Merry Christmas!!!

It's Christmas Eve in Sydney, and I think I've finally caught the Christmas spirit. This past Sunday night, we brought a picnic supper to Coogee beach to watch the Christmas carols, which may be what finally did it. It was great, we sang our hearts out to all the carols sung by local Sydney celebrities, a few of which I even recognized! (like Amanda Keller from Talkin 'Bout my Generation and hunky Chris Brown from Bondi Vet...although I still have a hard time forgiving him for the one time I watched a full episode, and the little joey he tried to rescue died during the night).

Christmas in Sydney is definitely not the same as a Canadian Christmas. That was made especially clear from attending boozed up auzzie carols at the beach: when we got there at 4pm-ish I wondered if I should have brought some sunblock, and during his brief appearance, Santa let everyone know that some of the kids in the crowd were "damn bad" and they should leave some beer out for him on Christmas eve. However, we're making our own Christmas here, adapted to our new southern-hemisphere life, and we're having fun doing it.

Merry Christmas everyone!!! For those of you back in Canada, throw a snowball, make a snow angel and drink some eggnog for us.

Waiting for the carols to start..

Still waiting....
Santa! ...and do you know what he's saying? well, he's asking the kids to leave beer out for him.

One of the many carolers and the choir

Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere

It's pretty hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's hot and sunny outside and weekends are spent cooling off at the beach. As a result, we've done absolutely no Christmas shopping, and have made only a weak attempt at a Christmas tree (wrapped the branches of our balcony-sized frangipani with tin foil, then strung it with lights).

Tomorrow evening, we're planning to pack a picnic supper and enjoy some Christmas carols at Coogee beach. We're hoping that might help infuse us with the Christmas spirit. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, take a look at some pics of our recent trip to Clovelly beach for some snorkelling, where we saw lots of colourful fish, including some big groupers. I love that this place is just a few minutes drive away....is it any wonder Christmas is the farthest thing from our minds?

Walking into the water.

Vic and Gus in the water, if you look closely you can see that Vic is pointing something out to Gus.

Recovering from a big swim/snorkel.

Happenings

Two weeks ago, I finally got away from my desk and started the meat of my thesis; a survey of people who inject drugs. So far I have a sample size of 15, with the goal of eventually getting 260 participants. After a year and a half into my PhD, which involved successfully defending my thesis proposal a few months ahead of schedule, only to go through a very messy divorce with my thesis advisor shortly after, followed by a change in thesis advisors and a change in thesis topics, it feels great to finally be at the point of data collection.

It's been a challenging start to the survey for many reasons, one of which is that I'm so used to having a flexible schedule, able to drop Gus off and pick him up from school on most days. So it's been difficult for the both us to get used to me starting this more rigid and more demanding schedule. Luckily, Vic's parents will be here on Monday and will be a huge help with picking Gus up and being at home with Gus while I'm out surveying people for my thesis.

Completely unrelated, but slightly related to my elevated stress levels, is that we now know for certain that flying foxes (the big bats that live here in the Sydney area) are nocturnal. A group of them recently settled into a macademia nut tree behind our apartment building and man are they loud. They sound sort of like a bunch of angry squirrels, and we've had a few nights of crazy bat sounds going on all night. aaargh! The tree grows right above our clothesline, and we quickly realized that you cannot leave your clothes out overnight or they will end up covered in bat poo by morning. Last night we came home shortly after dusk, and ran to the back to get our clothes off the line before the pooping started, and as they swooped around the tree, disturbed by my presence, Vic decided to stand back and watch, while letting me know that there was a bat right above my head that had a funny, scrunched up look on his face. But he must have misinterpreted the bat's look, because I (and our clothes) came out unscathed by bat poo.

For those of you who live in the area, we made a great little day trip last weekend to Bundeena that I highly recommend. It was one of those hot, hot days. So we packed up our swim stuff, drove to Cronulla (which we had never been to before, but always had negative connotations for me because of the whole race riot thing that happened there about 5 yrs ago - however, it looks lovely and hopefully we'll explore it a little more on another trip), and then took a little wooden ferry to Bundeena. Bundeena has some nice cafes, a great kids' playground and a few beaches within walking distance of the ferry. We went to one of the more deserted beaches, and it was beautiful. Lots of shells for collecting, and a short hike nearby where there were some aboriginal rock carvings to check out.

