Rebas' Adventure in Ozzieland

On Thursday I went to worship practice. It was very casual and not very long, I think I would have liked it if we had practice a bit more. However it was fun and Sue (singer and leader) was very nice and seemed to know what she was doing. The scary part was when she would stop singing and let me sing on my own. She is excited to have two singers so she can do the harmony which means I am doing the melody all by myself! everyone was very encouraging and said I did well. On Sunday I sang, it was a lot of fun, I really liked it. I made some mistakes, but no one seemed to mind and I got several compliments afterwords. There are two teams of two people (piano and singer) that alternate every three weeks, I am not official on either, but am allowed to join a team whenever I want. I plan to go to practice every week for right now and sing if I am in town for the weekend. I want to get better. It is kinda fun going to a small church where it is easy to get involved.______________ School is going better, Thank you for your prayers. I have mapped out what needs to happen each week and discussed it with my Prof. I feel more organized and able to work.__________________ Two fun American word isms I didn't know I had. Yesterday I was at the Rowbottoms house. I am making the dinner for tonight's bible study and I figured it would be easier to make it at their house rather than trying to bring two casserole dishes on a bus and I needed to prep some stuff.(I am making eggplant parmesana). Anyway, another guy from the church was there to meet with David, we were all in the kitchen and Lorraine asked me if I wanted a tea (not tea mind you, a tea. I love that). I responded with a shake of my head and said, "oh, I'm good". And the guy, looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and commented that that response didn't seem to answer the question about tea and he wondered why I said it. Lorraine was familiar with the phase and explained that it meant that I was good as I was and didn't want tea (although now I think of it, I should have started with "no thank you" it would have been more polite). And then later I mentioned going to "school" meaning Curtin and he laughed and said that school means grade school. you would never call college "school", it is Uni.

So, the house I am housesitting is about a ten minute walk to a park on the Swan River. And at the Park was the Red Bull Air Race, apparently an international event. I sucessfully invited a group of 8 people to come to my house and walk down to the river and see the sites. The races went for two days Sat. & Sun, we went after church so we saw the finals and an air show of six synchronized planes doing formations and barrel roles. The pictures are of the view over the river at down town Perth, a girl named Mel (Melanie) and I at the waters edge (and yes I am sunburnt), a look at the planes in formation. It was so cool! I had Mel over for dinner and a movie on Saturday night, she is young, 21, but I think we will be friends, she is Canadian over here for a year. [New topic, no way to make a paragrah] When I first came here, Lorraine mentioned that they don't have much in the way of music at church. Usually just a piano and one singer. I said, off handedly, that although I had no training, I would be happy to sing if they needed me too. Well, on Sunday the lady who usually sings came up to me and asked if I would be willing to sing with her this coming week! I said yes and tomorrow I go to worship practice. aahhhhh!! My story-telling preformance side is excited and thinking "I have always wanted to do this, people have said I have a good voice, this is feeding my secret desire to be a superstar!" and my shy insecure side is saying "oh crap, you have no training and you will make a fool of yourself". I guess time will tell. On a more serious note, you may have notice that I have said very little about school. That is because I haven't been doing any! I know that God brought me here to work on some things, and I know that part of that is my very passive agressive rebelion which is manafesting itself in my research. I have done nothing yet and the clock is ticking. I need to have a proposal ready to show the college at the end of June. I need Gods' help to do that (trust me on that one, I would not have finished community college without lots of prayer). Please pray for me. I feel like I am in a tug-a-war with God and I although I am pulling as hard as I can, I really want Him to win. Thank you.

I went camping this last weekend with my bible study; there were about 10- 15 people depending on the night. We were they from Thursday to Sunday. We went to a coastal town south of Perth called Dunsborough. The second picture is a place called Sugar Loaf, it was beautiful! Some people climbed around the rocks, but I have a fear of going down steep places, so didn’t go very far up. We went on to a place were you could swim, but I didn’t have a bathing suit or a change of clothes so I didn’t go in, and we didn’t have much time anyway because more people were arriving at the campsite. I should have gone! The next day was to cold to swim and I never got to go in. We couldn’t get a campsite so it was planned that we would stay on one of our guy’s parents’ farm. It was sort of like camping in someone back yard. We camped right next to the chickens, (known as chooks here, to rhyme with cooks). A very determined rooster started crowing at 4am and kept it up until dawn. I was able to get back to sleep, but half the group was not so luck. The next night Clayton (guy whose parents owned the farm) caught the rooster and put him in a box for the night. We had good food, as you can see by my very British breakfast. And the guys had gone fishing had caught a salmon. It was had white flesh and didn’t taste like our salmon, but was it good! We wrapped it in foil whole and BBQ it. Oh my gosh, to eat baked fish that had been caught that morning, Wow, amazing. On Saturday some of the girls went wine tasting. There are tons of wineries around there. The picture from left to right is: Jenna (American student), Lorraine (pastor’s wife), Reba (a name call myself), and Jane (Aussie at the church who is very nice and give me rides a lot). I even bought some wine, it was on sale so I ending up with half a case! All in all a fun weekend. Oh, and we introduced the Aussies to s’mores! That was fun.

Sorry Y'all, I know I should have written sooner. Last week was pretty boring and this weekend was pretty full. It is Easter break around campus, so not a lot going on with my schooling. On Friday, I went to the Good Friday service at my Church, Curtin Community Church (CCC). They had the service outside on campus in the morning. I had never been to a Good Friday service in the morning before. it was very nice and after the service we had a BBQ! you can't swing a dead cat around here without having a BBQ ( I realize that phase doesn't quite work with the sentence, but I have always wanted to use it, and this is my blog). BBQs are not to fancy, you just need a gas grill, some sausages ( = high quality hot dogs and/or bratwurst), buns, ketchup, and some grilled onions and you are good to go. three points of interest in regards to BBQs. The grill is always gas and it is not a grate, but rather a solid metal griddle. Ketchup is know as Tomato Sauce, and thirdly, there is never any mustard to be found. You can buy mustard and I have seen it on sandwiches, but not on sausages. I was planing on having pictures for this blog, but I misplaced my camera, hopefully pictures coming soon. On Friday night I invited several girls over to have a movie night. we watched Whip It and Garden State. Both good movies, but, as I say, they didn't "penetrate my soul". check my profile for favorite movies. And on Sunday, I ate Kangaroo! That's right I ate it. There are several undergrad students from the states who are here for a term or a year, and we decided to make Easter dinner together. Lorraine (pastor's wife) said that someone had given her some "roo meat" and did we want it? we said yes, because hey, how often in your life do you get the chance to eat free roo meat? One of the girls took our pictures eating it and I will post it later. We ended up making a stir-fry with the meat along with salad and lemon meringue pie, make by yours truly. the meat tasted like elk to me. One of the girls, Mel, commented that it tasted like some kind of game. I agree, it was like wild meat, so it had a flavor to it, but nothing gross. The cut of meat we had been given was very tender and the stir-fry was a success. I guess that is enough for now, I will write again soon, I promise. I love you all Reba