A little Slice of Sydney, Sent Straight to your Inbox!

If you want to get a a daily email that makes you want to visit us or if you just want to see beautiful beaches and good looking Aussies you have come to the right place!

I signed up for the Aquabumps email list a few month before we moved and it made me more and more excited to move everyday!  Sign up for the daily email here. 

Here is a sampling of their shots - all taken from their website, which like I said you should visit, here! 

 the colors of bondi 

Multicoloured  

Beachtime

Surfing Glass

Chris might not know it yet, but we will (I really hope) be purchasing one of these before we leave! I can't wait to visit his studio in Bondi, but I am scared to go just yet because I don't think I will be able to leave without purchasing something and we kinda need a coffee table, somewhere to eat and other important things first! I hope you love the photos as much as I do!

And happy first day of Spring!  

Ode to Oscar and Jules

Don't get me wrong moving across the world is a big deal and while we have had a few bumps in the road it has been a relatively easy move.  The bumps are mainly because of US banks...don't even get me started…that is a whole conversation that maybe I will blog about after some wine. I think (now I have probably jinxed it) that our American Citi account was unfrozen today, fingers crossed. 

But this post is about family and friends that are basically family. Here is my family at the beach in New York saying bye to us the day we left - miss you guys!

Not gonna lie, this photo got me a little teary at the airport!

Moving on to the friends that really are just like family. We can credit the ease of moving here to the Australian welcoming committee - Oscar, Jules and their families! From our very first day we were taken care of, picked up at the airport, given a place to stay on a mattress FedExed from the States for a mere $2,500 (that is not a joke), scenic drives & walks, brunch with friends. On our first day we had drinks with Greg, Katina and Poppy (Oscar’s family) and a visit and dinner with Nick, Chris, Ammalie, John, Judy and Oscar The Cat, who really acts like a dog (Jules family). Full disclosure, by dinner on our first day Chris and I were almost falling asleep in our food.

Oscar took us on a walk - can you believe it Jules?!?!?!

Jules started work right away, so we got to hang out with chef Oscar in his brand new kitchen. Who knew he was such a great cook, I didn’t. Over the 2 weeks we lived with them we benefited greatly from his cooking! He hates photos but I managed to get one!

This stew was AMAZING! 

We somehow have weaseled our way into a delicious, family, home cooked meal every Sunday we have been here. We even got ot meet Tilly, Oscar’s younger sister. She just got into exchange at Georgetown for a semester! I'll be calling on my BMaryland family to make sure she is taken care of in the States! Although Jammi might scare her away :) 

Greg even wore his Chicago shirt for us, he must really like us :)

We also moved into our apartment with literally nothing. Well not nothing, the 9 bags of mainly clothes and shoes we came with. We also have nail polish and a strainer, cause those are necessities. Greg and Katina lent us their camping mattress; Oscar and Jules their pillows, sheets, blanket and towels (how did we not think to bring any of that?!?!?); and my mom’s gift of sleeping bags came in handy! 

Our set up for the first few days in our apartment! 

But seriously, Oscar and Jules you guys are the best! Thanks to you and your families for welcoming us to Sydney! You’ve made us feel right at home! We look forward to crashing your family and friend outings for years to come!  

Robbie also had us over for dinner with his family before he left Australia to travel all over the place. I am pretty sure the Sandigs are the nicest people in Australia! We met the whole fam, all the siblings, parents and even Nanny.  I still regret not taking a photo of the massive display case of Sandig sibling trophies and medals, next time!

Some of My Favourite Things

It’s been a super rainy winter in Sydney – it rained almost all of last week and we had the coldest days of the year at 14 degrees. Feeling bad for me? You shouldn't that is in Celsius...which is 57 degrees Fahrenheit - people were in parka's!

I need to start jotting down things as they happen, for now, here are a few fun Australian facts off the top of my head.   

 

The money here is awesome - its plastic so you can wash is and bend it and it really never gets damaged. It is also different sizes and colors - the bigger bills are worth more money, you can kind of see that here. The smallest bill they have is $5. The coins to the right are $2, $1, 50, 20, 10, 5 cents. There are no pennies, which is awesome. 

I think there are then $50 and $100 bills, but that's it. 

Utes are awesome El Camino-esk cars that are popular in the country and amongst Bogans (Australian for WT, hope that’s not offensive). I really want to make a friend that owns own so I can catch a ride. Extra points if you have a dog in the back. 

