melrose place

This is our super cute house! We call it Melrose Place!

I know it looks a little bit ghetto, but I promise you it is so cute! The tour will come when we move in next weekend!

happy one week!

We celebrated our one week anniversary in Melbourne with Karaoke! On the left is Nina, she is one of the wonderful girls who is letting us sleep on her living room floor. The six of us who went to Karaoke rocked that place and the crowd was loving us!

Yall look what I found in this cute little area of the city called Chapel Street!

Thanks to Brent, I knew about this song before I got here. Apparently all Aussies LOVE this guy and this song, and the DJ at the pub last night made that very clear! He really loved that we knew this song...thanks hotrod.

because my dad said i had to...

the beautiful city we now call home! this was taken from the horse tracks in our neighborhood.

Funny story..Abby and I had just met Sarah, the girl we will be living with, for the first time. As we were walking back to the tram stop, we found some chairs on the side of the road. Our natural instict was to pick them up, but Sarah had this awful look on her face when we suggested it, and made it clear that picking up "rubbish" from the side of the road wasn't something she was used to. Abby and I went back later that night and got the chairs anyways. Hey..we are poor kids moving into an unfurnished house - we were just being resourseful! 

I've got a HUGE sweet tooth here, so I frequent this section of 7/11 a lot! They have so many different candies that we dont have in the states!

These are all Aboriginal artifacts that we found at Queen Vic Market. This is a great place for souvenirs and I know most of our house decorations will come from this place!

When we were walking to a tram stop one day, we found a beautiful park that reminded us of New York/San Fran/Lubbock. I know..weird combo.

This is my favorite sign in the city! They are at every tram stop and make me laugh every time I think of a real rhino riding a skateboard.

Love yall heaps!

our new home

Abby and I were just talking about how after only 4 days, this place already feels like home. It is so comfortable here and we have been exploring every day so we are learning out way around, and loving it! 


Our bags finally got here!! it was so great and comforting to know where all of our stuff was and to actually have a clean pair of clothes to change into.

We are staying with some girls from CRU who we met when we got here and they have been wonderful! They have introduced us to most of the other girls on the staff team, and the summer project that is here right now. Yes, this means that most of our interaction has been with Americans, but the Aussies that we have met have been so friendly and wonderful.

Here are some things that we have noticed that we aren't used to:

-Free wifi is not a concept that has made it down here yet. The mall gets free wifi but its incredibly slow and pretty unreliable. Some houses have internet but its just not as fast as American internet..which is going to take some getting used to.

-Everything is so ridiculously expensive and so ridiculously small.

-Its winter and its cold! That’s been the biggest shock in coming here since my mind still thinks its summer. I haven’t experienced much culture shock since most of my interaction has been with Americans, and the aussies speak English.

-There are so many Asians! So so so so so so many Asians all with aussie accents.

-Very few people have seen feathers in hair before, so mine are getting lots of attention.

-All of the schools have uniforms, and all of the students take the trams to school because there are no school busses.

-The city as a whole wears very dark colored clothes, and even though its winter right now, we’ve been told its like this year round.

-There is no central heating. Just space heaters that you turn on when you go to sleep, and turn off when you wake up. Its like life in the testosterhome!

-Filtered coffee doesn’t exist here and I’ve been told that it would be a good idea to start liking the stuff.

-Students don’t enjoy spending time on campus. They only go for class then go home right away, so they have no student union buildings or places to eat on campus.

-The toilets that I’ve seen don’t really swirl around when they flush. They just fill with water and shoot down so I really don’t know if they flush the opposite way.

-I’ve only seen three types of m&ms: regular, peanut, and CRISPY!!

-Face piercings are very common.

Great news! Even though I’m half way around the world, there are ways for us to keep in touch! Obviously there is skype. I would love to see yalls faces soon! I also got something through skype that allows yall to call me whenever you want. It’s a local American number, so you will won’t be charged international fees. The catch is that I have to have internet to actually talk to you. You can call whenever you want, and if I don’t have internet it will allow you to leave me a voicemail that I can hear when I finally do get internet. It works both ways so I can call yall whenever I want too.  So if you want to get ahold of me call 1-281-617-2556 and if you see this number call you then pick it up because it’s me!

And now we can text each other. Again, I have to have internet in order to receive them, but hopefully we will get our house soon and we will get internet! The number to text me is 857-576-2798. 

we made it!!

WE. ARE. HERE!!!! 