Here are some pics from the day:

Waiting for the ferry, eating cornettos.

On the ferry on the way to Bundeena.

Making pictures in the sand.

Beachcombing for shells and other assorted things, and on the way to the bushwalk, where we saw the aboriginal rock carvings. Very, very cool and definitely the highlight of our trip to Bundeena.

Fearless

When it comes to swimwear, that's what Sydneysiders are. Completely fearless.

We're going through a heatwave right now, 30+ heat every day for the past few days. In fact, I just checked the weather for Sydney, and it's currently 41C!!! Luckily, we live nice and close to the ocean so it hasn't been too bad at all. We've been cooling off with morning and afternoon swims and there's a southerly breeze coming off the ocean that's keeping our apartment a decent temperature, even without air-con. It's been a nice weekend, actually. A couple of times we've ventured out of our beachside suburb to pick up groceries or drop off a video and we were amazed at just how hot it was once we got away from the beach. (yep - we're feeling a little smug right now)

So, the beach has been pretty crowded, not surprisingly. And, I still find it somewhat shocking to find people of all ages and all sizes wearing speedos and teeny bikinis. It's downright refreshing to see people so comfortable in their own skin, something that would never happen on a beach in Canada. We're a prudish bunch, us Canadians.

On a completely different topic, last Sunday we spent the day at Taronga zoo. It's a fantastic zoo, full of the usual suspects (elephants, giraffes, tigers) plus all the Australian wildlife, wallabies, wombats and whatnot. Here's some pics from our day out.

Waiting for the bird show to start, which was awesome - I highly recommend seeing it if you happen to be at the zoo.

Lemurs, who can resist them. God, they're too cute! What is it about a yawning animal?

Gus, trying out some Fennec Fox ears.

And, going home at the end of the day. They both look like they're in good spirits, but those are some tired boys. The zoo, like the rest of Sydney, requires alot of climbing up and down hills.

When birds attack

It feels strange for me these days, to be going through Spring in Sydney for the second time around. I actually know what to expect, and now I'm an old hand at some of the typical Spring goings-on that I experienced last year at this time. One of them is the flies, oh the flies! At this time of the year they're everywhere, and they land all over you, on your face, your arms, your back...and then you wave them off...and then they all come right back on. In fact, these flies are so pervasive, that they call the wave that you do to get them off your face: the "Sydney wave". Disgusting! But at least the flies aren't dangerous. Because, the magpies, in Spring, now they are dangerous. To protect their young, they'll 'swoop' (fly right close to your face) anyone who walks close to one of their nests. I'm sure I've read somewhere that they can even recognize people, and will target the same person over and over. I don't doubt this for a minute, 'cause last year I was repeatedly swooped whenever I would walk Gus to school, and even got scratched on the nose on one of the swoopings. And it's terrifying, because they come out of nowhere. This year, I now know to avoid that side of the sidewalk, and immediately after dropping Gus off, I put my bike helmet on and ride quickly away, while looking at the poor souls, walking hurriedly down the street holding their newspapers and books over top of their heads to protect themselves from the magpies.

But it's not all bad. Don't be jealous, but right now....it's MANGO SEASON!! The mangoes are delicious and decently priced and everywhere. And, there are even a bunch of, all slightly different tasting, varieties (were there different varieties of mangoes available in Canada?? I can't even remember). yummm.

Another great Spring happening: Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi beach. We did our traditional walk from Bondi to Tamarama beach, stopped for a swim and a snag from the sausage sizzle, then walked back to Bondi. It's such a great way to make art accessible. And the natural beauty of the backdrop for the sculptures - just beautiful...take a look at a few:

Halloween, Aussie-style

Aussies suck at Halloween. There, I said it. They do other things really well (coffee, meat pies, beaches). But Halloween, not so much. It's understandable though. The problem is that it's a relatively new holiday here, having only recently been introduced. And while the kids love it, and embrace it wholeheartedly with great costumes and attempts at trick-or-treating, there are many Australian people my age that have strong negative feelings about it, because it's an "American holiday". Wha?!? Not only is Halloween not a uniquely American holiday, but it has Celtic roots, not American roots. Adding to those difficulties, is the fact that Halloween falls in the Spring, with flowers in full bloom and the sun not setting till almost 8pm. Not the spookiest of settings.

