Before we left for Australia, I searched carefully for a good couch surfing host. I found a young Iranian couple whose references were phenomenal! In the past I have tended to not pay much attention to who I'm choosing as long as they look approximately the right age.
So I sent off a couple of requests, and within a day or two, Nasim and Amir responded positively. They even said they could pick us up from the airport! That was such a lovely and generous touch. Flying into a new place and trying to make sense of the buses or really fork out for a taxi can be intimidating.
It took a little longer to find them than expected, but once we did, we were thrilled to be in Australia with such nice people. We would spend our first three days in Australia with Iranians, and we were thrilled to be moving back into a little more social scene after a month of mostly hermitage in little Papatoetoe.
The first thing I noticed was that Nasim (the woman) was very fashionable and beautiful, where Amir seemed a little nerdy and not overly attractive--it looked like he had seriously married up.
They took us first to Surfer's Paradise to walk along the busier part of the area. Surfer's Paradise has a few moderately tall buildings and is supposedly where the young people hang out and the wealthy backpackers come out to play.
Nasim had this beautiful smile and she was charming and pretty easy to talk to for me. She and I ended up talking the most. Her voice was this very smooth and high tone that occasionally broke into a' very nasal sound that made it seem like she were speaking around a bubble in her throat.
Joe and Amir were very compatible and within 20 minutes were passionately discussing religion, of course. It was very interesting to hear an Iranian's take on Islam.
Nasim is working towards a PhD in something like Iranian women's health administration. Her research takes a large survey of women back in Iran about a bunch of areas of health.
Amir was a classic software nerd who used quick humor as a social lubricant. I really liked him, but he seemed to get nervous around me. I tend to do that to people who don't know how to take silence.
They took us next to their favorite Italian pizza place and we got a couple of pizzas to take out to the boardwalk on the Strand (like a false beach behind the real beach). It was so good and sitting out in the fresh air felt really nice, if a little cold.
We went home and they showed us their modest little place and our fold-out couch (not a sofa bed, but like the attached cushions folded out to arrange into a 3/4 size bed). We were so tired.
The next morning when we woke up, Amir was gone to do a photo shoot on the beach, as his weekend job was portrait photography. Nasim made us breakfast and we ate together, and it was so good. Apparently Iranians eat cashews for breakfast, which turns out to be quite lovely. We looked at their wedding photos, which were very interesting because I couldn't recognize him (he looked handsome like a vampire and maybe even was wearing a little bit of makeup), plus Nasim was wearing SO much makeup. She looked like a painted doll or a well-kempt hooker. I don't mean that rudely at all, sorry. That sounds harsh.
Nasim did something that was really nice for us as guests--she told us that she needed to get some work done and while Amir was away for the morning, we should go down to the beach and explore on our own. It was nice to have open direction, instead of us feeling like we were imposing on her or her feeling like she was imposing on us.
So we headed down to the Strand and walked along it, running into a little gathering of greenies who wanted to "save the broadwater" (the Strand; the channel between the false beach and the real beach).
We passed huge pelicans who were standing around at a little wading pool. They were very cool. We moved on to try and lay out and get a little sun, but the sun was more often hidden by clouds than not, so we headed back towards the pelicans.
This time a dog got loose from its owner and started chasing the pelicans, who half-trotted half-flew into the wading pool, right in front of us. These pelicans were seriously huge (between 4 and 5 feet tall) and they had a white circle around their black eyes, which made them look like an animated character. They were quite the attraction and had gathered a crowd, which got all the more excited when the nearby fish and chips shop did their daily scraps feeding.
We were starting to get hungry at this point and checked inside the chip shop to see prices, but kept on moving when it seemed pretty expensive. We walked up the road a little and came across one of the many Thai restaurants, which had a cheap lunch deal that we jumped on. Joe had a noodle dish and I had a soup type of dish, both of which were so good and so much food.
We headed back to Nasim and Amir's house, where they were both keeping cool in the shadows. We watched some TV with Amir while Nasim started the long process of getting ready for a cocktail party she would go to later that evening.
Nasim knew how to flaunt it. For being from a culture that tends to be more modest than others, she knew exactly what looked good. Her boobs were very full in the tight mini-dress. Her makeup was exact.
She was going to a cocktail party that was thrown for the graduate students at her university, and her friend Bing was coming along. Bing showed up in a much less impressive outfit, but I have a feeling that she felt blase in comparison and the two worked out a tweak here and there to make her feel a little less dowdy.
And then of course at the last minute Joe and Amir decide that we'll go with them and just play pool while we waited for their cocktail party to end, so I had to race to look even half presentable. I scrounged a partial outfit up and we went.
We dropped the girls off at their party and parked the car to walk to the arcade where the pool was. I felt super self-conscious about the way I was dressed and especially how white my dress made my skin look, an effect magnified by the tan women who were everywhere in Australia. But I did manage to mostly hold my own at pool, and win flat-out in air hockey against both boys (they didn't like that much, but I think Amir especially didn't like being beaten by a girl).
The girls called and we went to get them from their party. Nasim was a little tipsy and was swaying just a tiny bit on her heels, so they had had a good time. We all headed to a "mature" bar that had fewer of the very young backpackers, and more of the young professionals.
