Gone on a Lucky Country

I know I haven't been here in forever and usually I don't have a very good excuse for my prolonged absences; but this time I have a few decent excuses.  Our life has been busy busy over the last couple of months...  We took a beautiful holiday to Fremantle and the Margaret River region.  We drank (and bought) lots of gorgeous wine while we we there and returned in just enough time for a busy week of catch-up before Joe went in for surgery. Ha ha!!  See?  I do have good reasons?  I win....


My poor husband had been having horrible problems with breathing that were growing steadily worse over the last six months.  Sleep was eluding him (and by proxy, me) and slowly, breathing during the day also became a real hardship.  He started up with a horrible hacking cough, his asthma returned and every cold virus and allergy irritation seemed to be attracted to him.  It all happened so gradually over a period of months that neither of us really saw the true impact that it was having on us.  We were both exhausted, we were getting sick constantly and poor Joe could hardly breathe!  He finally got a referral to see an ENT specialist who took one look and told him that he need surgery and soon...

Basically, everything in Joe's breathing area (Please don't be intimidated by my fancy medical terms - I'm really just like you) was swelling up and slowly cutting off his airway. Nice right?  Additionally, he has some genetic malfunction where his esophagus is weak and will continue to swell and get irritated  if not taken care of...  The long and short of all this gross medical talk is that Joe had to have surgery.  In this surgery, he had his adenoids and tonsils removed - he also had part of his soft palate shaved back and he had his entire esophagus cauterised, widened and scored with little cuts to ensure a strong esophagus for life.

It was a rough procedure and there was a whole lot of pain involved.  A whole lot.  Joe could tell you a lot more about the specifics of the pain; but let me tell you, it was hard just to watch him go through it.  It was made much worse by the fact that the dose of pain meds that they gave him wasn't even half strength. He wasn't eating or drinking and I started getting concerned.  Thank goodness for my lovely sister Julie who is a nurse.  She gave me all the proper info on what safe dosages were, I called Joe's Dr., he agreed and we went forward with better pain management.  That's when things started turning around and the healing process began.  Yesterday was just 3 weeks out from the surgery and Joe is feeling like a whole new person.  He still gets a bit tired and sore when he talks too much and he still has to concentrate a little bit when he's drinking so as not to allow the liquids to come out his nose!!

The best part of this whole procedure has been the sleep.  Oh!  The Sleep!!  Neither of us realised (again, as it al happened so gradually) how little sleep we were actually getting through the night.  It has been absolute heaven to go to bed every night and wake up feeling truly rested.  As the sleep has improved, everything has improved.  We are in good moods all the time, we want to go out and do things, we are happy and life is beautiful.  I know that anyone reading this who is a parent will understand what I am talking about when I say that 6 solid months of interrupted and crappy sleep can make life seem like a very dark place.

Anyway, if you add together the general misery leading up to the surgery, the surgery, the recovery and some other largely life-changing decisions that have gone on in the last week and a half (and no, I'm not preggers) than I would say that I have some darn good excuses for neglecting you for the last month or so.

I promise I'll be better from here on out - and really, with this much sleep in my life, I am feeling like there is not much that I can't do right now.

More news to follow in the coming weeks - we are welcoming summer, our first overseas visitors and some big changes here so there should be plenty of writing material!

I had to get up an hour earlier than usual this morning and it really threw me off - I kept asking Joe on the commute in to the city why he was so cranky.  Suddenly I realised that I was the cranky one...  Oops...

I've been trying to take lots of deep breaths this morning - I had a coffee etc...  Just trying to tame this wave of irritation that keeps spiking up.  Well, it's not really working so well.

Any tips?  I could really use them right now....

I got a lovely letter from the IRS last night - Happy Fourth of July to Me!!

Now that we've been back in Sydney for a couple of weeks, it almost feels like our holiday to the States never even happened.  The build-up to the trip was intense - creating packing lists, buying souvenirs and generally worrying too much about what it would be like being back.  I've heard a lot of ex-pats talk about their first trip back and there seems to be an almost unanimous agreement that it is a very big deal.  There are a lot of emotional issues inside of that first visit - do you still fit in, are you homesick for your original home, are you homesick for your ex-pat home etc....

