Rebas' Adventure in Ozzieland

Hello Everyone, It has been a busy week. On Monday I started my school. Right now I am just getting my feel wet. I am hanging out at my desk in one of the "post grad" rooms, reading papers and starting to figure out what my research is going to look like. (I promise pictures soon). tomorrow I have a meeting with my "team" of professor who will lead me through the process. I found out today that there is a World Congress of Food Science and Technology this August in Cape Town South Africa and a group from my department is going...and if I pay I can go...and I just got three months off rent money freed up...I have no details yet, but I am so going! I am finding it a bit boring to just read up on different papers, so please pray that I focus on the work that needs doing now, not just the fun stuff later on. Thanks. As you may have seen on the news, Perth got a storm of the century on Monday. Lorraine's office roof fell in (not on her, another department) and I came home with lightning on every side, David was kind enough to pick me up at the bus station so I didn't get struck by lightning. Lorraine's car had over 50 dents in it from the golf ball size hail that fell. I didn't get to see the hail, which I am bummed about because I have never seen hail bigger than a rice crispies. Tonight is my first night at my new place. Dale and Lany are going on vacation on Saturday, so we have a few days to get to know each other and make sure I know everything about the house. It is a small house, but nice. it was a rental for 15 years until they moved back from Sydney 6 months ago. You can tell the house is still between looking like a rental and looking like them. (I will take pictures Adan show you after they leave). I am sort of glad, I would feel intimidated to house-sit in a house that was someones pride and joy. It is a cute and clean and I think I am going to be very sad when I have to give it up and find a place that I can afford.

What, you may ask, is a tim tam? It is a cookie. A chocolate sandwich cookie with two rectangular chocolate cookies filled with chocolate filling and dipped in chocolate (yum!). But what, you may ask yourself, is a tim tam slam?!? Well, what you do first is to get yourself a cup of hot chocolate, then you take a small bite out the the corner of the tim tam, then take a small bite out of the opposite end of the cookie. Now, you put one end of the tim tam into your hot chocolate and suck the drink through the cookie. Only do this for a couple seconds, because the hot liquid is causing all the filling to melt, so you have to carefully pop the whole tim tam into your mouth before it falls apart. On Tuesday the Rowbottoms have a bible study at their house, everyone said I had to try a tim tam slam, so some people left the study to go to the store and by some for me. They also bought me a kind of cake that I haven't tried yet and a mars bar. I mentioned that we had Mars M&M brand, but no actual mars bars. I had always wanted to try one because it is mentioned in the first Harry Potter book, it is like a snickers without nuts. It was so much fun to have people show me a local dessert and tell me things about Australia. I liked the people at the bible study, no kindred spirits yet, but nice people. On Wednesday I went to a campus bible study that meets at noon, It was for undergrads, but I talked with the leaders and they seemed nice. It might be a ministry opportunity, I don't know yet. Oh, and major blessing! A couple in the church are going on a 3 month trip and they asked if I wanted to house sit! SO I now have a free place to stay and time to find roommates that I like. Yay God! How was the grammer Mom?

i went to curtin, oh sorry, Uni today. I walked around campus and went to all the places you go on you first day. the thing is, school started two weeks ago, so all the start of term stuff is over and everyone looks at you like, where have you been? the international office didn't know what to do with me, i went up to the desk and the lady just said, "well you missed orientation, here is a pamphlet" not very helpful. Housing on the other hand was very helpful , I give them an amount I want to pay on rent and they will set up interviews and showings of houses with roommates and apartments around the school. I officially start my degree next Monday, so I have a week to find a place, or at least do a good bit of shopping around. I met with my professor, Stuart Johnson, he is new to Curtin himself, he is from the UK and has been working at Curtin for only 6 months. But he has alot of experience in research and in writing proposals and grants. He is going to help me get a scholarship for next year. And speaking of that... While we were talking Stuart (he told me to call him that) told me that my masters by research was closer to a PhD then a masters in course work and that I could get a PhD if I stayed for one more year... then when he took me to meet the head of the department he mentioned it to her and she said that the big difference was having an original idea in the research, not just getting practice in researching. Stuart said that he had always planned on me doing original stuff. So basically Stuart is use to PhDs and he is planning on working me like a PhD student anyway, It just would be a matter of red tape for me to change to a PhD, I don't have to decide for several months if I want to do it or not, and there is a scholarship for international PhD students that I am eligible for that would pay for my second and third years... I am seriously thinking about about this. I don't know if I can handle the work, I mean, I haven't even seen what it takes to get a masters, but as I think about this I have that sly grin on my face that I get, you know, the one I had on when I first started talking about Australia? I am really scared I won't do well, so I don't want to start making castles in the sky when i need to be focusing on getting the job done, not making the job harder. On the other hand, I had assumed a PhD would take me several more years. just one more seems totally worth it. it means I could teach at a college level if I wanted to. All in all an interesting first day at school. Oh, I forgot about the bus. I took the bus in from the Rowbottoms and it went really fast i don't know if really went at a high speed, but if felt like we were going too fast for such a big bus, and when i got on, the driver didn't wait until I was seated before he took off rather suddenly, I literally fell into my seat, very Knight Bus. Please comment and tell me what you think.

