hope all is well.

Too busy to blog?

HOLY MOLY! I forgot to blog for a WEEK…I’m really sorry to keep you all waiting;) Good thing I’ve been keeping up with my bedside journal to help me recap a little bit of last week.

Tuesday 2/9

Planned on going grocery shopping after work, but after getting done an hour early and cuz it was so hot (96*F) we had a change of heart and headed to the beach! So we texted everyone, and ended up meeting up with Caty, Dan and Adrian. I had to purchase sunblock on the way to the beach cuz I had already ran out of my two bottles I brought from home! Pretty crazy, that’ s like a bottle a week!

So Jayme and I just chilled until everyone else came, then we played some intense beach volleyball;) We also watched this magic dude in the street for a bit and found that entertaining. We grabbed a bit to eat from a Mexican restaurant down in Glenelg…I had tacos and they were huge! Jumped on the tram and headed home…

Wednesday 2/10

Got out of work early again today=) and actually made it to the grocery store and market this time. That was the first time we made it to the market and were in awe of all the fresh fruits and vegetables! We went to the botanic gardens for movie in the park and watched ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on the big screen. It was really sweet, the walk there was 40 minutes and I was in flip-flops and a dress so when I got home I was pooped and my feet were sore=bed time for sharshar.

Thursday 2/11

Work was all about planning and getting things ready for the cocktail party that night. All busy work but didn’t seem to mind it, now that we knew we were actually invited=) Jayme and I got everything ready by 3 and got to go home for a bit to ‘freshin’ up’ and then we had to head back to the Hilton. Dan was in the area so we stopped and said a quick but friendly hello.

We were a little late for the start of the cocktail party but our boss Jenny, didn’t seem to notice. JAYME AND I HAD A BLAST AT THE COCKTAIL PARTY! Part of that could have come from the fact that there was all the free wine and apps you could handle! We met a new supervisor named Kay and she introduced us to some pretty rich and important people who, like everyone else here, loved our American accents. We also met the singer who sings the Special Olympics song, she was amazing! Turns out she’s getting big in the US and is writing songs from Lady Gaga! Crazy. Anyway, if you didn’t guess it, got a little tipsy, headed home and then went to see ‘Valentine’s Day’ with the girls. Nothing makes me wanna leave this beautiful city of Adelaide, keeping busy and having fun;)

Friday 2/12

Jayme and I slept in…felt soooo wonderful to catch up! Then we got ready and went to the Botanic Gardens with the girls, it was really beautiful and I took tons of pictures of all the plants and flowers, surprised? …Didn’t think so=) Since we’re addicted to sushi and not cooking we had that for dinner. Showered and had some shots and met up with our Adelaide buddies. We ended up at the Garden of Unearthly Delights and saw some neat/different things…This guy was standing on top of this ladder and he juggled a knife, fire and an apple-I was pretty amazed. We also checked out this trailer full of creepy puppets, most of them were naked and doing random things-soo weird! Then we headed back to Hindley Street, Dan jumped on the tram to head home and the rest of ended up at the “Bear and Bull” chilled there till we couldn’t stay awake any longer and then us girls headed home.

Saturday 2/13

Slept in again, oops not sorry…went for a wonderful long blade (rollerblade.) Showered, tram’ed it to Glenelg, did some shopping and then headed to the beach. Just chillin at the beach soaking up the sun is what I do best theses days=) Angela finally got here! She’s from MN but goes to school in WI…so I knew she’d be a ball of fun! We all went to HQ (dance club) that night and had a blast…only danced for four hours that night, lol. Enough said.

Sunday 2/14

Not 100%...wondering how I’m going to keep up with the night life of Australia for the next couple months if I’m struggling after two weeks. Ha, but we made it to the beach and then headed to Adrian’s to just chill and watch a movie. On this day at the beach I wrote about all the things I love about Adelaide…here are just a few=)

1- Being able to breathe! No allergies over here and I LOVE IT

2- warm weather, duh!

3- Day-old sushi, after 6pm if we walk down a block or two they’re always selling the sushi from the day for super cheap!

4- Tram ride straight to the beach

5- Living on Hindley Street, right in the middle of everything

6- Sunsets

7- Working out along the river, either early morning or late evening

8- Iced coffee…etc

My first wkend in Adelaide

Well, hello long weekend, I thought you’d never come! Friday= rollerblade day…we just decided that is the law while we’re here. Jayme and I went for a real long rollerblade this morning and it felt amazing! Kinda weird to be rollerblading in February, but I’m def not complaining.

