Melbourne...

...it's like a baby London. As far as cities go, this one is great! Kris is busy all day in her conference, so I'm roaming the streets looking for things to do when she gets off work, and let me tell you, there's plenty to choose from!
It may be a mix of the best of Seattle and London, with some history, some classical and gothic architecture, but with a trendy cafe and bar scene, good arts opportunities, and seemingly infinite variety of restaurants. And, like both of those cities, it is considered to be more overcast than the rest of the country.
We've been to the opera, the pub, a stand-up comedian (did I mention that this is the international comedy festival site?), and tonight will go to Miss Saigon. The only disappointment so far is that the Percy Grainger museum in the Melbourne University was closed for building works. After all that, there's still all the sports facilities, more comedy, the casino (briefly the largest in the world), more museums (musea? museae?) than you can shake a stick at, and Captain Cook's cottage, transported here from northern England, which I actually find kind of odd. It's not like this city has nothing of its own, that it needs to bring an entire house 15,000 kilometers as a footnote for the guidebooks.
All of this is in a relatively central area -- I haven't even been to St. Kilda's yet, although that's today's adventure -- which is much more easily traversed afoot than is the sprawl that is Sydney. Yup, as far as cities go, this is a definite keeper!

I'm sure they are glad we approve.

Botanical Extravaganza!

Good Friday indeed!

This morning started pretty well, considering that the phone rang at 7:15 on our day off. There aren't too many things that will make me smile after a start like that, but it was a call from our Realtor, Curt, to let us know that there was an offer on our house. A long-awaited, much needed resolution to the Fairway Drive Dilemma is another step nearer. Ahhhh...

After church, we then went to a national park just north of Perth, and had a GREAT hike. A little over 10K of sandy, dirty walking amongst the Tuart trees and kangaroos, finishing off in time to watch the sunset over the water.

For those of you who are keeping score, that's two weekends with time together. This may work out, after all! Of course, I work all day on Easter, so we'll have to see how things go from then on. We'll keep y'all posted.

A weekend away -- Margaret River

Remember all those promises of frequent updates when we got internet at home? Yeah, we remember, too. The new excuse is, "There will be more frequent updates when we have wireless internet at home." This will give me some time to come up with a new reason for our poor showing at blog updates.
So, this is Nathan, and for this update, I want to share a little bit about our weekend away -- the first weekend that we have had free together to get out of town a little. We got a chance to spend some time in Margaret River, a sort of Napa Valley of Western Australia, and a great place to blow the diet.
We stayed at a B&B called Bewitched, whose proprietor was named (i'm not making this up), Samantha. They only have accomodation for one couple, so it was nice and cozy, and we ate roughly 8 squillion calories for breakfast every day. Which was nice.
We can still pass for tourists, especially when Kris wears that red hawaiian shirt that we picked up in New Zealand, so we felt okay about going on a canoe tour of the area. We felt even better when we found out that 18 of 23 were from Perth. We have now officially eaten Bush Tucker, from Tasmanian Pepper corns, to desert limes, to emu (Kris), and witchity grubs. Mmmmm. We even found out that there is an edible form of the ice plant, called a pig's face, or bain. Salty kiwi flavor, who knew?!
This last weekend was also a big international surf competition at Margaret River -- we got to see the women's finals and presentation of the trophy. Pretty cool, and something that we're not likely to get to see in Minnesota.
The rest of the weekend was spent in gastronomic bliss, doing wine tastings, cheese tastings, olive oil tastings, eating ocean trout and fennel, rhubarb brulee, and ending up having lavender and honey beer at the Bush Shack Brewery. A trip to Kent's glass studio in witchcliffe was a highlight, as was seeing the grounds and art collection at the Leeuwin Estate.
We had a special treat for Palm Sunday, though, when we went to the smallest church ever. Not just a small congregation (there were 7, including us), but we actually made the building feel full. Everyone was very pleasant, and we went up to the cafe as a group afterwards to talk about water rights and the new restaurant coming into town.
All in all, a fulfilling weekend.
(photos to share, just as soon as i charge the batteries!)

40 years! Happy Anniversary,--Kristin

40 years is a pretty significant amount of time. Its the time Moses and the Israelites wandered in the deserts. Its the amount of time it takes for a car or song to become a classic. Its how long my parents have been married. Wow.

Mom and Dad's marriage is pretty amazing. March 17, 1967. It wasn't an easy decision--Mom was 15 years younger and Dad was divorced--two items that put Mom's parents and Dad's kids (Julie and Alan) a little on edge. Mom tells me she was nervous. She wasn't sure until the day of the ceremony. Then she called her girlfriend said she was going through with it, and that her girlfriend should bring her good dress. But once the ceremony was complete, the decision was made, there was no turning back for either of them.

