Back to the US, Home of the Free...Chick Fil A Sandwich!

Originally Posted June 4, 2016

On June 1, we made our first journey back to the US. During our 2 legs of the flight and 5 hour layover in LA, I kept thinking about that movie, “Snakes on a Plane.” I haven’t actually seen that movie, but given the title, I think I have the general plot line down. I thought about how, occasionally I might have preferred a few snakes to dodge on a plane rather than share my seat with a one year old. Samuel L. Jackson clearly passed up the script for “Toddlers on a Plane” as that was too scary or a movie! In all seriousness, Isla did as well as I think she could have given the length of the trip. At one point, we ordered a beef sandwich and lamb and mushroom pie thinking Isla would have some bites of at least one. Instead, she ate both complete meals. I’m sure you can imagine the poop we had to change in the airplane bathroom after that feast! We are a few days into the trip and the 14 hour time difference has made for some interesting sleeping patterns while Isla adjusts – she mostly just wants to party at 3am which means I mostly want to cry a little at 3am.

While we rave about the food in Melbourne, I must admit I can barely contain myself being back around Chipotle and Chick Fil A. I was especially ecstatic to learn that if you download the Chick Fil A app, you get a free chicken sandwich… Yes please! I made Nate’s parents stop in a mall in the middle of nowhere, WV while driving to our weekend getaway yesterday and indulged in my first Chick Fil A sandwich in 6 months. It was glorious!

We are with Nate’s whole family out at the Stonewall Jackson resort in WV, staying in a cabin on the lake. Yesterday, Nate and I saw a small advertizement for an event called the “Rush Run,” a 6 mile trail run at the resort that starts at 8am. We figured we might as well take advantage of having grandparent babysitters and do it. We went to bed at 11, and ended up awake from 3-5am with our very energetic child whose body still thinks night is day. In the morning, in our exhausted stupor, we decided to just go ahead and do the race. We walked over to the race site, paid our money, and then realized a couple things:

1. Everyone else knew each other and we were the outsiders.
2. No one else was in running clothes. They all looked ready to hike.

As it turned out, “Rush Run” was actually the name of the hiking trail and no one intended to run except us. Being the competitive souls we are, Nate leaned over to me and whispered, “I think we are going to win this thing!” (We did). It turned out to actually be about 7 miles (but it is West Virginia to be fair and I don’t think counting is really their thing) and we never saw any other people on the trails. It was still very pleasant and we enjoyed ourselves. The highlight may have actually been during the hike briefing where they let us know lots of bears are in this area and just to be aware. Then this older women wearing a Sriracha shirt yells, “Um, excuse me, what does a bear smell like?!” Um, what? Nate and I asked each other that question about every mile which kept us giggling instead of just giving up, lying down and taking a much needed nap.

Winter is Coming!

Originally posted May 16, 2016

No joke – winter is a real thing here!  It never gets too cold, but it is definitely a bit raw and windy.  We got our first real taste of the really chilly morning and evening temperatures when we went to Tasmania over ANZAC Day weekend the last weekend in April (similar to Memorial Day). This was also Isla’s 1st birthday weekend.  (She just kept asking for a trip for her 1st birthday, so we gave in.) Thank goodness there are so many sheep in Tasmania whose wool is turned into warm clothing - Isla and I both had to buy locally knitted hats to keep warm at the market in Hobart when it was in the 40s that morning!  It was a wonderful 4 day trip!  We saw the historic sites, ate tons of local seafood, checked out the markets, went to one of the national parks, and went to an island off the main island, called Bruny.  Tasmania has so many little strips of land that are literally feet wide with water on either side which makes for some crazy scenery. They call these narrow little land strips, “isthmuses.”  I tried over and over and still can’t pronounce this word without putting too much emphasis on the “th” sound and drooling a little.  I’ll keep practicing. They are beautiful little areas though!  Tasmania is only an hour flight from Melbourne and on the way home, the flight attendant did her usual announcement about food and complimentary beverages and then added, “plus it’s Anzac Day so we’ll give you complimentary alcoholic drinks too.”  I love Australia.



