Heat Wave

Well I have been in Australia for 4 whole days and I am dying from the heat!!! Holy cow does it get hot here and it is hot from early in the morning until very late at night.  It hardly cools down ever which is why I think it is so much worse that Montana heat!  Other than the heat though things have been great.  I have been with my host family for 3 days and they are better than I could have dreamed of.  The youngest girl is 9 and full of attitude.  She is always making me laugh and is great entertainment.  The older daughter is 17 and seems so much different that 17 year olds in the states.  For one thing she only recently got her driver's license and it is so much more of a process here.  They these 3 different stages that they have to go through before they can have a free license or adult license.  It is weird to think how easy it was to get my license at 15.

Another large adjustment other than the time has been the grocery stores.  I didn't think that food would be much different over here but it is.  They have many of the same things but even then things taste different.  And simple things like graham crackers and many spices/seasonings are rare to non-existent.  This has really put a damper on my cooking since not only do I have to convert everything to metric but I also have to find substitutes for some basic ingredients! Speaking of damper, today we went to the Camp Oven Festival which is basically like a pioneer days sort of things and I got my first taste of damper which is like a dense bread.  It was neat to see everyone cooking with the camp ovens and there were booths set up which showed how all these people would survive in the outback.  The camp oven is basically a dutch oven and they use it to cook everything over the coals.  I bought a cook book for my dad, so we will see how all this works out, I bet it takes some getting used to.

A camp oven setup 

Herding dog demonstration 

Alrighty well school starts tomorrow and even though it is only 9 pm, I am exhausted! It will be weird walking into a classroom and not seeing all the familiar faces of my Chinook students.  I have to say I really do miss them and can only hope that the Oakey students are as amazing as they were.  I'm sure they will be!