Real Life Begins

The first picture on the left is of the view from my office window. The office is on the edge of Brisbane. The next picture is of the birthday breakfast Emmy and Charlotte prepared for Karen’s 50^th birthday, which was on the 15^th of September, 2006.

The last picture is of Emmy and Karen, who fell asleep watching television one night this week. An awful lot of Australian television is American stuff, usually a season or two behind. The rest is probably evenly divided between British and Australian shows. Then you’ve got one channel that just has 30-minute newscasts in the various languages of this part of the globe: Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Indian, etc. The best show on the air, though, is an Australian-produced improv comedy show in which they throw one guy with no script into a setting where the other actors are scripted and he has to ad lib his part. It’s frequently hysterical. It’s called “Thank God You’re Here” because that’s always the first line spoken by a scripted actor to the unscripted person when he or she enters the scene.

Charlotte got a full-time job this week at a store called Bargain City. Jake got enrolled in Aspley High School. They both start on Monday, the 18^th of September. We’re still doing paperwork to get the financing taken care of for Charlotte to attend Queensland University of Technology as a psychology major when their next semester starts in February.

Karen failed her first attempt at the drivers test this week and will try again Monday. I’m letting her be the guinea pig. I’ll try after she succeeds. She also got a cell phone this week. So all in all, this week we began to approach the feeling that we’re settling in and really living here, rather than just visiting.