remember...

Our first day back in Australia was full of confusing instances that helped to reconstruct the memories I have of my husband’s culture. After making our way through customs, Steve in the Australian passport holder line, and me in the All other passport holder line, we parked ourselves in front of the luggage carousel. While waiting for ours to appear, our carry-on bags were sniffed by the cutest drug dog I’ve ever seen. I struggled to let the puppy do its job, without a pat on the head and back or maybe behind the ears to assure him he did a good job not finding drugs in my bag.

We found all of our bags and then headed to the Express line of customs because we had nothing to declare. The customs guy who took our bags to send them through the x-ray machine took my purse as I gave it to him and said, “All right ma’am, you’re good to go, have a nice visit in Australia.” And then he started to laugh. It was the first sign that I was in Australia – that the customs officer could laugh about taking my purse from me in an effort to joke about stealing it.

We were finally free to be in the country, so we left the customs area into the arrivals waiting area. Our eyes scanned the crowd looking for either Steve’s family or our friends who had all promised to be at the airport to meet us. We were having trouble finding their familiar faces, when out of the hum of the crowd I heard a very distinct bird call of “Ka-Kaaa” and I somehow knew it was Tim. We saw him then, as he pointed out that his brother Jon and other friend Phil were also there waiting for us. Hugs all around and then a request from me to use the bathroom.

I made my way into the girl’s room, and was surprised that I had forgotten what the toilets look like. They are rounder, taller, with a small amount of water in them. The stalls give more privacy here than in America, because the cracks between the door and post are almost non-existent. And then there’s the button on the back of toilet, allowing you a half flush or a full flush, depending on the job you’ve just done. For some reason, I had forgotten these differences, even though it is the main difference that I share with my own American family and friends when talking about my Australian experience. After my initial shock at how the toilet looked, I was able to do my job and smile, at yet another reminder of where in the world I was sitting.

When I was finished, I found the boys again and we wondered what we should do to find Steve’s family. We were all in need of a coffee, so as we made our way to find a good one, Steve’s brother Dave and mum Pauline walked by and Dave said, “Hey, there’s Tim,” before he realized that Steve and I were standing with him. There were more hugs, and we were able to finally leave the airport. We decided to leave with Tim, who always parks about a mile and a half away from the airport, to avert the fees for parking at the airport. We had a pleasant walk to the car in the beautiful Australian spring morning air. It was a strange atmosphere, this being my third time here. It didn't feel new anymore; I wasn't searching for the funny differences anymore, because they seemed normal to me. It felt like home, even like a different town within America, but definitely not foreign. I liked it.

We were taken to Steve’s sister Katherine’s apartment, where we would spend most of the day before leaving to sleep at Jon’s house. Our time there, though, consisted mainly of small snacks as we chatted, interrupted from time to time by a nap. After a shower, we made our way to Cronulla beach for some Oporto chicken burgers, which my mouth had been thinking of for nearly 2 years. After eating, we strolled the beach, near the big houses, and back again, ready for a trip into Miranda for a shop at the Westfield, which is what Australians call most of their malls.

At the mall, we were able to buy an Australian Sim card, so we unlocked our American phone. Steve handed me the American Sim card, for safe keeping until we made our way back to America. I stuck it in the envelope that the new Sim card came in, and placed the envelope in my purse. We then walked around looking to see if there was anything else we needed. There wasn’t, and we got back into the car and headed for Katherine’s yet again. When we were half way home, something told me to check my purse to see where the Sim card was. When I pulled the envelope out and looked inside, it was empty. I dug through my purse, pulling out books and wallets and passports – and the Sim card remained hidden. I stuck my hand in the bottom, trying to feel around for it, yet trying to be delicate enough not to break the card if I did find it. No luck, the Sim card was not in my bag.

Thoughts went through my mind about what an airhead I was. The amount of times that I’ve lost something of Steve’s or mine is uncountable. We got back to Katherine’s where I was able to dump my purse onto the ground to make sure the sim card wasn’t in there. Nothing, nowhere. Steve’s dad, Wayne, suggested we call the Donut King we were sitting near when we unlocked the phone, to see if we had dropped it there. After getting a disconnected number and calling mall security, we were finally able to get a hold of the Donut King store, and luckily, someone had just given them our card. They promised to hold it until the next day. Drama, finished.

