brekkie and sunnies

I'm not sure if I've ever had everything fall into place when I had little to nothing planned from the beginning. I haven't updated the blog recently because things have been happening pretty naturally and there hasn't been any major bumps in the road that our worth telling the world about. But while we're on the subject of roads...let's just say that the most difficult thing about our trip so far is learning how to cross the street. YOU try getting used to crossing a street where you look: right, left, right (I had to look out my window at the street to remind myself).. instead of the American: left, right, left. This isn't so much an issue when you're using a crosswalk..but when you're jay walking, apparently cars like to speed up when they see foreigners like us looking the wrong way. So.....in all seriousness...getting run over is the worst of our worries at this point.

 Basically, within 36 hours of being in Coolangatta...we found ourselves with jobs and a place to live. The three of us were sitting downstairs for "brekkie" with our computers, and the general manager of Komune (the resort) came over to see what our plans were for the day. We let him know that it was a top priority for all three of us to get jobs..and we asked him if we could use the front desk printer to print out a copy of our resume to take to businesses. Turns out..there was no need to print out resumes...because he ended up hiring all three of us within that same day. He asked us to come back that afternoon to get behind the bar and make him some drinks. After that successful "interview" he proceeded to tell us that all we would need to do is some paperwork and we would officially be "working migrants", as our Australian bank likes to label us. For now we're working to pay for our accommodations here, but we hope to get our own apartment as soon as we find something that has as good of a view as this one.

 There are a lot of events that Komune puts on for anything surf related...with it being owned by pro surfers, I guess it comes with the territory. Between the friends that we meet through these events and through our job here, we have pretty much decided that we couldn't be working in a better place to get to know Coolangatta. On friday night, the Electric Sunglasses company had an event here and not only was it an awesome night hanging out with the company, but I scored some new "sunnies" that will forever be my favorite pair of shades. Ironically, I had rolled over onto my old sunnies that same day, and spent that whole day trying to find a new pair. Low and behold, a sunglasses company was staying in our very same resort..and Pete, the owner, was generous enough to give me a nice new pair of sunnies. He simply looked at my face, pulled some sunnies out of his briefcase..and I was back in business.

Pete the owner would be the man in the bottom left of the picture....quite the lively group, to say the least.

Our first day of work was on Saturday. Ironically, we worked Saturday morning, and were sent to clean up after the Electric party that we had attended the night before. Talk about bad karma! We're planning to email Pete from Electric and ask him for some more free sunnies since we cleaned up after all of the partiers! Alyssa and I also had a chance to work an entire shift behind the bar that night. There was an awesome group of Aussies that came in and were pretty understanding when it came to the language barrier...Aussie drinks are not exactly comparable to American drinks.  In other words, California knows how to party, and Aussie's fancy a shot of peach schnapps as opposed to a stiff shot of whiskey. As long as I know what they're talking about when they want a "fruit tingle", it's all gravy =). 

                                          This was with one of our manager's at his going away party.

As far as friends go, we’ve met our fair share of Aussie locals, and even Americans. There’s one guy from the states that we work with at Komune, so he’s been able to show us around a little bit and we don't have any language barrier with him! We also ran into a girl working at the gelato shop down the street; turns out she used to live in Santa Barbara for about 12 years and happened to have a bunch of mutual friends with Chelsiah. We all decided at the gelato shop that it truly is a small, small world and we should therefore meet up for a beer in the next few days…

                                            These huge lizards are everywhere!! Click on the pic to check this thing out!

                                                    

Now your FAVORITE PART..it’s Aussie lingo time!

“How you going?”- Nope, I did not mean to say “doing” instead of “going”. You’re probably asked this about 10 times a day. Oh, and if WE try to ask someone how they are “going”, the Aussies laugh and say something along the lines of :“Oh, so yous are on holiday?!”- and no, I did not misspell that last sentence either, they say “yous” as an abbreviation of “you guys”. And “holiday” is another word for vacation. We’re used to this now...but in those first few days, the language barrier was definitely in full force.

And here’s a bonus word..it was pretty much the theme of this blog, so I better explain it: “Sunnies”-This one has really caught on between the three of us..because lets face it, “sunnies” is way easier to say than that longggggggg word “sunglasses”. They very rarely say “sunglasses” or any long word for that matter. If a word needs an abbreviation, leave it up to an Australian to figure that one out.