Despite the above challenges, there were a number of houses all decked out and some people really getting into the spirit. We started the night out with a Canadian/American event in The Rocks (a touristy part of Sydney), where we met up with some American friends (Hi Ana!), then off to one of Vic's coworkers who was putting together a Halloween party to give him a few tips on Halloween decorating, got in some trick or treating, then to some Aussie friends' house to end the night with a bbq, of course!

Gus in his bat-boy costume at the Canadian event....at a bar! a very aussie-spin on Halloween!

Pumpkins here are crazy expensive, like $30+. So not surprisingly, we saw some creative alternatives to the pumpkin.

Gus, trick-or-treating. What's that she's fishing out of that bowl with a spoon, you ask?

Hmmm, let's take a closer look...


It's an eyeball! Edible? I'm not sure...and we won't be testing it out, either!

And Gus' haul, which includes a packet of crackers, Easter eggs, a mini cupcake and a handful of cheesies! The last one from a group of young people, sitting around having a drink in their front yard, who offered him a handful of the freshest cheesies evah! How could he resist?

Acclimatized...sorta

Proof that we're finally acclimatized:
1) Yesterday, Saturday, we walked down to the beach. It was another sunny day, not too hot though, around 20C. When we got down to the beach, we were surprised to see people swimming! There was a cool breeze coming off the ocean, and we all gave a big shiver at the thought of getting wet. This time last year, I'm sure we had all been in the water for a couple of swims already.

2) We saw a whale at the beach! It was pretty exciting because we had never seen a whale in our neck of the woods. I watched it play around in the water for a few minutes, before I got tired and moved on to doing something else. IT WAS A WHALE! Looking back at the experience, it felt a little surreal. What kind of life am I living where I've now seen enough whales that I get tired of watching them?

3) On Friday, Vic placed a bet on a horse in this weekend's big race (the Caulfield Cup). Betting and the horse races are two of Australians' favourite things to do (separately and together). In fact, there is a huge race coming up at the beginning of Nov (the Melbourne Cup), and on that day everyone in the state of Victoria has the day off.

But, on the flip side, there are some things we still can't get used to:
1) This past week, Vic ran into a convenience store to pick up some lunch. When the bill for his convenience store sandwich, pop and chips came up to $19, he almost had a fit...but then he remembered that we live Sydney.

2) Yesterday, I got my hair cut in Potts Point - swish 'hood at the other end of the eastern suburbs from us. And I had to ask Vic to drive me there. After more than a year, driving in Sydney still gives me cold sweats. I'm sorta used to driving on the left side now (although I'll still occasionally walk to the passenger's side, or turn on the windshield wipers when I'm trying to turn on the turn signal), but the streets are insane and the drivers are even more insane. It's not uncommon to have 5 streets meet up at an intersection. And to make things worse, once sydneysiders (who are usually quite friendly) get behind a wheel they turn angry. I'm not kidding. I'm not sure that driving in Sydney is something that I'll ever conquer.

p.s., Vic's horse won the race, and now he's planning to use his winnings towards other future bets. Should I be worried?

Vic watching the whale, Gus planning his jump into the sand.

Gobble gobble

This weekend is Thanksgiving in Canada. A time for family, overeating and giving thanks. To stay true to our Canadian roots, we decided to celebrate the day with the Canadian-Australian Club, who hosted a Thanksgiving lunch today.

We ate turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, played some Canadian trivia and met up with some of our Canadian friends. At one point, one of our group pushed away his plate and said 'I can't eat this, the turkey isn't dry, my sister isn't arguing with my mother and there's no couch to nap on after we're done eating...this isn't Thanksgiving". I completely agree - despite the Canadian-Australian Club's best efforts, it wasn't quite the same. This sentiment was echoed when they played Oh Canada at the end of the lunch and we all stood and sang...there were a few teary-eyed people by the anthem's end. It's not easy being on the other side of the world from family and friends. But, we're finding and making our own little community here in Sydney, and in spite of some homesickness on my part, we had a fun time at lunch, especially playing Trivia (if anyone knows Vic - trivia is one of his strengths and his fave activities...there is a ton of useless knowledge stored in that brain of his).

There was even pumpkin pie. ...not sure what's up with the grape and mint leaf though.


Gus had a blast, mostly because of the ice cream they served to the kids, and the colouring contest in which he won a frisbee.



