June 18: Day 53 Hanging out with cousin's in Melb

Thursday, June 18, 2009
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
June 18: Day 53

I did not sleep more than 3 hours the night before as my cousin Jason showed me how I can download skype on my iphone and use the internet to make calls directly from my cell phone .  The charges were 2 cents per minute or so and I used Jason's internet to wireless to connect via my iphone.  Amazing technology.  It was not different that using my cell phone with great reception.

Due to my new excitement, I called everyone and anyone in the states that I had needed to talk to.  The timezone in Australia is 16 hours ahead of Denver I think so basically, I add 8 hours to the time and subtract a day.  It is easy to mistake the timezone and call my parents and hear them answer half awake.  Even though I know immediately that I must be wrong, I always ask, "Isn’t it 9PM there? No, 4AM in the morning.  Ooops, I must have miscalculated the time!!!!" 

Jason’s wonderful wife Rene made me a toast and coffee as I awoke on just a couple hours of sleep.  They had their share of stress on them in the upcoming days.  Jason listed his house on an auction and they had realtors showing the house and were trying to keep it cleaned .  As I spread my smelly backpack across his living room floor with clothes that had not been washed since a campground in New Zealand several weeks earlier, I tried to keep my belongings neat and orderly and be mindful of what Jason had going on.   

In a typical Kelley-family fashion (this side of the family is very athletic) Jason and I got up and went for a 2.5 mile run through the parks, over beautiful rivers and with lush green trees and landscapes.  We finished our run and Jason decided he would teach me a few things about Footy (Australian Rules Football).  They tend to abbreviate many of their long words with words that end in either y or ie.  So we started off kicking the ball back and forth at close distances.  Different from an Amercian football, this ball was difficult to kick straight.  We used a kid’s ball and it is shorter than a football and perhaps more fat.  He next taught me the “hand pass” where you bump the ball with the top of a closed fist.  We continued to take our skills to the next level by kicking a little further, then with our left foot and then we moved to a bigger area to try and kick further .  My first kick attempt to kick a left foot at any distance went off course down a ravine to a river.  It was maybe 100 to 150 feet down and Jason asked whether we should go after it or leave it, mentioning that it is his son’s favorite ball.   Up for the challenge, I suggested we find a way to get the ball.  We walked around the steep area to find an area that was walkable. I told him the story of my brother Mike who slipped down a hill in Vermont cutting himself in the butt with a piece of glass.  We laugh as we describe the process of him going to the hospital in the car on his stomach.  Jason wonders if he still has the scar, but I tell him that I did not ask to look.  This is one of those family stories that will last forever.

We walk through the deep grass that sinks down a foot or two with nearby streams and water ditches.  There were plenty of knocked over trees and my memory brings back all the Steve Irwin shows that I would watch where he would pull snakes out of bushes and tree areas like what we were walking in .  So, I ask the obvious, “Hey Jas, are there snakes out here?”  He responds with the Australian tone and words,”I imagine there are.   Australia has the most poisonous snakes in all the world. “  I think…Great, I am living every Americans worst fear on my first day in Australia!  Jason continues, “If you clap, you will scare them away before you get to them.”  I start a clapping sequence resembling an Indian Tribal Dance, singing or humming anything I can to scare off a possible snake.  Although I have limited fear of sharks of any animal underwater, I am scared to death of snakes.  After a few minutes, I noticed Jason was not clapping.  I asked him why and he responded with his Australian tone, “I have not seen any snakes before.  So, I don’t know why I should clap until I have reason to.” Knowing that I was probably being set up, I did not care and erred on the side of caution, continuing to clap my hands as my feet sunk into the deep grass and I stepped over the luxurious snake habitat. We found the ball eventually without any snake encounters and returned home placing the prized footy back on Jason’s son Hunter’s bed .

After a short rest and a sandwich, Jason and I figured we were ready to go again.  We headed across the street to get a workout in at the gym.  Alternate sets back and forth, I tried to outlift him and he tried to outlift me.  This side of the family is competitive also and it makes our workup a bit more challenging than if I were working out by myself.  If he did 10 reps, I would attempt 11.  He was pretty strong and I think that I was the weaker person in the gym that day.   

I love the Good Day Mate terminology that they use here in Melbourne.  As Jason answers the phone, he does not say “Hello.”  He says, “Good day mate!”  Finally, after wanting so much to say “Good day mate” to the Kiwis, I am able to talk like Crocodile Hunter with the Ausis and use their terminology.  I want to ask for Shrimp on a bar-b, but my cousins give me the heads up that this was really just a movie thing and they don’t eat shrimp on the bar-b every night

As Jason prepared to go to work for the evening, he dropped me off at Corin’s house.  Corin was not there and his two oldest kids Sky and Will were a little shy to see me.  I decided I would get a pizza and return in a few minutes when Corin was back.  I returned with a pizza and became an instant fan favorite of his kids.  Pizza always does that with kids!!!  I had my backpack with me and decided that I would tell the kids where I had been.  I asked them if they had a map.  Sky returned with a big map of the world.  I showed her Galapagos where I started and quizzed her about useless trivia in Galapagos to give her stories that she would remember like “Do you know what color feet the Blue-Footed Boobie Bird has?”  I advanced with tougher questions and she was smart.  I knew she was paying attention and hoped  that I would impact her with some of the stories I shared with her.  I remembered that I had my laptop with me with all my pictures on it.  I pulled it out and started through a slide show of my favorite pictures of sharks, sea lions, penquins, blue-footed boobies and other animals .  Sky was interested so I continued.  After an hour or two, we had gone through all the islands that I had visited and I had not only 12 year-old Sky huddled around me looking at my pictures, but also 9 year old Will and 4 year old Madeline.  Will has down syndrome and although he was a little shy with me in the beginning, he warmed right up to me sitting up my lap laughing and giggling as we took pictures afterwards.  Most aptitude tests had told me that the best job for me is a Teacher for Disabled Children.  A job that I never tried before, but something that I think I could be good at and my goofy humor was something that Will thought was very funny. 

Because Corin had to take another courier package to the airport, I decided that I would perhaps get dropped back off at Jason’s bar.  Living like a gypsy on this portion of my trip, I had one of my backpacks on me with a change of clothes and toiletries and my other backpack in Jason’s shed out of the way of any Realtor that might want to show his house.   I arrived to Jason’s bar and was met with great hospitality once again setting me up with beer and food; I was treated very well by my cousin.  We had several beers at the bar and I hoped Jason close it down, arriving back to his place exhausted from the long day.  

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