The number of things in Australia with completely different names is sometimes amazing. We all speak English, right? Apparently we don't. We find ourselves trying to define things for them until they spit out their word for that item or we have to ask for their definition of some word we see on a menu. Examples:
- Tomato sauce with sugar is catsup, right? No, that's tomato sauce. Makes one wonder what tomato sauce without sugar is, hmmm.
- Green peppers are capsicum (oh yeah, I was just about to say that!).
- Flat white is coffee with milk.
- Long black is black coffee.
- Short black is black coffee without all the water as in a concentrated shot of espresso (ordered this thinking I was getting a small cup of coffee and barely suppressed my giggles when I saw just how "small" it was).
- Serviettes are napkins
- Beetroot are beets (sometimes it's an easy guess).
They do like their beetroot here. I had a beetroot salad the other night. It featured three kinds of beetroot (purple, orange, and one called a target beetroot) and aside from the goat cheese and hazelnuts, not much else. It was actually quite good and must have looked inviting, too, because Eric was suddenly offering to share some of his food (no ulterior motive there!). My bite of his kingfish was tasty and I think he would have accepted as much of my beetroot salad as I was willing to share which wasn't much!
Another thing Australians are quite fond of is pumpkin. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin in their stew, pumpkin alone, and strangely, not a pumpkin pie to be found. We had a very nice time eating dinner at the home of a couple from the church on Monday. Ren and Glynis were excellent hosts and fixed a nice home-cooked Australian dinner for us. We had a roasted chicken with potatoes, pumpkin (of course), onions, sweet potatoes, stuffing, peas, and green beans. For dessert Glynis fixed a traditional Australian dish called Pavlova. It has a creamy inside, a slightly crisp meringue outside, and fruit on top. It was delicious. We can't wait to get our place so we can have them over and fix them some of our fare.
The next thing on our plate, ahem, is to shop for appliances. We've got to get a refrigerator, washer, dryer, and TV. As soon as we accomplish that we have to start populating a completely empty kitchen. I can just see our shopping cart (I mean trolley) at "Big W" now. Filled to overflowing with toaster, mixer, plates, bowls, glasses, utensils, pots and pans, can opener, knives, measuring cups and spoons, mixing spoons, and, are you kidding me?! I can't even list it all. If there's room I guess we'll get some food, too. Okay, two trolleys might be better.
A.J. will be arriving the 16th. I managed to navigate the Boeing Australia system to get his Boeing-provided airline ticket (I love my company!) bought. I can't wait for him to get here.
Eric walked out to Nobby's Head today. It has the lighthouse into the Newcastle harbor. The view out there was "cool bananas" as he could see all of Stockton Beach (it's 20 miles long) and then further on he could see the headlands into the Port Stephens bay where we will be living. It was a bit more of a walk than he thought so he was a little tuckered out afterward.
We've heard that dolphins swim by our home-to-be in the morning. We can't wait to see this for ourselves. The whales having been heading up the coast and we saw one when we were here last month, but we haven't had a chance to spend any time looking since we got here permanently.
The weather has been much better since the storm. It has been quite sunny with temperatures as low as 5 (that's 41 in Fahrenheit) in the morning and in the high teens (60s) in the afternoon. That one day aside, so far I love their winter weather!
Guess I'd best wrap this up before it turns into a book. Take care and know that we miss you all!
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