Hi All!!! We are all settled into our little apartment here in Townsville overlooking the Ross River! We had a great trip over—-a delay coming out of Los Angeles (big surprise considering how messed up their international terminal is) and had to take a later flight into Townsville from Brisbane since we did not make it through customs and security in time to make our original flight. This trip was much better than the trip down in March—we had 4 pieces of luggage each so we got carts to lug it which was hugely helpful. Of course in Detroit my suitcase was over 70 pounds so I had to transfer some stuff to Chris’ duffles in order to get it under the 70 pounds. They are VERY strict on that now—-we had to pay for overweight bags and I had to pay for an extra bag since I was not Northwest Elite but other than that we did okay. Our vow is that when we fly back to the USA we will limit ourselves to one carry on backpack and one checked bag! Makes life much simpler but when you are moving you don’t have a lot of options–you have to take that much luggage.
We had good flights over—watched movies and Chris slept a bit though I didn’t really get much shut eye on the LA to Brisbane flight—just couldn’t get to sleep I guess. Food was good, service was good and though the flight was full and we had a seat mate it was not bad at all. We were definitely glad to touch down in Townsville and meet Chris’ boss. He was so helpful and drove our rental car to the apartment building for us so we would not have to do that right off the bat.
The apartment will be perfect for the limited time we hope to be in it—it has a nice kitchen and even has a little washer/dryer combo which i am using now—-will tell you how that works out—I just don’t get how a washer can be a dryer too but we will see!!! Of course it is small but gee whiz–what else am I going to be doing??? LOL
We found out today was an agricultural holiday in Townsville so the banks are closed and a lot of businesses are closed so we can’t do our bank stuff today yet. We both woke up about 4 and then Chris wanted to get going early so we ate a leisurely breakfast on Palmer Street and then walked to the grocery store (Cole’s) to pick up some stuff for the pantry. Sadly missing—a real coffee maker…..we will have to remedy that soon. They use a lot of instant coffee but yet I saw whole beans for sale in Coles so they have to have coffee machines like we have in the States.
Two things we have learned already today: when they say hash mark they mean our # sign. And when we asked to take our leftovers home we could not take Chris’ omelet because it had meat in it…….not quite sure what that is all about but we will learn. I am just going to ask a lot of questions.
We paid to have internet in the apartment but there is a cap on usage I think so I may not be able to linger like I am used to. Bummer. I want to upload some pictures to the blog too but I will do that later after I take some worthwhile ones!!!
Chris will go into CSR tomorrow and get all his IT stuff done and paperwork done and then probably take the afternoon to get banking done and some other stuff. I think he wants to attempt to do a test drive later today—YIKES! His rental car is a Mitsibishi something and hopefully we will learn this driving thing easily but it is still kind of scary, you know???? Chris will be VERY busy for the next 6 months especially since they had a big accident in one of the plants last week which took the plant down for awhile. It is going to be very interesting to say the least but he is really excited and so am I!
Okay, enough blogging for now! I will keep you posted on what is going on so tune in!! And remember that we are 14 hours ahead of the eastern time zone so I will always be writing when it is your tomorrow!! LOL