We bummed around Katherine’s for a couple of hours, and then ate some homemade lasagna, garlic bread and roasted vegetables. It was tasty, it was fresh. After dinner, we jumped into Katherine’s car that she is letting us borrow while we’re here. We readied ourselves to drive the 20 minutes to Jon’s house where we would be sleeping for the weekend. Jon was going to be meeting us there after visiting his grandma in the hospital. As we pulled up to his house, a wave of sick feeling hit my stomach. I thought that maybe I had some gas issues due to the crazy amount of traveling we had done and the fact that I hadn’t had to use the bathroom that way since Phoenix about 2 days ago. But as I decided to relieve myself of the air in my belly, I soon discovered that it wasn’t only air. I thought, "Maybe it will subside if I just don't think about it for a while." No luck, the feeling just intensified until I couldn't bare the thought of holding on for another minute. I frantically asked Steve if there was any way we could get into the house without Jon here, because I really needed to use the bathroom. He asked if I needed him to drive me to a gas station, to which I yelled “NO” before he could even finish his sentence – I didn’t even think I could get back into the car without letting everything go. Steve gave Jon a call and asked him how far he was from the house. 10 minutes. And no, there's no spare key. I began to cry. “I can’t wait ten minutes, Steve. I need to go now! Quick, let’s get in the car. QUICK!” Steve ran to the driver’s side and I jumped into the passenger seat. I reached for the seat belt as I began to whimper. I couldn’t hold it in. I was sure I was going to mess up Katherine’s front seat.

We turned left out of the subdivision and in the distance, at the next light, we could see a gas station on the right side. Unfortunately, we were driving on a divided highway, meaning we would have to do a u-turn in order to get into the gas station parking lot. Which meant we’d have to wait for all of the traffic to go through the light before we could do our u-turn. Which meant I’d have to physically hold my bum cheeks together, ensuring a clean ride to the toilet. I began to scream for some help from Jesus, as tears ran down my cheeks. If there was ever a time I needed him to come to my rescue, this was definitely one of them.

Steve turned into the station, wheels squealing, and drove me straight to the outside entrance to the toilet. I ran out of the car and into the bathroom as he told me he’d fill up the car with petrol while I used the bathroom. I looked around at the dirty sink, with the thin, hard, bent piece of soap, left over and old from probably months of not being used. The toilet seat was up and inside was a layer of dirt, outlining the bottom of the bowl. I couldn’t even tell if there was water in it, and if there wasn’t, that would mean my mess would be there for someone else to clean. Trying to be considerate, even in my panic, I made sure the toilet could still flush, and sure enough, there was water in the bottom. I quickly knocked the seat down, causing an echoing "clang" to fill the bathroom, and looked around for some toilet paper to line the seat before I sat down. Between the toilet and the wall was an empty toilet paper roll, and there wasn’t a fresh one in sight. I couldn't wait another second, so I decided to worry about what I’d do to clean up later, and sat down to instantaneous relief. Thoughts went through my head that maybe I could just use my underwear and go commando until Jon arrived back at his house. I was starting to feel better, though, and logic was coming back into my brain. What was I going to do? I thought that maybe I could wait for Steve to get back from filling up the car, but I couldn’t make out how long I had been in the bathroom. Time had stopped making sense when all I could think of was the pain.

I then remembered there had been another room next to the bathroom, and I started thinking that maybe it had been another bathroom. I pulled my pants up to a sagging position, so that my underwear wouldn't touch anything, ensuring their cleanness, and waddled my way outside and over to the other door. And of course, in big block letters, it read STAFF USE ONLY. I hesitated for about 2 seconds, and decided I would just see if they had toilet paper. They did. Four whole rolls. I grabbed one and made my way back to the other bathroom where I could finally clean up and be done with the disgusting mess of a bathroom trip this had been.

Steve was waiting for me outside after, smiling. He said he almost wished I would have messed my pants and the car, because it would have made a good story. I told him I thought this one was good enough.

up to date

I sit at the window at Grind coffee shop at Cronulla Beach, in beautiful Australia. A smallish mug, filled with a flat white and topped with a heart, carved into its foam is brought to me on a saucer. I take a sip and hold the taste of espresso in my mouth for a few seconds, to savor this moment on my third trip back to Australia. I swallow the heated liquid, I sigh, I smile. This is one of the things I could barely wait to experience again.

We are into our first full day in Australia, and already, so much has happened. It is Saturday, and last night was the first time we slept in a bed since Tuesday night. Which sounds wrong, but the days get a little muddled together when traveling over that all-powerful International Date Line. I woke up this morning feeling fully refreshed, but by the time I had showered, dressed, and eaten breakfast, I was ready for a nap. Fair enough, though, since our yesterday was basically a full 45 hours. Time has no meaning for now, and I'm loving it.

