The Best & Worst of OZ!!!

Okay. It is now 3:08 in the morning in Australia and we leave the country at 3:30pm the afternoon. This is my last post on the continent of Australia - and sorry that I've updated all four of these last posts at the same time. It just didn't happen for me before now, so we'll see if I can stay awake long enough to finish this list in its entirety. After hours of thoughtful deliberating on the ride back from Sydney, we, Jonathan & Amy Hook, have agreed on our top ten lists. We'll start with the "worsts" first...

The Ten Least Desirable Things About Australia (according to the Hooks)

10. Vegemite. Okay, we know it's a bit lame. No one forced Vegemite down our throats or anything. We were just having a hard time coming up with #10 and thought we'd give our opinion on the soy sauce-type mixture that people like to spread on toast around here.

9. Lack of Drip Coffee. Although the espresso here in Oz is great, the availability of drip coffee is a huge bummer. I love lattes & flat whites, but I wish the plain ole drip was an option as well. It's quite a bit cheaper too. Those lattes hurt the budget & the presence of the filtered variety could have helped out a bit!

8. Drivers & Their Pedestrian Etiquette. I think it may say somewhere in the law books here that drivers should yield to pedestrians, but one trip across the street will prove otherwise. Without fail, we'd hear the vrooms of the engines as cars passed instead of stopping for us. We justified their actions by saying they were just trying to pass faster so we could cross sooner:).

7. Aussie Foul Mouths. I think that during our time in Australia we heard more profanity on the streets, in the shops, and on the beach than in our entire lives combined. Seriously.

6. Unfamiliar Groceries. Going to the grocery store was fun at first, and I do appreciate some of the new foods over here, but it was also a nightmare at times! I can't tell you how many nice old ladies I stopped in the aisles when I couldn't find a certain product (black beans, egg noodles, half & half, whipped cream, corn chips, molasses, the Mexican section - which doesn't really exist, cornmeal, corn syrup, etc!).

5. Australian Tax Law. I didn't earn much of an income to begin with, so when I found out a week ago that as a non-resident I owe 29% of my income back to the Australian government because I'm a foreigner, I was not pleased in the least!

4. Closing Early. I really like the idea of shops closing early. All the employees go home to their families and snuggle up by the fireplace for some hot cocoa and a bedtime story. Or...I guess it's Oz. They go home to a cup of tea and biscuits or scones. Anyways, we just hated that there was nowhere to go after five pm when all the shops closed. We miss the coffee shops in Denver that stay open late!

3. Internet/Phones. Both of these services are a bit sketchy (or dodgy, they would say) in Oz. Everyone has to pay so much for Internet (even wireless - you pay per download) and therefore no coffee shops offer free access. Similarly, our cell phone plan here was pretty bogus. Even Martin & Romana, on their family plan, cannot talk to each other for more than five minutes or they pay 40cents/minute. Ridiculous, I know!

2. Poor Road Signs. This one is near and dear to Jonathan's heart right now especially since his $250 ticket (thus the reason we slept in the car, as explained in our Sydney blog)! It might not be entirely fair to blame the road signs in Oz, but we have noticed considerably different (that's a euphemism) signs when it comes to clarity, size, and the degree to which they give advanced notice.

1. Expensive EVERYTHING. Or almost everything. We had to get over this difference pretty quickly or we'd go crazy. We did the best we could, but it was sure hard not to wince each time we checked out at the grocery store or paid at a restaurant. It would have been better if the exchange rate were a bit more in our favor (the American dollar reached an all-time low while we were here and continues to decline!) A couple random prices we saw recently (Maybelline mascara: $14.30, one powerbar: $4.52, vitamin water: $3.48. You don't believe me, do you? Here's a picture:

Now that you are probably thinking that we don't like Australia, we'd better follow-up with all our FAVORITE things.

The Ten MOST AMAZING Things About Australia (according to the Hooks)

10. Muesli & Pineapple. It's a tie. We love muesli for breakfast. It's quick, healthy & delicious and I've been recently inspired by Romana to make it myself, like she does, when we get back to the states. I don't know if it'll be the same. Pineapple is a huge love of ours & we definitely ate our share during our time here, both fresh & frozen in smoothies! Delicious.

9. Friday Night Footy. Almost every Friday night, we'd cozy up to the TV and enjoy a little Australian rugby. Jonathan was hooked right away, both for it's similarities to football (or gridiron, as they call it) and it's sheer insanity. Although we still don't know all the rules, we've improved in our understanding of the game. Going to the live match in Brisbane was a definite highlight as well.

8. Seafood. Coming from the land-locked state of Colorado, it has been wonderful to be close to the ocean and experience fresh & delicious seafood. We've enjoyed our fish & chips experiences, our yummy restaurant seafood selections, and our amazing crab day!

7. McDonald's 50 Cent Cones. Yes, you read correctly. A soft-serve vanilla ice cream cone is 50 cents (it was only 30 cents in Sydney!!!). With food prices sky-rocketing all over the place, the cone has somehow come through unscathed:). We never could figure out how everything else on the McDonald's menu was much more expensive than in the states, while the cone was so cheap. We weren't complaining though. I have no idea how many of these cones we consumed during our four months here! :)

6. Wildlife. It has been so fun seeing the abundance of wildlife Australia has to offer. In the wild we've seen koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, snakes, lizards, geckos, dolphins, kookaburras, dingos, and countless other creatures that we can't even begin to name (plus many more animals in the zoo like the wombat, another personal favorite). There is nothing quite like waking up each morning to the crazy calls of the birds in the rainforests surrounding us! (ironically, as I write this the first kookaburra has awoken. It's 4am)

5. BBQs. Aussies truly do know how to BBQ. They NEVER "throw a little shrimp on the barbie" because they only throw prawns (we were set straight on this right away). We've especially loved the clean, efficient, accessible BBQs on all the beaches and parks. They are everywhere and people use them all the time. We will miss that.

4. Scooter Rides. We have loved scooting around the coast in our little adventuremobile. Although it was a bit of a nightmare on rainy days, it was so glorious to zip along the coastal roads while feeling the wind on our faces, smelling the salty sea air and soaking up the sun:).

3. Surfing/Swimming/Reading. This is a large category, I know, but it's basically "beach activities". Jonathan fell in love with surfing during our time here and it was really fun to watch him improve (except on those four-hour days when I couldn't catch his attention to make him come in:)!). Swimming in the ocean was just heaven (most of the time), and reading was a huge highlight for both of us. I wanted to make "reading Harry Potter" a category of its own, but Jonathan said it wasn't very "Australian" and I suppose he's right. We both read the entire series for the first time while over here (in about a month and a half) and it was a serious highlight!

2. The Beach! This category, unlike the last, is just the general presence of the beach. It's glorious! Granted, you can't really separate the beach from the beach activities listed above, but it was just too big a category to all fit together. Since neither of us have lived near a beach before, we loved every second of sunsets, walks along it, beach sports, and just the general beach atmosphere.

1. Relationships/GoodLife. As great as everything else was in the country/continent of Australia, relationships easily top the list. We have been absolutely blown away by the amazing people we've met here and their kindness, generosity & loving nature (above is a scanned copy of the front of the church bulletin last week - a funny picture of our home group). It's impossible to think about our time here apart from these relationships. We'll certainly come away from this experience with a bigger view of the world and of the body of Christ. We only pray that our paths will cross again someday with all the people we've come to know and love!

Wow. It's 4:40 and I am heading to bed for a few hours at least. I hope that my strategy worked & that I sleep through the entire plane ride!! We'll be on American soil in just a few long hours.