I have no concept of time right now. It is almost 5:00 p.m. but my body thinks its 2 a.m. And I lost a day in this whole traveling process. How was Wednesday? Guess I'll never know. Our flights wern't bad at all. Leaving Dallas we had a big delay because they couldn't get the plane cooled. They even called everyone up in line a few times and let people start boarding the plane before pulling everyone off again and making us wait even longer. This caused us to get to LAX late, and even though our plane left late from there too, apparently our bags didn't have enough time to make it on the plane. The airline says that we should have them tomorrow morning. 


We have found short term housing until we can find a house for the year!! PTL!  We are going to be sleeping on the floor of some STINTers with CRU here. We are thrilled that we don't have to say in hostels. 


We have been told that we have to stay awake till 8:30 tonight to beat the jet lag, but I just don't see that happening. Both of us are fading fast!


Thanks for all the prayers yall, keep em comin!

just for the family..

Hey Carters!! Even though we didn't make a video at our half-reunion this summer, Griff still pulled through and wrote us a poem for us to remember the week!

Cotter to me

May be different than Cotter to you

All of us are unique

Marching to our own tune.

But when we come together

On every second year

Our tunes become one

A song pleasant to any ear

Tackling white water

And hiking up mountains

Driveway basketball

And corn hole combatants

Commander pilots

Pepperoni Roll eaters

Pimento Cheese pounders

And love dat money repeaters

Britt and Joel plus Dave

Equal a lot of years, just count them

But on these summer days,

Old farts become fountains

Fountains of youth,

Springing up from the past

They may hurt for weeks after

But they’ll all have a blast

For one rainy Monday

No one can deny

Our water proof spirits

And a great Fourth of July

From there, to the river

Where the sun was the hottest

When I missed my chance

With a true River Goddess

Then to the mountains,

“3 miles!” says Dave!

At the end of that hike,

Pepperoni Rolls we craved.

With a somber heart

We loaded the cars

Headed home for the night

For basketball under the stars

When the morning light came,

We had to say goodbye

To our Illinois family

As they started their drive

A few beers left in the cooler,

And a few Carters left in town,

We went to the lake,

For one final round.

Although this year

Our numbers were down

All left Dub Vee

With out any frowns

The rest of our family

We missed very much

But on the horizon

Is Texas for turkey and such

Words cannot describe

Not even in a poem

The Cotter way of life

And the love that is shown

I am so grateful

For such a family,

From Howdjas, to firemen

To love dat money.

The miles in between,

Mean nothing at all,

Family means everything,

And I sure love y’all.

Stephan, Stephanie, Kim, Christopher, Graham, Jay, Miriam, Evan, Ellis, Mason, Jesse, Cathy, Casey, Jian, and Jackson we missed yall so much! 

LOVE DAT MONEY!

part of the adventure

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that, both to myself and to others. You know, in theory picking up and moving around the world sounds great, but when you have to make all the arrangements yourself you realize just how much work has to go into it. There are so many details that have to be worked out, and when someone asks me a question that I don’t have the answer to yet, I just tell them that it is all part of the adventure!

Where are we living? I've got no idea, but that’s all part of the adventure.

When do we start work? I wish I knew, but it’s part of the adventure.

What about furniture? Not really sure, but it is just part of the adventure.

Where will you be teaching? Are you ever going to come home? What if you meet your husband? I don't know, but that’s just part of the adventure.

There are plenty of things about this trip, this year of my life that will be spent living in a foreign country, that I am unsure about. I used to not like responding like that to the questions people were asking. It came with the nervous laugh and a panicked look plastered across my face, but I’m learning to embrace it. We are leaving in three days, and these details that aren’t worked out yet are starting to get me more excited. It's all unknown, and I'm ok with that. Sure, right now its stressful to think that we could potentially be homeless in less than a week, but I know that everything will work out. I've got no doubt in my mind about it, so why worry?

So that’s my attitude going into this journey– that everything is part of the adventure. I want to try new foods (shocking, I know!) and experience new things. I want to learn all about the Australian culture and how to talk in an Australian accent. I want to take advantage of where I will be and TRAVEL! I want to be daring and bold, and go on excursions because lets face it, if I move half way around the world and don’t make an adventure out of it..well that would be worse than someone stealing the movie Pearl Harbor from me. And I absolutely love Pearl Harbor. I bet it would bring me to tears if I could never watch that movie again but that’s a whole other can of worms. So sweet reader, I’m want you to keep me accountable. Help me make this year an adventure! Give me some ideas, what have you always wanted to do in Australia? I promise to take pictures so you can live vicariously through me!  

peace & love yall!