Rebas' Adventure in Ozzieland

Ok, I was waiting to update the blog until I could get pictures, but that didn't work. I went out last Saturday without my camera, now I do have a camera on my phone and it even comes with a USB cable and a program for your computer, yeah sure, even with help from a desk-mate I COULD NOT GET IT TO WORK!! Very frustrating, anyway. I went to a place called The Maze with some people from church. I girl named Becky invited me. It is just outside of town so it has a nice country atmosphere to it. The Maze is a park that you pay $20 to get into, once you’re in there is free disk golf, mini golf, a "giant" chess set (it only came up to my knees, but I still made my friend take a picture of me playing a game of chess and I am a piece on the board, hopefully you will see this picture one day. The guy playing chess with me is named Richard, he goes to my church and is on the worship team with me (to your questions, no, but I think he could be a friend)). And of course, Mazes, we did them all. one was made of clap board and was quite tricky, and two of them were short and came up to your waist, but the trick was, in one you could only turn right and in the other you could only turn left, it was really fun figuring out how to get out of the maze. The whole day was so much fun, playing games and it was cool and sunny. There is a restaurant there and I had my first Meat Pie (very Aussie) they are a small individual pastry full of hamburger and gravy and sometimes veg. you can get good meat pies and bad ones, sort of the equivalent of a buying a burrito, everything from Taco del Mar to the gas station. The one I ate was on par with a Reesers brand called Mrs Macs. I had such a good day. And then at night I went to an event that was not what I thought it was going to be… Jill is a girl who plays the piano at church and we are on the worship team together (please remember how casual the worship team is, I am having tons of fun being on it, but I don’t want to boast, anyone gets on the team if they can sing and are willing to). Anyway, Jill goes to another church at night and they were having some sort of yearly dinner, like an appreciation dinner or something and Jill asked if I could come help in the kitchen and do dishes. I knew she had already asked around church for help so I said sure. I was imagining a church kitchen and I some nice church ladies handling the dinner and a group of people doing the dishes, many hands make the work light, that sort of thing. Well, no. Jill picked me up at 6:30pm with Jono, a guy from church (Jonathan, is nicknamed Jono over here). The car is full of balloons, we get to the a building 20 minutes later and immediately start grouping balloons into arrangements for the doors and making centre pieces, may I remind you that it is now after 7pm and this dinner is starting at 7:30. And people keep coming in with dishes, it is a potluck and there is only one table set up full of appetizers (by the way appetizers are called entrees over here, entrees are just called mains, this confusion didn’t help) and the woman in charge starts to tell us how we are going to how we need to wait until 7:30 and then bring out the mains that are waiting in the next room. And that is when I starting asking a lot of questions. it turns out that they rent part of the building for church, and their part does not include a kitchen, just a big room with a small sink and some tables, ahem, ok, we get to hand wash dishes for 50 people with nothing but a one bay sink and some folding tables. The one good thing was a hot water tap so we had plenty of hot water all night long. The other thing was there was no one in charge of the kitchen, it was just us.Here’s the story: The church had realized that the people who should be going to the dinner where the people who always served and so they decided to get outside help so that the nice old ladies (and they had some really cute, classic old church ladies, Love them!) could go to the dinner. Great plan, and Jill’s job was to find said outside help. No problem, if I had been told. There was a major lack of organization, Jill was supposed to be at the dinner too, and it was just Jono, another girl and myself. I ran around trying to find out what resources we had and to set up the tables so we had a dirty side and a clean side. Since coming to Australia, I have met several people here who don’t bother to rinse their dishes after they wash them, you just scrap them and then wash them in a tub of hot soapy water and shake ‘em off and call it good. Of course after a few dishes the water is not exactly clean anymore, this was what happened on Saturday night. I didn’t say anything and just let it be. Soon, it was our job to take out the main dishes, there was so many and they had set up only one table. If you have ever help out at a potluck, you will know that people can get very upset if they don’t see their dish set out, we tried really hard and I think over all we succeeded. By this time I was over my surprise and willing to still have fun. I had felt very, um, incredulous (that’s a nice word for it) at the lack of planning and I hope I didn’t let it show. We ate the leftovers, yum! That church can cook! Jill came after she had eaten to help and we kept up on the dishes pretty well. At the end we had done everything but the glasses, water and wine for each person (no paper here) and we were all dead on our feet, and three young people at the party came and asked if they could help, we said yes. We shooed away the nice old ladies. All in all a fun and full Saturday, I was so tired on Sunday I didn’t do anything.