Pics

Top Left (our town and countryside)

Top Right (R.T. and kids at local vineyard)

Middle Left( a wing at the hospital)

Middle Right (vineyard)

Bottom (Abbie sitting in drivers seat of our car)

I did not include a pic of our house. It is pretty american looking. We actually love the local houses that are on stilts - I will try and include a pic of them later on this year.

We are loving our house. We feel so blessed and undeserving of what we have been given. We do feel that it is a bit strange that the house has neither air or heat. We have already been a bit warm this week and it is only Spring. It will be an experience when the temp outside is 110. I think that we may go and purchase a fan. I keep telling myself that people lived for many years with out air.....

Thanks for the comments, it is encouraging to know that someone is reading our blogs :-)

Home

Today has been a good day. In anticipation of today, we did homeschool yesterday so that today we could enjoy the moment.....WE MOVED INTO OUR HOUSE. After living out of suitcases for 7 weeks and staying at 6 different locations, we were very ready to settle down into some normalcy. Actually, I have been looking forward to this moment for about 6 months. The last few months in the states were so busy and unsettled.
Queensland Health has gone above and beyond what we expected to make us feel at home. We have a four bedroom home that is only a year old. We have only a few "hand me downs" from other docs and everything else is new (new beds, living room furniture, dishes etc) They have also provided us with a desk in each of the kids rooms and a computer desk for the living area. We feel VERY blessed.
I think that we have found our church home. Our fellowship is about 60 people. We meet on Sunday mornings from 9:30-11:00 and then we have "tea" (a varied collection of hot and cold drinks and fruit and biscuits-cookies). We are one of the larger churches in the area. I was talking with a friend the other day and she was stunned to hear that, even though our towns are similar in size, we have several churches that are over 500 people. I told her that we were in the Bible belt though-not all of America is like that. With that she said that this area is the Bible belt of Queensland. I guess we have our work cut out for us.
We are getting involved in the community. The kids are doing swimming in the afternoons-I think that the Australians idolize Ian Thorpe a little more than we do M.Phelps. Both of our kids are in the beginners class learning how to do the different strokes. Abbie is also doing gymnastics on Monday mornings and I am meeting with homeschool moms fortnightly on Thurs for bible study. Dad has joined a wood workers group and they meet on Sat. mornings.
R.T. is enjoying being home more. Last night was his first night "on call". The ER closes at 10:30pm with just a nurse who stays there. Then they call the doc if necessary. He ended up having to ship someone out via helicopter and was home around 1:30. The hospital staff is learning what "type A" means. We get many good laughs at the difference in the cultures.
I will close this blog for now. We are still using internet library, but we have ordered the internet for home and it should be working in 5 to 14 days. At that time, I will blog a lot of pictures. Thank you SO MUCH for all your prayers. We would love to hear from you .

aliens

Sorry about the quick post yesterday, I had so much to say and so little time.
I wanted to tell you all about our trip to the immigration office last week. We had to go and get our visas put into our passports. It dawned on us while we were there, that we were now the immigrants. R.T. is the one who is a foreign medical grad. We are the ones with an accent. This is a strange feeling.
The day we arrived in AU. Abbie told us that she thought that she already had an accent. We told her that she really did have an accent; but the way that she said her words had not changed in 24 hours.
I was checking out at the grocery store and I was asking if something was "cheaper" and they looked at me strangely. I then phrased my words differently and we communicated just fine.
R.T. went to type up his c/section report yesterday (no there is no dictaphone) and he found that he wrote many of his words wrong. (ie esophagus is spelled with an oesophagus. So instead of doing a TEE they do TOES)
Everything is good though. We are getting used to the new ways and words. I am afraid that we will be foreigners this whole year. There is nothing that we can do about it. :-) It will be good to be home and blend in a little bit more :-)

We are at least in our home town

We are very excited that we were able to drive up to our town. R.T. told us about this option to stay up here, and we were all very excited about moving. We are currently in a 4 bedroom house. It is meeting our needs until we can move into our house at the end of the month.
The drive up here was amazing. We went through countryside, flat lands and even the rain forest. We saw three dead roos on the trip up and many live cacatoos (sp). After arriving, R.T. visited the local hospital. It is very basic...very basic. They have an x ray machine if they call someone in to use it. I told him the hospital looked retro from the outside and he just looked at me saying that the hospital predated retro. He is very much looking forward to the challenge of "real"medicine. He is still doing his orientation in Ip--ich, near Br-sb-ne. They are very impressed with his skill. He flew though the endoscopy part and after doing 2 c/sections this morning, they said that he did not need to show them anymore. They said that he is the most qualified doc. that have had at our rural hospital. I may be a proud wife, but that is now surprise to me.
Our first evening, we were told to go up to one of the local wineries for dinner. we were told that it overlooks the town. While driving up we saw 2 (alive) roos and the countryside reminded up of Italy. It was AMAZING. (Pics will come in Nov. when we have internet at our house) Unfortunately, the winery was rented out for a wedding, so we went to another resturant in town that had great food.
We are very surprised with everything that this town offers. It is the same size as our hometown in missouri, but it offers much more. We have a home store that very much reminds us of our home store in willow (waggoners). We have a small mall, many parks, many resturants etc.
We joined about 40 fellow christians at the local presbyterian church yesterday. It was very good except the aver. age was about 65. The people were extremely nice though. I think that we will try the church of Christ of sunday. We were told that they have a younger/larger congregation and a nice praise band.
I need to go..I am out of time....

