Christmas in September?!?

OK so we all know how outraged people in the states get when stores put out Christmas items before Thanksgiving.... here they have been out for at least the last 3 weeks. I'm not talking minor displays ducked back in a random isle - full on displays at the end of the isle. There are even stockings and other things usually left for the last minute shopping people usually do. Apparently they like to do their last minute shopping early here.

Will try to take some pictures and post them - hopefully that won't break security proticals.

Bringing Smores to Australia

Next weekend we are going camping for my leadership camp and I must say the thing I'm most excited about is smores!! I've found all the equivalent ingredients here in Australia. Which for those of you in the states sounds like it would not be a problem. However they don't have or know what graham crackers are... I've found out that the equivalent is something called a digestive cookie. Now I'm sure you're having the same reaction that I had - YUK! But am willing to give it a go and see what happens as there isn't really any other option.

I'm doing a test run this week just to see how good they are so we'll see. Eitherway I will report back on the success and the weekend away.

Australian Spanish

So with working at a Tex-Mex restaurant I have developed a surprising skill that I wouldn't have imagined - that is to understand Australian "Spanish". Before I elaborate let me just highlight the fact that Mexican food is not big here, so I often have people coming in who have no clue what the food is on the menu.

Now with that said, I have heard some really odd pronunciations of standard Mexican names. Here are some spelled out versions of what I've heard...

For fajitas (normally pronounced fa-hee-tas), I get...
fa-gee-tas
fa-gi-tas

For quittos (normally pronounced kee-tos), I get..
quit-os
qoo-tos

The pronunciations are compounded by weird rhythms and speech patters... luckily people usually respond well to my repeating the correct pronunciation, but there are definitely some Napoleon Dynamite moments. :)

Cutest Nieces EVER

OK so I know everybody does this when new kids enter the family, but my new nieces are the cutest!! They are already showing the true McClelland fight and have been going through the roller coaster that most premature babies go through. Kirsten is doing well and Mary might actually get to go home soon! :) Lila is still working on eating a bit more before she can go home. My brother tells me they are already looking different, one having dark hair and the other with light. Will post more as we know more information, in the mean time here are a couple snaps.

Lila Grace and Mary Elisabeth

New Skills of the Resume

So I finally found a part time job (yay!) at a local restaurant. So yes I am going against my personal goal never to have to work in a restaurant but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. It's a local Tex-Mex place which is owned by a Canadian of all people and the cooks are all Indian... Needless to say it doesn't live up to my standards of any sort of mexican food - but hey it's money.

Tuesday was my first official day of waitressing - and after 6 hours my feet were killing me and I had come to the conclusion that the years of typing have rendered my hand writing illegible. So I have a couple points to work on but all in all it was a good night. I work again tonight and will most likely be a standard Thursday, Friday and Saturday worker. Considering I don't have class on Friday this will be an excelent way for me to 1) make money and 2) not spend money by going to bars. :)

New Aunt Again!!

So the babies decided they'd had enough and wanted to come out!! So I have now doubled my aunt quotient and now have 3 nieces and 1 nephew. Lila Grace and Mary Elizabeth were born at 1:58 and 1:59 PM on 9/25 and weighed in at 5 lb 1 oz and 4 lb 14 oz. Now I'm on a hunt for some cool Aussie toys/stuffed animals to bring back for Christmas.

Will post pictures when they are available. :)

Roller Coaster Week

This week has been pretty insane... with interviewing for both part-time and future full-time jobs, catching up on loads of reading for school, coming to crunch time on a major project, then today going from severe home sickness to a literally bright outlook. While the majority of these are pretty self explanatory I will highlight the last couple.

I have been working with a team of people from my school and the overarching business school to put on a program to help other masters students who do not have business experience learn some of the basic skills and start networking. Now everything has been going great, but our assistant dropped off the face of the earth for two days and things didn't get done. We are now in crunch mode and having to do things very last minute - which is never any good. The good news is that it's almost over!! After next weekend I will be done with this project and be able to focus on more pressing things.

In the mean time, I was watching the Rock n Roll Fashion show today and was hit with a massive wave of home sickness when Lynard Skynard played Sweet Home Alabama. There is something about those good old songs that make me miss home. However I just checked the weather and am feeling better... below is the forecast for Sydney, Phoenix, and Seattle. For all you American's you'll need to do a bit of converting if you don't want to simply use the pictures. :)