So you know it will be an interesting day when you are awakened to the sound of the fire alarms ringing, you throw some clothes on and the firemen are outside your building walking around trying to determine what the problem is and all the occupants are hanging out on the balconies trying to figure out if they need to go find the stairwells or stay put!! And the little Red Hat Society ladies are all hanging their heads over the edges trying to yell at each other from the different floors!!! What a trip!!! Lesson learned….have a quick set of clothes very handy to throw on …..
Our day began with that rude awakening and we decided that we needed to just kind of go with the flow after that! We ate breakfast and I enjoyed reading the article in the paper pertaining to the pope’s visit to Sydney for World Youth Day. A brothel (yes, you read correctly), was offering a 10 % discounts to people associated with World Youth Day and the owner had hired 5 extra workers and business had doubled since the event began. Not sure quite what that means and they weren’t able to say that it was the “pilgrims” who were using the services but that business had indeed increased. This is bringing a lot of media and extra folks into the area I guess so perhaps that is who is taking advantage of the slashed rates??? Who knows. I just found it an interesting article.
We set out for our day of shopping and spent another entire day looking at beds and washing machines and dryers. I am very weary!!! We did select a bedroom suite at the one store we went to last week after getting some prices quoted at another store. They were able to match our prices and we felt that we had a decent deal—and I loved the salesgirl—she put up with us for 2 weeks in a row and we had a great time. We have made a name for ourselves without trying I think because when we stopped off at the realtors’ office for Chris to give them a copy of his license the girl said “Oh you are the Americans!!!” with a grin!!! Oh well. Anyway, our new set is made of Tasmanian oak—looks Australian and will be a nice set to have!! That was about all the decisions we could make today but I think we have narrowed it down to another big store where they will work deals with us on a lot of the small appliances and washer and dryer that we want to get. It is all a little bit overwhelming to be buying all this stuff and I have to think and make a list of exactly what I want right off that bat. We really need to be able to go back to the house and measure spaces and then it will narrow things down a bit.
We made it to the mall at 3:30 and grabbed something to eat in the food court since it would close at 4!!!! The cool thing in the malls (what we call a mall at least) is that everyone has trolleys (shopping carts) inside the mall so they have these “travelators” which are escalator things with no steps that go up into the mall so you can take your trolleys loaded on them to your cars. I was going to take a picture but then it was just way too weird to take pictures in a shopping center with all these people around. Parking garages/lots are called car parks and they are the most difficult things to park in!!! There really is not a lot of space and there are concrete posts everywhere and for some reason they seem much worse than parking garages in the states—not sure why–maybe it is the whole right handed drive thing or something.
We came home and decided we had hit the wall and collapsed. This shopping stuff is wearing us out!!! I guess it is just our age?????? Or that we have so many things to choose and decide and everything is spread out…I don’t know. Anyway…I am closing for now….tired…so tired….
