I got a job!

I am employed! And it is about time because my bank account is looking pretty meager.

I am working at a company called 2evolve which does fundraising for NGOs like Amnesty International, UNHCR (the Refugee Fund), and some other great organizations. So even though it's a call center, it's pretty legit and I can definitely put it on my resume when I get home (something I was not quite expecting to be able to do with the job I got here). Megan got the job at the bar and is looking for another job...she's interviewing at 2evolve today which she is totally going to get. Then Emmy, Megan and I will all work together.

So now we are all employed which is a fantastic feeling. I have never been so relieved.

The charges went through on Kelsey's card so now we can see where the perp spent all of her money. Half of the charges were for taxis. He opened a $300 bar tab. And spent another $500 at none other than good ol' Ed Hardy. Go figure. Hopefully between all the places he spent money, some security camera will have a clear picture of him.

I think I'm going to go lay out now....rough life, I know.

Oh and if you get the chance - you should wish Erin Dose a happy 26th birthday!!!!

Trouble in Paradise

Well, we have run into our first real problem.

On Friday night we went out (for our 3rd time since being here). We started out in Bondi, then came back to Coogee and went out at the hotel right by our house. It was a pretty fun night....nothing too wild. The next afternoon, Kelsey and Brigid realized that they were missing some of their credit cards. Megan and I went out to get dinner and stopped by the internet cafe to check up on the girls' accounts. Kelsey's checking account said zero. Someone had pick-pocketed the girls and went on a wild shopping spree. They spent all of the money in Kelsey's checking account and charged some on Brigid's credit card.

What is most surprising is that our experience so far is that people are pretty strict in stores about checking the signature and ID....so I'm not really sure how the person got away with it.

We have a pretty good idea of who it is (or at least we think we can narrow it down) and hopefully when the charges go through and show the places the money was spent, we can check security tapes and figure it out. And hopefully the banks will reimburse them for all their lost money. The girls went to the police station today to file a report, so hopefully he is caught soon.

But the good news is that both Brigid and Kelsey got the jobs at the Palace Hotel in Coogee about two blocks from our house! Megan has a trial run at a bar in Sydney on Tuesday and I have an interview in the city on Tuesday also. So hopefully we are all employed soon!

I don't have much to post about....but I feel like it's time for an update.

We watched the news all day on the day of the dust storm and found out that it is not a normal occurrence, like we had originally believed. Apparently, this only happens once every 70 years. I kind of just thought it was a weird sunrise and since it was 6 am, we were too lazy to get up and take pictures (which I'm pretty pissed about). But about 8 different news channels said that it was like waking up on Mars. So I guess I'll just take their word for it.

We discovered a RedBox to rent movies from. Which was great because otherwise we were going to have to pay a $50 membership fee to the video store in town...something I was not prepared to do. So we rented New In Town last night. Good flick. (Did I just blog about a movie we rented? We really need to get lives.)

Brigid has her trial run as a bartender tonight and Kelsey had a trial run as a waitress during the day. So hopefully they both get those jobs so they can support me while I go on not having a job. But I have heard back from a few places....so hopefully something works out.

We also learned the joy that is $2 steak night on Wednesdays and $1 burgers on Thursdays. So we will be regulars at those places.

I forgot to write about the class we had to take for 6 hours one day last week. It's called the RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) and you have to take the class in order to work in the food or bar industry here. We spent 6 hours learning about how to tell if someone is intoxicated. It's called we went to college. We got it. But they have a big drinking problem here and are taking strides to control it (let's hope the US doesn't jump on this trend). They have drastically increased the price of alcohol (a 30 rack of beer costs $40 - at home it costs $15) and made some other laws that bars now have to follow (like kicking people out if they show 2 of the 4 signs of intoxication). I'm not sure it's working though because we're getting down to the Rugby League finals and I haven't seen a sober fan yet.

We are planning some activities for the week - so expect better posts/pictures to come. I know, you're totally excited, huh?

Dust Storm/Red Sky

I woke up at 6 am and looked out my window and saw a red sky. Kelsey and I's window was open and our room was covered in a thin sheet of dust. Apparently, we are in the middle of a "dust storm". I'm not sure if this is normal....but from what I hear, the weather is acting crazy everywhere today. 103 degrees with rolling blackouts in Danville and it's snowing in Boulder. I think it's safe to say we can blame El Nino.

Things are looking up on the job front. Brigid has a trial run as a bartender on Saturday night. She's pretty nervous - but I feel like it might be easier to bartend here than in the US. All they have is beer, which we know how to pour, and pre-made mixed drinks. So it ain't no thang. And we might be packing boxes of wine for 17 dollars an hour for a couple days. I think this is a sign of more things to come.