Australians are very environmentally conscious, Chris fits in perfectly J If you leave the door to our fridge or freezer open too long, it starts annoyingly beeping at you since you are wasting energy. I can’t help but think of Eric every time making some comment to Mary Ellen about letting all the bought air out. Such an old man!  

Seriously, how tiny is it!  

The freezer is even smaller - I don't think a Jack's will fit in here!

We went on a walk with Jules a few weekends ago and I saw some nets near a beach in the water. They were shark nets. Not that I was headed for a swim at the moment, but it made me not want to swim.

I had a few lessons from Greg, Oscar’s Dad, in Australia’s deadly animals. Black snake = bad, but if you get bit you live. Brown snake = you die. But don’t run, just stand there and hope it goes away. I think that was the advice, maybe I should look this up. Also goanna’s, I’m spelling that phonetically, are these huge lizards. They ate 2 of Robbie’s Mom’s rabbits the other day just to give you a picture. They are pretty scared of people, but they think people are trees, so if you scare them, they try to get away from you BY CLIMBING UP YOU, because you are a tree. I didn’t sleep for days after this “helpful” lesson.

I am so grossed out that I am even putting this on the blog

The booze here is expensive – we saw a case of corona is $80. Corona Fridays will be no more. The coolest thing however is on every alcoholic beverage there is an alcohol content label that tells you the drink equivalent of your beverage. No matter the size or alcohol percentage you know how much you are drinking! Their beers here are heavy, no coors light here!  

8.8 on the wine and 1.2 on the cider

There are so many different types of coffee – but nothing like our American coffee. The closest is a long black, which is basically an Americano (espresso and water). I think I have narrowed my favorite to a flat white, but I am still experimenting. Its kind of like a latte but less bitter.  

They all come with fancy designs

There is no such thing as a box spring here. There are bed bases, which is basically a non-fancy, fabric covered box frame that is always visible. The salesman when we bought our bed had no idea what a box spring was. It took us a while to work that one out. He also thought I was Canadian.  

The time change is something I don’t think I will ever fully get used to. It’s strange to wake up in the morning to a whole email chain from your friends that went on during their workdays, but is now over. Which brings me to the point of everyone should get What’s App so you can text with me! 

Random Things From Our First Week

Moving here has been awesome - the city is beautiful, the people are great and we of course have great hosts/guides, Oscar and Jules! I can already tell I am going to love it here. There are definitely differences to the states, but to be honest, so far I generally like the Australian version more.

Chris and I were walking the other day (between apartment inspections) and talking about how it hasn't really felt like that difficult of a transition. I'm guessing that is mainly because it is an english speaking country and we have Oscar and Jules, seriously they are the best. We really have only had one hickup thus far with our bank account getting set-up - we didn't sign in one place so had to go back 2 days later to sign...hopefully we get the cards in the mail today...

Here are a few fun/interesting things from our first week.

1.  Winter in Sydney is way, way better than winter in Chicago - I am currently sitting on Jules and Oscars porch at 3 PM in a tank top soaking up some sun, and the view isn't bad either.

Seriously, this is O & J's view!

2.  People think we have accents. We have gotten comments like, "oh I rather like your accents" or "I thought you had an accent" when we said we were from the states. We don't sound like hicks or valley girls, so I guess we are harder to place....actually a few people have thought I am Canadian, not Chris, just me :)

3.  We have caught ourselves picking up a few new phrases - like "wildly" or "rather like", they just come out. I think wildly might be more of an Oscar phrase than an Aussie phrase.

4.  Everything is expensive, except cell phone plans, those are reasonable and cheaper than the states, but that is the only thing :)  Things are also priced by the week....when its priced by the week, you can't just multiply by 4 to get the monthly cost, there are a sneaky 4 extra weeks in there. Here is what I mean:

• The Crossfit down the street from our apartment is $99 per week, $5,148 per year or monthly cost of $429!!!!!! Yep you read that right, I miss e-town for more than one reason!
• Rent....same story, we are paying under $3,000, which is not crazy and what we expected but, we did pay less in Chicago for way more space.

This is a microwave that cost $890, yep a microwave and yes $890 is not a typo

5.  Sweets are much different and better here! They are not as sweet as in the states, if that make sense at all. At its called lollies, not candy. There is a lemon club soda drink called a lemon squash that is delicious!

6.  Breakfast (brekkie) is also delicious. Avacado, but you call it avo, is on everything, so I obviosuly love it. And the bacon, the bacon is so good, its much different, more meaty than we are used to in the states.

7.  Everything is called a burger, a chicken sandwich, nope its a chicken burger.

8.  People sit in the front of the cab here with the driver. Yesterday I opened the cab drivers door, oops, wrong side!!!

