more homestay

Okay, Mom demands more details about the life down under. Honestly, it’s not too much different from home! But people are definitely more environmentally conscious. 5 minute showers are a rule, and we don’t use the dryers for our clothes. We hang them up on the clothesline for a few hours, and then we just throw them in the dryer for 10 minutes or so to get the dampness out of them. The electric sockets everywhere also conserve energy: there are on/off switches on them, so when nothing is plugged in or when you aren’t using an appliance, your turn it off. It’s such an easy habit to get into: why don’t we have them at home!?

Helen, my homestay mom, is a wonderful cook, and very creative, considering she is now cooking for a vegetarian! We’ve had a lot of different foods, and always fresh fruits and vegetables. One of the main roads was flooded earlier this week from all the rain, so the grocery stores were practically empty because the produce trucks couldn’t get through, but I was still very well fed! We’ve had sushi, fried rice, pasta with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, a potato-egg-cheese pie with veggies, Thai curry with noodles, and I helped with a veggie stir fry. I usually have toast in the morning, and yes, I did try some Vegemite. A very small bit of Vegemite. It’s very salty… and I’ve seriously limited my sodium intake in recent years, so even things that are only a little bit salty are very salty for me. So I won’t be tasting a bigger bite. But Vegemite is just spread lightly on toast, sometimes with melted cheese or butter.

We have air conditioning in the house, but it’s only on when you are in the room taking advantage of it. I usually just turn mine on at night. There are screen doors all over the house, so the other doors are left open to catch any breeze or fresh air. My house has a pool, but the water is probably about 84 degrees or so because the sun has warmed it up so much! It hasn’t rained in a few days to cool it down, but it’s still refreshing when you are sitting in the sun.

Geckos and frogs are welcome visitors in homes because they eat the insects crawling around! There is a really cool native gecko – I am still trying to figure out its name – it’s almost translucent and has really goofy eyes. There were a few on the ceiling of the porch last night.

There are birds everywhere, all day. Everything is really green now, because it’s the rainy season, and summer. It’s quite pretty. Today the clouds finally lifted, even off the mountains in the distance. The sky was so blue. Beautiful.

More questions?