When we returned from Tassie, we had a week straight of beautifully warm fall weather and then it really got cold, windy, and rainy for a while.  Ugh…winter.  For a week or two I wore sweatpants and slippers a bit more, around the house at first, but then I figured no one at storytime at the library would care if I had sweatpants on, then the grocery store…put simply, I got lazy and cozy.   Lazy and cozy was fun for a little while, but it’s just not me. I decided I needed to do something, something to get me out of a funk and back to normal.  A month earlier, I’d been toying around with signing up for another big race.  This past weekend I revisited the idea but continued to flip flop on it.  Finally, Nate told me to “stop being a sissy and just do it already.”  Clearly, this man knows me better than anyone because that’s all it took.  On Mother’s Day, I had a few celebratory mimosas for some liquid courage and registered for Ironman Western Australia!

Ironman races are particularly interesting because you have to train in order to start training.  The race is Dec 4th.  Pre-training started today; actual training starts July 11th. I swam outside today and caught a glimpse of the lifeguard as I took a breath after a flip turn. He was wearing a down coat and a winter hat.  I thought for the first time the thought that will inevitably go through my mind 200 times between now and December: “WTF am I doing?!”  20 minutes later while chugging along in the pool still, I decided that given the location the race, which is 2 hours south of Perth (aka shark heaven) I should probably also figure out how to work shark-punching lessons into the training plan!
Nate and I always find that doing intense training together, but a bit staggered, works best for us.  He has registered for Ironman Port Macquarie (north of Sydney) which is in May 2017.  We are mental gearing up, physically gearing up (the credit card bills when you’re buying tri gear are painful to look at!), and getting excited for the experience!  Between the ironman training and our 1 year old’s affinity for smoked salmon and blue cheese, the grocery bills are about to get out of hand!

Almost Murdered By a Kangaroo!

Originally posted May 14, 2016

The title of this blog sounds scary, and it certainly was a bit scary…but also one of the wildest things I’ve ever witnessed!   On April 16th, Nate and I did “The Great Ocean Bike Ride,” a 145K (about 90 miles) ride that starts in the surf town of Torquay, winds up into the mountains inland, and then back down the mountain side down to the ocean and loops back along the ocean road.  I vaguely recalled that the last time I trained for and biked 90 miles that it hurt quite a bit.  Without training, this was quite a painful experience!  After about 3 hours of riding, my upper legs were just aching and felt like they were on fire as we pulled into the aid station.  Then I looked up and was delighted too see massive boxes of cake – Nate and I each ate 4 pieces of cake, some Tasmanian apples and bananas. I’m pretty sure nothing ever tasted so good.  After that point began the “mountain section” of the race and it started to downpour as we got above the clouds.  I should have eaten six pieces of cake…

Anyway, back to the kangaroo murder.  The first couple hours of the ride went through beautiful and slightly poop-smelling farm country – open fields and rolling hills as far as the eye could see.  We did the race with another couple and the wife was riding ahead with me while the guys followed.  Behind us, I heard Nate’s voice yell, “Hey, watch out!”  By the time I looked up, all I saw was this massive brown kangaroo in the air in front of me.  I braked hard and saw him touch down in the center line of the road, only to pounce back up into the air, clearing the remainder of the road as well as the fence on the side of the road and go bounding off into the field.  Holy crap, I’ve never seen anything like that before!  I kept thinking how neat it was until our friend pointed out that if I was riding about 3 seconds faster, that thing could have killed me (not quite as cool…) I like to think I would have just been injured, but what an awkward way to go that would have been.  Wow. So that, followed by cake, were the highlights of the day, for sure!  The whole ride with some stops here and there took about 7 hours.  I must say, we certainly needed our hot tub that night!  This is one feature of our rental property we use quite regularly and have decided, without question, that when we return to the states, we’ll be purchasing a hot tub for our house there.