First off I have to say sorry for no pictures, I havn't had a the presents of mind to take any yet, I will try to do better next post. So, even though I bought a special neck pillow and took sleeping pills, I could not sleep on the red eye from LA to Sydney. I maybe got an hour in. I got through costoms just fine although they made me throw out my beef jerky before I could enter the country. I was allowed to keep the smoked salmon that was my hostess gift to the Rowbottoms, go figure. As I said before, the Rowbottoms are a pastor's family who I have been emailing for awhile and they invited me to stay with them for a few weeks. I am so glad of that! I would have felt so overwhelmed if I had to find a place to stay and figure out how to get places, not to mention not knowing anyone. The rowbottoms are Lorraine and David, they have three girls, Rebekah-9, Rachel-7, Johanna-5. they girls are so cute and they were excited to meet me. The funny thing is, they mis-pronouce my name. They had read it on the email so the e in Reba is like the e in web. this is funny because I was joking with my family about how, seeing as i became Reba in college, I should come up with a new name for myself in Perth, well now I have! I arrived in Perth at 2pm local time (for me it was 10pm) and I proceeded to stay up until 9pm local time (5am). the Rowbottoms had company for dinner and I was made on of the party, they are very laid back and they have a very open, homey house. I felt OK most of the time, once in a while I would get that feeling you get when you get off a boat, but you feel like the ground is still moving? that was me. I slept all night long and feel pretty good today. Lorraine and I went for a walk with the dog (Bella for Twilight, oh yes, you heard right) the weather and the plants remind me of southern California. David said that the summer months, Nov, Dec Jan will be in the 80's and 90's F and once in a while 101 or 102 but no more. In the winter jun, Jul, Aug, the record cold day is 30F ! I have found a few fun words already, Lorriane told the girls if they would good they could have a lollie (aka hard candy), and for dinner we had pizza with chicken and capsaicin (bell peppers). that is very interesting because capsaicin is the name of the chemical that is responsable for the heat in peppers. tomorrow will go to church which meets on campus so I will get my first look at my college (oh, and all universitys are called just Uni) to tired to spell check, you get what you get. Reba

I am sitting at the LAX airport (that is LA California). I don’t have internet right now so I will post this later. It is currently 8:50pm Wednesday March 10th. I feel pretty good. I was getting a little emotional on the plane from Portland. I realized that I would be unable to call home when I hit LA and I started to feel a little isolated. Just thinking about not being able to call my mom or my friends when I get stress and need advice; I got a little feeling of panic, a very little feel, just a wrinkle in the stomach area. And that is the first time I have had emotion about this trip, I have been excited, but I am a fairly mellow person and I don’t get emotional very often. I thought to myself,” I will be a lot more tired when this trip is over and much more prone to being emotional, I hope I am not in trouble.” So I prayed, and then we had to get off the plane so I didn’t have time to think. I had to wait for a tram to take me the other side of the airport and while a waited I thought I would read my little bible. Kathy Glass (family friend) had advised me to read Philippians. So I read the first chapter. The funny part is I decided to stand because of all the sitting I was doing, so I ended up facing my chair with a bible in my hands looking like a crazy religious nut, GO JESUS! Anyway, the first chapter of Phil. has the verse,”He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” The whole chapter was awesome and I teared up a little and calmed right down. (For me, crying is a calming thing, such a nice release). Then we got on the tram. The tram/bus went right out onto the run way, we would stop and a plane would pass us and would keep going, very cool. Then we saw this huge plane ride along side of the tram, it was a double Decker and it was so cool to see it up close like that. I was an Australian Line (I think LAX is a big Australia jumping off point) Just seeing that plane made me feel excited again. I am going to a foreign country! I am going to live there! But first I have to get there, and it is going to take a while. Staying with Portland time I will be taking off at 11pm Wednesday night, I will land in Sydney at 2pm Thursday afternoon! Then I go on to Perth which is another 5 hours in the air. So I will write again when I am through customs. Love and soda pop, Reba

So, it turns out that while US flights let you take two pieces of 50 Lbs each, the international flight only allows 20 Kg total (~44 lbs) so, I now have the task of packing up all my stuff and weighing it to see if I need to cut out my new shoes, or bite the bullet and pay extra. I have had lots of advice about what to take on my carry-on: all ID, computer, snacks for the journey, a change of clothes (just in case) and most important of all, drugs. I have been told that nothing helps a 15hour flight more then allergy medicine. it keeps your ears from popping and helps you sleep through the long boring hours. I let you know how it goes. I have also signed up for skype, so I can talk to you all, that is when you get skype. my name on skype is rebecca.reba.licata so you know it's me. TTFN PS does anyone know what movie the title of this post is a quote from?

Hello Everyone! I am now a blogger, (thank you Steph for your help with that) I am about to start on my big Australian adventure and you get to hear about it. I will be leaving on Wednesday next week and I will let you know all the fun and crazy things that happen along the way. Yay!