Karen's day

Hi Everyone,
Since the rest of my family wrote and told you about their new schools, I thought I should write too. I plan to be a casual (substitute) teacher but conveniently left all of my transcripts and teaching certificate at home. Hopefully by Easter I will be working.
Here is what I did yesterday (Saturday). Got up around 7:00 and went for a 45 minute run while Mike biked with me. We get many comments as we go by people. I think this has to do with the male dominated culture here. I don't run here with the same intensity like I do at home. I think the picture of the track sums up running for this community.
Then at 8:30, Mike and I took Kyle to the beach (1/2 mile from our house) so he could practice surfing. For 3 hours Mike and I sat on the beautiful beach and read. I just finished reading The Thorn Birds. Imagine me sitting for 3 hours and just reading. There is always a nice breeze to keep you cool.
After lunch, I signed Mariah and Jakob up for soccer. It cost $234.00 for the two to play soccer, shorts and socks. Everything is so "dear" (expensive) here. Besides the initial cost, every soccer game they play in, they must pay $4.00 each. Kyle has a p.e. class at school where he is swimming and playing tennis. Twice a week, he rides the bus to the pool and the tennis courts. He must pay $2.00 for the bus every time and $2.00 to swim or play tennis. So he pays $8.00 a week for a school pe class.
After soccer sign ups, I joined the "Mermaid Mums" for tennis. ($5.00) This is a group of woman who play social tennis every Saturday for 2 hours. It was my first time playing "proper" tennis. I lost every set but it was a lot of fun! I now know how to keep score.
Then Mike and I cooked a nice pasta dinner. After dinner, Mike and I went for a walk and picked Mariah up at a birthday party. That evening we watched a movie on the telly (t.v.) There are only 5 channels. Usually one channel has cricket on. The rest are mainly American shows. So it's usually an easy decison about what we are all going to watch. I was excited for the advertisments about the new seasons starting for some shows that I like. Then I realized that this is the same season that we just watched at home. They are about 5 months behind us for t.v. shows.
After the movie we went to bed. Mike and I were in bed for about 15 minutes and he said something just crawled across his arm. We turned on the light and there was a HUGE cockroach on the wall right next to our heads. We tried to smash it, but it was very fast and ran under the bed. We could not find it. Needless to say, I had a restless night dreaming about this cockroach that was under my bed! It was a wonderful day "down under".