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| We are thinking back to Hazards Beach and Promise Bay in Tasmania. We will see much more spectacular scenery in New Zealand. |
| Erin's Journal 12-27-02 & 12-28-02 Victoria The first priorities today were to get a new battery for the car and to transfer our pictures from camera cards to cd. I also needed to see a doctor about my continuing problems. Glenn was to go straight out and get a battery in the morning, as John would give the car a jump start before leaving for golf. But sure enough, as he was getting directions to a shop from Elaine, the phone rang and he was talking to his parents for almost an hour. I checked on the car a couple of times, and even ran out there in my nightclothes to drive it around and bring down the engine heat. But Glenn got lots done while on the phone, ironing out wedding details and sharing surprise over the news from his brother the previous day. It has been so nice to be able to speak with our parents over the phone while staying here! There is such a big difference between voice and email when you love someone! Having dated Glenn for 18 months from a distance, I can testify that our phone bills got a lot more use than our email accounts! Anyway, he took off then for the battery shop, and I made a quick call to Elaine's doctor and scheduled a late afternoon appointment for myself. We were a bit late going to Rose's house to do the picture transfer, but she was very generous and accommodating. We got all our photos transferred over, and even put our journals on the website! One hour can be so productive with the proper tools! We then sat and talked with Rose & Brad while they fed baby Charlie before taking off for a few shopping stops. We went to a real bakery for bread, an office store to get some cds for future photo transfers, and the grocery store for a few staples we'd been cleaning out of John and Elaine's fridge. When we got home, we had time for lunch and a little rest before heading to the doc at 4pm. Unfortunately, all the doctor could do is provide me with a sample cup and tell me to finish the current medication, then wait 48 hours before doing the specimen. Once I'd done that on the 30th, I would have to drop it off at the med office, then call for the results either that day or on the 2nd (the day we'd leave for New Zealand!). She gave me a stronger prescription in case I was still having symptoms by then, and we were on our way. By the time this was over, we were planning for the evening. I was still craving the Lord of the Rings experience, and managed to talk Glenn into heading for a 7pm show. But we didn't leave till 6:30, so I knew we'd be seeing the 8pm show! I was right - there was a huge crowd in line for the 7pm show by the time we showed up, and neither of us was interested in seeing it from the front row - for 3 HOURS! So we bought 8pm tickets and had dinner in the food court. We showed up a half hour before the show and were only about 40 people back. By the time the theater was opened up for people to sit down, the line was snaking all the way out the hallway back into the mall! It was packed, but everyone was good and interested in the movie. No snotty teens talking on their cell phones during the flick...how novel!!! We were both a little disappointed - Glenn, due to the artistic nature of some of the cinematography (he was bored), and myself due to the changes made by the director to the story. Never, EVER read the book before seeing the movie!!! I'm sure if I see it again and focus on not remembering the book, I'll like it a little better. If nothing else, it made us excited to go to New Zealand, as the scenery is very impressive. By the time we left, it was really late. We got home and went straight to bed. Okay, I read a little, but not too insanely that night! 12-28-02 Victoria Sure enough, Glenn couldn't hold out on the 'relax' theme all week, so by Saturday we had to get out of the house and see some of Melbourne. Actually, this was a nice way to see the place - we took the train! That's been the best thing about some of the big cities. You can find useful public transportation that lets you avoid trying to navigate your car around all the crazy one-ways and mislabeled maps! The train station is only about a 4 minute drive from John & Elaine's, and we were able to jump on a train within 5 minutes that got us to the city center 20 minutes later. We stopped first at an internet cafe so we could work on getting a few photos online. This entailed putting our photo editing program on the hard drive and working from our newly created photo cd, which luckily was no problem here. While I worked on photos, Glenn tried to create some new journal pages on the website, but the server was malfunctioning again and kept kicking him out. Nothing frustrates him more, so I was glad when he turned to catching up on a few emails and doing research instead. We stayed till after 2pm when our pre-purchased 3 hours at the cafe ran out, then went out to see more of Melbourne and find some lunch. We went into a touristy shop and found a few things we liked for once. So we walked around and shopped a bit more, and ended up with several bags of goodies. This is unusual for us, except in the case of Nairobi where we did all our shopping in one day. It felt good though! We hung around town till a little after 5, when things were closing up anyway. Then we jumped the next train back out to our suburb of Ivanhoe and made our way home to share our treasures with our hosts. We had a late dinner and watched a movie before bed. |