Auf gehts nach down under!

now that i'm a real aussie surferchick i decided to write an article in english, just because i can, haha!
sorry that you had to wait that long, but since i left umuwa there wasn't much goin on.
we drove for 3 days, 1900 k, it was fuckin hot because the aircon in the car stopped workin, and the landscape changed from red dirt to grass and trees, victoria looks a bit like tuscany in italy...

when we arrived in bendigo, sweaty and tired, i had to meet adams parents - harold and wanda. reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally nice! harold drives trucks and flies little planes to the remote towns and communitys in australia, and wanda owns a laundromat - and she does our washing for free, we get it back dried and (!) folded!!!

in the week before christmas i got to know heaps of adams friends, and finally hist two brothers and their families.
the oldest brother is matt, 37. he lives in an old church with his girlfriend mary and his two daughters, orion, 16, and sierra, 11.
the middle brother ist dave, he is 34. he and his wife donna have 2 kids, indigo, 5, who is a bit of a menace, and oliver, a cute 2year old.

on the 24th, our christmas, we just got takeaway indian food and i opened my parcel from germany (haha! two days with presents for me!!!!), but the real christmas celebrations were on the 25th, christmas day. at 12 o'clock we had a huge lunch at harolds and wandas, turkey, chicken, ham, pastasalad, potatosalad, chips, meatballs, and wandas famous christmas pudding - like a cake, a bit like christstollen, but with a lot of alcohol in it and totally different
we were all full, almost dying, but at 6 we had to got to daves to eat even more - all the leftovers.

christmas here in australia is about family, sure, but mostly about food, a lot of food. on christmas eve they leave beer (!) and cookies for santa clause, and when the kids are asleep the parents drink the beer and eat the cookies and leave tracks to make it look like santa was there. in the morning the kids wake up, run to the tree, open all their presents and go and wake their parents up - they don't sit around the tree and open the presents together like we do... that's a bit sad. i got heaps of presents, even though i'm that far away from my family, i can't complain!

the next week i tried to get a job, gave millions of resumes to millions of shops, but it seems like bendigo doesn't like me - anyway,i love it! beautiful old houses with lacework on the balconys, trees, lakes, a nice shopping mall, a big aquatic center where i try to do my 25 laps every day (i'm pretty good at it, really motivated! and i'm gettin even better now that i stopped smoking!!! must be sick...) and the supermarket is pretty near to our place - only the fuckin steep hill is a pain in the ass when you go by bike

our house is 2 storey, and we've got a big garden and a big shed where adam works on his car - he's building a drawer-system for the trunk, so we can store all our clothes and food while we're travelling.
it's really hot here, and the first floor is insulated pretty bad and there's no aircon, so we moved our bed downstairs last week and sleep in the kitchen/living room which is a lot cooler.

on new years eve we went to bens place, adams best friend. his parents must be fucking rich, they've got a pool and a fucking tennis court, and the house looks a bit like hugh hefners playboy mansion. and i'm not exaggerating!

we had a big barbie, and a lot of alcohol. aaaaaaaah that was bad. and new years day was even worse, as we had bloodymary foer breakfast.
i got a nice sms in the morning: "i'm passing this txt on 2 u because it worked for me. i have found inner peace. the way 2 do this i to finish the things u start. i looked around this morning and saw the things i had started.....so i finished.....the vodka, the baileys, some red wine, the icecream an the valium. u have no fucking idea how peaceful i feel now! pass this to anyone u think might need a bit of peace in their lives! happy new year!

aaaaah, i love it. and that's what we did, and it was bad. very bad. two days later we were sober and fit enough to go back home

and now the best part: last weekend we drove to ocean grove, a little cute surfertown on the victorian coast (3 1/2 hours drive, nothing for australia...) and visited adams mate darren, his wife jodie and their daughter lilah blue (the boys were at the grandparents). after 10 minutes my new name was schultzi (like a fat german guy in a british tvshow) and after we went swimming, had fish and chips, watched a movie, slept, got woken up by lilah jumping on our bellies and went to a market, darren took us surfing. he collects surfboards (and swords...), they are everywhere in his house, so he had one for me, too. the waves weren't exactly big, but i managed to fall of the board a lot. a few times i was able to stand up and look reasonably cool, but those attempts ended in even worse bails and the surfboard hit my head, and the headache kinda spoiled the fun. but anyway, it was a great first-surf-day because it made me a "real aussie surfer chick". yiiiiihaaaaaaa!

the next day we went to torquay, another surftown, where i bought this beeeeeeea-uuuuuuu-tiiiii-full dress for ridicoulous 30 bucks. what a grat trip!

now that we are back adams working on the car, and i'm planning to clean the house which i'm going to do...later. as i don't have a job i have a lot of free time. but that's going to change...

on the 13th i'm flying to cairns!!!! meet claudi again, and do some fruitpicking to make shitloads of money. i'm going to stay for 4 weeks, and when i get back to bendigo and adams back from his trip to queensland to work for his best mate, too, we're going to pack up everything and head to perth - with a few surfstops on the way.

and there's good news for all of you crying all the time - i'm coming back in april!!!!
only for 3 weeks, but better than nothing, huh???

hope you understood everything!

anna

ps: pictures follow in the next couple of days!