Things I won't miss

One thing I won't miss about Aussies is them being ok with shallow relationships. It's unusual for Aussies to go deep and share "real" things with their mates, which is fine, and I understand to some extent. But I'm amazed at how people can be friends for so long and not share anything real. An Aussies friends are generally very important to them, which I love, but I'm not sure how that goes hand-in-hand with not having any depth to those relationships.

Another thing I won't miss about Australia is their love of beetroot. They put it on everything, and it's always available in abundance. We had it out everyday for sandwiches on summer project, and the smell alone was always a little nauseating to me. I will say though, I did find one beetroot thing that I liked. The Aussie girl on our team, Elly, makes a beetroot hummus that is really good. But the beetroot flavor in it is pretty minimal. And for all my Office fans... generally all I could think about was Dwight... "bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica" :)

Things I'll miss

One thing I will certainly miss about Australia is the serving sizes of food. Everything is smaller here, and doesn't encourage you to be gluttonous. It's always just the right amount I need. A standard small coffee is 8 ounces, which for all you Starbucks fanatics is equal to a short. I worked at Starbucks for 2 and a half years and always viewed the short as not enough coffee; after living in Australia for a year I now view it as just the right amount. And I'm now convinced that the venti size should only be drunk by giants :)



Another thing I will definitely miss is the hospitality of Aussies. I always thought that I was a hospitable person, even been told by others that I am, but experiencing Aussie hospitality made me change my definition of the word altogether. We were having such trouble finding housing when we first got to Australia. A family from our team leaders church told them that we could stay with them as long as we needed, and they meant it. We ended up staying with them for a full month, where they housed us and feed us pretty much every night. We had never met these people before and they completely opened their home to us. And the more I got to know Aussies over the year, the more I became convinced that that amount of hospitality is the norm, not the exception.

One completely superficial thing I will miss is a TV show called Masterchef. I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but I became thoroughly addicted to this show. It's a cooking competition , but all the competitors are amateur cooks and have never had any proper training. I think I love the show so much because you get to see the competitors progress in their skills and talent as the show goes on, and because the judges are critical, but it's constructive criticism that the competitors can learn from, not criticism to tear them down, as we so often see in American shows. My absolute favorite was right before we left they had Junior Masterchef, so all the competitors were between the ages of 8 and 12. These kids were absolutely amazing!!

Things I've noticed

One of the first things I noticed about Aussies is that they are very non-materialistic. They might be a bit more in the bigger cities, but in the country town of Geelong they are not concerned with material things at all. They don't really care about what they are wearing, and things that are considered fashionable are very simple and comfortable. It's quite a change from the materialistic world of southern California!

Another thing about Australia is that it's totally culturally acceptable to be 40 years old and working at Starbucks or McDonalds. In America, those jobs are ok for students, but once you're out of school you're expected to get a "real job", but in Australia it's totally fine. There aren't any jobs that are looked down on in Australia, whether it's working at a cafe, gas station, or janitor. It's hard to find a job here that's genuinely disrespected by Aussies. Americans might not say anything to people working those jobs, but our attitudes and how we treat them usually do most of the talking.

Aussies are also very good at keeping up with the news, whether it's local, national, or international. Every hour on the hour there's news breaks on both the radio and TV to give short updates on current news. Most conversations you have with an Aussie will eventually turn to current events. I suppose you could say this about America too, but I think it's mainly with the older generation. In Australia it's every generation, and it's something that they learn the importance of at a young age. I'm amazed at how good uni students are at keeping up with current events, and it's something I certainly didn't see in UCSB students.

Things I've noticed, things I'll miss, things I won't

I have 10 days left in Australia, and it's hitting me like a ton of bricks realizing this. I am so excited to come home and see all my family and friends again, but I am going to miss this place a lot. I love living here, I love the people and the culture and what they're all about. But, like anything, there are some things that I'm definitely not going to miss about living here. So I've compiled a list: things I've noticed, things I'll miss, and things I won't. Maybe if I focus on the things that I'm not going to miss it will make it easier to leave this place :)

And I can't take credit for this, I totally stole it from my dear friend Hillary when she was leaving her STINT in Turkey. But so good for helping me process through leaving!

Gone to Summer Project!

There are so many more stories that I could tell, but we're leaving for summer project tomorrow so my time for blogging during the next weeks is going to be pretty limited. I'll definitely give a full update when I get back from project though!

Please be praying for us as we are serving down in Torquay:
- that God would prepare the hearts of those that He wants us to minister to
- that we would see schoolies make true and honest decisions to follow Jesus
- that our students would grow in their faith and their ministry skills, and that they would come out of this project with a deeper understanding of who God is

Thanks heaps!!!