Somewhere close to 4am Melbourne time
All of the Gray household is asleep except one of the dogs, either Tom or Blackie is barking outside my window. I imagine he's not quite used to seeing a light on in this room, especially at 4am. I am awake because my mind tells me to be. My body, however, disagrees and would like to stop this writing nonsense and get back to sleep. So this will be a short entry.
Robert is exactly who he said he was so everyone who was freaking out about the internet boy thing can rest assured. He is not, in fact, some 50 year old bus driver with serial killer tendancies. He is an intelligent, assertive, considerate and attractive young man who just happens to wear a lot of black. ;)
The family members with whom I've had brief encounters so far seem quite groovy too. I've met everyone but Angela. Everyone is much more receptive to me than I expected. It'll take a while for me to get used to the inner workings of this household, but I think everything should be fine here.
Things with Robert are going extremely well. At least on my side of things. He picked me up from the airport earlier. It was quite intimidating really. You walk out of customs and into the arrival area and there is this long line of waiting people just staring at you, trying to find their own travellers. So I didn't look at them and instead walked quickly to the side where I wasn't in their direct line of view anymore. That's when Robert came up. I knew it was him immeadiately and that was good because on the plane I was keeping myself busy worrying that I might not recognize him or something. Which is ridiculous of course, because how can one miss a 6'4 boy dressed all in black with those well-angled cheekbones??
Anyway, since then there have been brief times of akwardity (i don't care if that's not a word) but those were due mainly to him feeling like he has to show me everything interesting about his city and home and family all right at once. But I feel really comfortable here so far. They have a very groovy home (I'll take pictures), everyone's very welcoming, and regardless of the fact that I had never actually met Robert til yesterday, we do know each other really well so it hasn't been too difficult for us in real life so far. Only time will tell how our daily interactions will change our friendship. For right now though, I feel really natural around him and I hope he does too.
Plans for the coming week include touring both Frankston and Melbourne, visiting Souraya and possibly her family on the weekend, walking to the botanical garden by Robert's house and apparently, Angela wants to take me to some niteclubs. All of this requires sleep and some regaining of my energy so I should probably end this pretty soon.
A couple more things:
Flying into Melbourne, I observed that everything was a lot greener than I expected it to be. Then on the long bus/train ride from the airport to Frankston, I noticed that there are many trees in this city. Much more than I'm used to seeing in a city. All different kinds too, some I've never seen before. And flowers everywhere. Robert was trying to see his city thru my eyes and decided it was "messy" today, but all I saw was beautiful healthy green everywhere. For that reason, this city seems much more alive (living) than any other city I've seen.
All this talk of trees makes me start missing Shaughn. I got to talk to my family on both the phone and icq earlier, but Shaughn wasn't around, trying to keep himself busy I hear. He's written me three emails since I left though and they're all beautiful and make my heart hurt with this distance. I know that we will only be stronger after this though, I know that both of us will grow from it, and we will grow further into each other. I love him so.
Well, I've managed to crap on for a whole new page so I guess it's time to get back to sleep before I notice that I'm hungry.
I am doing alright.
Oh yeah...
Rest assured Shanda, they do have cabs in Australia! Only they drive on the opposite side of the street.
And for those of you wondering....
The light switches are down for on, up for off, the doorknobs are all very high (although Robert says that's not an Australian thing, just specific to this house), they call fanny packs "bum bags" here (fanny, apparently, is a semi-polite word for vagina around here), rednecks are bogans (Robert showed me some examples at the bus station in Frankston) and I'll have to report back on that toilets-flushing-the-other-way thing later.
10:32pm
Robert is talking to Souraya on the phone so I'm taking the opportunity to write another journal entry.
I spent all day in the house today. I slept until close to noon and then had a shower and Aileen offered me toast for breakfast. My head was still very light and I probably should've gone to bed again but instead I unpacked and made this room a little more lived in. Robert still hasn't gotten up so I asked Alex to let me know when he was done on the computer and got to talk to Shaughn (finally) and Amy and Wilson too. I feel like I've been spending too much time on the computer and not enough with Robert. I tried to reassure him that it wouldn't be like that later on, but that right now I just needed to let everyone know I was safe and happy. And I want to get this diary online. He seemed to understand.
I met Angela today. The adjective I give her is expressive. She's very warm and seems like a fun person to be around. She's excited about taking me to the op shops (=thrift stores) and to some haunted house on the beach.
It was nice watching Robert, Angela and Alex together today. They are good to each other, I can tell. Even if Robert and Angela were enjoying tormenting Alex into telling them which girl he loves. It was cute.
We had fish and chips for supper (no fish for Angela and I, she's a veggie too, just chips and potato cakes) and watched Australian music videos. They don't have ketchup here. Only something resembling ketchup, but it's not the same. 11:04pm
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