A Eulogy In Honor of John's Retirement Money

It's been a slow start, but the 3 day hospital stint is over and I'm back on my feet. Now that the morphine has left my system and I'm seemingly clear-headed, I've been able to start experiencing the trials and tribulations most abroad students face when trying to navigate a completely new life in the foreign country you now call home.

Now I realize what some of you are thinking- "Australia is hardly a foreign experience. They speak English and the only real difference between us is their cool accents and affinity for crocodile hunting."

But you are wrong. There are an excess of adversities I will be facing when living in this country, so I will cite some examples to help you understand.

1. They have no dryers. First world problems, I know. But when you have to hang dry your delicates in front of your three male roommates, it gets awkward.

2. There are seemingly more Asians in Brisbane than white people- I'd like to see you try and communicate with someone who has a half Asian/half Australian accent. It's like I went to Russia- I don't know what anyone is saying.

3.  A kangaroo tried to eat my jacket yesterday. I really like that jacket.

4. The largest Latte I can find on campus is the size of a tall. Is this a joke. I need caffeine people

5. There is WiFi nowhere, and the places that do have it only have limited amounts. Example: The purchase of one Starbucks drink gets you a voucher for 30 minutes of free WiFi. To continue using it after the 30 minutes, you must purchase a new drink. I'm sorry but this just goes against everything I feel Starbucks stands for.

6. Final point which will lead to the heart of this blog post- Ice cream is 4 dollars a scoop. A venti caramel macchiato is $7.50 (compare to $4.50) and a normal caesar salad is $15. WHO CAN AFFORD TO LIVE LIKE THIS?!

My measley savings sure can't, and John's (aka dad's) bank account certainly isn't happy either. Things here are expensive to a whole new level. 

Over the past week I kept a list of everything I have bought to give my parents an example of what the cost of living is like here.  I will highlight some of those items below:

$7.50 - spiral notebook for class
$60 - 18 + card (they will not accept my American license at bars, so I had to buy this to prove I am indeed above 18 years old and able to drink. The woes of looking like a 12 year old)
$10 - Croissant and Latte
$4 - gatorade
$5 - slice of pizza
$10 - 6 inch turkey subway
$35 - fifth of Burnett's

While this might not seem completely outrageous to you- the fact that you can't leave McDonalds here without spending at least 10 dollars is seriously a problem for those of us who earned an 8 dollar minimum wage in the US compared to their 16 dollar minimum wage here. On a two week vacation, this kind of spending would be fine. But paying prices like this for 6 months puts John and I on the fast track to being broke.

So the logical next step in this situation was to look for a job. Given my lack of experience really doing any sort of job because soccer consumed my life up until a year ago, the job search turned out to be quite a challenge. I handed out applications to 20 different stores, to then hear from none of them. So when I applied online to be a "door person" at a new club, I thought it would lead me to the same empty inbox that the other job applications had.

But alas, I finally got a reply! They emailed me back asking what the best time would be for me to come in and interview. Within five minutes I had replied with the date and time I would be coming in. This was definitely over eager, but I was so excited to have finally gotten a reply that I couldn't help myself.

When looking back over the email from the club, I noticed that they needed me to verify that I was above 18 years old and a female when I came to the interview, which struck me as odd because never in the initial job posting did they specify that the applicant needed to be a female. It just said "door person" which I took to be a sexually ambiguous term for hostess. Most places hire only pretty girls, so I applauded this one on their attempt to at least act like they would consider males to seat people. How progressive of them.

I was discussing how excited I was for my interview with my roommates that night, as we are all struggling to find a job, when one of them burst out laughing. He asked me if I had actually looked on the club's website to see what the place was like, which I realized dumbly that I hadn't.

I took that as my cue to check it out, so when 8 nude girls and the words "Brisbane's Largest Strip Club" popped up, I stared at the screen stunned. JJ had many rude remarks to add in about women's rights and how the strip club could be the place for me. I promptly cancelled my interview, but as the strip club has been the only job interview I have gotten to date, my self worth is dwindling a bit.

Given the failed job search, it is looking like John won't be able to retire for a while, if at all. Maybe in the next couple of weeks things will turn around, but for now, me and my dignity are going to carry on without a set source of income.

So until next time.

-F

PS- Here's a picture of an emu

Hello Australia, Goodbye Appendix

 Tangents 
     
 In case you were wondering, I have been alive for approximately 7400 days.

 I have spent 7000 of those days in my little bubble of heaven back in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where life is easy and my biggest cause of stress is whether I am going to get an A or a B on my next exam.

Of the 400 remaining days I have been alive, 363 of those were spent in the US, 34 of them were spent somewhere in Europe or South America, and only 3 had been spent in Australia.

If you then take these numbers I am throwing out at you and do a proportion, you will find that I have spent exactly .04 percent of my life in Australia.

Who cares?

I am telling you all of this because I would like to statistically back up the claim that my luck is in fact the worst, and this is because my appendix conveniently chose this .04 percent of my life to burst.

The Story

It was a normal Saturday. My roomates and I went into the city in search of a Super Target like any normal homesick American would, but as the day progressed, I became nauseous which then turned into a far worse stomachache more resembling cramps. As we passed a Starbucks and I proclaimed I didn't want anything, that's when I knew something was seriously wrong.

By the time early evening had rolled around, I was so miserable that I called it quits and went to bed at 7 pm hoping it was a 24 hour virus where I would wake up the next day feeling better.

4 am rolled around and not only was I awake, but I was on the phone with my mom trying to figure out what I possibly could have that would hurt this badly? A doctor came to see me around 10 am and he informed me that I should just rest and drink a lot of water for the diagnoses he gave me of "a tummy ache" (said in half Australian half Indian accent). After I stared down at my 200 dollar bill I demanded 4 Tylenol, which he bregrudgingly handed over, before departing 10 minutes after he had arrived.