Not too “hop” around too much, but I have to share one of my favorite photos of living here so far while on the topic of kangaroos.  Isla absolutely loves animals – her first word after mom and dad was dog, which she pronounces, “GOG” with quite a bit of emphasis on the initial “g.”  I take her to our local dog park almost every day where she runs as fast as she can, pointing and yelling “Gog, Gog, Gog!”  I am keenly aware I am the only person who A. Brings a small child to a dog park and B. Did not bring a dog to the dog park, so I occasionally call out a fake dog’s name (“Hey, Dinosaur, come!) and look around as if I just can’t believe my dog has run off again, and sometimes I have light conversations with the actual dog owners, some of whom now know Isla by name.
Anyway, the girl loves animals, so we were ecstatic with the amount of wildlife running around when we went to Wilson’s Promontory, a national park at the southernmost tip of Australia. There were enormous emus running around, some wombats, wallabies, and kangaroos everywhere you turned while hiking.  It wasn’t until this trip that we realized Isla thinks all furry animals are dogs.  We watched the really fat gog crossing the road (a wombat) and Isla was certainly faster than him, so we had to hold her back!  Then we went bushwalking (I think this is mostly just the term for hiking here) and there were tons of kangaroos hopping, eating, etc.  The below photo was taken when Isla had an absolute melt down because we wouldn’t let her pet the wild “gog” behind her.  Poor baby…first we made you move to another country away from all your friends and now this!

No Rules, Just Right

Originally posted April 29, 2016

I feel compelled to confirm what you may already have suspected:  Outback Steakhouse is in no way a representation of Australia.  The one exception is the first part of their slogan, as there often seems to be no rules at all here.  I was again reminded of this when we just got our cars.  We had arranged months ago to get a mini-van (perfect for visitors and triathlons) and a small car, which turned out to be a civic.  After hearing every week for 4 months that the cars would arrive “soon,” (because why would you work for more than 5 hours a day and complete your work at the car dealership when it’s a lovely summer day out?!) we were in a bit of disbelief when Honda called and said they had our cars last week.  The van was available first and Nate asked them to drop it off to him at his office.  At the predetermined time, Nate came downstairs to the street level, looked across the street and spotted a guy with a Honda Odyssey.  As he crossed the street, Nate did the “man head nod” to the guy and the said, “Hi, I think you’ve got my car.”  The man smiled and exclaimed, “Oh, brilliant!” and proceeded hand Nate the keys and then sealed the deal by telling him to have a nice day, then left.  It wasn’t until later that we realized Nate didn’t sign any piece of paper stating he got the car, nor did he receive any registration for it.  We are pretty sure anyone on the street could have just told the Honda guy they wanted the van and he would have given it to them!  After recalling this chain of events to me, I was excited to see what happened when they brought me the civic the next day.  The exact same thing happened. Jasper, the Honda representative asked if I was Ashley and handed me keys.   We did learn later than all registrations are electronic so that wasn’t an issue, but the casualness and lack of official documentation for the process was just mind blowing!

The other recent activity that made us realize just how few rules there really are was a dolphin swim excursion.  The Mornington Peninsula, a 1-1.5 hour drive from Melbourne is a magical area filled with fruit orchards, award winning wineries, precious towns with great beaches, and hot springs.  At the very tip of the peninsula is a town called Sorrento and then a national park that goes to the very end of the land with excellent walking tracks.  We heard you could swim with dolphins off boats near Sorrento and originally were pleased with the vision of a Seaworld-like encounter where the trainer lets you pet the dolphin who is barely considered wild anymore.  The logistics of what we actually did blew us out of the water (pun intended).  In the water surrounding the peninsula, there are about 100 bottlenose dolphins, but a unique species to the area.  They are quite large and, as we learned, extremely playful.  The boat trip went like this:

We arrived at the pier at sunrise where two crew members, Theo and Jess, handed you a wetsuit in exchange for cash or a credit card payment (no waivers, no documents, just a zip lock bag of cash).  We boarded a small boat with no actual seats.  You just grabbed your snorkel and plopped down on the front or back deck to watch the sun come up.  Theo explained to us how this was going to work and what to expect.  Once we got out into the water and the captain saw dolphins jumping in the distance, he yelled for everyone to get ready.  The back of the boat had a platform that lifted up and down, much like a moving truck has on the back.  The 4 self-declared “strongest swimmers” sat on the edge of the platform while the next 4 people stood on it behind them (like an elementary school class photo, except with lots of shivering and anticipation!)  Then 2 ropes with buoys on them were released to float behind each side of the boat.  The captain kept up at full speed as the platform was now lowered to the same level as the water, so the front row of peoples’ legs were dangling in the water.  Within minutes, the waters were swarming with dolphins jumping everywhere.  Theo yelled, “GO, GO, NOW, GET IN!”  We did as we were instructed, to jump in, holding onto a rope immediately as the current was incredibly strong, and the swimmers spread out along the rope.  Nate and I agreed this was no joke – neither of us had ever felt a current so strong.  You actually needed to hang on to that rope!  So, you are swaying around in the current on the rope, looking down into the deep turquois water, watching the dolphins swim around and play just beneath you.  It was amazing.  Nate and I had taken Isla along, so we took turns jumping in and swimming with dolphins and alternated holding her and watching them jump around at the water’s surface.  You then got to repeat this processes with seals who were also cute, but definitely a bit more smelly!  What a freeing experience though!

