Tiffany and Greg Around the World
Between exploring amazing churches
Our adventures with street performers
Avoiding the katana-umbrella mafia
Tasting the all important local sushi and waffles:
And F-1 racing. Did we mention the F-1 racing?
(Seriously, lots goes on here)
We almost forgot to mention our favourite part of Melbourne…
And Melbourne, well as you can see with like most anything else you can think of, video games they got.
Melbourne, VIC, AU
Then one day about a month into it, we woke up and realized that cleaning up horse poop at 3:45am 6 days a week sucks. In our defense, we were kinda tired that month so it took a while.
Now that were done “playing with horses” we actually had the time to start exploring this town. Melbourne is one of Australia’s largest cities. It didn’t occur to us what that would mean to two people who spent the previous year wondering around island countries with national populations smaller than most European villages.
Melbourne, VIC, AU
Unbeknownst to us, this job put us smack into the middle of the backpacker working trail and as a result, our workmates were not who we expected. In what we anticipated to be a primarily Australian work group we found ourselves surrounded by 2 Kiwis, 3 Germans, a Sweede, 2 French, a Scott, 2 Americans (us) and a paltry 5 Australians. The foreigners outnumbered the locals by more than 2:1. Also the overwhelming majority of employees were female or as Greg put it to his unmarried brother Chris,
“Dude, wanna meet a bunch of young European Cowgirls?”
“Then come to Australia.”
Continue reading “Mostly European Cowgirls”
Melbourne, VIC, AU
…just usually not so much on themselves.
While Greg spent the majority of his time feeding and mucking Tiffany got to “train” the horses.
At this point we should point out that Tiffany has a tendency to…smack things (Aside from Greg, that is). We’re not saying that Greg has ever been approached by a pastor at church but he has had to field a few worried glances from time to time from fellow parishioners. It came with the territory when he decided to marry a woman who gets her kicks zip lining over tropical rainforests and sailing through gale-force winds. As Tiffany puts it, “I don’t bruise easy. I just hit things hard.”
Now we’ve already gone over how these horses are half-ton hyperactive 2 year-olds that are fed nothing but sugar all day, every day, right? You put them together with Tiffany on a daily basis and well…
It keeps it interesting
First off, horse racing is a big deal and a major piece of Australian culture. Heck the entire state of Victoria has a national holiday for their version of the Kentucky Derby: The Melbourne Cup.
The rest of the country is also glued to their TV sets to watch “The Cup” every year. There are fashion contests at most major races and everyone is expected to dress in nice clothes at the minimum but two piece suits or cocktail dresses are more the norm.
So it’s a piece of Australian life that really isn’t part of American life. (We bet you can’t name the date of the Kentucky Derby off the top of your head or who won it last year. Aussies can for the Melbourne Cup.)
Also, horses! Tiffany loves horses and she’s done volunteer work with them in the past. Greg’s a rider and likes horses well enough so why not? We may never do this again so let’s go work with horses…
Continue reading “Working with race horses sounded cool…”
So ends our time with Dan and our adventures in the land of the Kiwi. But New Zealand isn’t the kind of country that goes out on a sad note or at least without some final amusing antidotes. A fact they made sure we realized as got ready to board a plane and fly to our next destination.
“Wait, what!? A plane!? You guys use those!?”
We have, to a degree, made light of the titanic forces that shaped and continue to mold this tiny island nation within the South Pacific’s ring of fire. We don’t do this out of lack of respect; simply out of acceptance of how very small we as humans are before the fury of Mother Nature.
As people who have lived in Northern California and Southern Florida we have learned to live with the fact that a natural disaster could just up and kill us at any given moment and there is, in the end, precious little we can do about it. Coming from the San Francisco Bay people ask Greg what they should do if there is an earthquake. His response,
“The truth of it is that if you actually have enough time to realize that an earthquake is what’s happening, you have more than likely already survived it.”
Christchurch Cathedral
Before the 2nd quake – taken by us
After the quake – thanks to wikipedia
That knowledge, mixed with our unapologetic and absolute love of this country, made the fate of Christchurch weigh heavily on our minds as we prepared to depart New Zealand.
We spent the 4th of July in Australia which worked out really well being as our Australian friends had access to things that light on fire and we, as Americans, could provide them with an excuse to use said things that light on fire while consuming beer…all in the name of international friendship. It should be noted though that this ain’t the Australian outback you’ve been expecting.
Continue reading “Blizzard of Independence”
[fgallery id=7 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”Mount Aspiring Descent”]
After a week of enjoying the excellent company and stunning views provided by living on a mountain surrounded by glaciers and waterfalls from, most importantly, behind the protective barrier of a New Zealand hut, the day finally came for us to depart. Unfortunately no one decided to tell the rain.
Now seems an opportune moment to discuss a little saying, a philosophy if you will, that we’ve found is said down here when things get a little tough:
“Take a teaspoon of concrete and harden up!”
With that little nugget of Kiwi wisdom we depart our shelter and remember that “Kiwi Moderate” cliff face we crawled up a few days ago?
Now it’s a waterfall…and our only way down:
