A week of firsts

This past week, I swam in the ocean for the first time in Australia (brrrr), drove for the first time (Vic put it well when he said driving on the left side of the street goes against every fibre of your being!), and Gus and I started swimming lessons. They take their swimming seriously here. In Gus' first class, he started right into learning the front crawl. This is after many Canadian swimming lessons in which they played games, blew bubbles under the water and did a lot of jumping into the water (?!?).

I feel as though we're finally starting to settle in. Vic found a job as a 'construction all-arounder' with a landscaping company. He's liking the work and the people he's working for. And I've finally banged out a draft thesis proposal, so next steps are getting it approved and then starting the actual research. I can't wait! Since we've gotten here, Gus has had good days and bad. You know it's a bad day when he rants about how Canada is much better than Australia. These rants are getting fewer, which is a good sign.

Yesterday we had the most perfect day. We went to see the Sculptures by the Sea. We started at Bondi and did the coastal walk to Tamarama. When we got to Tamarama, we stopped for a swim and lunch before turning around and making the walk back to Bondi. The sculptures were beautiful, some were whimsical, and all were impressive next to the natural beauty of the ocean. To make it even more amazing, on the way back, a whale and a group of dolphins were hanging out in the ocean right in between these two beaches. As if they knew there was a huge crowd watching them, the whale was flipping around and the dolphins were jumping out of the water! Below are some pictures of some of the sculptures. The pictures don't do them justice and I ran out of batteries and missed some of my favorites. But, it'll give you a taste. If you'd like to see more, go see Gus' faves.