The other Sorrento highlight had to have been the Asian noodle bistro we ate at the night prior. It had excellent food and live music, but this live music may have been the worst singer we have ever heard…think American Idol reject reel so bad that you think someone must have double-dared them to try out.  We couldn’t believe they were letting this guy play.  Nate and I were trying to keep a straight face while our likely also tone-deaf daughter stared and danced the entire time.  We think she loved the music, which made us think this may just a be a preview of some godawful band she is going to like when she is 13 and we have to draw straws for which one of us takes her to their concert.  We’d love to keep exposing her to some good music, but that is no easy feat in this country!  I think even my usual Pandora station tried to pull a fast one on me and play that Tracy Chapman Fast Car re-mix again.  Thumbs Down, Pandora.  And you should have known better.
In other news, we had our first visitors!  My parents came for 9 days at the end of March and we had a blast showing them the sites and trying out a few new experiences as well.  In short:

- My Dad reported after the flight that he has never in his life felt so “airporty”
- They came to adore brekky here as well as the flat whites.
- We realized we must have really gotten used to high winds very often, because they were “blown away” by how windy it is most days here.
- Together, we had quite a lot of wildlife interactions including front row seats for all those precious little penguins exiting the ocean and coming up onto land on Phillip Island after being out fishing at dusk.  This was a freezing cold, super windy 8pm activity, but those little guys are so cute and we were so close, we wanted to just scoop one of them up and take it home!
- On our way back from the Great Ocean Road, we passed Bell’s Beach, where the RipCurl World Surfing Competition was going on.  We made it in time to see the last heat of the day and hang out for a bit.  It seemed like a really neat event that we plan to attend more fully next year.  In the true Aussie spirit of everyone getting a fair opportunity to attend big events, the world championships cost a whopping $10 to attend and $2 to park.  As we were leaving the competition, we looked up on the hill in the distance and noticed a huge pack of kangaroos just chilling on the hillside – a perfect way to end the week!

Children's Animal Books Are Not Reliable

Originally Posted Feb 29, 2016

For the first few months we’ve been here, even with Nate working a ton and us setting up our lives in a new area, it has still very much felt like a long vacation.  It wasn’t until last week that I looked down at the toilet in the bathroom of our house and thought, “Ugh, someone should clean that” and then it dawned on me that this “someone” was me.  Nothing like a dirty toilet to “plunge” you back into reality! So I begrudgingly cleaned the toilet and did a few other chores all in one afternoon so I could go back to my vacation mindset as quickly as possible.  Many elements of our time here still resemble a vacation, so we do need to work on toning down things like how much we buy coffee instead of making it (way easier said than done once you’ve experienced a Melbourne flat white!), drinking slightly less wine (just kidding, I’m not changing this), and slightly less splurging on activities and meals out.

We both have vacation habits in the area of personal hygiene that have continued as well.  For Nate, most nights he goes in the hot tub in lieu of a shower (who needs soap when you have ridiculously hot water?) and for me, I don’t floss much. I’ve never flossed on vacation as my general approach to vacation is to only do things I enjoy and find relaxing. (Frankly, I’d rather get a couple cavities filled across 1 hour annually at the dentist than floss every day!) Don’t worry though – we are still generally clean and tidy human beings and we hope this doesn’t keep you from visiting!
As our multi-year semi-vacation continues, every now and then something new or different pops up out of nowhere and reminds us we are a far way from Pennsylvania.  Not long ago, we were enjoying some dinner out on our back patio when we realized we had a visitor.  The patio is surrounded by trees and shrubs which gives it a very tranquil ambiance…until you see a pair of eyes looking at you from the trees above!  We noticed a mysterious creature staring down at us just after it got dark.  The next 5 minutes of conversation went like this:

Nate:  Aaaahhh, what is that?!
Me: I don’t know but it’s definitely not a snake so I’m not too worried.
I should mention we hung out with some of the world’s deadliest snakes earlier that day at a local sanctuary.
Nate:  I don’t have my contacts in. Does it look bad?!  I really can’t see so you are going to have to get closer and tell me what it is!
Me:  Okay, (stepping a bit closer) it is about the size of a large rabbit, has very round, big ears and actually looks quite cute, but I’ve never seen one of these before!  But, wait…I think I recognize this from one of Isla’s books from the library!  

I ran inside to grab a couple of books from our local library including classics like, “E is For Echidna” and “Once I Heard a Little Wombat.”  As we furiously scanned through the pages of the board books, we read carefully about Bilbys (apparently they like to “scratch, scratch, scratch”) and sugar gliders who we thought looked very similar to our mystery animal!  Nate quickly turned to me and goes, “wait a minute, so this guy can fly?!”  My eyes lit up as I would have loved to see this thing fly out of the tree.  We debated this for a while and then finally concluded, of all animals in the book, this thing most closely resembled a sugar glider.  Way cool, we agreed.  The only remaining question was, how aggressively should we try to frighten it, hoping it takes flight out of the tree?  (It didn’t fly for us.)  A few days later, a friend informed us the creature was actually just a stupid possum and that they are everywhere around here.  They are cuter than American possums, but unfortunately do not fly, and have turned out to be little jerks who just run around our front and back patios and poop everywhere.  Half my day is spent trying to keep Isla from snacking on possum poop (part of her complete diet which also consists of sand from the beach and woodchips from the playground).  I think we liked it better when we thought this was a sugar glider!  We are considering obtaining some actual reference books or maybe even an Aussie animal app for our phones, if such a thing exists, for future wildlife encounters.

We are officially 3 months into our time here!  Housing – check, sea shipment – check, car – sort of a check (this is a long story but we have a rental car and a lot of bikes, so we are okay), bank accounts & credit cards – check.  Next on the list?  We could use some friends.  Nothing will replace our amazing friends in the US, but we’d like to add some fine guys and gals with cool accents to our friend circle to socialize with in our time here.  We’ve got a built-in network of Nate’s colleagues, especially fellow ex-pats who are from the Philly area, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the awesomeness of the “mum and bub” societal structures here:  

In short, when you are a new mom, you go through your town/city council to register for a playgroup so that as soon as you have a baby, you are instantly hanging out with other moms in the exact same place in life.  There is no set agenda or parenting method that brings the group together, just location and timing.  I hopped into a group in our town of all first time moms all with a babies within 2 months of one another.  The group was already incredibly close (as you would suspect since they’ve been hanging out together weekly since the bubs were all 1 week old).  We can all walk from our respective houses to the play facility and do so at least weekly to hang out, let the babies go nuts together, chat, and of course, have coffee or tea.  Nearly all the moms are going back to work, if they have not already, but do so when the babies are between 7 months and 1 year old and they ALL ago back 2-3 days a week.  It is a very cool social norm here, not the exception, so people do feel a very nice sense of balance going back to work.  This also means we can all still get together on Fridays easily.  This group has been great and limits the amount of what I’ll call “mom flirting” I have to do at the park.  Now, I haven’t dated…well…ever, but I think making other new mom friends is pretty similar to being single after college.  Mom flirting, as I refer to it,  goes something like this:

While at the playground with Isla, I see another mom who looks to be my age with a kid who looks to be about my kid’s age.  I debate starting up a casual conversation and eventually do so when I help her kid who just fell over (again).  We compare ages of babies and who’s eaten more wood chips and then I notice she’s in work out clothes – sweet, I think.  Maybe we could be friends and even work out together. Maybe she does triathlons!?  She also has good hair…I’ll need her salon’s number.  I like this chick… How do I become friends without being creepy? Should I ask for her phone number so we can get together?  Then I am elated when she asks for my number -yeessss!  We’re getting together next week.  Maybe she’ll be my new friend!  And then I walk home from the park with butterflies in my stomach.  Like I said, pretty close to dating, I think!   I met a friend at gymbaroo class this way last month.  We are hanging out for the third time next week…it’s getting pretty serious.