It seemed like a very suave place, but out of Joe and my comfort zone, for the most part. But we went in and made the most of it anyway. When I was about halfway to the back of the bar, I got a tap on the shoulder and a security guard told me no hoods. I didn't even have my hood up, I just happened to be wearing a sweater with a hood. I'm still not sure of that was for security reasons, or for dress code reasons. Could have been either.
We didn't last long there, since it was very packed. We headed instead to another bar in the casino. This was a little better for us, but we still felt out of place. People were out with their best clothes on, and frankly so were we, but our level of "best" is not the same, since we carry everything on our backs. There's no room for satin and heels when you're constantly evaluating possessions by volume to weight to utility. We were out of place.
But once we got a little relaxed, we started to dance and have a good time. But even then, we were pooped by the time Amir had sobered up and we were leaving the bar.
Sunday we woke up late-ish and there was some sort of misunderstanding or difference in desires for what we were going to do for breakfast. Nasim wanted to go out and have a nice meal together and talk for a while, but Amir wanted to go get groceries and cook at home. We ended up doing the latter.
After breakfast we went to a nature reserve, and here we had our first taste of Nasim's driving. Her driver's license had expired and she had to test for a new one within a month or she would have had to retake training. The problem was, of course, that she was shite at driving.
We were afraid for our lives, but we tried to stay calm and not be rude. Between the two of them, the whole thing was a failure. She shifted alright, but she would change lanes without signaling or checking for cars, she would go the wrong way down a street, or she would not pay attention to construction merging and would end up nearly hitting a cone to her left or a car to her right.
What made it worse was the way that Amir handled it. I don't mean to be judgmental, but he was a horrible teacher. He would focus on the wrong things--for instance, he made sure to lecture that if she didn't put on the parking break at stoplights, she would fail straight away. I don't even think this is true, but it's also a detail that doesn't need so much focus. He should have focused rather on her repeated failure to check behind her before changing lanes.
He was also super impatient. When she did something wrong, he criticized super harshly, but when she did something right, he would take it as a moment when he could teach her some sort of bogus points. I don't think he ever complimented her when she did something right. Granted, she did a lot wrong, but she did do some right.
It made me realize how lucky I am and how lucky Joe is. Though sometimes the Baxter family has a tendency to criticize first, Joe has learned and is usually pretty good at complimenting me on good things. I've learned the same thing along the way, and I realize how much more beneficial it is to have positive reinforcement instead of negative criticism. I think this was especially drilled into me during the MacKenzie's stint when Phil refused to say anything nice about anyone's work. It made me realize so much more the power of the positive. People really respond well when their effort is acknowledged.
We did make it safely to the nature park and got out to walk around. Within the first five minutes, we found a young kangaroo lying on the ground and sick. We asked someone passing by if the department of conservation should be called, and they said it had already been reported and someone was coming. Poor little buddy.
We very soon saw two of the symbols of Australia, a couple of kangaroos and a couple of koala bears. When we told people later that we had seen koalas, they were surprised, as many people had never seen them in the wild. To be fair, we only saw them from the ground in their high, high perch in the branch of a tree while they were sleeping, so we just saw little puffs of grey fuzz.
The walk was pleasant and getting to talk to Nasim more was interesting. She opened up to me about some of the problems she and Amir had been experiencing. This interpersonal discussion is up my alley, while Joe and Amir had cultural exchange via religious discussions and philosophy. Maybe that makes me less intelligent since I don't like to talk about deep and complex issues, but I do like to talk about emotions, so perhaps I am emotionally intelligent.
Nasim and Amir told us that they are very choosy about who they accept for couch surfing, so Joe and I felt very honored to have passed their screening.
We decided to buy supplies for dinner, including marinated kangaroo meat. Joe and I made the salad with lemon and salt and Nasim made the kangaroo meat, which turned out to be fantastic.
We sat down to eat with a good bottle of wine, and Joe and Amir started talking and talking and talking. Joe, bless his heart, sometimes gets into his discussion voice, which is very engaging and broad, but not great at involving everyone at the table. He gets it from being the youngest of 10 kids, I think, and the whole family sort of fights for the spotlight in conversations and the winner is usually the one who can out-talk the others. Nasim kept trying to end their religious discussions so that she and I could be involved in their conversation, but then she had nothing to say and they would get caught up again and be barreling ahead without us in no time. It was not conducive to good dinner conversation.
That night we said goodbye to Amir, since he would be up way before we would to commute to work. In the morning Nasim generously offered us to stay around as long as we needed and just lock the door behind us when we left. She told us where we could get cereal from their cupboards and the apologized but had to leave very quickly to get to the university. We said goodbye to her and she left. It was very nice to have had such an enjoyable couchsurfing experience.
We were scheduled to leave sometime in the afternoon with our first helpx host to go to their home on Tambourine Mountain, so we texted the guy and he actually happened to finish work early and could come pick us up right then. We showered and packed quickly, and before we knew it, the very young looking Paul pulled up to Nasim and Amir's house to pick us up.
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