Best News All Day

Janssen's always running around blogging about all the money she saves. Well, take this, Janssen:

I took out a small loan to pay for school my freshman year. According to the terms of the loan, interest would not accrue until six months after I finished school. That six months ended at the end of February. I paid down about half the loan in December and then paid the rest about a week before we moved to Dunedin.

Last week when I was in Australia, my co-worker brought me some mail from Eric's parents' house (among other things), and in it was a letter from my loan authority that said my payment could not be applied to the account because they were unable to locate the bank account. I was pretty frustrated. I mean, now I'd accrued like $30 in interest! And that's $30 I could spend at a mediocre Mexican restaurant in Dunedin!

I went online to make the payment and basically free myself of the loan, but the screen said my balance was $00.00. What? So I called, and I talked to a really wonderful guy in the office and explained to him the situation.

And you know what he told me? The loan authority randomly picks people who pay their bills on time and forgives them the balance of their loan. And I was selected.

That's right. My loan office just paid my balance of $634! And all I had to do was type my bank account incorrectly.

Now, what to do with that money?

Michelle's Footraces

Michelle (Eric's sister) is a fast runner, and we've gotten to watch her race a few times. Usually we would try to watch her if she was running in Provo, and once we got to see her run in San Diego. She has been to nationals a few times, but we've never been able to go, even though we've really wanted to.

This weekend she ran in the 2008 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Fayetville, Arkansas. Fortunately for us, the University of Arkansas broadcast the events live! So, on our Saturday and her Friday, we watched her run in the preliminary 1600m race where she qualified to race in the final with nine other girls.

We also got to see her run in the distance medley with her teammates.

But the most exciting part was watching her race in the finals. We had to go late to church to watch her, but it was totally worth it. We were so excited to be able to watch her race live, and we wish she could have heard our cheers for her!

Way to go, Michelle!

Cafe Del Sol

Last night we went to a Mexican restaurant in town. Honestly, we weren't expecting much because, after all this city, even this whole country for that matter, is not full of Mexicans like the U.S. But, we both really love Mexican food and thought we'd give it a shot.

We were immediately worried when we didn't get any chips and salsa. None. Perhaps you have to pay for it.

I got a little more concerned when Eric told the waitress he would like "Enchiladas Rojos" because it should have been called "Enchiladas RojAS." But, okay, I could deal with that because it's just a typo. No big deal.

And then I realized that most dishes only came with rice. Beans cost extra money. WHAT?

And THEN! They brought our food out. The rice? White, steam rice. Just plain steamed rice.

With all that said, the food was really quite good. Just not Mexican.

It kind of reminded me of my friend who ate at a Chinese restaurant in the middle of a Native American reservation. Sometimes our cravings for ethnic food just can't be met the way we'd like.

Australia Trip

Well, I’m back from my trip to the land down under, which, from my perspective is actually the land up above. Well, really, the land west above. But you get the idea. I’m back, and I’m eager to report on my business trip.

For whatever reason, the person who booked our flights was unable to get me a flight to Adelaide without some sort of overnight layover for me, which was rather annoying since it added a night to my journey, but alas. So, I flew to Aukland on Tuesday night. After a bit of confusion (like calling a hotel and asking them to come get me since I had just arrived, but the clerk said I didn’t have a reservation at that hotel, and I was completely perplexed and worried about what I was going to do since the domestic terminal in the airport actually closes! But then I realized I had called the wrong hotel. And this was the longest parenthetical explanation ever!) I arrived safely at my hotel outside of Aukland. I travelled there via a taxi, and I had a nice chat with the Samoan taxi driver. About seven hours later, I left the hotel to catch my flight to Adelaide.

At the airport in Adelaide I saw my old roommate’s doppelganger. (Thanks for the word, Allison.) This girl looked exactly like my old roommate, Priscilla. I can’t tell you how confused I was when I saw her at the counter. All I could think was, “But Priscilla lives in Canada, not Aukland! And why won’t she say hello to me? Surely she has seen and recognized me!” It even crossed my mind that perhaps Priscilla had witnessed a mob-sponsored crime in Canada and was in the witness protection program, and that was why she couldn’t say hello to me.