I can't lie - I was so nervous...  I was excited to see my family again; but I was mostly afraid of going back, realising that I missed it too much and then coming back to Australia completely miserable and homesick.  I have been lucky up to this point on the homesickness front - not that it hasn't happened; but that it seems to happen infrequently and be very low-grade when it does.

Anyway, the visit was great... There was lots that felt weird and lots that we seemed to just fall right back in to.  Being back in the States did make me realise how much I had been missing; but hadn't admitted to myself.  I really miss driving...  I love that we use public transport here; but I miss the ease of getting places easily, quickly and on my own timetable.  I also miss the ease of driving - I've driven here; but it has not been a fun experience...  Being on the wrong side of the car throws off what little spatial understanding I have and both of my driving experiences here have left me shaken and teary as I narrowly avoid being side swiped the whole time. So, while we were back on our holiday, I was finding any excuse possible to drive - it just was so effortless and enjoyable.

I also missed the prices and the ease of shopping - it's easier to drive to stores, they are bigger, it's cheaper and the customer service is unparalleled.  So yeah, I miss those things a lot...

I was really looking forward to eating certain types of food that I missed and that part was very disappointing to me.  Nothing tasted quite like I remembered and nothing tasted as good as the food here in Sydney.  Except burgers....  They were amazing and promptly reminded me why I don't order burgers here in Australia - they just can't quite seem to get them right.

Anyway, the last two nights before we left to come back to Australia, I got really really homesick.  Crying myself to sleep homesick - which is exactly what happened to me when we originally moved here.  It passed, and by the time we left for the airport on our last day, I was only looking forward to coming back here to Sydney.  Isn't that interesting?  Crying for one home and yet looking forward to returning to your other home...

I guess if I learned anything from this trip, it's that you can have two homes and you can love them both so much that you can miss each one when you are gone from it.  I learned that Sydney has become my home over this past year and that, regardless of my "ishews", I don't want to leave it.

Coming out of customs and into the Sydney airport proper are these banners.  One says, "Welcome to Sydney" and that's the one I was excited to see when we moved here.  Look more closely though, and you will see that they next one says "Gday, Welcome Home".  That's the one that I was most excited to see on this trip because I felt like it had finally come true for me.

If you look more closely, you will see a Christmas tree as well, which is a dead give-away to the fact that this is actually not my picture.  I stole it from the interwebs because I never have enough hands free to actually snap a picture at any time during a trip - let along a 26 hour, 4 layover trip.

The upshot of all this is:  I love my family, I love the US and I miss all of them all the time. I also love Sydney, I love my husband and I love our life here - so parting from one to go back to the other isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

As some of you may be marking off the days on a special calendar and trembling in anticipation may know, Joe and I are leaving on Sunday the 22nd for an almost 3 week holiday in the States.  Excitement abounds and I am even more busy than usual - what with the packing and preparing...

You would think that being busy would be bad for blog writing; but, in this case, it is forced me to get some stuff done.  I've been wanting to blog about our Easter holiday; but the photos have been sitting - leering at me from my sadly neglected pictures folder.  How do you choose 4 or 5 good photos of the 12 Apostles when you have about 40 photos of them in different shades of sunset?  See... you understand now...

Well, Joe's mom (i.e. the greatest MIL ever) has planned an open house for us during our visit so that we can see the whole family without having to cram a bunch of individual visits into our time there.  We decided to put together a folder of pictures so that people could see where we have been and how beautiful this country is...  Well, actually, I was just going to throw everything into a folder and let it play at random; but Joe has been nice enough to put together something with some heft and depth.  The photos will actually be in order and there will be some labels and explanations as needed.  That will save us from standing next to the tv all day saying - "Yes, this was our trip to Thredbo" - "Oh, that's an Echidna".

Anyway, this whole process necessitated an afternoon on the couch with Joe going through my pictures folder.  I have come to realise that I am not nearly as organised as I like to think I am...  The pinnacle of embarrassment came when I had to show him a folder entitled "Random Australia" in which I had pitched an alarming number of completely random photos.  Add to that the existence of additional random folders in my on-line Picasa account that I had uploaded from my phone; and I am truly feeling sorry for him.  We had many conversations like this one yesterday:

"Oh honey, I don't really like that photo - you should really put up the one of the Botanical Garden"

"Where are those ones?"