Although I think he may have been given a prize because the judge was worried about what Gus might do if he didn't win...is that a creepy picture or what? I think Gus felt that if he embellished the picture, it might improve his chances for a win - hence the red horns and other added features on that poor girl in the picture.

As an aside, Gus is taking an art class with about 7 other kids - all girls, no boys. It's hilarious, whenever we go pick him up, the girls show us all their pictures of butterflies and rainbows and Gus shows us his pictures of aliens, monsters and mass destruction machines. Yeesh! I often wonder what the teachers must be thinking.


Happy Thanksgiving fellow Canucks! Eat some turkey for us. (warning: don't stare at that last picture for too long, it'll give you nightmares)

Quest for koalas

This weekend was a long weekend here in Australia (it was Labour Day on Monday). To celebrate the long weekend, we headed to Port Macquarie, about 5 hours North up the coast. We are still dying to see koalas or kangaroos in the wild, so we were all pretty excited about checking out 'the Port', as it is said to be prime koala habitat.

Well, this weekend we saw just about everything else but a koala in the wild. On the drive up, we took a little detour down a dirt road to see a 400-year old eucalypt. Along the walking path to see the tree, we spotted a python just hanging out on the boardwalk. It was the strangest thing...when I saw it, my mind instantly tried to make sense of seeing a python just 10 feet away from me. As in, am I in a zoo, or a reptile park, what's going on here?!? It was surreal. Although not poisonous, we (especially Gus and I) gave him lots of room, but Vic got close enough to snap this photo.

The 400-year old eucalypt we had set out to see.

We also took some time to do a guided tour of a subtropical rainforest, where we saw a wallaby. And went on a whale-spotting boat trip, where we saw several whales, including a mom and her calf. And to make up for the fact that we saw plenty of koala-crossing signs but no actual koalas in the wild, we visited a koala hospital.

The wallaby in the rainforest.

One of the injured koalas at the koala hospital. Awwww!


Another of the hospital's koalas up in a tree. Can you spot him? Is it any wonder we haven't seen one yet? They are well camouflaged up there!

One of the elements of this holiday which made it so successful was the kitchen facilities in and outside of our room at the hotel. At our last two mini-holidays, we've been lucky enough to score rooms with mini-fridges, microwaves and outdoor bbqs. This is a godsend with a kid like Gus, for which the term 'picky eater' is an understatement. When we go out for meals, we have to be very specific, like 'he'll have the burger, but with nothing on it, I mean NOTHING on it'. And when the kitchen staff forget and the burger comes out with ketchup on it, then we're stuck with a meal that Gus will not even look at. Grrrrrr. This has made for many a stressful supper out.

Vic and Gus eating supper at the hotel's outdoor kitchen....and Gus and I cleaning up afterwards.


It was a great, great holiday. It's a lot of fun to live in a country where we are also at the same time tourists where everything is new and exciting.

Vic and Gus looking for fossils at one of Port Macquarie's many beautiful beaches.

Fun with Kumquats

OK - I'm warning you right now, this is going to be a lame post. I'm exhausted these days...not sure why, but it may have to do with the birthday party we had for Gus a week ago that involved entertaining 10 kids for 4 hours. I'm still recovering. 10 kids is way too many, and 4 hours is way too long, what was I thinking???

Anyways, you know how people who work in offices might sometimes bring home the odd pen or pencil, or a pad of sticky notes? Well, the other day Vic brought home macademia nuts and kumquats from the worksite. The macademia nuts were yummy, but required several serious blows from a hammer to break them open (making them an instant hit with Gus). And the kumquats were equally entertaining.

Turns out they're really sour.

That thing around Gus' neck is a sling because a couple of weeks ago, he broke his elbow. Well, he may have broken his elbow (the two doctors he saw disagreed on whether there was in fact a break).

Totally unrelated, Gus is the new banana king, thanks to a special delivery from Michelle. Ever since our recent trip to Canada, where his cousins introduced him to this acid-tripped-up youtube video, he can't stop talking about Charlie the banana king. And now he IS the banana king. Thanks Michelle!




The crazy hair that Gus is sporting in the picture above is because until recently he couldn't take the sling off (both doctors agreed on that one), and Gus' barber warned us not to get his hair cut till the sling comes off because the itchiness from the little bits of hair that would inevitably get stuck in this sling would be unbearable. The lack of a haircut combined with Gus' complete and utter lack of interest in a hairbrush have resulted in some really great bedhead.

This coming weekend is a long one, so we're heading up the coast for some fun in the sun in Port Macquarie. Can't wait! I'm planning on lots of sleeping, eating and swimming at the beach.

Spring has sprung

I've now lived through all four seasons in Sydney, and I've decided that Spring is definitely my favourite. The weather is perfect these days. Gorgeous blue skies and not too hot, with temperatures around 20-24C most every day.

Last weekend, we went to the Festival of the Winds (a kite flying festival) at Bondi beach. Bondi is by far the most famous of all Sydney's 100+ beaches. It's a beautiful beach, but man - it is crowded, and parking at Bondi - well the parking situation is exactly what keeps us from going to Bondi more often (that and the fact that we live just down the street from a great beach).

Vic dropped Gus and I off at Speedos (our breakfast destination and also a famed haunt of Hugh Jackman's), and proceeded to spend an ungodly amount of time circling around to find a spot. After finally finding parking, he joined us for breakfast. And although visibly shaking with the traumatic experience of trying to find parking at Bondi beach and pining for a beer to settle his nerves, he decided on a mango smoothie instead. Disappointingly, we did not spot Hugh and after paying a stupidly expensive bill (have I mentioned Sydney is pricey?), we walked down to the beach feeling a little defeated by the whole experience. Thankfully, our time at the festival completely erased the earlier parking, non-Hugh Jackman-spotting and breakfast-paying stress.

Gus made a kite at a kite-making workshop, then spent a good amount of time flying his homemade kite at the beach. Kite-flying is one of those things that I don't think about doing very often, then when I do it, I wonder why I don't fly kites every day. The colourful kites looked amazing against the backdrop of the perfectly blue skies. Afterwards, on our ride back, seeing all the little shops and cafes spilling over with people enjoying the day, Vic said to me (Mom: don't read this next part), it's days like this that make me want to stay in Australia (Mom: if you did read that - don't worry, we're still planning to move back after I'm done my PhD).

thanks to Fl Girl for the beautiful pic (Gus' kite is the green and orange one):

Back on-line!

Wow! So much has happened since we last spoke, I'm not even sure where to start. ...Well, first of all, I can now say, with all certainty, that moving does suck (as per the comment made by anonymous) no matter how few posessions you own and no matter how short the move. Do you know what really sucks? It's those last straggling boxes that you just stuff things into from your 'junk drawer' or from the piles that were lingering on your desk and that you don't really feel like you can toss away but at the same time, they don't really have any obvious place to go in your new home. Those boxes suck, packing them and then unpacking them.

But, we're all settled in now, and loving our new place. It's positively palatial compared to our last apartment and still close to the beach and right across the street from Gus' school. In fact, our view is of the chooks (that's aussie for chickens) that his school recently acquired. (sidenote: isn't Gus' school so amazing? they continue to delight me with their innovative teaching styles. Gus recently reported that if you're really good you get to take an egg home with you and all the kids are very excited about that. How unbelievably sweet is that?)

In other news, I am proud to say that I have been spectacularly productive on my thesis lately: I've acquired the funding that I'll need for my research, submitted one application for ethics approval, drafted up a second one that I'll be submitting at the end of the month; and have gotten support for my research from the three needle and syringe programs in the area where I'll be conducting my survey. In other words, for the past few weeks, I have been winning the battle with my Getting Started Monster (I hate that guy, I fight with him all the time!).

One last thing, remember that post where I wrote about the scary Aussie public health messaging and how they try to scare you into being good? Well, that's nothing compared to this new German ad about the dangers of unprotected sex and HIV. CRAZY!!! Have you seen it yet? I tried to find the video on youtube to show you, but it's been pulled. So here's a link to an alternate site that's showing it. If you follow the link, make sure there aren't any kids around - it's pretty graphic! Apparently, it's causing quite the hubbub in Germany and elsewhere. Understandably.

Update on our impending homelessness

After spending our Saturday looking at apartments in our area, we saw one place that we were all quite happy with. It's very close to Gus' school, still close to the beach, a wee bit bigger than our current place, and plenty of storage space for camping equipment, my bike and other assorted things we've picked up over the past year.

We're moving in over the weekend, and I can't wait. I've been feeling completely overwhelmed over the past week trying to get everything ready for the move (disconnecting/connecting utilities, changing addresses, packing, dealing with old and new property managers). I haven't spent nearly enough time on thesis work, and have been spending way too much time watching episodes of Gossip Girl (what?!? as if I could focus on anything more serious than GG over the past week) and eating ramen noodles (sadly, my comfort food of choice these days).

One worthy (non-rental-related) thing I did get around to this past week, is a tour of a supervised injection centre in King's Cross (the Cross used to be one of the seedier suburbs of Sydney, but is quickly being gentrified). MSIC (or the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre) has been around since 2001 and during that time they've dealt with about 3,000 overdoses that occurred on site. It's sad to think about what would have happenned to those people if they hadn't had access to MSIC. The tour was fascinating and I found the community's support for the service very inspiring. If you're in the area and you're interested, they run tours for the general public once a month. I highly recommend it.

Awww, come on

Remember in my last post, how I was all boasting about being recharged and refreshed and ready to get back into my research. Well, I think I jinxed myself. My first week back post-holidays went like this:

Day 1:
Unpacking, laundry, groceries. Asleep by 7:30pm, exhausted by the flight.

Day 2: Awake at 5am (because crossing the international date line will do that to you)
I was looking forward to my first bike ride in three weeks. I packed up my basket full of the books and papers I had barely cracked open during holidays, dropped Gus off at school, and started off to Uni. It was hard going, and I attributed this to my previous three weeks of sloth and gluttony. On my way up the first hill though, another cyclist passed me (one of those hard-core, lycra-wearing ones, typical in Sydney) and yelled at me "Your back tire is flat". I looked back and sure enough, it was really low. So, I stopped at the nearest gas station to put some air in the tire, except that when I unscrewed the cap, any remaining air came out and the little air thingy retreated into the tire. Aaaargh! I tried to get it back out, but it was beyond my abilities. Also, since this was my third flat in my back tire over the past couple of months, I figured it was time to bring it into the bike shop to get looked at (my bike skills being limited to pumping air into the tires).

I ended up walking the remaining 5km to the nearest bike shop and left it with the bike guy, who - between the aussie accent, aussie terminology and bike terminology - was totally incomprehensible, but I did manage to figure out that I could pick it up after lunch. Afterwards, I walked to the nearest bank machine to pick up some cash, only to type in my pin wrong enough times that the machine wouldn't let me try anymore. I then walked to the bank to sort out my pin and get some money. By that time, the day was pretty much a write-off.

Day 3: Awake at 5:00am
This started out as a good day. My bike was back in working order (something was wrong with the rims, maybe? ...again, I couldn't really understand what the guy was on about). I met with my thesis advisors, and got some feedback for some upcoming ethics review boards I have to submit an application to. All was good. I was back on track.

When I got home, I picked up our mail from our neighbour and found a letter from the property manager indicating that the owner of our apartment was planning to move back into our apartment and that we had 4 weeks to vacate. The letter had been sent two weeks before, meaning we now had two weeks to find a new place to live. Yikes!

Day 4: Awake at 4:30am (because stress and crossing the international date line will do that to you)
Instead of working on ethics submissions, as I had planned, I spent the day begging our property manager for an extra two weeks to vacate (which we got, thank god!), and looking for a new place to live. In order to stay on budget, it seems we may need to make a choice between picking another small apartment within a few blocks of the beach (as we are now), or getting a slightly bigger and better apartment a little farther away - 1-1.5 km from the beach. It will be a tough decision, because I want both: a bigger place that is close to the beach.

Day 5: Awake at 6:30am...yay, I'm finally back to a normal sleeping pattern.
We looked at four places this morning, one of which we all quite liked, then off to a bbq, cause that's what you do in Sydney. Things are looking up. Fingers are crossed!

Back to reality

I just had three of the best holiday weeks ever. It was so nice to see everyone again and it was great to be able slip back into old conversations with friends just as if it hadn't been one whole long year since we last saw each other. We started our trip in Montreal and made our way across Ontario, ending up in Niagara Falls. We got to see so many people (although we still managed to miss some of our favourites because of our/their schedules). I had lofty ideas when I packed and I brought my yoga mat, some thesis work and picked up a new pair of running shoes, but barely managed to get in much time on any of those three tasks (yoga, studies or running). Instead, I ate a lot, drank too much and slept in every day. It was the perfect way to end our first year in Australia and start my second year of my PhD refreshed and ready to get on with it.

