More Aussie Facts and Blog Stuff

More fun stuff about Australia!

• I'm still not used to this driving on the wrong side of the road thing.

• Weet-bix is "Australia's favorite cereal!" It's like if you took cornflakes, only made out of wheat and thinner, and squished them together into 1"x3"x0.5" bricks. They're good, though they require a healthy dose of sugar (om nom, raw Australian sugar, nom!) and they get soggy instantly upon contact with milk. Seriously, I have to eat a bowl of Wheet-bix in less than 20 seconds if I want something other than mush. My favorite cereal so far was Bushfoods Breakfast though.    

•  The light switches are backwards: up is off and down is on.

• The standard paper is longer, something like 8.5" by 12". The ends stick out of my binder, so I had to get something else to hold my papers (whoo sweet folder/clipboard!)

• More than half the products in the grocery store are made in Australia, though the conscientious buyer here will go for those made in Western Australia over the regular Aussie-made stuff. I don't know if that is just a result of being a geographically isolated country, but then again it's certainly physically closer to China than the U.S. is with all of our products made there.... I really like that it's so easy to know and buy "local" food. 

• Hulu doesn't work outside of the U.S. :( And CrunchyRoll only works for a handful of sketchy-looking animes. If anyone knows of a good streaming site where I can get my movies/anime/cartoons fix, let me know!

• (because I secretly have the maturity level of a 13 year old boy, which my brother can assure you is really very juvenile) There is a company called “Dick Smith”. (In my defense, can you think of a single American company that would dare to use the word “dick” in its name??) There is also a mortuary I pass on my way to school with the sign:

                  “Chippers

               Understanding Funerals”

        (I have no excuse for why this makes me inappropriately snort every time I see it.) 

• Lastly, even the TOASTERS are lethal in Australia! (lol, thanks for the link Kaiser ^_^)

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Now, a few things about the blog itself:

My dad alerted me to the fact that not everyone may know how to use the comments portion of this blog, so here's a quick tutorial. (All those that obviously know how to use the comments section, skip this! For all those that have yet to comment, maybe you need to read on :p)

At the bottom of every post it'll say "Posted by Miela at" whatever time and then next to that "0 comments" or however many comments there are. Click on that orange text that says however many comments, and it will reload the page to show only that post (as opposed to the three posts you can see on the main page) with the comments below. If you want to post a comment, there is a box in which you can type whatever you want to say. Here's the tricky part (for my dad at least): below the box where you just typed a heartfelt comment, there is a drop-down menu for choosing who you "comment as". By far it is easiest to just chose "anonymous" and identify yourself in the text of the comment. Anyone who has a LiveJournal or Google account probably knows what to do from there (though, it does take a few more steps than I had expected). When you're ready just click "Post Comment", though there is one more step: you have to do that squiggly word identifying to prove that you're a person and not a spam-bot. Then you should be golden. ^_^

I also figured out a way for people to subscribe to the blog by email! In other words, when I update, the post will be sent to your email instead of you having to come check the blog. This is good if you happen to be a rather...... forgetful person (*coughMaxcough*), but I certainly will make no judgment if you want it. It looks like there is a "subscribe by email" button under the section where you post a comment, but if that doesn't work or whatever, just let me know and I can add your email by hand. I think I only have room for 10 email addresses, however, so make sure to let me know if that is something you'd like. If there are more than 10 people who want this, I'll try to figure out if I can enlarge the list, but if I can't, I'll put you on the list on a first-come-first-serve + nepotism basis.

Finally, THANK YOU.

Thank you for reading this. This blog is my connection to home, my way of documenting this experience not only for myself, but for everyone else who will ask “So, how was it?” when I get back. I’m throwing out this rope across the Pacific Ocean, and it works best when all of you in New Mexico hold the other end. ;P

And thank you for commenting. It truly makes my day when I find someone else has commented (even better than a webcomic updating!). Comments are also pretty much the only way I have to find out who, if anyone, is reading. (Though I do get to see statistics for this blog… Hallo to the people in Belgium and Germany and China who aren’t my friends and family! What on earth were you googling when you came across this site??)

So thanks guys! It really means more to me than you know.<3