Day 78 Everton Park, Brisbane:

Brad and Rosemaree - our homestay parents - had warned us of hotter weather today and after melting all day, i thought i understood what they meant about the sticky queensland summer. Of course, i arrived home this evening to be told that the weather forecast lied and today was quite a chilly spring day 'with a nip in the air'!!! They couldn't stop laughing when i said i found it REAAAALLLY HOT.

So worried about how hot it's going to get now, when we're hostelling it round! Plus Brad gave us some right horror stories! Here's a few highlights from our dinner (delicious again!) :

' you'll be waking up from the puddle of sweat (characteristic brad pause here)... that is your pillow, melting'

' it's lucky we've got a spare fridge in the laundry room. you'll be wanting to sleep in there, girls'

' you'll be wanting a washer'. washer... as in a thing found in a toolbox??! after a demo from rosemaree, complete with sound effects, we realised that a washer means a flannel.. and whilst i politely provide the english translation, brad and rosemaree mock us for a good 10 minutes, cackling that shirts are made of flannel, not washers! 'maybe the kiwis also call them flannels... they're always saying stupid things?' ends that part of the humiliation :p

'just to warn you girls, in summer i'll be down to shorts'. big pause here again. i;m about to say 'but, brad, you always wear shorts. very short shorts,a ctually' when i realise this isn't a pause but a full stop. luckily rosemaree's gasp of shock masks my own, with her saying 'Brad, that's DISGUSTING. Don;t worry girls, i'll protect you... brad, i can;t believe you. no way for my sake as well as the girls...' we could not hold the laughter in... especially as i could picture only too clearly what he would look like in just his short shorts... after that mortifying shower incident 0_0 (more another time :P)

then if the melting heat wasn't enough of a worry, brad goes on to warn us that snake season is coming up as well as divebombing magpies. Rosemaree's actually planning on spending the mid semester break making us magpie hats.
apparently, these consist of an ice cream tub (we can pick our colours) with 2 -200 googly eyes stuck on pipe cleaners... ' at least it will add some height for rachel. forget those heels girl, you need a magpie hat!' LOL

and after all those warnings of death by sweat, schocking shorts, snakes and magpies, Brad offers up yet another possibility for my animal behaviour experiment assignment... something to do with shimmying down the side of his shed (known as teh disaster area) and watching rainbow lorikeets get drunk of nectar and fall out of the trees...

Rosemaree sums up tonight's entertainment by saying to me ' or you could use Brad. he would make an excellent case study' :D