Community Day

How yah goin’ mates? All is well here.

Word of the day:
Hungry Jack’s = Burger King
Bunjy = rather than binge
The AustraLearn people reminded us that we will have to use Australian spelling for when we write papers for school. This could be pretty tricky! However, besides the towns (Cairns, Melbourne, Brisbane) Australians generally spell everything the way they say it. Instead of a “Super Market” they have “Supa Markets.” It’s pretty funny.

Last night we went to a steakhouse and had supper there. We had to walk in the rain but luckily it was only about a 5 minute walk. And I must say warm rain is much better than the 6 inches of snow that I hear Dallas has right now! The dinner was pretty good. They’re feeding us well. I really want pizza though! Good thing that’s tomorrow night’s dinner!

Today we went out to do community service. Australia has these birds called cassowaries and they are kind of like an ostrich. They’re really beautiful birds; if you have facebook I posted a photo of one. The cassowaries are going extinct for a number of reasons…one of them being that dogs like to chase them, they do not have many of the trees that they eat left, and another is because they’re pretty dumb birds and often run out into the middle of the road. The birds eat a fruit from a certain tree which allows that tree to reproduce. A number of species depend on that particular tree for life and so it is very important that ¹ the trees are able to reproduce and ² the cassowaries have the trees to feed off of. So we went out and planted a number of those trees. The place where we went to do this was a beautiful place that was completely environmental and efficient with their supplies. Some of the people had the pleasure of getting to mix koala poop that they use as fertilizer. I unfortunately didn’t get to do this job. Two of the other Tassie girls, Amy and Stacey, and I labeled plants and had a very interesting chat with the wife of one of the gardeners. We talked a lot about religion and politics (the two things we were told not to bring up but oh well, it’s all good!) and where the world is headed. It was very interesting.
After that we went to lunch at shenanigans’ where a lot of people tried a crocodile burger but I decided just to be safe and opt out for a beef burger! Maybe some other day when I haven’t been planting trees all morning will I work up the courage to order some crocodile.
We then walked over to Ricky’s Market which is a huge farmers market. There were so many amazing fruits there. A lot of the people had samples set out and it was absolutely amazing how fresh it tasted. Every Saturday Hobart has a market like that; I’m very much looking forward to it. The fruit and vegetables were really cheap and were much better than anything you could buy in a store. There was a huge fruit that was the color and shape of a pear but it had bumps on it like a pinecone and it was about the size of a watermelon…apparently it was some kind of mix between passion fruit and pineapple. It sounded really good but there weren’t any samples of that out.

Being here I’ve realized just how wasteful Americans truly are. Here they have two buttons on the toilet to flush…one for a #1 and the other for a #2. They’re very efficient with their water and food. I feel so much healthier being here. The food is so fresh, we walk almost everywhere and I drink waters because cokes are about $4 for one glass!!! Haha. It’s just amazing to see how other people live and to think what we could be doing differently.

Tonight for dinner we have another free night so I think we are going to walk down to the lagoon for a swim and just grab a sandwich or something on the way. Tomorrow is snorkeling day at the Great Barrier Reef and we have to be at breakfast at 6:30 so we are going to have a chill night tonight! I’ll post again tomorrow after the reef! Thanks for following!