Afterward, we showered, Jayme got her haircut and we were finally off to the beach to get some sun! We met this dude on the tram, named Trezor he was French and decided to come hang with us at the beach with his buddy. Kinda random, but like I said before-Jayme and I were searching for friends. After about all the sun we could stand, we ditched our new friends for shopping and had gelati! Genius idea, both Jayme and I found a dress and then we headed back home.

Amanda, Jayme’s friend/neighbor had been to Adelaide last year and told us that Friday nights people go the “the stag.” So guess where we went? Yup, you got it. Before having our id’s checked the bouncers guessed that we were from Canada because of our accents. They scanned them in some machine and we were on our way. Once inside, these guys walk by shouting US states, “Virginia, California!” Ha, we’re like umm hi…and what are you doing? They go we heard you guys in line, where are you from? This is when we met our best buds, Adrian and Daniel. We informed them that they were both wrong and that Jayme and I were from Minnesota/Wisconsin. Julie from Virginia, ended up going home early and Jayme and I went to a lower-key bar (meaning less techno) with Adrian and Dan. It was pretty chill and since both of the guys had previously been to the US, we just made fun of all the different things between the US and Australia. I taught them awkward turtle and the word sketchy and they told us things to avoid and places to go around here. Overall, a pretty fair exchange and a great time. Jayme and I made it home and were completely sober but thankful for a few more friends=) We also told the guys that we were having a bit of trouble finding g/f’s to chill with while in Aussie and they said that they would introduce us to some of their friends! Basically, we’d had heaps of friends before the weekend was over, at least we hoped so! Lol

Saturday!!! This morning I had skype dates with practically everyone, it was great and much needed after my long week-ish away. Jayme made me go running at like noon and we almost died of heat stroke and then headed to the beach. The weather was great and there were tons of people there! They were even giving people camel rides around the boardwalk, it was hilarious. I snuck a picture with one of the camels when he was getting his tan on. I go to Jayme, I wanna get a picture with it…she’s like ok just go over by it…so I did and right before Jayme took the picture the camel turned his head and looked directly at Jayme like he was ready for his close up! So funny, we laughed for about 5 mins=) (You’ll have to check out her pics to see it!)

Anyway, we did a little more shopping down by Glenelg and I found a new suit, it was a bit of a splurge but worth it since I’ll prolly wear it every day for the next 3 months…we headed back home a bit early and got ready to go out. Caty’s friend from her internship, Nathan, took us (Jayme, Caty, Julie and I) out with his friends on Saturday night. We went to Kimmy’s place to chill and pre-drink as they call it, then went to London and then finally to Red Square. We all had heaps of fun and danced until 3am…only 5 hours of consecutive dancing-crazyyyy. Got to our apartment building (which is right across the street from Red Square) and decided to wonder back out for a snack…finally came home and skyped Steph before hitting the hay…I seriously had the time of my life that night and think that it’ll be hard to top.

Sunday funday, not so fun when you’re not 100%, sleepy and sore! Since we danced so much the night before Jayme canceled “boot camp with Jayme” so thankfully no working out for me. Lynda (Dr. T’s friend) took us to the beach with her car and we met up with Nathan and his friends, Adrian and Dan. It wasn’t anything jazzy…I was just chillin and getting my tan on. Later Lynda took us home and we (Caty, Jayme and I) ended up going back to Glenelg to catch the sunset…well we missed it by about 15 minutes so we got ice cream instead and just hung out by the beach and talked about life. We caught the last tram back to Adelaide and went to bed immediately after we got back…nothing like getting good nights sleep Sunday night before work/internship on Monday;)

2/8

Woke up still feeling tired this morning, even after like 10 hours of sleep…boot camp with Jayme resumed and I was dying of heat the whole time. We ran around 9 am and it was 89*F and HUMID…but beautiful. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I kind-of lost my voice on Saturday night and it still hadn’t come back to full throttle like I had hoped…So sqeak (aka me) and Jayme got ready for our internship and made it there by noon. We did heaps of fun stuff like make nametags for this huge conference/cocktail party this Thursday night and added more stuff to the media folder, fixed our HAP Passport and attended the big Monday night meeting. (Mind you that we would have much rather been home watching the SuperBowl)

Jayme and I hurried home to cook some grub and grabbed, day’s end sushi on the way. Enjoyed, scratch that, inhaled dinner and then hung out with Caty…after deciding to not doing anything we stayed home and caught up on laundry and blogging. Just snatched my laundry outta the dryer and I’m now I’m gonna get some shut-eye. Hope all is well with ya’ll. Are you guys reading this still? Lol Comment or something if you are…kinda feel like I’m talking to myself on here…but really I am. Haha-Night family and friends, love you long time.

