After the Greeks left, Mandy took charge - thankfully. After she brought loads of blankets, towels, and air mattresses in for us (what would have done without her??), she drove me to the “shopping center” (not called “malls” here – I see a language post in the future…) to get a cell phone. I got my first introduction to how shopping is done here, and I think the motto might be “The Bigger, The Better”. The malls are ridiculous. I hate them. More on that later.

So one cell phone later, Mandy brought me back to be with the family and left to bewith hers. It was getting on to dinner time by this point, and since we had no food and no transportation, we set out to our neighborhood McDonald’s, about 1/3 mile. We paid $27 dollars for our meal, and immediately vowed no more McDonald’s EVER in Australia. On the way home, miracle of all miracles, Hank fell asleep in the stroller. He has not done that since he was six months old.

This was to happen more often over the course of the next week as we dragged our poor kids to the mall, night after night as we tried to get our home outfitted with the necessities.

It’s a lot harder than one might think, to start completely over. I mean, it’s not like I’d never bought pots and pans and spices and furniture and lamps and a refrigerator (okay, I’d never bought one of those) and towels and milk before, but having to buy it all at once and in a place where you don’t really know the ins and outs of retail, it was absolutely trial by fire. I’ve since learned that I made a lot of mistakes. I hate my phone, for example. HATE it. And don’t even get me started on our car. But we also found some real gems. Weet Bix – that stuff is awesome. Our first morning here, we woke up cold and hungry and without a car or a thing to eat. Since it was 6AM (we’re lucky it wasn’t earlier), we headed out on foot without a clue in the world where to go. We ended up walking at least two miles and buying a box of Weet Bix and a liter of milk for way too much money at a convenience store, but it was food and the kids were happy.

From that point, it’s all a blur. I do remember Mandy dropping me off at the rental car place, them handing me a key, and me going directly to the passenger side to drive the car. That must have been a real boost of confidence to the guy watching me from the counter – I sort of felt like I felt when I was leaving the hospital a couple days after Abe was born. How could they allow me to do this?? I had no idea what I was doing. Mandy had very good advice: Keep the center line close to you and drive as slow as you need to. Amazingly, I was only honked at a couple times, but it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, pulling out of that parking lot and not knowing which way to look for traffic, not knowing which mirror to look in, not even knowing what the speed limit signs looked like. Seriously – there should be laws against that. There probably are, actually.

So sorry it’s taken so long to complete Day 1. Things are just now slowing down, as far as settling in and getting a schedule down. Be sure and comment so that I know you’re reading and that you care – this will help motivate me to write more often!

P.S. Mandy and her family were unexpectedly asked to move back to the US three months earlier than they had planned; they were notified the week before Thanksgiving and left this past Monday to move back home to Houston. I am so grateful to them for all the help they were to us before we even got to Melbourne and then after we arrived. If they ever make it to Norman for a visit to her brother (Gabe Nabors), someone please give her another big hug for me. I'm so sad we had such a short time with them.