We meet at last

July 13, 2011


The bus ride yesterday was a lot longer than I thought it would be, and it didn’t help that we left almost a half hour late. When we stopped for lunch at noon with two hours of driving left, I realized we would not be arriving between 1 and 2 p.m. but I had no way of relaying this information to Jane. Even if I had been able to borrow someone’s phone, I hadn’t planned ahead enough to write down her number. 

After stopping the bus to let a random man get on and pass out papers, we finally pulled up to Rotary International at about 3:20. According to the guy who showed us our rooms I had just barely missed her. Before I had a chance to get to call her (they have phones in the rooms!), she called the guy’s cell phone. He handed it to me and I started apologizing profusely. Even though Jane told me not to worry about it, I still felt awful.

While I was waiting for Jane to come back, a girl from the U.S. walked up and started a conversation. I'm so used to the Australian accent by now, I thought she sounded funny! A silly voice in the back of my mind wondered if I would recognize Jane, but it was soon shushed when she showed up looking as pretty as I remembered. We hugged and chatted to the other girl for a little bit before throwing my stuff in a car as petite as she is and driving a few minutes to her house. I met one of two cats, two birds, three dogs, two guinea pigs, her sister Clair, and her mom, who had bought a whole bunch of vegan food just for me, before we went back to JCU and picked up Nicole, the other girl from AustraLearn who is in Rotary, to go grocery shopping since that is the only dorm that doesn’t have a meal plan.

She seems to find this position comfy.

It was mind boggling to try to find reasonable prices at the store. First of all, a lot of the food is a lot different from what I’m used to, so I don’t even have a comparable price from the States in my head. Second, some of the food that is the same may not have a similar cost anyway if it is harder to obtain. For example, bananas are very expensive right now because Cyclone Yasi damaged many of the plants in February. Third, the Australian and American dollar don’t match perfectly, and finally, prices are per kilogram instead of pound so a lot of extra math is involved for conversions. Besides that, I currently have a minuscule amount of cash and neither my credit nor my debit card works, so I was really glad I hadn’t planned to buy anything. 

For dinner Clair and her dad made two kinds of homemade french fries to go with stuffed pastries similar to samosas that have an Australian name I can’t remember. Jane invited Nicole over for dinner, and she graciously accepted, so the six of us sat around the table talking until Nicole's severe cat allergy started to act up. She mentioned earlier that in the past it had put her in the hospital, so I tried to calmly but urgently let Jane know we needed to take her back to the dorm. I couldn’t relax until we left because I kept expecting Nicole to stop breathing at any minute. Thankfully she didn’t, and she made it to her room safely. Because it gets dark so much earlier here, I get tired very early, so after we returned I didn't have enough energy to do anything but take a shower and watch an Australian soap opera with Jane and her mom before going to bed.

I have to get the recipe for these.