Other miscellaneous updates include:

• Last weekend it was my turn to do a triathlon and Nate’s turn to cheer with Isla.  As was the case in Nate’s race, people take their training and racing very seriously, which means my bike might as well be a huffy compared to the other racers and I get punched a fair amount during the swim (quite the change-up as I must admit I’m usually the pushy one in the water at the start of the race!)  It was a beautiful day and a great race.  Every triathlon here also has a mini kids triathlon so they can launch the little ones into fierce competition early.  This is the most adorable / scary thing ever to watch. The kids are intense (the race includes an ocean swim for them too) and so impressive.  Some parents are calmly cheering while others are screaming out split times and telling at the kids to hurry the heck up tying their running shoes in transition.  I think Isla’s been taking careful mental notes so she’ll be ready soon.
• This past weekend, Isla and I hopped onto one of Nate’s now very frequent business trips to Sydney and we enjoyed a long weekend exploring the major sites and beaches.  There is quite the rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney – everyone seems to think their city is, hands down, the best one.  We’re still loving Melbourne, but Sydney is also wonderful!  We look forward to more regular trips there as it is a quick hour and fifteen minute flight.

That Brand New Tracy Chapman Song...From 1988!

Originally Posted Feb 7, 2016

In many ways, we’ve found Australia to be extremely accessible and welcoming, but there have certainly been a few challenges finding/getting what we need, as well as some eye-opening cultural moments.  There are several very interesting differences that we are still adjusting to:

Let’s start with music. I am baffled by two things.  1. The glacial pace by which new music makes its way here from the US (and timing of its popularity) and 2. Just about everything about locally produced music.  US films open here at the same time they open in the US. We recently saw the new James Bond movie and hope to catch Mockingjay while it is still in theaters. Yet, most of the music on the radio is from 10+ years ago and is treated as “new.” Today I heard a bit of Prince while driving (not complaining about that!) The exception seems to be only if a popular artist has recently toured here, as is the case with Taylor Swift, whose new songs are played from time to time. What the radio stations here seem to get extremely pumped about, to the point where a song is played nonstop, is a re-make. This is currently the case with Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” This is a pretty somber but catchy tune from 1988. Recently someone took this song, added a stronger bass and sped up the pace, and boom! It has got to be he most popular, most played song here! I hear it on the radio, at restaurants, and at the gym – people are all over this remake that sounds nearly identical to the original. They even played it while we “summited a hill and went into a sprint” at cycling class.

As for the locally produced music? Well, it’s not great, but everyone seems to know it well. My favorite was last month when we had one of those 105+ degree days, the radio DJ says, “On this stifling hot day, there’s really only one artist we want to hear and you know who I mean! Here’s… ICE BOX!” The ice box tune left a lot to be desired. There’s a reason the best thing to listen to is Tracy Chapman’s song from 1988 with an expedited beat!  I think I’ll be using Pandora a good bit while we live here.

Moving on to athletics: I have previously alluded to the impressive athletes we’ve come in contact with. Couple this dedication to sports and training with a culture much less concerned about lawsuits (no joke – we took a flying trapeze lesson 2 weeks ago and didn’t even sign a waiver!) and things like cycling class start to feel quite different. I’ve taken a lot of cycling classes around the US and while they are quite diverse and instructor-dependent, some common these are:

- “This is YOUR workout – you decide how hard to push it.”
- “Drink plenty of water the entire class!”
- “If you don’t feel well, raise your hand immediately.”

So far, my favorite quotes from the Australian instructors at my gym have been:

- “Don’t THINK about it, Just do it!”
- “Just hurry up and quickly have a LITTLE BIT of water!”
- “The best way not to throw up is to keep pedaling!”