Thisty Thursday?

2/4

Good morning to me, woke up to discover an email stating that I was awarded a scholarship from the Foundation of Asia Pacific Education…yeah get it Shar! So that pretty much made my day.

Also, making my day was the fact that Thursday is our last day of work for the week. Together Jayme and I finished reformatting that huge binder (which looks great by the way) and we got going on a project for the Healthy Athletes Program (or HAP)! We’re both liking the office more and more, we’re getting to know the people and the time seems to be speeding by. And now that we’ll be doing more for the HAP, so it’ll be more beneficial for our life, I guess you could say. We are given a 45-minute lunch break where we go to the middle of the mall (its outside) and eat our lunch and people watch. Sometimes we wonder around but we usually don’t go too far from work.

Along with finishing the Media Release binder we also finished the HAP Passport for the athletes. Afterward, we asked Jen what else there was to do and she said, “there wasn’t anything at the moment, so I’ll just give you girls and early mark for the day.” AKA –go home early!!! (woot-woot) It was quarter past 3 and we were only leaving 45 minutes early but it felt so good to peace out for our long weekend a little early. We also learned that we will be attending the committee meeting on Monday evenings so from now on we don’t have to be in until noon on Mondays, but then we’ll work thru till 7. All sounded peachy to me!

Soooo after our “early mark” on Thursday we headed down to the beach…but unfortunately is was bloody windy- like sooo windy we could barely stand= no sun for us. (But the waves looked sweet) We ended up shopping around in the sweet shops down in Glenelg and catchin the tram back to Adelaide for some din din with the other girls. We decided on Chinese and I order Mongolian beef-which was served on a patter shaped like a cow! Just sayin’… Jayme and I indulged in some house wine-that was so delicious we ordered another bottle. Ooops, not sorry.

After dinner, Jayme and I were feeling pretty jazzy and the other girls, not so much. Turns out I have an internal GPS, cuz even though my inhibitions were a bit impaired…I was able to lead the girls in the right direction->home! Quoting Jayme: “Drunk or sober, I'd follow Shar any day...she always knows where she's going!" lol We put our leftovers in the fridge and headed back out. Met a friend in the lift that was from Ecuador his name was Nik-o-las and he was going out for a beer too. So we followed him to the bar he was headed and became friends on the way. We hung out with Nik-o-las and his buddy from New Zealand and then headed home. Nothing too jazzy for a Thursday night, but the girls and I were kinda glad we finally had some friends other than each other. =)

2/1/2010 - 2/3/2010

Haven’t been too busy these last couple days and I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing so I’m just gonna jamble them together=)

Monday: Went for a morning run down by the river (AKA our backyard) before work. Got situated with apartment contract/keys and such, all weekend my elevator (or lift as they would call it) key hadn’t been working so it was nice to get that taken care of. First day on the job was BORRRRRRRRRING. Sad but true…Jayme and I read some tons of information about the Special Olympics, met lots of people whom I can only recognize not name and reformatted some papers. The computers in the office were donated so they’re real fast;) and growl when you save anything or make too many clicks in a small amount of time. Kinda funny and hard to get used to but it’s getting better=) Learned how to answer phones on the job and enjoyed my lunch hour sitting in the sun, people watching by the mall. After work Jayme and I went to Target where we thought we’d find an Ethernet cord and a converter but found neither. Turns out that Target here kinda sucks…they seriously only carry clothes (nice ones) but that’s it. So then we were directed to a electronic store where we found both of the things we needed. Came home and made dinner, debated whether to purchase internet through the building and after deciding that Jayme and I would share the service and switch our new cords we bought for one long one. So we went to McDonalds again (only one block away) and checked our necessities of the World Wide Web=)