"Oh, they are in the folder called Nature - Sydney - Garden"

"That one is empty"

"Oh.....  Did you try Random Australia?"

"Yeah"

"Oh....  Here, let me have the mouse"

click.... click.... click... click...

"Here they are!  On-line in my Uploaded Blog Pictures folder"

"Thanks (almost invisible eyeroll)"

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that we went through all the photos from our Easter holiday and they are now sorted and done.  I was going to have this blog post actually be about Melbourne with some pictures; but now it's sort of long and I don't want to blow everything at once!

Tomorrow my pretties - tomorrow....

But here's an arty picture of the Opera House to tide you over (I know that it doesn't have anything to do with our trip to Melbourne; but I'm feeling guilty for not having any other photos in this post!)

I am in the midst of dealing with our first ever "shaped" internet usage!  "Shaped" is a nice Aussie term for "you have used to much internets and now you must be punished!"  So, we have a plan for 100MB a month (yes, I know this is an extreme amount; but we download a lot so don't judge) and it is at lightning fast (I'm not being sarcastic - it really is crazy fast) broad band speed.  Once we go over our 100MB we get throttled back to a "slightly faster then dial-up" speed.

What that means....  Well, for one thing, it means that I downloaded too many movies the other day.  Also, this means that there will be no video-Skyping tomorrow for our Skype date with Joe's parents.  That is a bummer.  The only positive here is that our usage resets in about 24 hours - so, we only have to live with a pre-historic internet connection for another day.

Jennifer - I am dying to watch your You-Tube videos... I can get to "this is the part of the classroom" and then it stops loading and I have to give up.  I swear I will watch them Sunday night.

Well, it's been a long and eventful week.  At this point I am weighing the good and bad together and trying to decide which one is winning right now.  I guess the nice thing is that the week isn't over and that we have some fun things planned for the weekend.

I'm finally admitting to myself tonight that I am a little depressed.  Depression is a bit funny for me - it's never very deep and it's easy for me to get out of; but I don't notice it when it's happening...  It's always several days after the fact when I can get enough clarity to look backwards and say "Oh! - that's what I've been feeling!"  I'm sick of not having much to do.  Inactivity seems to be my arch-nemesis.  As of Saturday we will have been without our things for three months; and I am really starting to miss not being able to look at all of the things that mean home to me.

I once read somewhere that there are two types of people - those who will only feel at home in a specific geographic location and those who can live anywhere as long as they are surrounded by the things that mean home to them.  I think there are many more categories than those two; but as a broad description and as an illustration to my point they work just fine.  I fall into the latter category - there are things that I own that mean home to me in a big way.  I moved a lot in my late teen/early twenties years and it never seemed to bother me as long as I had those things that were a touch point to my life.

When I think of our crate and the things that are inside of it, my first mental picture is of the belongings I inherited from my parents - My mother's spice rack, a set of their wedding china, a cushion made out of one of my Dad's flannel shirts, my Mom's sewing machine...

Next I think about the things that have meaning for me regarding Joe and our life together - our framed photos from Hocking Hills, our wedding albums, our books....

I need those things to feel completely at home here as opposed to the sort-of at home I am feeling now.  Really, it's not about possessions.... We have almost nothing here; but Joe is the biggest thing in my life that means home to me - so, wherever he is is home to me.

I've also been feeling a bit homesick the last few nights - not in a weepy sort of way... Not even any longing to go back to the States really.  More of a general regret.  That I wasn't closer to people before I left or that I didn't appreciate the time with them as much as I should have when I had it.  It's hard to think that there will be two more babies born into the family in the next couple of months that I won't be able to see/hold/cuddle.  I think about everyone every day - really, I do. I'm just afraid sometimes that they aren't doing the same and that they will end up forgetting me.

See - Inactivity makes my brain go round and round and round..... never a good thing.

Well, I am sitting at home this morning waiting for the electricians to show up.  Several of the older power points (outlets) have been sparking and popping so we figured it would be a good idea to have someone check it out.

Also the window repair guy came at "half seven" (love it!) this morning.  He took some pictures of the broken latch on the window and left.  He said that they would get the parts today and repair the window Monday or Tuesday.  So, yea... we have had a semi-open broken window for a week now.  It's getting hard to keep my feet warm.