So, after a long, long flight (thank god for those Qantas personal entertainment systems, on which I managed to watch every chick flick that's been released in the past year...don't ever rent He's just not that into you, but do rent Confessions of a shopaholic), we got back to Sydney this morning. We made Vic walk in the door first to make sure the huntsmen spiders hadn't taken over our apartment during our absence, and once he gave the all-clear we were relieved to drag in our luggage and start unpacking.

It's nice to be home.

Intant coffee and non-dairy creamer

Oh yeah baby, we're in North America, sipping on instant coffee with non-dairy creamer (two things that would be very hard to find in Sydney) in a hotel room in NYC.

We arrived in NYC last night, only to find out that after 21 hours of travel, the last leg of our flight (from NYC to Montreal) was cancelled. And when the airline rep started to give us our options, which involved waiting 24hours for the next available flight to Montreal or flying to Cincinatti, staying overnight and connecting to Montreal in the afternoon, I had a total breakdown that went something like: I can't (sob) take (sob) this ("this" being the thought of one extra minute more in a plane or an airport), and Vic had to take over the negotiations. After researching car rentals, buses, and other airlines, we ended up with a slightly better flight that gets us in Montreal later this afternoon.

So we're now enjoying the luxuries of hotel living, the highlights of which involve cartoon channel and sugary cereal at the breakfast buffet for Gus, relaxing with a book for Vic, and a long hot shower and free wireless for me.

We're almost there and can hardly wait to see our siblings, parents, grandparents and friends. See you soon!

A Year in Sydney

The day we left for Canada, coincidentally, also marks my one year expat-iversary (credit to Florida Girl for coining that term!). We've all three of us made major adjustments in our lives, and I like to think we're the better for it. For my part, I've had to adjust to the fact that I'm no longer an equally (financially) contributing member of the household. Something I'm still a little sensitive about, and I realized just how sensitive when Vic recently wondered out loud if I could be considered his dependent for tax purposes. This statement was not taken well, in fact he's pretty lucky there was nothing within reach that could be easily thrown across a room.

Related to that last item, is the fact that we're definitely not as flush with money as we used to be, and we're living in one seriously expensive city. Of course I knew going into this that it would be a lifestyle change, but I was kind of looking forward to living more simply. Back to basics, as they say. The reality is that I don't think any of the three of us have actually pined for things that we weren't able to buy in the past year. And surprisingly for me, the hardest part has been worrying about other people's perceptions of us, living in our tiny little apartment with our Ikea furniture. I think there may still be some learning on my part when it comes to that aspect of my life!

But here's one thing I'll definitely be taking away from this experience: Being new to Sydney, we've had to rely on the generosity of people we barely know (but are getting to know). These people have invited us over for a meal, shared child care, celebrated birthdays with us...and it's meant the world to us. So now I know, something as small as an invite for coffee can be a huge gesture, and I'm hoping that I will remember that next time I meet someone who is not on familiar ground.

So I know this post is getting rather long, but I can't let a one-year expativersary go without making a couple of lists. Here goes, with Things I Love about our New Life in Sydney:

1. Cappucinos, lattes, flat whites.
2. Living a short walk away from the beach.
   
3. Waking up to the laugh of a kookaburra.
   
4. My new flexible 'work' arrangement.
5. Being in school again, learning new things and honing my research skills.
   
6. Sydney's natural beauty (beaches, rocky cliffs, palm trees... need I say more?)
   
7. No snow and no need for mittens, tuques, big down coats or long johns.
8. Fresh local fruits and vegies 365 days a year.
9. Gus' new school, which is small and quirky (e.g., the kids sing ABBA songs at their weekly assembly), and where the teachers are fantastic.
   

and Things I'm Still Not Used To and Could Do Without:

1. Bugs that are way too big and insist on coming into our apartment (i.e. massive cockroaches and huge huntsman spiders)
2. Aggressive Sydney drivers who hate cyclists.
   
3. No screens on the windows combined with the lady who insists on watering the native plants around our apartment building every day, twice a day equals mosquitoes in our apartment (note to lady: they're native plants, meaning they can survive the hot sun!).
   
4. Cold winter nights.
   
5. Missing everyone, family and friends, tremendously.
   

I put together those two lists on the fly and it's gratifying to see that the pros outweigh the cons. I'll leave you with some pics of our beach. Lovely.