Moon Bathing

Right now it is almost 11:30am on Saturday. On Friday we ate breakfast here. I tried to continue to try some of the other cereals. I am finding they are mostly the same concepts with a twist. Yesterday I tried what looked like raisin bran, but it also had like dried apricot or something. Good, but I still liked the Cocoa Krispies. This morning I tried one that is like a golden grahms king of thing. They had sausage out this morning, which I tried a bit of out of curiosity. I am finding that I am VERY glad I don't eat much meat as the meat here, especially at the place we're staying is not very good. It doesn't help that it doesn't taste the same at all, even to someone who eats lots of pork etc. They make spectacular white rice though! I can't remember if I've explained that the majority of the other students living here are asian international students, and the chef/cook is from hong kong. It is interesting to see that group of students line up for food and pile it on their plates when we are not exactly fond of it.

We got picked up about 10am to head to the Magill office, our "home base", for our first day of our field placement. (We've learned that this is the correct word for what we are doing here. We've been using internship, but that is used mostly for medical students here.) We were pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little cooler than the day before, but still above 100 F. We spent time doing some mailings and getting accustomed to the office. It is a wonderful atmosphere. There is no sense of a hierarchy in the office. Everyone works together to get things done. When we were mostly done with the mailings we brought out a map to give us an idea of where the places that things were being mailed to were located. We've come to realize that it is true that Adelaide, where we are located, is really the only city in the state of South Australia. Here the population is about 1,158,259 people. Most of the other places are what we would consider towns. We ate lunch with all of the staff in the kitchen. The building is a house on the property of a church that they've converted to an office. After lunch we worked on a couple more tasks before Helene offered to take us to get money exchanged and take a quick trip to Kmart to get any things that we need. They don't have Wal-mart here, but there are Kmarts and Targets. They rate about the same with the people here as they do in the U.S. By the time we got back from the quick trip the work day was over. We came back to Hosanna Heights for supper and then Helene picked us up and took us to the beach. It is so hot here that people don't go during the day. They wait until the sun has gone down. Most of the Helene's family joined us. Her son Jeremy stayed home to take care of the house. Their home doesn't have air conditioning so in order to keep it somewhat cool they must open it all up when a gully breeze comes through. We also have a hunch that he wanted to watch Cricket on TV. We had difficulty finding a parking space at the beach because of all the people that had come out. We walked down and found a spot to set up shop on the beach. Immediately the 3 Americans pulled out our towels and set up to "sun bathe." Helene and her family found this amusing since the sun was currently setting. It one event that helped me realize that sometimes I find myself just going through a routine of what I'm expecting. I have to be aware of that here where things are done quite differently sometimes. We headed into the ocean where it was cool. For the first time in 3 days I was cool while being outside! We played around and tossed a tennis ball, even after we couldn't see it anymore. Hilary and Morgan (the other two girls I am here with) had gone in to lie on the beach so we decided we should go look for them since it was dark. At first we couldn't find them anywhere, which included our stuff since we were counting on finding them to find the belongings. Then suddenly we crossed pathes as they were walking the opposite direction down the beach. I was extremely frustrated at first that they'd left the belongings alone. They said they'd told us that they were going for a walk, but we're pretty sure that they were talking to a different group they'd mistaken for us in the dark. Helene assured me, though, that it is safe to leave belongings unattended on the beach. In the end it was ok since we found our things and they were all accounted for. We took a series of pictures of us laying out on the beach trying to dry off in the moon light. It is a good thing that Helene and her family know we are tourists and have accepted that we will take lots of pictures. Even of the beach at night. The picture on the right is Klaus, Helene's husband, whom I didn't even realize was in the picture I was trying to take of the moon reflecting on the water (since it was so dark) until it was too late.