Otherwise, I don't have much of an update. I think we're going to stay inside today....the wind is crazy.

Still no job

Update: We still don't have jobs. We've been looking and haven't had any luck. But today is Monday and I'm giving myself until Friday to get one because that is when I run out of money.

We haven't really found any attractive men. We have found a bunch of 19 year olds. I now appreciate the 21 year old drinking age because then the minimum age at bars is much more appropriate for us. We went out on Saturday night and I chatted up three sophomores in college....one of whom was a spitting image of McLovin'. Hopefully when we find jobs, we make friends with people our own age and kill two birds with one stone.

And our final issue at the moment: we met our neighbors across the hall. They are two Irish men. One of them says, "how are you guys living here? It's so gross. We couldn't even deal with it so we found a new place to live." Let's just think about how depressing this is. First of all, they are guys and second, they're Irish and even they think our apartment is uninhabitable. We had started to convince ourselves it wasn't that bad until we had this conversation.

So thinks are looking gloomy in the lives of Mallory, Brigid, Megan and Kelsey.... but I guess we can't complain too much because we still have beautiful scenery.

Pack of Cigs

I thought this was kind of funny. This is a picture of a warning label on a pack of cigarettes. This was pretty much the first thing we saw when we landed and walked through the duty free store at the airport.

More Productivity

G'day mates!

I'm not sure what is going on....but I am a new woman. I have accomplished more in the week I have been here than I ever did in a week at home. I hope I keep up this work ethic for the rest of my life. Oh, and I haven't been napping either. Kind of a metaphorical 180 for being on the other side of the world....not sure if that made any sense, but you know what I'm saying.

Yesterday, we were able to move into our place (no more sharing with random people!). We then hit up K Mart and got a bunch of cleaning supplies and scrubbed the sh** out of that place. Then we made ANOTHER trip to a grocery store and stocked up. We have more food at our house now then I ever did at school. We also fixed our resumes and sent them out to a bunch of places (still no job...but I'm making a solid effort).

We are also only one week in and already have some landlord drama. The other night we went out to the Coogee Bay Hotel (C to the B to the H as we locals call it) and our landlord, the Saudi Prince (SP as he will further be referred to), was there. We weren't really talking to him but we did start talking to these Irish blokes....who turned out to be the boys living in our apartment who SP evicted. SP got mad at us, the Irish guys tried to turn us against SP, and we basically got put in the middle of something that has nothing to do with us. The next day was rather awkward seeing as though the Irish guys were in the apartment above us and SP was in the apartment below us. Luckily the Irish guys are gone and SP told us he wanted to "start fresh" (something I personally didn't understand considering we didn't do anything). I think part of the reason this even became an issue is that SP is only 24 and doesn't quite get how to be a good businessman yet. Not that I'm one to give any insight since I am only 22.

Today is a little gloomy...so again we're trying to send out some resumes and try to find some work. I'm running short on the funds - so I need a job stat. Ok, I'm gonna find one. Right now!

Pictures

Coogee Beach

WE FOUND A PLACE TO LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is one block away from the beach. I repeat: one block away from the beach. And it's pretty cheap. But it's pretty gross....which is not exactly unusual after four years of college (especially our house sophomore year with 6 girls). Kelsey is convinced that the guy who owns the apartment building is a Saudi Prince who has too much money and is bored which is why we're getting it for so cheap. I feel like if that actually were the case we would be getting it for free.

We can't move into our place until Monday, so until then we are staying in a room of a different apartment in the same building. It's definitely going to be nice when we have our own place and we aren't trying to fit 8 suitcases into a very small space.

Yesterday we went all over Sydney. We hit up the Opera house then walked to Darling Harbor. Not shitting you....we walked like 10 miles. In flip flops (actually, they're called thongs. And apparently you sound like a tool is you call them "flip flops"). The funniest moment of our day came when we were trying to find the Aquarium. So ya know how at bus stops and ferry stops are named according to the area you are in. For example: if you are getting off the bus near town hall the stop will be called "Town Hall". Well, we were for some reason convinced we had to take a ferry to get to the aquarium, so we sat down at the "Aquarium" ferry stop where we waited for a half hour only to have the captain of the ferry tell us that the aquarium was the building behind us. It was pretty embarrassing. But the aquarium was pretty sick and we saw a lot of sharks.

Again, we had every intention of making it out and again, we did not. We have not gone out at night yet. Today, we went for a long run and now we're going to lay out at the beach for a while and then definitely go out to the bars later. I need some liquid courage to talk to these hot Aussie men. jk. kind of.

Right now, I'm in an internet cafe, so I can't post any pictures...but I'll bring my computer back with me tomorrow to do so.

