The most remarkable thing about church today was how unremarkable it was. Here in Melbourne there was a very high Samoan presence in the ward and they meet in an old day care building that's part of a strip mall. It felt foreign there. In Tassy, we drove up to a normal looking ward house, walked into a normal feeling sacrament meeting, listened to normal high counsel Sunday talks...it was remarkably unremarkable. Weird!!!
It's also bizarre to me when, with ten people in our group, we walk right onto a plane and just sit down. No fuss, no hassle, no worries. I expected it to be a lot more hectic. A lot more work. I really can't say enough about this buddy system. It works! The bigs each help their own personal little and everything gets done without a problem. Even carrying our bags up the stairs to board the plane hasn't been a problem. Incredible.
I'm so glad we've planned our trip the way we have. We got to 'practice drive' in virtually no traffic on Fiji, then we got 'pre-view driving' in the city during our 4 days in Melbourne with family shuttling us around, then we got to try our hand at real driving in the relatively small town of Hobart so that today when we drove away from the massive international airport in Melbourne, it was no big deal. I am learning that following the GPS isn't as easy when you're driving on the other side of the road, but I'm sure it'll get easier with a bit more practice. As it is, we only added an extra 10-15 minutes onto our drive by slipping up today and the traffic didn't scare me at all, even though it was heavy at times.
Oh! I have a funny experience to tell. Well, it's funny now, it wasn't yesterday when it happened. While driving to Port Arthur, I needed to close my eyes for a minute so Cody drove while I snoozed. It's a mountainous type road so it was a bit twisty and turny. Anyway, I must have fallen right to sleep because I startled awake as Cody took a curve a bit fast. Imagine if you will startling awake in the 'driver's seat' whilst swerving around a corner in the wrong lane of traffic. I did what any rational person would, I screamed. Loudly. Which made Cody's real life turn into more of a swerve. He was not too happy with me for the next few minutes. I have woken up a few times since then from dreams where I have fallen asleep whilst driving.
We didn't get to Cathy's house until around 3:30 this afternoon, but we've taken full advantage of the day taking naps, watching movies and planning the next leg of our adventure. It's weird that it isn't weird at all being here at Cathy and BJ's place, even when they're not here. They've done so much to make us feel comfortable that it's almost impossible not to. Then Bonnie called tonight and the two of us chatted for an hour like we were old friends who've known one another for years. It's remarkable. I wouldn't say I feel 'at home' here, it's far too "through the looking glass" for that but I definitely feel like I'm with family and that is a sweet feeling indeed. One of the children mentioned tonight that it felt like we were staying at Clarrisa's which I guess is their way of expressing the same thing.
Tomorrow, the adventure continues as we make our way to the Otway National Forest. We'll be sleeping "Under the Koala's" and going for an after dark walk through the forest to see the glow worms. Great Ocean Road, here we come!
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