Day 21: What?! Three weeks already?!!

No way!  I didn’t realize until just now that we’re 3 weeks in to our 10 week holiday!  Two weeks in country though—which is amazing to think about.  We are currently sitting back at the park that we ate lunch at yesterday in Naracoorte.  I don’t know where the time went today.  We got up early and I was at the Laundromat right as the man opened the doors.  I washed all our laundry from the week (holy loads of dirty laundry batman!) and was back at the cabin by 8:45.  We were due at the temple at 9 so we rushed out the door. 

The contrast between the dodgey rat hole we were staying in and the temple was phenomenal.  The minute we walked onto the temple grounds, we were surrounded by that familiar warm, peaceful feeling.  What a beautiful place!  And TINY!!  But the atmosphere inside!  Have you ever noticed that each temple has it’s own feel?  Well, we were greeted not just with warm handshakes, but with hugs and a genuinely warm welcome.  It was so homey after the first few minutes you felt like you were at Grandma’s house.

It’s weird to be a novelty but with these darned accents we stick out everywhere we go.  The difference at the temple was when people asked where we were from, all we had to do was say Salt Lake and that was it.  Everywhere else we have to explain where Utah is compared to California.  (About the same distance from Cali as Melbourne is from Adelaide.) 

Oh and while I’m on the subject, why does everyone think we’re from Canada?!  The ticket taker on the cruise at Port Arthur asked me to say, “Out and about” and he thought I sounded Canadian too!   Yes, technically Canadians speak English too but come on, ay!  Don’t be treating me like that!

Anyway, we enjoyed our time at the temple immensely and returned as quickly as possible to the cabin.  I was nervous leaving J with all 4 littles but they were only there a little over an hour and they had TV, movies and electronics to play on so they were fine.  We figured we’d come back all together to take pictures after checking out of the caravan park.

Leaving the park was difficult once the kids saw the life sized chess board.  We stayed an extra hour and a half because everyone needed a turn.  É was super excited because he finally beat me in a game!  First time ever!  If I recall correctly, pi² was also about 12 when he first bested me at chess.  Aah the milestones of youth!

When we finally pulled the kids away from the chess board and started loading them into the cars we realized it was already time for lunch. 

There are names like this all over this crazy country!  How do you even pronounce this?!

We made it to the park and used the grill to make some hot ham and cheese sandwiches and another round of really funky chips.  There are some wacky flavors of chips down here! Many taste like they’ve been shaken around in chicken bullion.  They have a type of sun chips that have really good flavor but they’re the consistency of pork rinds.  Oh and their main type of cheese isn’t cheddar, it’s Tasty.  That’s right, tasty.  What type of cheese is that?  Tasty.  Not mozzarella, provolone, processed etc, just tasty.  You can’t buy cheddar.  And yellow cheese doesn’t exist at all.  It’s all white.  I have seen mozzarella and provolone, but no cheddar, just tasty.

After eating while the kids were running and playing we realized that we have pretty much been doing a park tour of the country.  It’s what the kids are enjoying the most.  We went to see the caves here in Naracoorte the other day and instead of going back to the museum to see more stuff, they wanted to find a park.  The parks here are all incredible.  Unbelievable really.   É has said a few times now that if he has to be homeless ever in his life, he wants to be homeless here because you’d always have a place where you could cook yourself a hot meal and relax.

As we started towards the freeway, around 3:30, we remembered we hadn’t taken pictures at the temple!  We weren’t too far so we went back only to find that the gates were locked.  They’re only open a few hours each day apparently so we took what pictures we could and headed towards the freeway once again.  This time we were waylaid by a road sign that read, “Hello Dolly!  Authentic Lebanese food”  We had to stop!  I wanted a take out menu so I thought I’d just buy a piece of baklava and maybe a fatayer (a Lebanese empanada…er fried pie…er meat pie—depending on your culture) to share with the kids just so they could know what Lebanese food tasted like.  That was my biggest mistake!  An hour and a half later we actually pulled out of town with bellies full of Lebanese food and children with a new found love. 

How did I get these kids who love exploring, adventure and trying new things?  I’m so blessed!  I mean, we’ve had our fair share of squabbles and tantrums, but on the whole, they’re doing so great.  We’ve only had one or two major melt downs in 3 weeks which is almost a better record than at home! 

We decided that instead of going to Sovereign Hill on our way back to Cathy’s house, we’ll retrace our steps along the Great Ocean Road and hopefully see it without the storm—and go to that park again.  Then next week if we’re feeling adventurous we’ll head up to Ballarat to see the ghost town and fun stuff they have over there. I guess there’s something to be said for the flying by the seat of your pants kind of travel that we’ve done this week.