It's about dancing in the rain...

The other day I was telling Jaime a story about the grocery store and continuing to find subtle differences between Australia and home. I was looking all over the store for chicken broth. After no luck, I asked a worker, but he had NO idea what I was talking about. Together, we went and asked two more supermarket workers who also had no idea what I was talking about. I even said "You know, chicken broth, its soup, you can drink it or cook with it...you know, broth from the chicken?" Nothing. "Umm...chicken stock?" "Oh! Chicken stock, of course!" they all said and the first guy took me right to the aisle and said "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?". Hmmph. Really. Is it that different that they had NO idea what chicken broth was? At the end of my story Jaime summarized our experiences here and said "You are speaking English, but its still like your speaking a different language." So true!

So I figured I would write about some of my favorite random little things that are so similar/familiar, but yet so different and some things that just make me laugh.

Last Sunday, Jaime's attending took us out to dinner with his family. I ordered a salad to share, which turned into 4 salads for the table since we had 8 people. The salads came out before the meal and we were educated on how in Australia people eat their salads during the meal and not before. However, this dinner, they came out before. Like I said before, salad and veggies are so hard to come by that I so strangely crave them. So I had two servings of the salad closest to me and then once I realized everyone else was done eating salad, I finished off the rest of the bowls. Professor Heggie's 9 year old daughter, Caroline, noticed that I was seriously into salads, and for the next 30 minutes we talked Salad! She went through lists of salad add-ins to find out what I liked. And offered up the things she put in her salad that day, like Mint and Coriander. Brilliant! I never thought of that. I proceeded to tell her about all the things that I have just recently discovered that I love while living in Australia. I am pretty sure one could find these things in America, I just never noticed them.
Like butter lettuce! I freakin love it!! I hope its good for me because I don't buy anything else now.
Mini Roma tomatoes, just like the large oblong ones that are good no matter how you eat them, these are spectacular. They have regular mini and aromatherapy mini. I stick with the regular mini, since we are on a budget, and actually I am a little skeptical of aromatherapy tomatoes in general.
Lebanese cucumbers, the smaller and much sweeter version of the much loved cuke. Little Caroline, whole-heartedly agreed.
She then proceeded to ask me about the fruits I like to eat and to add in my salad:
Blueberries, strawberries, mango. Yes, I absolutely love mango, but they are rather expensive here so I usually find a way to drink most of my expensive fruits via smoothies and healthy drinks.
I actually think drinking my fruit is at the top of my favorites list and its not difficult to find a good fruit drink around here. :)

My next favorite thing is definitely my new Universal Steamer! This thing is awesome, it magically fits into just about any size pot and steams away! Its very handy and Jaime had no idea I could make snow peas.

Living in the Italian heart of the city, I have this great little food store that sells fun Italian foods and wine. I found a little personal bottle of Moscato (Sweet champagne, similar to Prosecco). It is the perfect size to have for my "private stock" as my dad used to say.  As Prosecco lovers, my mom and mom-in-law are going to love their personal Moscato when they come to visit!