Needless to say, I’m getting in pretty good shape, but am probably dehydrated frequently. Oh, and a number of you have asked some follow up questions on my open water swim blog post from a few weeks ago. I have yet to join another Saturday swim (I’ve been sure to have plans for my Saturdays recently…) but I am on the group text so I get updates like “hi all, meet at the pier at 6:45am tomorrow to do a 20K swim.” 20K – OH MY GOD! That is over 12 miles! The Ironman swim is only 2.4 miles and that took me an hour and 15 minutes. Granted, these guys are faster, but they must be out there swimming for 4-6 hours! I remain intrigued, but will not be joining on the days they swim for 4+ hours.

Groceries: One of the biggest cultural shocks that you can experience in any foreign country is grocery shopping. The first true full-on grocery trip here took me 2 hours. By the end of it, Isla was losing it, I was losing it, and as I finally breathed a sign of relief loading up the “boot” of the car, I walked up to get in the driver’s seat only to find I had just sat in the passenger’s seat on the left. “Ugh, I made it through all of that and now I have to drive on the other side!” (I should mention this also was my first day driving here). I’d spent $180 Australian dollars, unpacked the groceries at home, and the fridge and pantry still looked empty. That was a rough morning all around. Fast forward a few weeks, and our grocery trips have become much more productive and I only mess up and drive on the wrong side of the road about once a week (I think this is excellent progress, but Nate does not quite see it this way.)

Grocery stores are certainly different though! To start, the range in prices on items is massive as anything grown here is cheap and if not, it’s massively expensive due to importation costs. Then, lots of items have different names. I must have searched 30 minutes for breadcrumbs (they are not in the baking isle) and I eventually learned they are called “krummies” and they are near the dried fruits. Who knew? The most entertaining part of the store to me, aside from that “Liquor Land” is in every grocery store of course, is the meat section. There is lots of beef and pork, an entire kangaroo meat section, yet almost no chicken and turkey. Good thing the beef is really tasty! They must not have their grocery operations down to quite the science that a place like Wegmans in the US does though because there is always a “quick sale” on lots of nearly expired packages of meat, essentially selling packages for half price or less. I find this to be slightly disturbing, but mostly economical so I cook this “dangerously close to expired” meat for many of our dinners. No illness to report yet, so it seems like a sound strategy! I must admit that the first time I bought quick sale meat, I ran in the door and told Nate I had just bought this awesome chicken on a huge sale that didn’t even expire until February 1st! He took a look and muttered, “oh jeez, Ashley.” Yup, forgot about those damn backward dates again. The chicken expired the day before, on January 2. I am proud to say I’ve been error free since that incident on January 3.

Conversions: We have done a reasonably good job, I think, adjusting to the weather and oven being in Celsius, and the transition to kilometers is pretty easy, but the one that I just can’t wrap my head around is weight. Kilograms are tricky. I went to Isla’s 8 month nurse visit here in January and she weighed just under 8000 grams. I stared at the nurse as she was moved on to talking about sunscreen, and I had to ask her to please pause for a minute while I thought about how many pounds my child weighed. I thought and thought (I’m not sure what about as I don’t even know what the conversion rate is) but finally I apologized, got out my phone and used google conversions. 17.5 pounds…cool…now what about sunscreen? This pound-kilogram conversion also makes he deli counter a challenge. While a pound of meat makes sense for us for the week, a kilogram is way too much meat! After a couple errors, I decided I would just always order deli meat in dollars (i.e. – I order $8 worth of meat) and order my cheese in the number of slices I want. They find my dollar order amusing, but look like they want to smack me when I request 11 slices of cheese. I usually try to make Isla do something cute like wave to them and clap her hands so I don’t seem like such a pain in the ass.

Aside from all these truly minor, mostly amusing differences we are adjusting to, there are some very interesting cultural differences that I don’t think we would have fully picked up on or even understood without spending a lot of time here. Australia is a capitalist society, but one that believes strongly in people being on equal ground and that everyone gets a “fair shake.” This plays out in a few different ways. It actually makes the hierarchical structure at Nate’s job feel quite different as the relationship between supervisors and direct reports is much more informal (in fact, I highly doubt they even use the terms, “supervisor” or “direct reports!”) The two examples I’ve witnessed directly are in cabs and at sporting events. In cabs here, it is expected that a passenger sits in the front seat and chats with the driver as opposed to sitting in the back with a chauffeur.