It's a beautiful Friday and we have plans to go on a pub crawl tonight with the people from Joe's work.  That's always a good time so I am looking forward to it immensely. Tomorrow we have a bunch of errands to run and Sunday we are going sailing with some of Joe's coworkers.  Needless to say, one of the errands tomorrow will be for motion sickness pills for me (just in case).  I'm usually fine in Joe's Mom and Dad's fishing boat in Florida - I seem to only be bothered on cruise ships/large slightly moving wharfs etc.... but it never hurts to be prepared.


I think I'll count us lucky if our things arrive before summer.....

I've been so excited that we are moving to our new place on Friday that I have been in a bit of denial....

We will most likely not get our crate from the States until the end of August.  That means that we will be in an apartment for an entire month with only the contents of our suitcases.  Wow.

We bought a mattress set last weekend and it is being delivered the day we move in... I immediately began the hunt for appliances (we need to provide our own washer, dryer and fridge) and found the washer and dryer second hand. I am working on getting a fridge this week.

What I didn't realize was how much you need for just the basics of everyday living.  I keep thinking of all the things in our crate that I am dying to get. 

So, with all of these things in mind, we took a trip out to Ikea yesterday armed with a small list and the knowledge that everything that we bought would need to be carried home in bags.  Eek....  I am proud to say that we only spent a very little bit and we now have just enough to get us through the month:

2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 glasses, 4 sets of silverware, a set of steak knives, 2 mixing bowls, a frying pan, a sauce pan, 1 cutting board, a trash can, 2 towels, 2 washcloths, a fitted sheet, 2 pillows, and 1 blanket.

I've been struggling a bit with not really feeling like writing this week.  Every night I sit down at the computer intending to bang out a post about one of the many things that I have jotted down on my "Blog About This" list; and I end up wasting my time trolling Facebook or something equally mind-numbing.

I feel like I am in limbo - just waiting for our real life to start...

I'm glad there will only be another 8 days till we are out of this apartment.  I am struggling a bit with the whole "stay at home wife" bit right now; but I think it is just because there is so little for me to do in this tiny place. It doesn't take that long to clean it and do the laundry.  I feel pretty giddy when I have to run to the grocery or drycleaners (that's so pathetic that I can't believe I even wrote it).  I feel guilty a lot too - I didn't have much to do today and it was raining so I spent a couple hours reading and I watched some TV.  It felt like a really illicit sick day (sicky) from work when I wasn't really sick.  It makes me feel a bit better to know that Joe actually feels guilty too.  He feels guilty that I get up with him, make brekky and coffee, do the laundry and have dinner ready when he gets home.

So, I guess we are all right.  I feel guilty for having so much free time and he feels guilty for me not having even more free time.  This is why we work as a couple.

I am excited to explore my new area and start meeting all of these wonderful people from YanksDownUnder and from the Blogosphere who have invited me out for coffee.  I also can't wait to start decorating the apartment....  Boy am I missing a TJ Maxx here...  Joe and I were walking down Military Rd. Sunday night and we stopped to look in the windows of a furniture shop.  There was a standing lamp that I loved loved loved - so Joe checked the price and had a bit of a heart attack when he realized that it was $1800.00.  Ha!
I guess I'll be shopping at Ikea!

Hmm.... I have to say, even blogging a little bit about relatively unimportant stuff made me feel lots better.  Perhaps there is a lesson here for me?

I've gotten over most hurdles here so far.  I found all the little shops I need to live my life on a daily basis....
I have a grocery, dry cleaners, coffee place, cafe with wifi and a street that seems to have anything else you could think of.  I've mastered buying train and ferry tickets and actually making it onto and off of the right trains and ferries.  We have mobiles now and even an Australian bank account.  Joe is working and I got all of the paperwork just in time for him to be getting his first paycheck and for us to get reimbursed for our moving expenses.  The only thing that seems to be missing right now is finding an apartment.

We ended up getting approved for the place that we applied for in Manly; but they said absolutely not to our little doggy so we had to turn them down. It's a great feeling knowing that we can get approved with the packet that I turned in. I'm not sure why I thought they would be so anal about paperwork when they aren't anal about anything else here.  I sat next to a girl on the ferry yesterday while she talked to her friend about how pissed (wasted) they all were the night before "and oh, by the way, I just applied for an apartment and I put you down as my last landlady - I told them I lived in your building for 18 months and I paid 500 a week for rent... Thanks".  So, I guess I am being over prepared and over zealous in providing all of our last utility bills and copies of every vital document I can think of.  Oh well, if it increases our chances than great.