One thing that I am learning to love, my little clothes dryer. This little box was donated to us by our friend Peter, which was really nice. It is the size of a small hotel bar fridge and just has a power cord and a timer knob. No vent. I was really puzzled at this no vent situation and did some research online to figure out where to put the thing so it wasn't blowing out all sorts of stuff into our little flat. The only place it was listed was on an antique chat room. Apparently, I have a much coveted dinosaur dryer. People who found one or two of these things that worked were so excited, but no one really talked about where to put it. The one thread that had the same exact make as mine said that they used theirs for years but it finally broke and "the repair guy wouldn't fix it because of the asbestos." hmmm....not putting this in the house. Peter's cousin, who had been using the dryer, kept it in their basement. So I had no choice but to put it on the balcony. So now whenever I need it, I have to run the extension cord out onto the balcony. The balcony is open but quite protected from normal rain so I just cover the cord with a tight plastic bag when its not being used. As much as a hassle as it is to actually use the dryer, it is probably the best dryer ever. That little thing pumps the heat and gets clothes dry in less than 20 minutes! If those antique people only knew! On my day off last week, I was doing things around the apartment and started the laundry. When I took the wet clothes out of the washer outside to begin the hooking-up-of-the-dryer process, there it was...light Melbourne rain. Well, dang it. I can't dry the laundry in the rain with my dryer outside on the balcony.  The funny thing here is that anyone I talk to about my dryer situation reminds me that no one here uses a dryer. It gets so warm that clothes apparently dry very quickly on the clothesline. "It is a HUGE energy saver", I was told. Most people denied having an issue with sheets or towels getting crunchy. I did finally get one person to admit that the towels definitely get crunchy on the clothesline. So, as you can see, regardless of common sense, I absolutely could not use the dryer in the light rain. I can see the headline now..."American, electrocuted, doesn't care about the earth. Why was she using a dryer anyway?!"

My mom loves Dr. Oz on tv. She loves him because he was introduced by Oprah, and she really loves Oprah. She often passes along home-remedy tips discussed on Dr. Oz if she thinks I could use them. I do like home remedies, but only if someone can vouch that they may actually work...so if it applies to my situation, I'll give it a try. This often results in Jaime saying things like, "Why do we have a bar of soap under our sheets, again?"
I just giggle. :)

Last Tuesday, I took a cab home from my late-night basketball game. My cab driver was very chatty and wanted to talk about America. He was from _________, which I couldn't understand due to his foreign mixed with learned Aussie English accent and he would get a little perturbed whenever I asked him to repeat himself. I would guess that his first language was Arabic and he has been in Oz for 3 years...3 1/2 years, don't forget the 1/2, he told me. I told him that America and Australia were similar yet very different and he wanted to know specifics. So I remained vague and said categories like food, expenses, etc. He would then zone in on America with typical negative stereotypes..."Well food, I guess its different because people in America just eat the fast food." I told him that some people may, but I rarely eat fast food, and alot of the people I know rarely eat fast food. Plus the city McDonald's here is always packed. (And we did try a cheeseburger with "Australian grass-fed beef", we had to see if it was the same!).  My cab driver, now turning into a judgemental cabbie, went on to talk about American "Fads" and how everything is a fad "like not eating Gluten" "and thinking organic is best" and "how are Americans going to be healthy, when they (still) only eat fast food.". He asked if we had any culture and how could we have so many religions? Hmm...I remained positively vague. I then redirected him and asked what he was doing in Australia. He came here for University to study Horticulture. I said well, how can you do horticulture in the city? Well, he doesn't do horticulture anymore, he didn't like it. He does enjoy living here with his Aunt while his family is back in _______. There have only been a few occasions I have felt the need to stick up for being a proud American. Once in awhile I say something odd like "shave a sheep" instead of "shear a sheep" and I get a response like..."Oh, you Americans." Please.
And then there are always the much loved "map" and "geography" jokes, Thank you Miss Teen USA. But those are easy. This cab ride though, was full of judgement. When we arrived at my corner, before I go out of the car I looked right at him and I said, "Ya know, life is not about surviving the storm, its about dancing in the rain."

I am not sure why I said it...maybe I wanted him to realize that he was a judgemental fool and we are all humans, connected in some way, or maybe its because I do and say random things all the time and this was the quote on my calendar this month. I don't know. But he just looked at me, dumbfounded. I figured he was contemplating whether I was so profoundly wise or just really ridiculous. But with that, I gave him a quick, righteous nod, got out of the cab and walked to the 7-11 to pick up some milk for Jaime.
1% milk, produced by organic Australian cows. 1% milk per product label guaranteed to be 100% free of hormones, preservatives, pesticides, added sugar, msg, gluten, and high fructose corn syrup. :)
You know, I think like an American but I currently purchase Australian, and sometimes...we are pretty similar.

Think Globally!


lol