The flight to Adelaide was about five hours, and I really wasn’t expecting such a long flight. I got to see August Rush on the plane, and it was not very good. Extraordinarily contrived and predictable. I could go for the theme of the mother missing her child, but the idea of a one-night stand producing that sort of longing and affection in a couple was completely ridiculous. Also, I find Robin Williams pretty annoying these days.

After I met my co-workers at the airport we headed to our hotel where we caught up on a bit of rest, and then we went to dinner with our Australian business partner, Alan, and his wife, Anthea. I had a delightful seafood dish. I love red snapper!

On Thursday we met with Alan for about seven hours. It was one of the longest days in the entire world. Also, we tried to find breakfast at the “deli” next door to Alan’s office, and that is where I had the worst donut of my life. Just awful. That night we ate at a Thai restaurant, and I was rather disappointed with my food there as well.

On Friday we had our first presentation at the South Australia State Library. The presentation went quite well, but we decided to revamp it for future presentations, once we had a better idea about our audience and what they were hoping to learn from our presentation.

That night we had a nice picnic dinner with Alan and his family. It was great to get to know them a little better and to relax in the warm Adelaide evening.

On Saturday we flew to Sydney. We arrived there a little before noon. After we dropped off our luggage at the hotel, we hit the tourist sites. We took a ferry ride over to Manly Beach, and we spent a little bit of time swimming in the ocean. I got a little bit sunburned, but not badly enough to peel. On the ferry ride (both ways) we made sure to take lots of photos of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and of course, the Sydney Opera House. The harbour there is really beautiful, and I hope to have time in the future to go back and spend more time. Sydney has a great transportation system, and you can ride all the ferries, buses and trains (within the inner city limits) for only $16 per day. It’s really a cheap way to get around- much cheaper than renting a car.

That night we went to The Rocks, which is an older part of the city that has been kept up quite nicely. We ate at a little Italian place, and then we headed back to our hotel.

The following day we went to the Hyde Park Branch in Sydney. It was an interesting mixture of people, with oodles of missionaries and tourists. In fact, I would say the branch is comprised mostly of tourists and missionaries. But, you know, the Church is true everywhere, so we had great lessons and great speakers.

That night Alan flew into Sydney, so we met up with him and grabbed a bite to eat at Darling Harbour, which was just a short walk from our hotel. We were glad that Alan suggested we go there because the environment was just lovely, and we would have completely missed were it not for Alan. For dinner, I ate a filet of barramundi fish, which reminded me a lot of Tilapia. My colleague, Jonathan, had kangaroo, and he let me have a bite. I didn’t care for it, and I was glad I didn’t order it.

On Monday we gave our second presentation. We had completely revamped it based on the feedback (or lack thereof) and questions from our presentation in Adelaide. Our group was very talkative and responsive, and we felt like we got a lot of our questions answered and a lot of feedback, which is really what we were going for.

After the presentation and our little follow-up meetings we had a bit of time to sit and chat with the locals about kangaroos, koalas and opossums. One lady that worked at the society library said a parton came in once refusing to put her bags in the lockers. When questioned, she told them she had a joey in her bag that she was taking care of because the mother had been hit by a car. So, the society librarian let her hang the bag on the back of the door in her office. Mostly the joey just slept in the bottom of the bag, but he would pop his head out every time the phone rang.

They also told us about what a nuisance opossums are- how much they smell, how territorial they are, how they burrow into your attic and such. And because opossums are protected in Australia, people aren’t allowed to remove them from their nesting sites.

After that and yet another meeting, we started our drive to Canberra. Ordinarily that is only about a three-hour drive, but because of traffic it took us about four hours to get to Canberra.

Alan’s distant cousin is the wife of the Finnish Ambassador to Australia, so Alan had arranged for us to meet with them and eat dinner with them. I was a bit out of the loop in the planning of this trip, so I really didn’t understand what this dinner was all about, where it would be or what to expect in general.

