Its been an interesting selection of months, so much has happened, developed, changed moved and altered! Mothers day was over the weekend so i missed you more than usual and suddenly missed when we watched survivor and you or i would make us rice and plain fish and we would eat it out bowls to make us feel like we were in survivor. There has been like A MILLION episodes of survivor now.....anyways, my new favorite thing is master chef, which i doubt you wouldnt love! Any ways! On to all the fun news i seem to have forgotten to mention. Things this side of the ditch are....well.....interesting. I was expecting a warmer friendlier culture from the aussies, and although when you do start getting them to talk they are nice, on a day to day basis they arent the most pleasant, i think its where the Saffers win, WE are just SO friendly and so happy and nice to everyone. I've noticed some funny things about aus and some really NOT so fuuny things. Thier slang is reeeediculous! Servo = Service Station. Mounto = Mountain. Bottelo= Bottle store. Sausage Sizzle = Boerewors Rolls......if something you use every day can have an "O" on it....it will.
Public transport here ROCKS my world! I get this little swipe card, and it gets used for the bus, train and ferry. All of which are clean and wonderful to use and if you feeling lost, just ask and someone is always on hand to send you in the right direction. ALTHOUGH, i clearly have a giant sign on my head that says...."Please talk to me"! Over the last couple of weeks the bus drivers i have had all seem to have these LONG conversations with me. Just recently there was the Bosnian bus driver who had been living in Aus for 10 yrs and he had lived in new zealand before that, and he got out of bosnia because he was a POW and was tortured in a concentration camp and he liked south africa because in the concentration camp the saffers (all colours he ademently mentioned) were the best at hunting and soccer. But in the end he was the only one out of 3000 to survive. Yeah. All this in a bus drive to work. PSYCHO!
The not so nice things about aus though are few and far between but let me tell you, when you find them its pretty upsetting. One of my biggest issues here is the lack of motivation SO many aussies have. SO many are quite happy to live on the dole and think its a RIGHT to be paid by the government. We have house mates and they are a perfect example. Shes 21 with 3 kids and her partner (unmarried) is 27 and both just stay at home and live off governement money. They dont really have goals and aspirations but are pretty happy to settle for using MY tax money to stay at home. Its really frustrating when the entire amount that i get taxed is what they earn in a week and taxing here is NOT shy. For foriegn nationals its almost 48% and you can only work 20hrs a week. So i seriously dont know how some of the students here survive.
Right on to studying....my course is going splendidly! It is facinating and fun and just plain AWESOME!
I have some great subjects this semester....i love how although its a Masters they give you subjects, but instead of exams you write mini-thesis's and then at the end (like your last 6 months) you write your final thesis combining all your subjects....at the moment im focusing on 2 subjects of interest. One is the transboundary river of the Araks which streches from the black sea to the caspian sea and im focusing on the lack of law of that as well as the development of a "new region" though the workings together of the countries that share this river. Then my other one is mining and how mining in sub-saharan africa can eradicate poverty.
I feel like im saving the world :) Although i really want to start focusing my attention over to anything NZ because thats where we planning on ending up.
Now onto the exciting stuff!
The wedding was truely divine! It was small intimate and in the most awesome location! The views were outstanding and ALTHOUGH we got carried away by gigantic mozzies, it was all worth it!
This is my favorite picture in the whole world! The view and the loveliness!
I did miss you terribally on the day, although my new brother-in-laws lady's name was Natalie so made me feel a little like you were there anyways :)
My birthday (like every year for the last 3 years) has been deathly quiet and boring. Didnt do much. But i did get my first warm winter jumper in preperation for NZ from dustin....he rocks and he knows im a big girl when it comes to the cold so warms my side of the bed up for me before bed!
We have been doing alot of beach visiting because the beaches in Queensland are just tooo divine!
(Dustin and our dog missy)
Work wise things are very boring, i have been working part time while studying and mainly doing admin stuff and helping people set up their integrated management systems for environmental stuff and health and safety. its strange to think that here, minimum wage is about 400$ per WEEK! which is about R2100 PER WEEK! and people living on the dol get about 300$ per week. Its slightly insane to think....but then again cost of living is pretty high. For bread and milk you looking at about 10$ which is about R70.....now that is INSANE! but you get used to it. now anything R7 is actually not that expensive.
I was playing and coaching netball, but unfortunately (except for one or 2) the moms were vert clicky and not very pleasant so dropped that and that was also fueled on by the fact that my knee got buggered up in a game. Completely dislocated so time to hang up my sports boots for a while until I can play permenantly in NZ.
Well thats all for now! I hope that filled some of the gaps since i last wrote in January!
All my love!
Nix
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