Even without a lot of money in this country, you can attend some really good events! In watching the Super Bowl highlights so far, I realized that in order to attend this sporting event in the US, you really have to be quite well off financially. Yet, you can buy a grounds pass to the Australian Open here and get to see some of the top tennis matches (that is, if you choose to forego the beer garden). We bought grounds passes for the middle Saturday of the tournament for only about $30 and got great seats in the arena to watch John Isner play Felicio Lopez! I kept thinking that this would have costed us $300 a ticket anywhere else!

I asked Nate what other things feel drastically different here that I should include in this blog post, and he wouldn’t stop going on and on about Tim Tams! In short, Tim Tams are a wonderfully delicious chocolate-bar like dessert with a great balance of fudginess and crunchiness. We’ll bring some home with us in June, and all visitors here will certainly be treated to them!

One Couch/Bed, So Much Action!

Originally posted January 26, 2016

I’m happy to report that our furniture and all other stuff from our house in PA have made it across the globe by sea (somehow this makes my couches seem more cool to me, although it might just mean they are permanently dented) and it is all being delivered this Saturday. We haven’t seen it all since Nov 17th and I’ve quickly forgotten what many of our belongings are. Also, only one item didn’t make it through customs – another Christmas decoration! Australian authorities must be out to destroy our American Christmas decorations to ensure we have only white trees and other Australian-purchased items to celebrate with.

While we did pack some useful things in our air shipment, we also packed a bunch of crap we definitely didn’t need. We also didn’t really think about the period of time from when we moved out of our temp furnished apartment into our more permanent rental that did not have any items in it, and how long it would be before the sea shipment arrived. We feel very grateful for IKEA – for $60, we outfitted our kitchen with 2 plates, 2 glasses, 1 pot, 1 pan, a baking dish, and a few utensils. Cooking meals with any level of complexity, requiring 2 pots for example, takes quite a bit of time. With such good wine around, we later decided we “needed” plastic wine glasses as the IKEA mugs just weren’t cutting it. The Australian Bed, Bath and Beyond is a tinier store called “Bed, Bath and Table.” The tough plastic wine glasses from this store were on the pricier side compared to IKEA, but we put safety first so that no glass gets in the hot tub when we are drinking our wine in it at night! I see it as just being responsible.

I had packed Isla’s beach towel with purple sea horses and her baby-sized bath towel wrap. Her beach towel has now become the “family towel” and we all take turns using it for the shower, bath, pool, and ocean. Every evening Nate yells downstairs, “Ashley, where is THE towel!?” I’m not sure how long this would be funny, but we are still laughing. We totally scored when our complimentary gift for joining a gym here was 2 small sweat towels with the gym logo on it – we were overjoyed by the gift, leaving the membership representative quite perplexed by how we could afford a $20/week gym membership each, but clearly couldn’t afford towels. One is our bathmat now and one is a hand towel…like I said, score!

What trumps the rest of this, however, is the one piece of furniture we bought the day we moved into our house. IKEA had a magical couch that pulls out into a flat double bed. It is the only piece of furniture we have (and I suspect it will now always be very special to us considering we don’t hate it yet). This treasure is pictured below, outfitted with hot pink Paris-themed flannel sheets I got on clearance at target (because we forgot sheets too). We do everything on this thing – eat meals, read books, Nate does work, I book our upcoming trips, Isla plays and sometimes naps, and all 3 of us end up on this thing at some point in the night and wake up in a group snuggle each morning. Oh yeah, and to further confuse the heck out of our child, it’s in the living room. We started out with using sweatshirts as pillows (didn’t pack pillows either) and then finally broke down and got 2 of those too. Isla is quite close to walking and I can only imagine how close she’d be if she had an additional piece of furniture to transfer to when she constantly pulls up to stand at the couch/bed. Instead, she stands up at the bed, pulls everything off of it, looks around to find nothing else around, and plops back down on her but to crawl somewhere else (usually either to the backdoor to escape outside or the stairs…you know, baby favorites).

A number of friends and family members have started talking to us about making plans for a visit. You too will get the privilege to stay on this very special couch/bed! And by the time you get here, you can choose between the hot pink sheets or an array of other less festive options.

Living simply has been very freeing, but I think having a bed in a bedroom and maybe even our dressers will be nice soon.