"Real Life"

Okay, so last post was a bit of a rant. I get that. To top that I have been on an even bigger emotional rampage since I wrote that... I know hard to believe(insert extreme sarcasm here! - sidebar: Pete says I have TERRIBLE sarcasm) ....but believe it. I am not going to go down that path or fill any of you in on the circumstances to my black-hole of despair because as my mother cautioned me about my first post.

IMMIGRATION COULD READ MY BLOG!
NO INFORMATION IS SAFE.
THE "MAN" IS EVERYWHERE.

-sidebar#2: I could be sitting here with a colander on my head and really have gone off my rocker and none of you would ever know... "Is she just writing that she is crazy or has she ACTUALLY gone crazy".... You'll never know :)

So during my now four months in Australia what have I been doing in "Real Life"

April = Arrival.

Ultimate relaxing and housewifery... normally this would be contradictory statement however when you have nothing but time to bike around Maroochydore, setup our apartment and clean it becomes quite relaxing. There is something about hanging clothes out in the yard on the metal, swirly, laundry thing that is enjoyable. Even after four months I am still quite content to be doing laundry!!

May = Job hunting among other things.

I started job hunting once the relaxation felt complete.

We hung out with Pete's friends, had a few BBQ's went out for dinner and hung out with the family.

On top of all that I also started a friend hunt. Now let me tell you this was WEIRD. Growing up in Summerland (as most of you will know) I have known and had my friends for a very long time. So the idea of making new friends without using school, work or university to create them was a completely foreign concept to me. What did I do you ask, well, I tried facebook....

I joined a facebook group called "Girls on the Coast" and essentially put a person ad out.... it hit the points, 27, Canada, new, moved, no friends, coffee.

AND THENNNNNN

My post got hijacked by another chick wanting to make friends. So that made things even more awkward...

In the end I went on two lady dates... both went alright and I ended up seeing the girls a few more times after that, but this all happened the week before I got my job so friendship took the back burner.

I am going to try and re-tackle the whole making friends as an adult thing once the visa debacle is over.

June/July/August = Life with a job.

Family camping trip out to the beautiful spot Pete's brother is getting married at in October.

DRAG RACES.... when I saw the FASTEST EVER TIME in Australia... which rumbled my heart with these massive, long, skinny, hot wheels looking things called Top Fuel-er 's.

Multiple hikes on multiple mountains all with amazing views that are just so different to hiking in Canada.

Beach days, books, colouring, soccer games, beach walks, runs(every so often, should be more often but hey...) watching footy (which is rugby but not...and they are all very sensitive about it).

And now the newest addition to our life, is intermittent fasting. We are on week three and feeling pretty good. What is it you might ask... well for two days out of every week (we are doing Monday and Wednesdays) we eat a very limited intake of calories. For myself it is 500, Pete 600, the day before and day after we try and stretch our non eating time to about 17 hours. So this looks like....

Sunday night we have a late dinner and don't eat till lunch on Monday (approx 17 hours of fasting)  Monday has our limited calorie intake so a 200 calorie lunch. Then Monday night we have an early dinner pf about 300 calories, so we can eat at about 10:30 the next day which gives us the other 17 hour fast. It has been fun and challenging and I will keep you in the loop on how it goes. There is a documentary by Michael Mosley if you want to check out more. 

Anyway, that is about it in my life at the moment. Pete is doing well with TAFE and our tiny little home is still suiting us just fine. The weather is starting to warm up a bit and all I have been told is how great Australian springtime is, so I'll let you know if all the hype is true. 

But it is currently a non fasting night so I am going to eat a whole bunch of stir fry. 

Xo till next time,
-B  

                                          An Evening Beach Walk View

                                         Our Cozy Little Home

                                          A Crazy Loud Top Fuel-er

                                          The Fastest Run :) 4.54 seconds

Moving to Australia

First off.... Welcome back or welcome for the first time, this is a blog I had when I was living as an Au Pair in Germany back in 2012. I had it so that I could be lazy and not have to constantly update the loving people in my life. Instead they could read it if they wanted to find out what I had been up to or.....(the better option) they could ignore it entirely and save themselves from grammatical errors and bad spelling.

I have giving the blog a bit of a facelift but the same rules apply, endure my terrible spelling and grammar to find what is happening in my dull life, or ignore my writing like the plague.

***WARNING***post might be on the lengthy side as I decided to resurrect this blog after I have been in Australia for 3 months and 20 whole days already.

AND GUESS WHAT??!! I have NOT seen one flippin' kangaroo!

Alright lets get on with it.

As soon as I got here (Maroochydore, QLD) I was able to move straight into our little granny flat.  Thankfully Pete did all the ground work in the apartment hunting and I got off stress free.  It is cute and big enough for Pete and I but guests and privacy are 100% out of the question.... our internet is terrible due to the 5-7 other people living in the main house and the only way we can get cable is by having the TV antenna in the bathroom on the towel rack. Other than that..its clean and cozy (after I went on a 3 day ant killing spree)We are in a pretty prime location, we can walk just about anywhere and bike to the beach in 10 minutes.

After about a week of settling in I started the second visa approving job hunt... and because of the lovely cyclone that hit Queensland just before I arrived, strawberry season was pushed back 3/4 weeks. With multiple trips to farms around the coast (most of which had no one around that spoke english) and constantly checking gumtree(like castanet) and emailing everything I could I had no luck. Pete's sister in-law was actually the one that found me the job, it is in Elimba which is a 40 minute drive in good traffic from our home in Maroochydore and I got the job packing strawberries for .17cents a punnet. At first we thought "oh man not a problem" "once you get use to it you'll be able to make 22-24 dollars an hour easy, that's only 2.5 punnets a minute" BOY LET ME TELL YOU WERE WE EVER WRONG!!!

I have been on the farm 33 days now (I started June 14th but the season isn't busy enough with the cyclone and the strange winter weather so we only ever work 2 days on then 1 day off and repeat) IT IS AWFUL. I am not even breaking even with cost of living, plus NO ONE speaks english or sorry let me correct myself no one chooses to speak english so I probably only say a handful of words on any given day. Pete and I had read all of these blogs before I got this job to find out the best way to do my regional work for my second year visa and they all say "stick with it" "you'll get better after 3/4 weeks" "you'll meet strange and wonderful people"...... so far.... this has all been false. Yet in comparison to some stories you hear from further up north I am lucky.  The only positive I had was that each shitty day I went through was one day closer to my second year visa. NOW THIS ISN'T EVEN THE CASE! To save this post from becoming way longer than it already is. I'll sum it up.

-Might not get second visa because I am on a piece rate contract any day worked under minimum wage might not count as one of my 88 days.
-Called Immigration (or...the wonderful Anna did!) Said I should be fine, they dont look at pay as long as I have all the correct paper work.
-Talked to boss, he said it will be cutting it close but I should be okay. (I need to be earning between 15-17$ per hour to have the days count. I'd say about 75% of my days are in the bracket)
-Every blog out there says something different.
-No one knows what is really going on.....

All leading to... drum roll please......Brenna FREAKING OUT!
---and those of you that know me, know I am EMOTIONAL so poor Pete has been graciously putting up with a monster!

All this said and done I am now in a state of preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.

And that my friends has been my life this far in Australia.


UPDATE:::::

Don't get me wrong it is BEAUTIFUL,
Pete's family is wonderful,
going to/on the Mountains, Beaches, Hikes, Fishing, Picnc's and all other outings has all been AWESOME.

Just had to vent and be a big baby about the mundane majority of my current situation.

                                                  Strawberry Packing.

                                                  Top of Mount Cooroora.


Until next time,
-B