Melbourne Day 1 & 2

Well, there is one thing you can thank Hollywood for. It puts out all of theses popular movies with actors/actresses with American accents, which gives Australians (and other peoples of the world) practice processing this accent. So, they can understand us pretty well. We figured we'd watch Crocodile Dundee 84 times to even it out.

On Wednesday we left Canberra for Melbourne. Upon our arrival, we were driven straight to Melbourne University for lunch and to meet a student in the Nav ministry there. Esther (the student) is one of the many international students who come from Asia and Southeast Asia for education at Melbourne University. In fact, there are so many Asian students here that there are times when walking around in the student union that you forget you're in Australia.

We also met with Quek, who had graduated from Melbourne University and now works in the city while working with the Navigators in community groups.

We are staying about 40 minutes east from Melbourne with the Utley's, who have been Navigator missionaries for many years.

On Thursday the Utley's showed us the city, then brought us to an informal coversational English class run by Navigators at the university. There were 5 Asian students there for the first meeting. We talked about all sorts of topics with them, including differences between Australian, Asian, and American cultures.

The conversational English class is a great way to make contacts in the international student body at the university. These students were excited to be there and even wanted to invite their friends in the future.

In the evening we had dinner with Barbara who does work in the Navigators with Church Discipling Ministry (CDM) in the community. It was encouraging to hear about the different ways she builds relationships with other women in her local community.

Aussie Vocab of the Day: Bikki

You may know that a cookie is sometimes called a biscuit in Australia (and maybe even in other countries). We have no feelings about this except that "Biscuit Monster" on Sesame Street just doesn't sound right.

Oh, and the shortcut word for "biscuit" is "bikki".