Getting settled

April 30, 2010 Friday

What a tiring day! President & Sister Maurer had a zone conference down in Bunberry today, so they asked us to help in getting their boys where they needed to be this morning. Orson picked up Nicholas from seminary at 7 am while I worked on getting stuff into the suitcases. The president had given us his wife’s GPS to use over the weekend, but it was set so the screen was very faint and the sound was so low (perhaps our age has something to do with it?) it didn’t do him much good in the early morning. Nicholas fixed it on our way to dropping him and Liam off at school. After a flurry of busy-ness, we got them dropped off and set about our activities of the day.
First off was to find a “petrol” station. Seems like in the states there are gas stations every few blocks even on corners out in residential areas. Not here. Our gas light was on and we couldn’t find a station. We finally found a place on the Tomtom and let it lead us there. The trouble with that thing is that it’s just behind where you really are and it doesn’t tell you the name of the street we are to turn on. So typically it’s still telling us to turn a little way after we’ve passed the street. So we made a lot of “eraser marks” today. The petrol station was in the same shopping area where the License Center was, but we drove right past it because we didn’t know what we were looking for. We asked a fellow walking down the street, and he pointed us back where we’d come from. We finally found it—Woolworths. We old folks remember Woolworths as the precursor of K-mart only much smaller. Here, it’s a gas station. Go figure.
We’d decided we wanted to open a bank account, so we drove around the shopping area we were in until we saw an NAB (National Australian Bank). We went in there; the line for the tellers was huge! We got to talk to a customer relations guy and decided to keep looking. Coming out of the bank, we saw that the License Center was just across the street. We’d already heard the horror stories of how long it takes to get an Australian drivers license from President Maurer & Sister Kruger, the office secretary, who’s from England by the way. So we entered & took a number. We hadn’t even been able to turn around to take our seats when our number was called. The woman at the counter explained we needed our passports in addition to the letter of residence Sister Kruger had given us. As we started to leave, another worker there called to us. We went over, and she started out, “I don’t mean to be cheeky, but.…” She wanted to buy some US dollars from us. We agreed to sell her some. She was headed to Bali on vacation and needed them. She then asked another worker if she wanted some too. So I sat there while one ran to the bank across the street and Orson went out to find the passports. We became her best friends at that moment and that ended all the waiting we had to do. She took care of us and was familiar with the elders who came in every three weeks or so as they arrived new in the mission. Our licenses cost us $145 or so.
From the Licensing Centre, we went to the “Post” to apply for our “Working with Children” certification. They, too, needed our passports, letter of residence, and then took our pictures and $20.00 (good thing we had our Australian dollars). Then we found the ANZ (Australian New Zealand) Bank that Shelly, our friend at the Licensing Centre, had recommended. It was much nicer than the NAP we’d checked out earlier. Christopher Davidson (I know his name because we “contacted” him) set us up with a checking account and a debit card. Now we can transfer funds electronically from our account in the states.
Yesterday, we’d received a mobile phone (not “cell” phone here) from Elder Crawford. As today had worn on, we realized we weren’t getting any calls even though we had it on and set on “Loud.” When I’d set up the voice mail in the morning, it had told me I was in New South Wales; and when we’d try to call someone here in Perth, it told us that we weren’t allowed to call the area. Since we were waiting for a call from Elder Crawford to tell us our flat (apartment) was ready and couldn’t return his calls that we’d seen on the phone that had come in, we headed for the mission office. It’s 3:30 by now. We tried following the street map and become confused. The street maps are collection of small area maps bound into a book of 400 pages or so for Perth and its suburbs. So we put it in the Tomtom. It took us on a while goose chase to a different part of Perth to a street with the same name as the MO, Dianella Chapel, and the temple are on. We reset the Tomtom and headed back to near where we’d come from. Once we got in the area, it took us about 20 minutes to realize that the Tomtom was taking us in a large circle around where we needed to be. So we pulled out the street maps and finally arrived at the MO.
They were glad to see us since they’d been trying to call us most of the afternoon. We were given Sister Crawford’s phone and told to follow the Crawfords to a flat where there was garage full of “flat supplies.” (The flat had been flooded in a big storm about a month ago and was being worked on.) They gave us towels, blankets, and a hair dryer. We then followed them a long ways to their flat for sheets. We were finally ready to head to our new flat. We took a leap of faith and programmed the Tomtom to take us there. It was about a 15 km drive. Elders were there waiting for us to give us the keys. We apologized for taking their flat from them. They were cute and told us they were even leaving us food in the fridge.
So, we are in a two bedroom flat with a double bed, small kitchen, living room, bathroom (of course, but the toilet has its own separate room) and a laundry room complete with washer, dryer, and ironing board. But, following elders into a flat leaves a lot to be desired. It needs a lot of cleaning (and I am not a clean-freek)! We made the bed, ate some toast (we’d received some day-old bread at the MO) with peanut butter & jam left by the elders, and fell into bed about 8 pm. We were dead tired. Tomorrow will be a busy, tiring day to get this place into shape.