Cheers

Hello from the other side of the world! Michelle and I are at the halfway point of our two-week vacation in Australia. It's been amazing and we promise to have some pictures and video up on the blog, Facebook, and/or YouTube hopefully not too long after we get back.

So what have we done so far? A lot of relaxing and enjoying the company of our wonderful friends Alicia and Dan and their adorable daughter Sophie. We've kind of been soaking up the local sights and culture without going tourist crazy...we took a beautiful walk in a subtropical rainforest at Mount Glorious on one day, went for lunch at a beautiful beach on another, and yesterday I almost went skydiving. Unfortunately it rained, which kind of ruins that, so that's been rescheduled for Thursday. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

Of course the real fun of Australia is the people, who are just as friendly and lovely as Canadians without being so annoyingly polite all the time. We've been picking our friends' brains for all the linguistic differences; we have successfully put the pram in the boot rather than putting the stroller in the trunk. I, personally, am in love with the idea of replacing nearly any form of Hello, Goodbye, or Thanks with a simple, "Cheers." I may be saying Cheers for a while after getting home. It will be annoying.

I've also successfully driven on the left-hand side of the road. Have you ever done it? It's strange, but not exactly difficult. It's about as hard as you probably think it would be...as long as you're paying attention, you'll do fine. The steering wheel is on the other side of the car, so it's not really like you're going to forget where you are. The challenge isn't really to keep from forgetting and drifting back to wrong side into oncoming traffic. No, as John Travolta so wisely said, it's the little differences. Your most common blunder when you first drive in Australia will be that you will turn on your wipers when you mean to signal a left turn. You will do this several times before you really catch on. When you actually make the left turn, it will not feel as weird as you might think to turn into the near lane rather than the far one; the real challenge will be to look the right way to make sure no one is coming. You'll be looking to your left and in the near lane, then to your right in the far lane, and then you'll feel like an idiot when you realize it's the other way. Of course, if no one's coming it won't really matter, and if someone is you'll realize the mistake in time, so there's a good chance you won't do anything unsafe, but still. It's the little things that get you. I also found that I have no sense whatsoever of where the car ends on my left side. When I'm driving in Canada I know exactly where the right side of my car is and how to keep it in my lane. You'd think you could translate this pretty easily to the mirror opposite, but it just doesn't happen automatically. My left wheel keeps drifting on to the shoulder if I'm not paying attention. I'm so used to the car's left side being pretty much six inches to my left rather than four feet.

Anyway, that's life in Australia so far. We miss our kids but we know they had a blast this week with Granny Kapp. She flies home to Minnesota tomorrow and the kids will spend Week Two with Nana Lori. Many heartfelt thanks to both our moms from Michelle and me!

Or should I say, mums.