ohhh the good ol' hockey game

Ice Hockey is not as popular here as it is in Canada, as a matter of fact a normal reaction to any mention of it is usually as if it was a rare species of monkeys .... no one knows about hockey. Today I told a 45 year old man that i watched a game on Saturday night and he went on to tell me that "we don't have hockey here."

Non the less, it's here and we went to watch a game between the melbourne ice and the gold coast blue tongues... lol kinda a funny name. The arena maybe fit to hold about 2000 spectators and the crowd was wild.... i mean compared to a retirement home luncheon. (no offense Irene.)

It was a low key environment, except when there were goals. Good chances to score were unrecognized, big saves went unnoticed and the momentum was not like a junior game in good ol' Ontario. It was good to watch some hockey though. Melbourne pulled off a big win so as the game ended, there was more excitement in the air.

The highlight of the night for us was when i was entered in a contest called "chuck the puck." As the spectators entered the arena there was a girl picking ten contestants as we entered by sticking a sticker on our coats. Between periods the ten of us lined up on the bench and each had a puck to toss on to the ice and try to get it as close to one of the players gloves as possible.

My toss ended up about four feet from the glove, and that was the winner....!!!! Yah!! I won a new scarf, all i could think was i wish this was for a truck or 10,000 cash like it might have been in Canada. No complaints though, it was fun.

So the new job has begun, and i like it. It's a pretty relaxed environment with a ton of work to do and so far it doesn't seem as if anyone is in much of a hurry, which is nice. The site is in one of the more expensive parts of the city and is really close to the beach. I was done my work for the day today by 2 and was pretty wet from the rain and the boss said why don't you go home and i will pay you for the day. I thought is this a trick?? Nope it wasn't, home early with pay. gotta love it.

Shauna is still in prep this week and is loving it. She has met a bunch of girls from Canada that she thinks are very nice and she is planning on going out for drinks with on thursday night. She is pretty excited to do this as i know she is missing her friends from home. not that they will replace them, but I think she will enjoy having some girl time. She claims she needs this time, it will help her cope with me. I don't know what that means.

She had the day off monday for a PD day. She had a good chat with her mom, sister and nephews on skype. Kellen is now sporting the uni-bomber look and eleanor has a huge appetite. I guess all she wanted to eat the day before was a chip, allll day...just one, not two, not a hotdog, just a chip. She was quite happy to hear from all of her family on monday, i think she wants every monday off work now so she can catch up on the week events of her nieces and nephews. She misses them all so much, i was glad to hear she had a little catch up time. She was also very excited to finally get her hair done ( i am supposed to say danielle, she didn't cut it- only dyed).

we are settling nice into our new life. we each only wake up about 2 times in the night and take turns making dinner/lunches. usually when one is exhausted, the other one feels pretty good, so this has worked nicely. now that we've got accustomed to the time change, we think we'll be able to do more on weekends with out screwing up our sleep patterns. we have opted to not go on vacation in september. instead, we plan on working as much as we can and then travelling from january to april... but we will see. when i pictured australia- i pictured relaxation, warmth and kangaroos and right now it's practically like downtown toronto in october. it beats being in goderich's hot weather with out her though.