The Job and the Birthday

Hey Ya’ll, Erin here,

I know that it has been some time since I have posted… I’ve been BUSY! It’s been fun here the last week with everyone runin around goin to their interviews. I think Brian said that he wrote it but, Yes, I did find a job… two actually. So the first one is this really sweet gig where I get to just go hangout with kids ages 0-12 all day as a teaching assistant. It pays really well and the people that run the program are really nice, but it is only casual work and therefore quite unreliable. Right now they have some work but they said around the holidays it gets really s l o w and they could only really guarantee me one shift a week. Yeah, I didn’t feel comfortable with just that… So I found another job. I am now a happy waitress at the Sahnia Bar and Restaurant right on Bondi Beach. We leave all these big window doors propped all the way open and you can stare at the beautiful beach (which is only about 300 meters away from the bar) all day. When it’s slow it is fun to watch the surfers riding the waves… except that it was really rough and messy out there today and I saw a bunch of the surfers crash into one another. Scary, but they all popped back up so I guess they were ok. Most of the staff at Sahnia are really nice. The girl that trained me is spectacular and did a great job. It was super duper busy today so my shift few by. I hope tomorrow is the same. The food there is fairly normal… burgers and salads etc. There are some things that are different and might take some getting used to, like how they order their coffee and certain things on the menu. There was this Australian customer who was cracking jokes left and right who asked for an order of “the thing that hops up and down”, kangaroo. I thought that was a joke too and just laughed and smiled, but no... it really is on our menu : ) I can't wait to try it.

*ok, just so you guys know I wrote the above section a few days ago and am now picking it back up... so more things have happened. I’ll just continue.

Want to start with saying how happy I am that Brian is now part of the staff as well. I hope we get to work with each other some of the time. Work is still going suitably. The really busy days are not quite as fun but good tips result so I can’t complain too much. I think I have worked somewhere around seven shifts and now feel quite comfortable with the whole waitressing thing, precisely taking orders in the neat-o little palm pilot they give us, skillfully recommending tasty dishes.
Recently I have chosen to walk the 30 to 40 minutes to Bondi which can seem unreasonably long when you feet hurt but is a nice little stint through a very pretty area. The problem arises when I work late shifts and don’t get off until a little before midnight. At that hour I just don’t feel comfortable walking home so I have to make the hour long tip via bus and train and bus again. So a bike will solve this and I’m eager for it to be so. I am going to look at a bike tomorrow after work and if that works out I think I will be set.

BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!

Tuesday marked the 23rd year of my existence. I was kind of sad that I wouldn’t be home with my family and friends for my birthday (and wouldn’t get to have any of my moms awesome birthday cake) but I ended up have a wonderful, lovely, excellent day. When I got home Monday night after my shift it was just turning 12 (officially my B-Day) and Jesse surprised me with an uber delicious vanilla cake with green icing (apparently the icing was to be white but the sprinkles contaminated it, but it was scrumptious none the less). Brian was nice enough to buy some ice-cream to accompany the cake and it made for the perfect start to my day. AND as if that wasn’t enough, we all sat down as a family to watch the newest Office, so really… it doesn’t get any better then that. Except that it does, because the next day Jesse gave me a fantastic purse that I had been eyeing up and had been in dire need of AND Taylor bought me some beautiful flowers in one of my favorite colors, pink. I think they really brighten up our apartment (and match all our phones of course)
Also on my birthday there was a cool wine tasting at work. We just implemented a new menu and they wanted to give us some knowledge of what to recommend with what, how things taste and such. I had never been to a wine tasting before so I was thoroughly excited. It was really fun. We joked around a lot, learned at least a little, and I was fairly tipsy by the end, but it WAS my birthday so I guess that’s ok ; ) The more I work the more I like the people I work with. Before I left they brought me a slice of our raspberry cheesecake which I had been dying to try since day one. That night Jesse took me out to eat at this really neat gourmet pizza place called Crust. It was excellent and I plan on returning. So yeah, that summed up the turning. It was wonderful and I feel very blessed to be with three such amazing guys.

I think that’s it for me right now… Oh no wait. Jesse and I went to the Australian Museum today. I won’t write a ton about it but I will say that it kicked The Powerhouse’s butt and renewed my faith and confidence in Australian museums. We saw a bunch of sweet dinosaurs and some weird mammalish creatures that are now extinct, thank goodness. They had some other really cool exhibits like one all about skeletons, and some not so cool ones, like minerals that I got physically pushed through by a discontent Jesse mumbling “boring” the entire way. My favorite exhibit was one called Surviving Australia and it was all to do with the strange creatures that can harm/maim/kill you. Really neat stuff, and handy too. Now we know that if one of us gets stung by an octopus that has blue rings on it, and then we appear to be dead we most likely are not, just paralyzed, and the other needs to administer CPR till the venom clears out of the system. Ok that sounds super bad, and before you all start to worry, this barely ever happens and we are going to be more than careful… and now I’ll be even more careful then before : ) Also we learned that 120 thousand people die in Australia a year and less then 5 of those are due to crocodiles, sharks, or snakes. So that is good to know, I thought.

So I think I’ll call it kaputs for today. I hope all is well back in the states. As always I would love to hear how you all are doing so shoot me a line whenever you get the chance. Miss you and keep the comments coming PLEASE we love them.

-Erin out