It's been an amazing 40 years. Mostly I remember the last 34...and it seems that they have been happy. They joke and tease each other. They talk about the big things and the little things. They have been through some difficult times--times when they fought, when the kids fought. They have celebrated birthdays for children, cousins, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. They have made it through illness, car crash, separation from family, money struggles, the loss of both their parents. They plucked chickens, painted barns, made horse-radish, danced through the all-night road trips to North Dakota, cheered countless wrestling teams, and endless rounds of golf.

I admire my parents for something that seems so rare these days...endurance and commitment. We live in a pretty disposable society now--Nothing manmade is built to last 40 years anymore. We update our cars, computers, blenders, clothes almost every 4 years, not 40. We seem to get bored quickly--once it loses that new car smell we suddenly can see the stains and scratches and decide we need something newer, better, faster. But maybe its a sign that their marriage isn't man made...

What God has joined together, let no man pull asunder.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad--your love for each other is a blessing from God and an example to all who know you. --Kristin

AT LAST! INTERNET!

okay, I know that I have been promising for ages, but FINALLY Nathan and I have an internet connection at home.

You don't know how much of a ordeal this was....internet was my planned life line to keep in touch with all of you, so to be limited to sneaking it in atwork was killing me.

Let me just say, there are some customer service issues here. I don't know whether its our provider, all internet providers or customer service in general but WOW.

We ordered DSL from Dodo at the end of January. They said we couldn't get it until we got phone service. It took 10 days to get phone service. After we got phone service, Nathan spent almost 30 minutes on hold to order DSL, they said they had to test the line. If it was okay they would install it in 2-4 weeks (!). After 4 weeks, (45 minutes on hold) we called and they couldn't find the order. I placed the order we got the modem within 10 days, but no supplementary documentation (such as how to set it up or what our user id etc would be to do security. 3 more times 30-45 minute sessions on hold. So, we figure to get online it has taken 6 weeks and at least 6 hours of personal time. We could have written you all letters and sent them by post and been faster than this!

But, we are hoping that they will be reasonable from here on out. Believe me you'll here about it if they aren't!

Topol in Fiddler on the Roof

Yes. That's the TOPOL. The original Fiddler on the Roof. As part of his retirement plan, he's committed to doing 2 world tours, and we were lucky enough to catch his one of his last shows in the southern hemisphere.

Topol was amazing--funny, sad, weary, proud. His "If I were a Rich Man," brought the house down! (although Nathan and I agreed Merle's cackling chickens were better).
Actually, despite having the biggest name possible for FOTR, we were amazed how favorably the Rochester Civic Theater compared. With the exception of the dancing (sorry Hilary, these were pros!), our cast stood its own--and managed most of the time to be funnier! In this production, Yenta stole no cookies, Lazar didn't seem quite as desperate to ease his loneliness with a cow, Golda never as strong a personality as Topol. The show was great, solid, professional, but somehow seeing Fiddler on the Roof in Rochester Civic Theater's production spoiled me for the "big show." I will clearly say, though some may accuse me of bias, that Nathan was a MUCH better Motel. Nathan found the comic moments of trying to emulate what a PaPa was supposed to be--Nathan's demands to dance with his wife at the wedding left the audience laughing, this one wasn't even noticed. Although we tried to meet the great Topol to introduce him to his younger protege we were unsuccessful. So we went home enjoying a good night of theater but even more proud of the great achievements of the Rochester Civic Theatre Fiddler on the Roof cast!

I just wanted to share some of the interesting,mysterious, and miscellaneous flora and fauna here in Australia. Nathan and I went for a wander in the Perth Hills (the old mountains east of the city). During our amble, we heard the laughing Kookaburra (the bird to the left). You know in jungle soundtracks the sound you think are monkeys....I think its really kookaburras. they sound just like that. Also, Nathan almost stepped on this little critter. I don't know what it is...probably a rat with big ears. BUT, since we don't have our guide to Australian mammals, (we mailed them in December and they haven't arrived...or they have arrived but the post office has sent them back to the US) we are going to count on it being something exotic.\

The plants here are amazing too. Here's a couple, I don't know what they are either. But believe me what I don't know about plants here outweighs what I do by a SIGNIFICANT margin. I've learned so far that if you don't know what something is, you guess it is a gum (like eucalytpus), a wattyl, or a banksia. So, um, its a banksia....yeah.















Parks are everywhere here, so there's lots to look at--lots of the Parks are great about identifying species (although they all seem to be gum, wattyl, banksia, so I can never remember). What else is great is that several of the parks have roving summer art exhibitions. One park near us has a "drive through gallery" with sculpture in the park. Or next week, there is a sculpture exhibition at the beach. Our next door neighbors are both artists and one of them is exhibiting at the beach. So, we are definitely planning to do a photo safari there. In the meantime, here is one of the sculpture peices at Mundaring Community Garden.