our first week

It is hard to believe that we have been here for 1 week. With all that we have seen and done, I have to admit that it seems like we have been here a lot longer. This last weekend we drove down to the gold coast (1 hour south) and went to the beach. We swam in the Coral Sea (in the Pacific Ocean). The waves were pretty big so R.T. got to show the kids how to body surf. R.T. and Cas also made a big sand castle. I decided to relax on the sand and see if the sun felt any different here than it does in the states….I think that I am going to have to do some more research on that subject.
On Sunday we were able to worship at a Baptist church about 15 minutes from here. That was so cool to be able to worship with people that are on a different continent. Once again, I am reminded about how big my God truly is.
After church, we drove into Brisbane (about 10 minutes) and spent a few hours soaking in city life. We wanted to go to the Botanical gardens, but they had a big event there and they were closed. Thankfully, we have a year to see them.
One thing that we have been amazed at is the parks. Before we flew to Australia, we made a stop over in California. While there we really enjoyed their outdoor life. It was so much better than what we were used to in Missouri. Well, I have to say that the parks here are even bigger and better. I don’t think that the Australian gov’t has to worry about lawsuits. Cas and Abbie love the zip lines and the big spider web-like climbing apparatus that towers high above our heads. The parks have electric barbies (not dolls). It is great; you just turn them on and throw on your meat. The park council goes to make sure that they stay clean. There are huge grassy areas, running trails and hiking trails. I am sorry that I am unable to portray the greatness of the parks. The best thing about these outdoor spaces is that it allows the family to gather and to laugh and to enjoy the best that life offers (outside of a personal relationship with God)
R.T. has started work. It has been a bit overwhelming. He has found that with socialized medicine come lots of paperwork and wasteful spending. Instead of ordering a simple test that might cost $15, they order a whole panel (which might cost $250). When he questioned them, they said that it does not matter as the government pays for it. He will continue his orientation through Tues. at least. If they decided that they want to observe him some more, we may have to stay through the end of the week.
There is much more to say, but I know that your time is valuable and that you are not sitting without much to do in a hotel room. So for now, I will close…
Isaiah 40 “Who else has held the oceans in His hand, who has measured off the heavens with his fingers….for all the nations of the world are but a drop in the bucket…He picks up the whole earth as if it were a grain of sand….To whom can you compare God.. The Lord is an everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth.”

koalas and roos

O.k. you all, we had the most amazing day. Before we left the states, I saw that there was a koala refuge about 20 miles from Brisbane (actually it is about 10 minutes from our hotel in Darra). We went there on Thurs. This place is absolutely awe-inspiring. It is basically just Koala's and kangeroos; but, we were able to spend 4 hours walking around, sitting and starring at these amazing creatures. There were pens of male koalas, pouch koalas, year old koalas, the retirement home etc. At lunch we sat in this open air pavilion that had tree stumps holding koalas. We were probably surrounded by 40 koalas. The best part is they were quite active for the time that we were eating lunch. Cas got some great video. One of our favorite parts was the kangeroos. We went into a fenced area that housed 150 roos. we were able to walk around and feed them. I am not able to express the excitement that this brought to all of us. we were able to pet, cuddle and feed them. A great thing about this place is that they take very good care of the animals.

For those who choose to visit us, this is a place that we will take you to :-)

g'day mates

I have been waiting to use that title for about a year. Yes, we are finally in Australia. Things have been a bit unsettled since our arrival and we have not been able to get internet access. We finally were able to get access this afternoon.
The plane trip over was not as long as we expected. Of course, having movies, TV shows, and games at each seat helped our time pass rather quickly.
Upon arrival, R.T. and I left the remainder of the family at the airport while we navigated the roads and took our luggage to the hotel. This was quite the experience. Might I say, that driving on the opposite side of the road is not an easy task. Not only are the surroundings on the outside of the car very different, but some of the controls on the inside of the car are also switched. After R,T, turned on the windshield wipers several times after meaning to turn on the blinker, I told him that he had to give me a nickel for every time he made that mistake. I have to tell you that I am now the proud owner of a new australian twenty dollar bill.....and we have a very clean windshield :-) By the way, we did make it back to pick up the family about 45 minutes after leaving them.
We have also learned that round-a-bouts are not always a bad thing. Did you know that you can keep going around and around and around and around....until you decide which street you want to turn off on. At first, we were really wishing for our four way stops, but we are slowly growing to like our round-a-bouts. FYI, if you are told to go through a roundabout, that means that you head out in the same direction that you came from. If you are told to do a U ie, that means that you go 3/4 the way around.
There is so much to say, but I do not want to bother you all with the minor details. R.T. and I have been able to laugh about wrong turns and have come to appreciate having a "back seat driver". We are stressed with the details of life, but God is good and we feel completely blessed and at peace with what God has for us.
vocab: trolley - shopping cart, or cart
your welcome - no worries
"sure" - too easy