As it turns out, we were simply invited to come eat with the Ambassador and his wife in their home. All growing up my mom told me that I needed to have good table manners in case I ever got invited to eat dinner at the White House. I doubt I will ever do that, but I think my dinner at the Ambassador’s house was as close as I’ll ever get.

Seriously. This was a top-notch, multi-course, multi-fork meal. With servants. (What do we call them these days? The meal was the best I ate in Australia. Just terrific! And the conversation was very interesting. As you might expect, the Ambassador and his wife have done quite a bit of travelling, so they have some very interesting perspectives on various parts of the world and politics.

We spent that night in a hotel in Canberra, and the next day we gave our presentation at the National Library in Canberra. It was our smallest group, but they were very interactive and helpful. Following our presentation and lunch with them we headed to the national archives to meet with somebody there. After that we had about an hour to kill before we needed to catch our flight, so we drove around for a bit looking at the embassies and ambassador homes. Then we went to the War Memorial. It is actually a war memorial and a museum, and it was the main highlight in Canberra, which is a capital city without much going on. I’d really like to go back to the War Memorial with Eric and spend some more time in the displays and galleries.

After that, we went to the Canberra airport to catch our flight to Melbourne. From our flight we went straight to our hotel to rest. Yvette and I ordered in for dinner that night because we were just too tired to wander around town to find something. The next day we gave our presentation to our most lively and interactive group of the four. We really appreciated all their kind comments and suggestions. After our presentation, we ate lunch with many of them, and then followed up with small meetings with about four different associations and groups.

That night the four of us grabbed dinner, then I went out with Yvette to see the town a bit more and to help her find trinkets to take back to her kids.

On Thursday we headed to the Melbourne airport to catch our respective flights. I was really pleased that my whole journey would be only about 8 hours, whereas Yvette and Jonathan would need to travel for more than 24 hours to get home. AND they’d have to go back to snow, but I’d get to get to my sunny flat on Tweed Street.

Australia

I'm in Adelaide, but tomorrow I'm going Sydney. We haven't had any time to do anything touristy here. At all. Not any at all.

But hopefully we'll have time to see and do some cool things in Sydney. I'll definitely post any cool pictures I have. Right now I only have pictures of myself giving my presentation, and that's kind of boring.

I'm so tired. So, so tired! Business travel is not as fun as I had hoped.

Garage Saling and Our Branch

Today I went garage saling with some folks in my branch. It was fun!

Kiwis do garage sales in their garages, not on the lawns. That is because the weather here can be quite rainy, so they never plan on holding the sale outside. It also makes for some pretty cramped shopping.

Nonetheless, I prevailed in my shopping endeavors and came home with a $3 iron and $4 crockpot. Hooray!

Also, I am not very good at bargaining. I mean, I really have to work hard to make my self not just pay what is on the sticker. In fact, I often feel like it's rude to barter, even though I know that it is expected of me. That is, when the iron says $5, I feel as though I'm suggesting the iron is perhaps worth less than $5. Makes me feel just awful asking if they'll take my price instead of the one listed. But! I did barter, and I didn't pay sticker prices. Because really, who does that?

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And on a mostly unrelated note, I would just like to put a plug in for the Mornington Branch. Because, we have only been to church twice so far, and we already have friends that we have hung out with!

This is mainly of importance because in one particular ward, which we attended for quite some time, we never really made friends, despite our attempts to do so. It was actually very frustrating for me because I felt like the folks in the ward who owned houses (as opposed to those of us who were renting) felt like they shouldn't even bother to get to know us because we wouldn't be there very long. Well, as it turns out, we were there for over a year, which for us is a long time. And those old-timers missed an opportunity to get to know us. So, really, they blew it. Really, though, I was extremely relieved to move out of that ward because it meant I wouldn't have to come home from church feeling so utterly uncared about.

Ahem.

But in the Mornington Branch, people think, "Wow! A year to get to know you, we better make the most of it!" I hope that one day if I am in a transient ward/branch I will be like the folks in Mornington, and not like those other folks.