 The day dragged on and by three o'clock in the afternoon I could no longer walk and any slight movement caused me to burst into tears. The logical next step would be to find a way to the emergency room, but because I am staunchly against being a drama queen, I held out and sat statue still in my room waiting for the pain to magically disappear.

Finally, after googling 13 different MD sites listing the symptoms of appendicitis (most of which I matched), I legitimized a trip to the hospital. I would deal with the drama queen accusations once I had hospital confirmation that my appendix was not going to burst overnight and lead me to my untimely death.

Unfortunately, I never got this confirmation. After about 15 minutes they told me I had appendicitis and many asked why I hadn't taken the ambulance in. One would think that since ambulances were suggested, I would have had immediate surgery, but they instead chose to delay it until the morning because they didn't feel like making the surgeon drive in on a Sunday night.

What I got to do Sunday night instead of clubbing. Photo cred to Shand

 I ended up staying at the hospital for 2 days, and may or may not be known as the girl who started screaming at the nurses for a diet coke fresh out of surgery, but I reserve the right to be a demanding you know what after coming out of a procedure that has permanently ruined my bikini bod.

In regards to my bikini bod- I had three incisions on my stomach, so me, Shand, and our other housemate Honour are going shopping for some trendy one pieces before I start getting asked on the beaches if I've had a Cesearian Section and why I left the baby at home. Kill me now. The one piece will also be necessary as I am on a month long ban from running while I heal. Looks like I either kick my ice cream habit or face the consequence of resembling a whale. I'm still deciding which lifestyle I will choose, although I am obviously eating ice cream in the meantime because I firmly believe it contributes to a healthy peace of mind, which I'll need while making this decision.

While I would not say that there is a bright side to this situation really- as only someone with extremely awful luck could be in it to begin with- I will say my people have come to my side and shown their support.

My roomates visited me in the hospital and brought me a cosmo and a card signed by random people in a food court as well as themselves seeing as we have been here for less than a week and have no friends.
 

I received endless awkward questions from doctors who thought they showed up at the wrong bed because they were there to treat a girl with appendicitis 

And Ross was awesome and overnight shipped me flowers. They definitely improved my day by a long shot, so you're the best.

Housemate JJ trying to steal my flowers while grieving that no boys have sent him flowers. 

So all in all, my start to Australia could have been better,  but given the odds of me getting my appendix out three days after I stepped off my flight from Australia, I'm convinced that I am destined to win the lottery because if I have defied all reasonable odds once, who is to say I can't do it again.

Until next time

-F

Here we go

I’m one of those people that real writers always make fun of.

I consider myself decently talented when it comes to the art of writing, however, so far I seem to start something new every 6 months, be really absorbed in the work for about oh, 3 weeks, then move onto my next bright story line. All while completing 0 out of the 5 projects I have started.

This is not only sad for the average person who considers themselves an above-average writer, but as a creative writing minor, the fact that I have had the drive to finish zero works that I have started is verging on pathetic.

So this time, ladies and gentleman, I’m going to try and stick with it in the form of a blog during my 6 months in Australia.  Ambitious goal, I know, but if I can’t stick with it for 6 months then I should probably just give it up altogether.

Maybe my lack of motivation before can be attributed to the lack of decent material when it comes to writing about personal things. “And this weekend, just like the last one, and probably the next one, I took shots at the thrill, things got weird, then I went home.”

Being in Australia though, I think I can find some pretty good material to work with. Not only that but I plan on using this blog as an excuse to put myself in as many ridiculous situations as possible. Lets hope I don’t end up in the Auzzie jail or anything, but if I do, I’ll be sure to inform the jail attendant that they don’t really need to punish me for trying to sneak into the Australian Version of the Grammys because  “I was just doing it for my blog… and besides, I needed somewhere to wear this great dress and jail is not the place I had envisioned for its debut.”

Anyways, I am now sitting in the Washington DC airport, not on my way to Australia yet, but on my way home from Colorado where I had an internship for a month. What was originally a travel day from hell got even worse when on the last leg of my trip, I got off the plane in DC to find out that the monsoons had pushed back my flight home by four hours.  I was excited to get back to a sunny humid NC where my tan could be perfected. But instead of getting tan during my 5 days back in CH I now get to work on my canoing skills as that is the only way to get to the flooded Starbucks. Not getting my coffee in the morning clearly isn’t an option.

While I understand that delays are to be expected when flying, they just are not acceptable when you have been up since FOUR AM and have only 5 precious days left in CH before you leave for six months. I tried to impress this upon the American Airlines service desk as I cried and stomped my foot a time or two, but they stared at me blankly, probably internally noting my need for a shower and some makeup instead of listening to anything that I was actually saying.

So now I am sitting here at a table staring at the stick figure models on Pinterest with an Aunt Anne’s Pretzel booth in front of me, a Dunkin’ Donuts to my left, and an ice cream shop to my right. If this and the four-hour layer isn’t torture, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, I am recovering from my last week in Colorado, which included a house/dog-sitting gig where the dog died on day two. Zero for one on pet sitting successes, but I guess in a way it worked out because I was allergic to the dog and my face was so swollen my mother informed me that “everyone would be sure I was being beaten by my boyfriend (not that you manage to keep those for long honey).“ While it is slightly evil to say that the dog’s passing worked out for both of us, it really was the poor dog’s time (he was 15), and I think he is happy in dog heaven now. Or that’s what I tell myself to feel better about the mishap.

Anyway, while this first blog post is a page and a half of tangents, it is getting posted. So that is already a step in the right direction. Soon enough, I’ll be off to Australia.

So until next time- stay ratchet my friends. I look forward to my last 5 days in CH.