When I was still in high school and even up until I took my first international flight, I dreaded flying. I would get next to no sleep the night before my flight because of fear. Now, I lose sleep because of my excitement. I love to travel. I love the check-in process, the security lines, sitting in the gate area while waiting for the plane to board. I love watching people as they travel, trying to guess at who is traveling for the first time. This trip, however, gave us a bit more stress than most. We had flown down to Oklahoma City to spend a week with my family before heading to California for our flight to Oz. While in Oklahoma, we bought our tickets to San Francisco. The plan was to book the tickets to San Fran a full day before our night flight from there, so we could explore the city a bit. Our Sydney flight left on Wednesday late night, so we booked our tickets for the Tuesday morning, ensuring our arrival into San Fran by lunchtime. This would give us plenty of time to see some sights.

On Monday morning, Steve and I decided to check in online for our flight from Oklahoma City to San Francisco. We had found an amazing deal on Priceline, but couldn’t quite figure out how to check in for a flight booked through them. After about 10 minutes of full frustration, I decided to look at the confirmation email once more, to see if we were missing any instructions. On the email, in bold blue letters, it read, “Your itinerary for flight from OKC to SFO September 22, 2009.” We had booked our tickets for a full week too late. Our flight from San Francisco to Sydney left on September 16. I yelled for Steve, showed him what we had done, and we stared at each other, trying to think of a way that the computer could be lying to us. This discovery was followed by several phone calls to the airline and $500 later, we were checked in and ready to fly the next day for San Francisco.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Not only was I excited and semi-nervous about the process of exploring a whole new city, but I kept thinking that maybe the computer was lying to us about our Sydney flight. What if we were already a week too late? All throughout that day, I had checked and rechecked the calendar, the times, the emails – everything that told us when we were leaving. And then, what if our alarm didn’t go off? What if we slept through our boarding time? It was a long night.

After all that thinking, I got up in the morning on time, and even remembered everything the first time out the door. My mom took us to the airport and we met my dad there to say goodbye. They waved us off, and we boarded the plane for Phoenix, where we had a 2-hour layover. We arrived in San Francisco at noon, gathered our luggage, and made our way through the confusion of the hotel courtesy shuttle system.

We arrived at our hotel, the Vagabond Inn, and waited behind another couple so that we could check in. My eyes wandered around the sunny room whose walls were made of windows. Outside, palm trees swayed in the warm breeze and the blue sky remained uninterrupted by any intrusive clouds. It was going to be a good day.

But then my eyes wandered to a sign that the hotel had in one of their windows. It said, “This hotel uses chemicals that cause birth defects, cancer, and other reproductive diseases.” I jabbed Steve in the side and pointed to the sign. He looked at me and smiled…there was really nothing else he could do. I knew I needed to find out what I needed to stay away from so that my children would come out with all of their fingers, instead of webbed feet or something. When it came our turn to check in, I gave the concierge our name, and she began the process of checking us in.

“So, what’s the chemical that causes all the birth defects?” I asked, in a forced casual voice. “Oh,” she said, “let me get you a brochure.” She opened the desk to look for one, but discovered they had run out. I asked her if there was just something that I should stay away from and she said, “It’s just that we allow people to smoke in the hotel vicinity.” I was never so relieved to hear about cigarettes.

We settled into our room and then decided to take the shuttle back to the airport to catch the Bay Area Rapid Transit train. The price to get into the city from the airport and back was a whopping $16.20 each. Shocking though that news was, we gave in and bought the tickets, jumped on the train, and listened as one of the workers tried to explain to an Asian couple which stop they needed to get off of in order to transfer to another line. They obviously didn’t know much English, and as the worker said to them, “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” Steve let the guy know that we would tell them when they needed to exit the train.

The San Francisco BART line is loud, and it feels as though the train could jump the track at any moment. When the conductor would get on the loud speaker to let us know which station we were at, I was amazed that she could make every name for each stop fit into a one syllable, mumbled word. We finally arrived at the Embarcadero station, and unfortunately exited up the wrong stairway, which took us to the Financial District. We walked for about an hour before asking a local to point out the way to the bay, only to discover that we had been traveling in the wrong direction the entire time.

We finally made it to the bay, but by now, we were starving. We had planned on finding Pier 43 ½ where there was a ferry station that took people on tours around Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate Bridge. We decided to walk along the boardwalk and find some food while we looked for our pier. The smells ranged from the aromatic scents of Italian food, seafood, sewage, and fish water. We walked and walked and walked, and finally found Pier 1. So we walked some more, stopping along the way to peruse the menus of some very expensive restaurants. We traveled for about 2 hours, and finally made it to Fisherman’s Wharf, where our pier was located. We walked up to the ticket counter, where we were met with a sign that said CLOSED.