So, I was really excited yesterday to realise that one of our other favourite places was having a showing in just a little bit.  I ran down to Circular Quay and made it onto the Neutral Bay ferry just in time.  Of course, I ended up being early and so I had to stand in the cold rain for a half hour waiting for the agent.  She arrived and surprise surprise - her keys didn't work.  Sigh..... This is the second time we have had an inspection cancelled because the agents don't have the right keys.  There was only one other person there besides me and she immediately helped him, offered him a lift etc....  Then she turned away from me and started making calls and I actually had to go over to her and get her to take my information down so that she could call me Friday once she got the right keys.  I could feel her irritation with me and it was very obvious in the way she interacted with the Australian male that was there for the showing compared to how she acted towards me.

Of course, by the time I got back down to the ferry it was just pulling away so I had to sit and wait for a half hour.  It was pleasant for about 5 minutes until it started the increasing rain again forcing me into the little shelter.  I had the extreme pleasure (and I say this with as much Aussie sarcasm as I can muster)  of sharing the shelter with a pair of aging backpackers and their very smelly, unleashed poodle.  Well, the poodle took an immediate liking to me and started playing the age old game "I'll jump up and put my dirty paws on you and then when you try to push me away I'll try to bite you".  I feel like I was doing ok controlling my irritation until these French girls joined us inside the shelter and proceeded to chain smoke vigorously, as though they had not had a cigarette since at least ten minutes before.

I opted for cold rain over smelly dogs and clouds of cigarette smoke.  I was so dispirited by the time I got home...  I had had such high hopes that I was about to go see the apartment of our dreams.  I decided that I was done for the day - no cooking dinner, no more ironing.  So, I watched tv till Joe got home and then we went out for a ridiculously over-priced meal.  Ahhh.  I'd like to say that dinner lifted my cloud; but it really didn't.  It felt hard to be out and to be laughing with the waiter.  I felt like I was forcing my cheer.

Writing last night helped immensely and I can feel the cloud moving away more and more as I get this out of my system now.  We have a full schedule for tomorrow.  I haven't seen the schedule yet; but Joe had me book two cars for tomorrow morning at eight so I can only assume that we are splitting up again for the day and that we are seeing enough places that walking isn't an option.

I was really hoping that last weekend would be my one and only experience with driving in Australia; but I am apparently going to have a go again tomorrow.

Well, I'm off to run errands.  I am meeting Joe and his coworkers out again tonight.  One of the girls that I met last weekend is leaving the company and going back to the States.  She was really nice and has been sending all of her books on Oz home for me with Joe so I am going to get her a card and flowers as a going away gift.  So, off to the market with me and then I need to make myself look presentable for tonight...

I just wish this bloody rain would stop....

I think that it is much easier to write about happiness than it is to write about sadness.  Happy is laughing, joking, light and keeping things at arms length...  Sadness is crying, pain, heavy and letting people way too close.

I decided to keep this blog as a way to keep in touch with family and friend in a way that didn't intrude into their lives - like giant update e-mails with no obligation to read unless they wanted to.  Of course, I knew that some people would read it every day and love the way it kept them in touch.  When I write in here it makes me feel really close to the people that read it.  When I post about food especially, I think about my sisters.  I can see Theresa curled up in her chair with a coffee wearing Hello Kitty jammie pants laughing along with me as I describe meat pies with faces on them.  I see Julie on the couch in her blue bathrobe looking at my photos and dreaming of the delicious coffee here.  I keep those images in my head when I write and I like thinking that I make people laugh.  I hate thinking that any of my posts might make someone sad.

I am also writing for every other person out there who is getting ready to move here.  When we first decided to move I found some ex-pat blogs and started devouring them...  I was so hungry for information on what my life was going to be like here.  I loved the blogs more than anything because, beyond covering the usual main topics, they really delved into what a day to day existence is like when you leave your home behind for a new country.

