I Love Australia’s Minimum Wage & Other Updates
Thanksgiving away from home was a little weird considering I’ve been doing the same things for Thanksgiving for the last 23 years. I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner of Thanksgiving chicken (haha), green beans and shallots, mashed potatoes and a homemade apple crisp and it turned out really well!!
It’s nearly impossible to get into the holiday spirit out here though. I feel like they just don’t do Christmas on the level that every other country I’ve ever been to does. I can count on one hand the amount of decorations and lights I see around town, there’s a couple TV commercials but that’s kinda it. As much as I don’t miss being cold and dealing with snow I do feel like it’s just not normal to have a 90 degree Christmas. We don’t have much plans for Christmas at the moment…Think we’ll just be cooking up another nice meal and hit the beach.
We had a lot of fun a few weeks ago playing tour guide to Mollie Bylett when she visited Noosa. Mollie’s Backpacking Australia video is actually one of the things that inspired me the most to come out and do this year so I’ve been a fan of hers for a while and when she posted on Instagram that she would be visiting Noosa Lewis and I offered to show her around. Originally the plan was just to do the Coastal walk in the National Park but we all ended up having such a nice time that our plans extended to going out for smoothies, flying her drone from the Laguna Lookout at sunset, seeing a wild koala, and finally having a BBQ dinner and drinks. Ended up being such a cool day and was so good to hang out with someone new who enjoyed all the same things as we did.
I got a job at an ice cream store on Hastings Street. I have to wear what is easily The World’s MOST Horrendous uniform but it pays TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS AN HOUR. Yes you read that right, ice cream for $25 AN HOUR! And, yeah, that’s in AUD but even in USD that’s more than $18 an hour which is MORE than what I was getting paid at my full-time “real” job in Boston. So I am there about 5 days a week for about 35 hours a week so do the math there but I am so relieved to finally be building back the $10k that I’ve spent over the last 3 months.
The new job is also about 10 feet away from Noosa Main Beach and about 2 minutes away from Little Cove so the best part about it (besides the wages) is before and after work just being able to run into the ocean. Coming back to this view after a 7 hour shift really makes it all worth it.
We’re also starting to plan out the trips that we want to do in the next year so we kinda know what we’re working towards so that’s been exciting. Hoping to get to Bali, Indonesia in late March/early April to explore the Gili Islands which look insaneeeee. If anyone reading this has ever been to Bali and has any recommendations please leave me a comment!!
What else have we been up to? We got a week’s free membership at a crossfit gym and got our asses absolutely handed to us. It was fun and a nice change but I MISS SOULCYCLE AND BAR METHOD SO SO SO SO SO MUCH.
Up next: Jack, who we met during the Ultimate Oz week, is staying with us from the 16th to the 23rd which will be so good to catch up with him again! Then we fly to Sydney for NYE on the 31st to meet up with my family!