By morning on Tuesday we had decided that, we were each going to get our own internet plan for the first month and that we wouldn’t need to go switch our cords. (All this internet business was such a problem, if you didn’t notice by now) Either way, we ran before work (It’s like boot camp with Jayme around here) and survived a second day on the job. I worked on sending out invites to very rich people for a cocktail fundraiser next week and Jayme reorganized this huge binder of media releases. Nothing we both couldn’t handle…had lunch on a bench near work where we enjoyed our people watching and such. Afterward had dinner at home, and went for a walk in the evening. Julie and Caty joined us on our adventure and we ended up finding some pubs and clubs mentioned in our “tourist” books. We stationed at some Elephant Pub and I was buzzing after one beer…sad but true. After our one beverage we wandered back to our apartment and did a little internet browsing-I was deprived of it for a week so I needed to catch up on my virtual life;) Then it was time for nigh-night

Wednesday was pretty much the same story, except no running for Shar this morning. I had my internet and I wanted to play=) Work was fine, things seem to be getting better and Jayme and I almost finished that binder. I forgot to mention that yesterday on our evening stroll, I found this sushi place selling “days end” sushi…and since we pass like 5 sushi places on the way to work every day I was craving it like WOAH! =) So I ended up having that for lunch today and was able to sneak on fb to chat with BL this morning…these were the two things that made my day. After work we found our way to the grocery store near by our apartment, Coles, and got a few more snacks for our lunches and some more fresh fruit and veggies! Took the tram back to our place, (cuz it’s free in the city) and listened to Jayme about where we were going and ended up backtracking about 4 blocks…note to self: Jayme may look like she knows where she’s going but really doesn’t. (jk love you girl;) Had a wonderful date with BL over Skype which was just what I needed to cure my bit of homesickness that was lurking into my life. Jayme and I made stir-fry for dinner and then went for another evening stroll with the girls. Found the library, a museum, and some other jazzy things and found our way back home. I finally caught up on blogging (yay) I am soooooooooooooo glad that tomorrow is Thursday because it’s our last day of the week meaning tomorrow is really FRIDAY! WOOT-WOOT!

The past two days it’s been real humid and cloudy so we haven’t been to the beach since Saturday but tomorrow it’s supposed to be real nice and since we don’t have a bedtime to maintain tomorrow night we are definitely going to beach!!! Well sweet dreams my friends, gotta sleep and wake up for my date with BL tomorrow morning before work. Love you all and hope you’re keepin’ up with me!

Cheers,
Shar

1/31/2010...Last day of Jan and the first full day in Adelaide

I woke up to the sound of Jayme rummaging around the apartment this morning, so I decided I should get up and join her. Come to find out she walked down the block to the mini mart and got us some bananas and granola bars=) So we enjoyed our mini breakfast and decided to go for a run. By this time is was around 9:30am and it was warm. I was sweating my butt off but it felt soo good to get outside and exercise=) Afterward walked the long way home to sight see and figure out what was surrounding our neighborhood. Turns out there is two strip clubs down one block to the right of our apartment building (funny)…and after our walk we decided we’re kind of in the ghetto.

Anyway, we showered and waited for Lynda to call. Lynda did ring us a little after 11 and she took us out shopping for groceries and necessities we needed for our apartment. After what seemed like the longest day of shopping ever, Jayme and I returned home with our jazzy new things and got situated. Later Jayme and I took a little adventure-aka wondered around to get familiar with our new town…we found Target and the mall and at the time that seemed like all that mattered;) Then stopped into McDonalds to try and use their free internet for a bit and failed miserably. We ended up going right around 5pm (when everyone gets off work) and there were too many people in there and the connection was soooooooo slow, so we ditched and went back to our place to make some grub.

After making a delicious meal at home in our apartment, Lynda and her two girls stopped by to drop off the blow dryer and straightener they were letting us borrow for the next three months. While visiting with them we discovered 3 things: 1) Jayme and I had our clocks set a half hour behind and would have totally been late for work the next day had Lynda not mentioned that Adelaide was a half hour difference from Brisbane. 2) The Super Bowl is on Monday at like ten in the morning next week and 3) We think Australians have sweet ascents but they feel the same about how we talk…interesting? I thought so=) Anyway, gotta get some sleep big first day at the brand new Australian internship tomorrow!

Cheers,

Shar