Discouraged and still extremely hungry, we decided to keep walking. We still had not seen any signs of the actual Golden Gate Bridge. We found some seafood places, but they were either too expensive, or too disgusting to temp us. We almost gave into one of the smaller vendors on the street when in the distance I saw a sign for an Italian restaurant. “Let’s go and see what they have to offer,” I said, and Steve agreed. While we were walking towards it, we could hear a man yelling something. He sounded like a baseball vendor trying to sell his products and we faintly heard “Golden Gate Bridge…Alcatraz…last tour of the night…$15.” Steve looked at me and asked if I wanted to go on the tour. My stomach fought against the tourist in me, and as we neared the man, I decided to take him up on his offer. My stomach could wait.

We paid the man, and boarded his dingy fishing boat, beautifully named Lovely Martha. About 30 other people were sitting throughout the boat. We found a seat near the middle of the back part of the boat, and laughed at how small the boat was and how ridiculous we felt. Would we make it through this cruise alive? We waited until all the seats were sold, and the captain and his cruise director (dressed in shorts and old t-shirts) boarded the vessel, untied us from the dock, and pushed us off. We headed first for the bridge, and along the way heard a history of the wharf, saw some seals sunbathing on a dock, were splashed by the waves that hit our boat as we made a wake, and got a glimpse of the “Full House”-like houses lining the bay.

As we neared the bridge, we realized that like so many other tourist moments in our relationship, this one was going to include fog. The bridge was covered in its own cloud. Nowhere else on the water or on the land was there fog; it was only around the bridge. We laughed at our luck, took some photos, and headed for Alcatraz. Steve invented a long, in-depth story about how he had been the only person to escape Alcatraz, and that when he got out, the guards tried to swim after him. He claimed that because he was so amazing, he was able to swim away, breaststroke style, while the guards swam free-style, unable to catch up to him. He apparently got to the shore, swam back to Alcatraz, and then back to the shore again, without the guards ever catching up with him. He was upset that I didn’t laugh.

After the boat docked again, we got off the boat, chilled by the wind, sticky from the salt water. My hair was a mess, my cheeks pink, and my toes were numb. We walked to the restaurant and found out there was a comedy stand-up night there, and we could both get in for $5. We couldn’t pass it up, so while we listened to sub-par comedians joke about their pretty average lives, we ate some great food and shared a bottle of red.

Afterwards, we decided we should head back to the BART station, so we could get back to the airport before the hotel shuttle was done for the night. We arrived with plenty of time, made our way to the shuttle waiting area, and as I picked up the phone to call the hotel to request the shuttle to be sent, Steve looked at me with panic in his eyes. “I think I just messed my pants,” he said. I thought nothing of it as he made his way back into the airport to use the bathroom. But as the shuttle pulled up, I began to wonder how my husband was going in the bathroom. I gave his phone a ring and told him the shuttle was here. “We have a mess on our hands,” he explained, “Ask the shuttle guy if he can wait for 5 minutes.” While it upset the poor man, he said he’d wait. I sat in the bus, watching for Steve. After about 3 minutes, I saw him running towards us. He hopped on the bus and sat on the seat, kind of on his leg. “What happened?” I asked. “That call could not have come at a worse time. I diarrhea-ed in my pants, and when you called me I was in the middle of a massive clean-up.” We laughed our way to the hotel, where Steve cleaned up and we soon fell asleep.

The next morning, we woke up slowly and checked out by 11 in the morning. Our plan was to check in with Qantas, getting rid of all of our luggage. We would then find some sort of transportation into a neighboring San Franciscan town where we would spend the day until about 7 pm when we would make our way back to the airport to go through security. Unfortunately, ours was the only flight Qantas had that day, so the check-in counter didn’t open until 6:45 that night. However, being the seasoned travelers that we are, we did not let that news upset us. We spent the day at a table in the airport’s food court and wasted the 7 hours reading, making a slide show for our Australian family, and eating. Time dragged by, and eventually it was time to check in.

Things went smoothly, and despite the fact that Steve looks much like a scary mountain man, we didn’t have to be wanded down or anything. We found our gate, sat for another 2 hours, and finally boarded the plane. We were delighted to find out that our seats were by themselves in the first row of economy, giving us plenty of leg room and denying us the need to climb over a stranger when we needed to use the bathroom throughout the flight.

We made our way over the enormous Pacific Ocean as we watched movies and tried, semi-successfully, to get some sleep. And as the sun finally caught up with us, we caught the sight of land. And slowly, the land became more distinct and buildings formed, and then we saw buildings that we recognized – the Opera House, the observation tower, and the Harbor Bridge. Steve pointed out my old suburb, and tried, yet again, to explain the layout of Sydney. We heard the wheels being lowered, and looked at each other in anticipation. “You happy to be home?” I asked, and Steve smiled in affirmation as our plane touched down.

More to come...