I do have some new slang though. First of all, everyone says "cheers". For everything. You say "thank you" for someone serving you a drink, they'll say "cheers". You say "excuse me" when you're in someone's way, they say "cheers". It's kind of awesome...I'm gonna try to bring that back with me. What else? "Fair dinkum" means you're a chill person. It's the best compliment you can give an Aussie (because they are actually the most carefree, happy people in the world). "Esky" is cooler. They put an extra vowel on abbreviated words. So a bottle shop (liquor store) is a "bottle-o". A relative is a "relio". vego is a vegitarian. I'll think of more later.

I'm sure I'll have better stories after tonight. I wish you were all here with me!

Finally in Sydney

After 20 hours travel time...we finally made it to Sydney.  At the airport, Kelsey got her bag sniffed by drug dogs who found chicken sandwiches and she had to go through the Quarantine line and have both of her bags searched.  When security realized she wasn't trying to smuggle in any drugs, or farm animal products, they let her through.  Each of us, with our purses, carry-on back packs, and two 50 pounds suitcases had to hop on the train and head to down town Sydney where our hostel is located.  We made a bit of a scene...especially considering it was 8 in the morning and everyone was heading to work.  

We decided we should drop off our stuff and head straight to IEP's (the program we went through) office to figure out what to do now.  We go there right before they started orientation, which was fantastic because now we don't have to do that on Wednesday.  At orientation, we got our cell phones and sim cards and set up house showings for the next day (two in Bondi Beach and one in Coogee).  We then stopped at the bank and got our accounts set up and debit cards.  It's amazing: I have to go to the other side of the globe to be productive.  Everything we did in our first day here would have taken a few weeks at home.  

At 5 pm we got back to the hostel and showered for the first time in a couple days.  We had every intention of going out for a drink and forcing ourselves to stay awake until at least 9, but decided to watch an episode of Gossip Girl and go to bed at 7.  Now I'm up at 6:30 am writing this entry.  

Today should be another big day, hopefully we like one of the three houses because he said we might be able to move on Thursday.  

You know you love me,

XOXO Gossip Girl

Diana's face

1st leg of the journey: California

Since we are flying out of San Francisco, and since every person I know is from Danville, I thought it would be fun to come a few days early and spend some time with the friends. On Wednesday night at 9 pm, Brooke Lensch came over to say goodbye and after realizing I had not put any items into a suitcase yet, she offered her assistance. She shoved everything that I had laying out into one of my suitcases and I told her I would pack the other bag in the morning before going to the airport (for my 8 o'clock flight...awesome logic). 5 am came pretty quickly....and the packing was done poorly. My mom takes me to the airport. My first bag is obviously overweight. The lady express checking us in asks us how many bags we have. Mom says two and pays the fee. Mom says "The one bag is probably overweight by a lot". I give Mom a dirty look. Mom realizes what she has done. The lady was not going to weigh our bags. She does because Mom told her to. The bag is 68 pounds. 18 pounds over. 125 dollar fee. Somehow Mom recovers by telling her I'm leaving the country and we don't have to pay. Mom cries when saying goodbye. I laugh at her. She whispers in my ear "be safe". I laugh harder. She cries more. I proceed through security. I arrived in Danville that afternoon and spend some time with my Aunt Bev who picked me up from the airport and also lives in D-ville. Cortney and Diana drove up from SoCal (southern California for all of those who don't know the west coast lingo). So we go out and hit the local bars (think Al & Gerry's...but a little classier). An old man started grinding on me.....and I let him. Time to go home. The next day, Bev and I went shopping while the girls went to Santa Cruz to the board walk. Diana got her face painted: one side was blue and sparkly and the other side had a single blue tear drop. She left it painted the entire day so I could see it that night when I saw her. I fell to the floor laughing....not just because she looked outrageous, but because she looked that way all day. Our cat from school, Remy, who lives with Brigid now weighs 15 pounds. He's not even a year old. Tonight we're having a bon voyage bbq. This is supposed to be a small shin-dig (like 10-15 people). Her dad came home this morning from grocery shopping with a full trunk of food. I'm probably going to gain a few lbs tonight. But this isn't unusual for Mr. Lambert. Once he took us out to dinner at PF Changs in Colorado and "snuck away to the bathroom".....he actually ordered one of everything from the desert menu. We're always well fed when he's around. Tomorrow night is the big flight.....14 hours to Aussie. Today was spent repacking my bag. Actually it was spent having Diana repack my bags. Now they are both underweight and I do not have to pay the 200 dollar fee for overweight bags on international flights. I'm good to go. Except the fact that we don't have a place to live or jobs yet. Oh well....that's future Mallory's problem. I'll let that chick deal with it.