I Come From a Land Down Under!

K....I'm trying to catch up. All my posts wont be this long, promise!

Friday, June 6, 2008

Today was my first day that I got to go onsite to one of our clients places and do my first install. This may seem super cool, but all it really means is I take a taxi to the site and let suppliers in to deliver furniture, or install shelves, etc... and make sure that everything is okay with the delivery. It did make me feel important if nothing else. It was for an office building for a graphic design company and they were making the entry into the office into an art gallery, so it was an interesting space to see installed. It is cool just seeing all the work come together, even if I wasn’t there for this project. I was pretty much back and fourth 3 times throughout the day so that made the day go faster as well.

(This is the section that will be the art gallery)

That night Wendy and I and some other girls from our ward took a train up to Campbelltown to attend the first night of the big YSA convention in Sydney which happened to be a dance. We got to Campbelltown and it didn’t take long to realize we were gonna have to pay for a cab, and to make it worse, there were 5 girls and they wouldn’t let us squeeze into one, so we had to pay for two separate cabs.

(Waiting for the train, seemed like most of the night was spent either waiting or traveling on some sort of public transportation.)

As soon as we saw the church Wendy and I got so excited because it felt like we were back home. I really did just love it. It was like known territory. I felt safe and happy and excited all at the same time. We walked into the church and I was very surprised at how many people that were there. It was awesome to see the youth in our church all the way over in Australia.

Another noteworthy event was the food table at the dance. Wendy and I walked in, wide eyed and ready for a chow down, like a lion ready to pounce the item he selected to hunt. We literally acted like we had never seen real food, I think people were worried. We really are just so frugal with our money that it was probably hilarious if anyone caught onto our amazement. They had chicken wings of many flavors (ok, maybe just two), and we really were so excited to get some meat in our diet. (FYI: If I haven’t mentioned prior to this, meat here is so expensive. It is supposedly one of the most expensive countries for meat so we have a valid reason to be obstaining from purchasing it.)

(Some Aussie boys we got our groove on with)

It ended up being a lot of fun. We got to know our ward a bit more, and met some cool people. The dance got over at 12 and we had to make our way back to Sydney, which if it was going to be as easy as getting there would’ve been no problem. The issue was that the trains stop running late at night, and we had no way to even get to the bus station. Plus, a train had taken 1 ½ hours so this distance on a bus that would stop every 5 minutes would take ages!

(Some kool kats from our ward)

We ended up calling for a taxi which was sad because this trip was getting so pricey. When the parking lot was pretty much emptied and the leaders were trying to kick us out we started walking to see if the taxis were parked somewhere and some wonderful lady came up to us wondering if we had rides home. When she discovered we were waiting for taxis she would have none of that! She rounded up some of the guys from her ward and made them promise to get us to the bus station.

We split into two different cars and although no one really knew how to get to the bus we began our journey. Somehow the two cars got separated and the first car called saying they had found the bus but that it was leaving and they would try to make it stall. We rushed over only to catch it parked on a one way rode so the driver of our car switched into reverse and frantically got us to the door of the bus. When we frantically scrambled onto the bus the driver let all of us on without paying a toll. I still don’t know why, but was indeed grateful.



The adventures were not completely over. The ride home did indeed take a much longer time than the train had. By the time we got to Town Hall, which was just another stop on our journey it was like 3:30 am. Now, from there we had two options; take a taxi home, or walk to the bus stop that was like 10 minutes away and hope that the bus would come in a reasonable amount of time. We chose the latter, being the frugal gals we were and soon discovered that the bus didn’t come for another 20 minutes.



Now if you think, I’m so glad they finally got home, think again. That bus just dropped us at Bondi Junction where we had to catch a taxi anyway because we were too exhausted to walk the 20 minutes. In the end it was almost 5 am and I felt like I had just had the worst night of my life. I felt literally miserable and was dreading the fact that I had to make that same journey Saturday afternoon.

(This is how happy we were to see our flat, I honestly had started believing that being home would permanently be an object of my imagination)