Monday

Monday dawned a gloomy, rainy day but it didn't start to rain until later in the afternoon. The internet still isn't working and we have a call into the property management to get it fixed but I don't know how long that will take so for now I am writing in WordPad and I will transfer it over once Kyle gets home tomorrow with a niffty little device called a dongal. It lets us connect to the internet through a company called Telstra. Not having internet is causing me to worry. The kids can't do their school work, we can't contact anyone through email or Skype or Facebook, can't find out when the church youth activities for the kids take place during the week and I can't take care of our bills back in Texas without it. All I can do is wait and hope things move quickly to get it fixed.

Today I wanted to try to find a library. Kyle looked on the internet, yesterday when it was working, and found four in between our house and the beach. Today I couldn't find the exact address because of the non-working internet so I looked in the out-dated phone book sitting on one of our shelves. It only told me the street name, Bank. Looking on the map I could see Bank Street wasn't far from where we live on Dorcas so we started out. We found it is only about a 10 minute walk from our house to the library. We passed over some train tracks that look like they came right out of a scene from the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes". We passed an elementary school, which is called primary school. The kids were wearing uniforms and looked so cute. Then we passed a park and we walked through that and found a basketball hoop. Jacob was excited about that. We also passed a police station and shortly after that Analee spotted the library. We were passing right in front of it but I didn't see it because I was looking across the street at the cafes and shops. The library used to be a post office and is very small. Because the company Kyle is consulting for is paying all of our bills to live here we don't have anything to prove our address is where we live. Because of that, we can only check out two items each at a time. Once we can give proof of residence we can check out as many items as we want and renew as many times as we want unless the item is wanted by someone else. There are also four other libraries where we can use our cards. I haven't found those yet but we can borrow and return items to any of them. The librarian was very helpful but I didn't get her name. The kids decided to get a couple of movies instead of books. They got "The Thief Lord" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". We discovered that the movies we brought from America won't work here because each region has its own code to allow DVDs to work in that region only. We do have our portable DVD player so that will suffice but with the library movies we can use the house DVD player and watch them on the TV.

When we first got here to Melbourne, Jeff and Sheila took us to Coles grocery store so we could get a few things to tide us over until we recovered from jetlag and could stock up properly. Since I didn't have a chance to make a proper grocery list we had very limited food and Sam is such a picky eater that today he only ate breakfast. The only things we had for lunch were couscous and spaghetti, neither of which he will give a chance and had only a few Ritz crackers for a snack. He was very hungry come dinner time. I made chicken, rice and mixed vegetables of which he only ate chicken but he ate 2 1/2 pieces. After dinner, Kyle and I went to CostCo to stock up better. The store closed at 8:30 and by the time we found our way there we had 45 minutes left. It was enough time and we got plenty of food. I still need to go back to Coles to get some of the items CostCo didn't have but that can wait.

Getting back home was an adventure all its own. We still need a GPS to get around and on top of not knowing our way around we have to learn to drive on the left side of the street. We took as much time to get back home as we did to get to the store and do the shopping combined and then some. We saw the other side of the bay, the side we don't live on, drove through a tunnel that seemed like it would never end and drove down a couple of streets twice. Roundabouts are everywhere and are not easy for me to understand. The more I am a passenger in the car, the more scared I am to get behind the wheel. Kyle says he is sure I will be behind the wheel but so far I am just fine being a passenger or walking. We can walk to the beach and the library and a farmer's market and two parks and maybe even Coles if I can find it. We'll see just how necessary it is for me to drive. I do have the thought that learning to drive in Australia is an opportunity and an experience I can't pass up but right now my fear is greater than that thought.