Negotiation Phase

When you move to a new country, there are different phases of adjustment that you go through. First, the honeymoon phase when everything is new and wonderful. Next the negotiation phase, where you start to get annoyed about the differences between your old country and your new country. "This phase is often marked by mood swings caused by minor issues or without apparent reason." This perfectly describes my mood last week.

It was hot, hot, hot. We had to open the windows at night to cool down the apartment. The problem is that there are NO SCREENS ON ANY OF THE WINDOWS!??! What is up with that? In a country with poisonous spiders and huge cockroaches, screens should be mandatory, a legal requirement. But strangely they are not. For two nights in a row, I was eaten alive by mosquitoes. Aargh, I was a huge itchy mess, got very little school or paid work done, and grumbled the whole week about the lack of screens.

To top it off, a big-ish spider has taken up residence in our shower.

When we first moved into this apartment, we found a huntsman spider in the shower. It was pretty threatening-looking to our untrained eyes, and Vic quickly killed it. When we told our Australian co-workers and classmates about how we killed the spider, we got horrified reactions: "What, you killed it?" "They're harmless." "You should let them live, they eat the cockroaches" were the responses we got. After that experience, we resolved to let the spiders be. But, I'm getting really tired of keeping one eye on the spider while I shower, and I'm pretty sure the spider is getting bigger every day. If not euthanized, he may need to be relocated soon...to somewhere outside of our apartment.

Here's some pictures of the wildlife we see every day. A lizard in our apartment building entrance.



A spider that hangs out outside our apartment.


And on a totally different subject, we went to Harry's Cafe de Wheels over the weekend, for meat pie with peas, mashed potatoes and gravy. Harry's is a Sydney institution and the pies are traditional Australian comfort food. It was tasty as far as comfort food goes, but kinda gross at the same time, leaving me with the same feeling I get after a big plate of poutine.

How I spent my summer holidays

December 20th marked the beginning of 2 weeks holidays for all of us. Vic's work and the University both shut down for 2 weeks, and Gus started his 5-week summer holiday.

The first part of our holiday was spent getting ready for Christmas (mostly eating and shopping). After Christmas, we went on a small road trip, driving about an hour south from Sydney to go to Jamberoo (a water park) and the Illawara Fly Tree Top Walk, and staying overnight in Wollongong. It was a beautiful drive back along the Grand Pacific Drive and through the Royal National Park.

For the rest of the holiday, we did a lot of sleeping in, hitting the beach and doing some prep work for the hot summer weather. All three of us are already darker than we usually are at the end of a typical Ottawa summer, and we're only a week into the Sydney summer. Even more disturbing is that I can see myself ageing before my very eyes. Gus was already pretty well protected with his rashie and long board shorts, but Vic and I needed some extra protection. So, I picked up a rashie for Vic, a variety of sunblocks for every purpose (waterproof, perspiration proof, a combo moisterizer/sunblock), and a stylin hat from the Cancer Council shop.

The other summer prep work we did over the holidays was roach-proofing the apartment. The cockroaches here are humongous! And they fly. And there's no screens on the windows. Since we moved in, we've noticed the odd one in the morning in our kitchen, which everyone assured us is normal and inevitable in this climate. But, lately we've noticed them with more regularity. So, we upped the number of roach disks (these black round things that contain roach poison and are ubiquitous in Sydney apartments and houses) in our kitchen, and invested in containers for cereal, rice, etc. Since our efforts last week, we haven't seen one yet. fingers are crossed.

Here are some highlights from the past two weeks:

Eating lotsa pancakes (with REAL maple syrup, of course).


Watching the start of the Sydney to Hobart race (the sailboat with the dark spinnaker is called 'Wild Oats' and won the race in one day and 20 hours).

A beautiful view on our road trip to Illawara.

One of the many, many, many sandcastles built by Vic and Gus over the past two weeks:

The fireworks over the Harbour Bridge, which Vic and I watched from a friend's place who has a good view of the bridge. I admit that these were the family fireworks they put on at 9:00pm. At around 10:30, we headed home and watched the midnight fireworks on TV. Oh yes, we are that old and lame!

One of the many coffees we drank over the holidays. Have I mentioned they have really, really good coffee and a ton of nice cafes in Sydney? There is no such thing as filtered coffee here, it's all espresso-based coffees and they are oh-so-tasty.

Here's the best discovery of the holiday, a coffee called 'affogato' (which my mother says means 'smothered' in italian). It is a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a shot of espresso...pure heaven.

After a mostly relaxing two weeks, we're all a little sad to be going back to school and work tomorrow (with the exception of Gus, who is continuing his holidays for another 3 weeks in a combination of vacation care, hanging out with his grandparents and with one of his school friends).

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! We miss you all.

Here's a quick rundown of our first Aussie Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we left tea, tim tams and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.


We woke up to pressies under our tree (actually a potted bush that Vic borrowed from work and Gus decorated using his crafty talents...the plant had been kept outside so when Vic brought it home a bunch of ants marched out of the pot, which we've been battling ever since. Later on, a lizard crawled out of the pot. Vic and Gus wanted to keep it as a pet so it could eat the ants, but I made them catch it and put it outside).


