L & L Australian Adventures: Paying it Forward

I know, I know, I know! I’m very, very behind on sharing our adventures with you. The great thing about this is because we have had SEVERAL adventures in the last couple of weeks so I have a lot to share! This will take me 10 or 11 blogs to get through so happy reading! J

I’m backing up to the beginning of January to tell you about a person we were introduced to. My friend Jamie has a former coworker, Emily, who is traveling around Australia for 6 months. Jamie introduced us through Facebook and then Emily and I made plans to meet up when she got to Sydney. This is where my title for this blog comes in. I have always been a big fan of the concept, “Pay it Forward.” I was very excited to make this happen even before Emily and I met.

You all know how grateful I have been for meeting my new friend, Kyra, over here. She still goes above and beyond to include us and never turns down a question/answer session when I need one! We have also had several of Luke’s Cerner coworkers who have been very helpful and always include us when something is going on. Some of them have even “taken us in” with their circle of friends outside of work so we have met many new Aussie’s, a few Americans, and even a girl from England who lives here now. It is a great feeling to have complete strangers give you a chance and then call you, Mate! Luckily, Luke and I are always open to meeting new people but I still wasn’t sure how it would be being “the new girl” in a new country far, far away. So far it has been a-ok!

So as you can see, I had the perfect opportunity to “Pay it Forward” to Emily and I wanted to make sure I really made it count. I decided to take her to Bondi Beach and do the Bondi to Coogee Beach hike that Luke and I did on Christmas Day. I knew this would give us a good chance to have plenty of time to talk and have some beautiful scenery while we were at it. Emily and I immediately hit it off. Within minutes we discovered we knew several of the same people and she is even cousins with a Baker friend of mine! This small world just keeps getting smaller.

I loved that we both talked nonstop and covered quite a bit of information and get-to-know you topics before we finished our walk. Then we took a bus back to Bondi so we could grab lunch and relax on the beach for a while. We took our lunch to the beach and found a good spot. The seagulls really like busy beach days like this one because the beach is covered with people eating and drinking and possibly leaving them something to nibble on. By the way, you are NOT supposed to feed the birds but unfortunately some people still do, especially when they don’t throw away their trash. I guess the birds didn’t agree with me on that because I got pooped on! Not once but TWICE within an hour! That’s 3 times now in Australia so far. Emily called me her, “magnet” and has invited me to always be her beach pal if I take the poo hits! I know this “good luck” is around me here- somewhere. ;)

As we relaxed in the sun and I wiped off the bird poo, we shared more stories and Emily said many helpful things- though she didn’t realize it at the time. Emily saved for three years so that she could travel all over Australia for 6 months and do everything she wanted. She is a world traveler and had great stories of her many trips. The more she talked about her goals, visions, and outlook on life, the better I felt about my thoughts and attitudes I’ve had about things since we’ve been over here. More importantly, my feelings since the new year. We had a great time that day and made plans to get together again before she went on to her next place. That day happened sooner than I thought!

Emily was introduced to a Aussie named Jason. Jason is a huge Royals fan…he happened to catch the 1985 World Series and has been hooked ever since! He even attends Royals Fantasy Camp each year and has made friends with many former Royals. Emily worked for the Royals for several years so some of the guys put her in contact with him. Jason found me on Facebook after Emily and I had met. He invited Luke and me to his birthday celebration the following weekend. Again, someone who didn’t even know us wanted us to meet some more people and have a new Aussie experience. We went to lunch and then to see a little of a girl’s BASEBALL game. These girls are amazing! Then we went to the Sydney Blue Sox game. Baseball is definitely not a popular sport over here. There are actually many people over here who didn’t even know they had a team! The stadium was nice and we had a good time watching something familiar. We’re still hoping to go to a Cricket game, too.

Then one day last week I got to play tour guide for Emily and I loved it! I planned out a full day of activities of things I thought she should try to experience before she leaves Sydney. She is trying to take in as much as she can in each place she visits. I wanted to make sure she saw not only the worthy touristy things, but I also tried to tell her about some of the other hidden things we’ve seen and enjoyed. I have to admit, it felt really great to know where to go and what to do in this massive city that used to intimidate me. We had another successful day of walking, talking, and exploring. We will continue to share our adventures over here and then back in the US someday, I’m sure!

Your new Aussie words of the day:

Jumper = jacket

“slip, slop, slap, slide on sunnies and seek shade” = This is the motto over here because of the strong sun rays. You really have to be careful in the sun even for a short time outside.

Fringe = bangs

Arvo = afternoon

Avo = avocado

Burger = when we order a “burger” in the US we know it’s a hamburger…over here you have to say what kind so a chicken burger means chicken sandwich, fish burger- fish sandwich, etc.

Salad = lettuce on your sandwich (can also just mean salad)

Mum = mom

And a couple of great quotes I’ve come across in the last couple of weeks…

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” Robert Brault

“The distance is nothing it’s only the first step that is difficult.” Marquise du Deffand

Emily and me on the beach hike