The most important reason I am writing this is for myself.  This is my tie to home - my way of connecting with what I've left behind and my way of embracing everything I am gaining here. This is making me really live this experience instead of having it be something that is just simply happening to me.

I'm starting to feel a little dishonest here - there are so many people who read this that I start feeling like I am censoring myself to a large degree.  I am afraid of making my family and friends sad, of offending the Australians who read this and scaring off the people who are considering a similar move...  When I have a rough day or I am feeling a little (or a lot) sad, I shy away from posting for the reasons I've just named.

I guess I need to give myself permission to write posts that aren't all fluff and fun... I need to allow myself to post about everything - good and bad.

We left this morning in a hurry - I wanted to stop on the way out and get a coffee at the cafe downstairs; but I keep forgetting that they aren't open on Saturdays!  Joe dropped me off in Neutral Bay and then he headed over to Manly in the rental car.  We had 7 apartments lined up to view for the day.

I really wanted to get my moneys worth out of the rental car after we had to pay $145.00 for parking to get it out of the parking garage (have I mentioned yet how expensive this city is?), $30.00 for petrol and $150.00 for the car itself...  Whew....  This is insane!!

This is not the first time I've had a blog...  This is, however, the first time that I have had one that I openly share with people.  There always comes time when you start weighing what you really want to say in your blog and what you know you should say...  For this blog, the time has come much sooner than I thought it would.

So, what I really want to write about is overwhelming homesickness and the absolute stress of making your way in a city when you have nothing to rely on.  When the streets are backwards, the cars are backwards, the GPS doesn't work and you feel like you just want to start walking until you get home....

But, what I should be writing about today is the fantastically dry Aussie sense of humor...

There is a rental book that we got when we moved into our apartment and it is a perfect example of things that you would never see in the states... 

On the page entitled "Fire and Other Hazards":

"Burning the apartment down will probably ruin your stay"

"Please refrain from smoking near the fire sprinklers unless you wish to have a shower at the same time"

So, yea - there's lots to laugh at.  Thank goodness; because there are days when I really need to laugh!

We started looking at apartments today...  We saw three and the experience was slightly disheartening.  The first was quite lovely; but had the downsides of being a short term lease and being pet-unfriendly.  The second one had an absolutely breathtaking view of the entire skyline and harbour; but had the downsides of being smelly, water damaged and dated inside.  The third was just awful - just completely awful.

So.....  We have about 30 or 40 more places that we are going to try to see in the the next few days.  It's hard to schedule them when you have to rely on public transit and walk to get to them.  I think we might rent a car all day Thursday and try to see a whole ton that day.

So far I am amazed by the prices people will pay for something.  I get the high rent prices - I am totally ok with paying them; but I am amazed that some of these apartments are even considered inhabitable.

We went to the Telstra store tonight to get our mobile phone situation sorted.  Turns out we need many more points of ID than we had with us.  I have to print out a copy of our membership card for our private health cover and we will be opening a bank account in the morning and that should get us to where we need to be.  Getting your new life set up here is just a series of small irritations and annoyances.  Someone tells you that you need a birth certificate and then later you find out that it doesn't count because it's not from the right country!  Ah!  I can't wait till things are a little more stable...

I'm sad that Joe starts working on Monday; but I'm kinda glad - we need some paychecks to start rolling in or else we won't have anything to open a bank account with!  This city is so very expensive.  Actually, I don't think it is nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be - it's just expensive to start a new life in a whole new place.  Every 5 minutes we are realizing that we need something that we forgot or running across some crazy fee or charge.

The Internet service in our apartment is $70.00 a week!  The saddest part about that is that the service is absolutely horrible. You can re-load a page over and over before it finally loads properly.  Our apartment had very basic sample packs in it so we had to run to the grocery for dish soap, laundry soap, hangers etc...

Thankfully we did not have to go out today and buy Joe a whole new work wardrobe as we located his garment bag at the airport!  Joe decided to call the airport just in case the garment bag never made it into the taxi and there it was!  So, on our way back from the outlets in Homebush I took the train into the city and he went on to the airport and collected it.  I love the trains!  They just make sense and they are so clean.  I had to change trains at the Wynyard station today and as I was sitting on a bench listening to my Ipod someone came up to me and asked me for directions!!  The best part was that I actually was able to tell this poor lost woman from Melbourne what train she needed to be on...  It felt good to realize that, only a few days in, I am really trying to learn this city.