We had a yummy brekkie of pancakes and real maple syrup (mmmmmm) with nonna and grand-papa.



And after testing out all our toys, we headed down to the beach. It was a little on the cloudy side, but we couldn't resist a swim on Christmas day. Sure enough, in true aussie style, there were lots of other people at the beach having family bbqs, swimming and playing by the beach.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Countdown to Christmas: 7, 6, 5, 4...

Wow! I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away. I still haven't done a lick of shopping, decorating or planning. I think it's partly to do with the sunny, warm weather and partly because I'm having a hard time with the fact that we're going to spend Christmas so far from our friends and most of our family. Thank god my parents are here! They've already been a great help, by looking after Gus after school, often making us supper and scoping out the deals (as retirees, they have become masters at scoping out deals). And, it's so nice to be able to share the holidays with them.

This weekend, I dragged them out to Manly, which I've been wanting to check out for a while. Although it was disappointingly tourist-y, the ferry ride there was nice, and I'd like to go back soon with a picnic and spend the day at the ocean beach. While we were there this weekend, there was a band playing Christmas carols, but Gus was much more interested in the fountains.


Afterwards, we headed down to the beach on the Bay side of Manly, where Gus met some new friends and together they worked on 'waterfall city'.



OK, so Australia is defnitely making me fat. It could be a number of things...my daily intake of timtams with tea that has become a nightly ritual when Gus is in bed and the apartment is quiet, or the full-fat cappuccinos (no skinny caps for me) that I pick up from the cute boys working at the coffee cart at school, or maybe the mountains of pancakes we've been consuming since my parents got here with maple syrup. I think some New Year's resolutions are in order...which I'll sort out when Christmas is over.

I've also managed to convince myself that I need the perfect agenda to get me organized in the new year. I just ordered one like this from Etsy (I can't show you the exact one, because I picked up the LAST one - it was that good). I love the idea of supporting an artist rather than a huge manufacturer. And, I'm sure this agenda will be the key to my success in 2009!

Price of Admission

Hey all you Canadians back home, if you want to come visit, this is what you'll need to bring:

(oh yeah, and you'll also have to spend $2000 on a plane ticket and spend 20 hrs on various planes to get here).

Mmmmm, maple syrup. We've had a hard time finding it in Sydney, and when we have been able to spot a bottle, we've had to spend big bucks to buy it. But my parents have come to visit, and they brought with them seven cans of the sweet stuff (some of it bought by my sister-in-law - thank you!!!). We had pancakes yesterday with REAL maple syrup, they were amazing.

My mom is a big foodie, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to check out some of Sydney's markets. Saturday, we tried out the markets at Moore park. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but the lemons are gigantic, like grapefruit.


...and lots of beautiful flowers, which would look perfect going home in one of these bags, which I've decided I must buy as the perfect accessory for our Australian adventure. Good for the beach and market outings.

We found some delicious cheese, sausages and olive bread, and Gus managed to talk Vic into buying him one of these cupcakes.


Sunday, I played tour guide and we toured some of the more famous sights in Sydney. We started at Hyde Park, made our way through the Royal Botanic Gardens to check out the beautiful plants, trees and flying foxes (can you spot them below hanging from the trees?) and finished up at the Opera House..


Christmas is less than two weeks away, and yet we have no Christmas tree and haven't done a lick of shopping. It's so hard to believe that Christmas is coming when it's warm and sunny and no snow in sight. I'm still trying to figure out what we're going to eat (cause we won't be cooking a turkey in 30C heat!). But maybe we'll head down to the beach for a bbq, which a few sydney natives have told me is traditional on Christmas day. Gus, on the other hand, is fully prepared, he's decided we'll have pancakes for breakfast and tacos for supper.

Legend of Bluey

Yesterday, we went to Clovelly Beach, a small lagoon-ish type beach about a 10 minute drive from here. Vic scouted it out last week while Gus and I were at the Christmas parade, and declared it a good beach to try out some snorkeling. So this weekend, all three of us drove up to try it out.

Clovelly is my favourite beach yet (this will be my fourth Sydney beach visited). Although it's surrounded on two sides by a lot of concrete, the best part is that there's no huge waves or big rips to worry about (which is a nice change from Maroubra beach, where we usually hang out). And, the snorkeling was great, I even saw legendary Bluey. Vic still doesn't believe me, and I guess it didn't help that I came out of the water saying "I saw a fish this big" - with my arms wide open....but no word of a lie, I saw him on the ocean floor in all his blue hugeness.

Our other big news is that my parents are coming this week! I can't wait, I miss them a lot and it's going to be soooo nice to see some familiar faces.

Below is a pic of Gus getting ready for a snorkel. And yes, I am trying to include a middle-aged man in a speedo in the background of all my beach shots. Clovelly beach had a larger than usual number of men and women in the 50+ age range sporting budgie smugglers and bikinis, and there's something nice about seeing people so at ease with their bodies, they don't feel the need to cover them up completely, a sight not often seen in Canada.

Is there such thing as too many Tim Tams?

According to how tight the waists on my shorts are getting, the answer is yes. ....must give up tims tams....starting tomorrow.