High Five Rejection

Going out in Glen Elg - we went back to the same place we had been last Saturday and saw Tom and Rosey playing music again. It was tons of fun for sure! A bunch of Tyler's coworkers and their wives came out with us too. During one of their breaks, Tyler and I went out to just hang out with Tom for a bit and I put my hand up to give him a high five for the good show. And he said "um no - I don't do that." I guess he says its "too American" of a thing to do so he wasn't doing it to be rude - he just never does high fives. Instead he normally just shakes hands - and we were like "isn't that American too - haha!". I tried to give some of his friends high fives too just to get a more complete sampling of the Australian reaction to a high five and then generally kinda hesitated too - haha - maybe just cuz Tom was there - but who knows. We had never even thought of it that way - Crazy!

Happy 4th of July!

Some of Tyler's coworkers and their wives who I've met a few times had a barbecue for the 4th of July on Saturday! It was also a going away party for Susan and Scott who are heading back to St. Louis after living out here for the last 6 months. It was fun for sure. Tyler and I got there fashionably late after the Gorge and then a brewery and then some wine tasting and then a train not running that we had been planning on taking and having to take the bus instead. Some of the people were even leaving already by the time that we got there. (It had started at 2 but we didn't get there until 5 - oops.) Some of the people stayed and hung out for quite awhile though so that was fun. Then some of us went out in Glen Elg for a bit again....
(This was the cake I had made - topping compliments of my Grandma's normal 4th of July cake)

Making Friends with a Monkey

Saturday morning we headed up to Adelaide Hills to go to a wildlife park that we had heard about. It was awesome! The pics definitely tell the stories best so just take a look at those on my picasa account. I think the best part was definitely when Tyler made friends with a little monkey. He kept smiling at the monkey and the monkey just kept "smiling" back. He was definitely opening his mouth and showing his teeth. Sometimes it would run behind another monkey and peek around and smile at Tyler from behind the other monkey. And when Tyler would lean to the side - so would the monkey! Haha! Awesome!

Feeling at Home

Friday Sandra and I went to the Tea Tree Plaza which is basically a mall in a suburb of Adelaide. We took the bus out there. It ran on a special road just for buses so that's pretty nice that's its completely unaffected by the traffic. The mall was exactly the same as any mall at home. It had a lot of the same stores or at least equivalent type stores. It had a couple large department stores - although I didn't recognize their names - at the end. It had a food court with normal fast food including KFC and McDonalds and Gloria Jeans. (BTW - in case I haven't mentioned it before - there are NO Starbucks in Adelaide - at least not that I've found yet - but Gloria Jeans are everywhere.)
Then Friday night Tyler and I went out to a really really good steak restaurant called Cos. It was so delicious. I had a fillet with a gorgonzola topping - amazing! Plus - the service was great as well! They even asked us how our food was! This was the first place in Adelaide that I've actually been impressed with the service - so we HAD to tip :)

Adelaide Old Gaol

So I haven't written in a few days and usually I just let this go and write about the most recent thing but really - I'm thinking it might just be interesting for me to read someday when I'm old and grey too so I'm going to write a couple different posts about a few of the different things that we've encountered this weekend (and later last week).

Thursday I went to the Old Adelaide Gaol. This is actually the Old English spelling of "jail" but is pronounced the same way as jail. It had been in existence for around 100 years but they closed it down in the late 70s-ish. Basically they had run out of money so the people were moved to other locations.

Being a chilly rainy Thursday afternoon, there weren't many people there at all. In fact - there was really just one other couple walking around and it was pretty big grounds so I didn't see them too much. I was getting freaked out reading all the stories of the crazy criminals that were in there and all the hangings and other executions that had been done there. The escapes are not comforting to think about either. Definitely not a fan! So yeah - I didn't really read all the stories but what I did read was interesting...

Shrimp on the Barbie

Last night Tyler and I decided to try to cook our own shrimp on the barbie. I had always thought this was an Australian food - probably influenced in my mind by Outback Steakhouse - but I haven't seen it on a single menu down here. So we decided to cook our own. I had found a recipe online that required marinating the shrimp for 5 hours beforehand so I did that in the afternoon. Then I walked over to the train station to pick up Tyler so we could walk back together, stopped for a hh, and then got home to get the grill ready and stuff. We only needed to cook the shrimp for like 2 minutes on each side so it went super fast but I think it turned out pretty good! Yay! :)

Speaking of Barbie - can I also mention other Aussie words that they just add "ie" to on the end: Sunnies, brekkie, bikey (as in "bikie gangs" aka biker gangs), bities, mozzie, shonky, tazie

And non-ie words: bonzor! (wow!), shiela (girl), bushwalking

GNO

Last night I got together with a bunch of the "American Ex-pats" wives for a Girls' Night Out dinner. It was fun for sure. There were 7 other girls including Sandra who I've mentioned before. I also already knew Susan and Rose because I had met them for lunch a few weeks ago. One of the other girls has been here with her family for 3 years and she's leaving later this week to head up to Newcastle - a city a bit north of Sydney - for another year. She was sad to leave Adelaide cuz they loved it here so much. Susan is leaving on Sunday with her family to head back to St. Louis - where they are from. And another of the ladies just got here 5 weeks ago so she's pretty new. It was interesting talking to them and about how they were adjusting their families to moving to Australia and getting ready to move them back. It sounded like their kids all loved it here so that's good.