Hey, sorry I haven't updated in a while. Sara's been quite busy and getting into new routines for herself so she hasn't had much of a chance to take us out and do too much... so today we went out and did a few things down the street... mainly did some mystery shops where you go into a shop and buy something and then rate the service you received by doing a survey online and getting paid a bit of money. The companies pay the companies that do the mystery shopping that she works for that way they can improve and rate their current staff customer service. Which is a good thing... kinda fun too but you have to remember so much information! It's crazy...
Anyways, it was time to get going... Sara had heaps to do today and didn't want to be out all day... so here's what Sara's main street looks like... at the bottom you can see what looks like a huge parking lot... that is indeed what it is... it's the parking lot to a huge company called Electrolux which makes fridges, vacuums and everything... they only make fridges and freezers at this one though... kinda cool anyways...
...and here's a street near where Sara lives... as you can see it looks very lush with a lot of trees... sadly, it's not this way just outside of Orange with mostly farmlands and it's very dry...
...going now out to the main part of Orange this isn't the main street but there are a lot of shops. You can't tell very much but the shops are very old, most of them anyways...
...now first stop Daniel and Sara had to drop off their 2 year old son, Andrew at daycare... *sigh* it's quite hot already and it's only 9am... geez, and it's only still the beginning half of Spring... oh it's so hot!...
...time to get going again, this is near the main street, this is Anson Street it connects with Summer Street and the back road to get to one of the malls... which are quite small to other malls, especially in America...
Almost there now... just through this roundabout and we'll be there... on the right hand side you can see a big blue/green type building and a big white one next to it is one of the original buildings in Orange... I can't remember what it is now, the white one next to is is the Ex Services Club where all the bands come to play and comedy acts are held and everything... Sara's seen a few preformers there including Jimeon and Steady Eddy two Australian comedians...
Welcome to Orange Central... this only recently opened back up after huge renovations... it's quite... different from what it used to be and seems to have a bit more upper class type stores now which are way expensive but also some nice stores like Dollars and Sense... but we're not going there for that, we're headed to Kmart to do our first mystery shop...
...well... back on the road again, we couldn't really take photos inside the mall because well... people get a bit weird about that for some reason but here we are... on Summer Street which is the main street of Orange. Now... what's strange about Orange is it has two malls, most of the bigger towns in the Central West have two malls... owned by different people. On the left is the Orange Central (where we just were) and on the right is the Orange Metroplaza which has stuff like Myer (like a big department store), Big W (Australia's Wal*Mart equivalent) and the Reject Shop... also next to Myer, which you can see on the right side, behind the trees is a huge building you can see sticking out - that's the main post office... quite big for such a little town isn't it? In reality, it's not that big...
...and as we go down main street a bit more you start to notice the trend of the buildings and how old they all seem to be... some more modernized than others but none the less... lots of the buildings actually have apartments on the top floor... and people still live in them to this day...
...down another street on our way to the metroplaza (the other mall) we went down Lords Place... Sara took a photo so show you their cinemas here... they're kind of funny, she's used to the box office being outside but it's not... instead you buy your tickets at the snack bar, I guess it's a way to get you to just buy some snacks at the same time instead of avoiding it... but another interesting thing... you notice how there is no parking really? Yeah, Sara thinks that's interesting too - especially since there's no parking unless you want to walk ages that's longer than 2 hours... which isn't good unless you see a movie under 2 hours long... oh well!
Well... that was my little tour of Orange... we're also going to do a tour of Millthorpe (hopefully), Blayney, and very soon we'll be going to Canowindra a small town 50 minutes drive of Orange... Sara's never been there before so it's going to be new to all of us! Write again soon mom!