Our days are so full - not just busy; but also full of the tiny little things that are so different in every day life.  I have about a million things I want to blog about every day.  I've been writing them down and I guess I'll get to each of them as I have time.  The sense of humor, the groceries, the food, the restaurants, the people... It's fascinating!

Well, Saturday was a ton of fun.  Our new friends Scott and Tracy came and picked us up at our apartment and took us back out to Manly to meet a friend of theirs and to see his apartment.  We got a good idea of what Manly real estate was like and we definitely decided to expand our search out there. We had lunch at a little cafe where I asked for an ice water with lemon.  Apparently that is a very foreign concept there - I caused some confusion!  The waitress kept asking me, "You want a plain water with ice and a slice of lemon in it?  You want the lemon right in the water?"  Oh boy....

Joe and I love Manly - the beach is really breathtaking.  When we got back to their house, Tracy and I spent some time looking on-line for apartments in Manly and we found some really great ones.  Joe has really taken the proverbial real estate bull by the horns and has been scheduling viewings left and right.  We saw a very very horrifying apartment downtown today.  Ugh - hopefully the ones in the suburbs will be nicer.

We ended up staying at Scott and Tracy's for dinner (yummy steaks) and overnight (heaven to sleep in a bed that didn't feel like a sack of rocks).  We went to their son's ice hockey game early the next morning and then headed off to Hillsong for worship.  What an incredible church!  Joe and I loved it and we will definitely be going back.

After church, we had Scott and Tracy drop us at the train station.  I was quite proud of us - we figured out how to buy tickets from the automated machine, how to read the maps and figure out which line and exchange we needed and how to switch trains to get back to Circular Quay (pronounced key....weird...)

We got back safe and sound just in time for some dinner and bed.

Monday (today still) was a boring, horrible but necessary day.  Boring in the sense that we caught up on shopping, Joe scheduled apartment viewings and I did laundry.  Horrible in the sense that we realized that we left Joe's garment bag in the taxi and they said they didnt' have it.  So, we are missing a couple suits, vests, suit pants, sport coats and every tie that Joe owns (many that were brand new that we bought right before we left).  So.... we have to make a big expensive shopping trip this week before he starts work.  Major sad face here people.

I am realizing that homesickness is like grief.  When things are going great it is easy to push aside the sadness to focus on the wonderful things in front of you.  When things get hard, sad or stressful; the sadness bubbles up under everything.  It makes it really difficult to ignore.  I had wine with dinner and that seems to only have compounded the problem.  I'm ok, I'm still excited about being here - just sad tonight...

Well, I have nothing to compare it to; but I thought that the Quantas leg of our flight was very nice.  The flight was delayed just by about a half hour; but at that point Joe and I didn't really care anymore how long things took!  The boarding process was just fine and we had a whole area in front of us since we were booked into an exit row seat. 

I am wavering back and forth about whether or not it was a good deal.  Joe says for $266.00 it was absolutely worth it to be able to stretch our legs out completely and have a place to stand up if we wanted.  I agree - that part was nice; but there was no seat in front of you to put your purse under and no seatback pocket to toss your stuff in - the result was that I was always holding stuff in my lap - very annoying!  Also, we were right outside the galley so the food smells were strong and the commotion was quite disruptive throughout the whole flight.

They gave us super nice blankets, pillows, headphones and a little bag with an eyemask and some toiletries I think.  Dinner was pretty horrible I must say; but right before they turned the lights out for bed they handed out a cute little baggie with a bottled water, candy, cookies and some mints.  Another nice thing about having the galley right next to us was being able to stick your head through the curtain and ask for pretty much anything.  They were really nice about supplying me with hot tea after I woke up in the middle of the night.
Breakfast was actually super yum!  There was a frittata, mushrooms and fruit.  It was really really good - the coffee was excellent as well.

The flight ended up going about 17 hours as there was fog and they slowed our flight plan down - apparently they also had to divert around quite a bit of weather as well.  There were moments when I felt like crying - I was homesick and squished and squashed and I just wanted to be home in my bed!  Then there were moments when I felt like it was ok and I had plenty of room and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.  I guess when it was all said and done - it wasn't horrible; but I was awfully glad it was over!