9.  Walking has been more of a challenge for Chris than me, you give way to the left not to the right.

10.  It is beautiful, this morning we did about a 2 hour walk with Jules along the North Shore, so we were weaving in and out of the harbour bays.

11.  Some of the birds sound like dying children, but they are beautiful. I was much more excited about the birds than Chris.

How pretty are these, they are everywhere, you just have to look

12.  We won a meet raffle, twice! Basically at a bar they sell tickets for these awesome meet trays and toward 9ish they have the drawing. We then went to another bar and they stored the meat in their fridge for us :)

Meat tray #1, breakfast with 2 dozen eggs

Meet tray #2, steaks that will be consumed this evening

Next up, sign lease, pay bond (hopefully with our Australian bank account), move into apartment, finish updating my CV and cover letter, look for a job, pick up Bone Crusher from jail, celebrate Jules birthday, buy furniture and send Chris off to his first day of work next week! Jules and Chris did find a job lead for me in the Sunday paper...

Bone Crusher - Quarantine Must Be The Pitts

On our last day in the states we dropped Bone Crusher off at a kennel next to LAX until his flight - it was a Friday, he flew on Monday. Dogs are only transported from the states when both the Australian and American government are operating, in case there are any issues.

His quarantine really started on the 1st when we left - he was separated from other dogs, just in case, its not really a requirement, but its not worth the risk. They sent us some photos and I am just pretending in my head this is how much fun he is having now that he has been in Australia for a few days.

That is a seriously happy dude! 

He arrived on Wednesday the 6th - they sent us a quick email just letting us know he was received and healthy and to pick him up next Saturday at 9:30 am. He is either going to hate us or be really excited. We are curious to see if he will get anywhere near his travel crate again. He was really loving it before he spent 22 hours in it.

And since we don't make anything easy when it comes to our pup, we had an adventure on our second day here to source him suitable food while on "vacation." He was approved for a special diet while in quarantine - he is allergic to grain and looses his hair, gets super itchy, its not the end of the world, but he's not comfortable and we love him to death so he gets what he needs. We were going to ship his food from the states, but quickly realized that would be destroyed in customs (can't ship beef). So we would find suitable food Monday and ship it to him next day. Well, most pet stores here don't actually sell food, what?!?!?! We ventured about an hour away to find a huge dog food warehouse and got food there, but the selection was not awesome, there have got to be better places I just don't know about yet. Then there was a post office in the mall next door and Bones had his food. Crisis averted.

I seriously can't wait to see this little man!

I did read on the quarantine facilities website that they wash them, so hopefully he won't be too stinky. And Australians, love their dogs, there are dogs everywhere and they are so well behaved. My favorite so far was an Australian Bulldog - I think they are what bulldogs are supposed to look like prior to human breeding intervention.

For those of you who are interested, here is Bones Resume. IT looks a little wonky, but you get the idea. I think I have emailed this to over 30 people in the last 4 days. Oh and, Chris created this, he wants to make sure I don't get credit :)

We Found an Apartment!

We have been on the move non-stop since we landed last Sunday. Mostly we have been walking from apartment inspection to apartment inspection, literally all day! But it was worth it, we found a place we love! We move in on Thursday the 14th and even though we likely won't have our stuff till the end of the month its still exciting to move in.

The rental market here is so different than in the states - I am by no means an expert, but I will try to explain our experience. 

Rental agents hold 15 minute inspection periods for an apartment where people line up out front to view the apartment. (These are not individual appointments like you would think of in the states and agents won't drive you from appointment to appointment, or show you other agents places. You are on your own.) If you like the apartment you submit an application on the spot or at least by the end of the day. The agency then goes though your application and decides who of all the applicants will be selected to live in the apartment. You also provide documentation with your application - there is a 100 point scale that you have to meet. Being foreiners with a dog we needed to provide extra documents, I think our packet was 24 pages long, including a doggie resume for Bone Crusher, we may have gone overboard. 

Durring the first part of our search we were tagging along with Nikki (also working with Chris & looking for an apartment) to apartments that don't accept dogs just to meet agents and see if they had options for us.  I think we saw a total of 4 apartments that accept dogs (that is if they like you), but a total of 24 apartments. We also spent about 3 hours every morning calling different agents trying to find apartments that would allow dogs, continual strike outs! 

I do have to say that the waiting to hear back from the application was agonizing. We got a call the day after the application was submitted for an interview. They focused mainly on our visas, jobs and Bones. There was concern that Bones would bark. So the agency needed special approval from the owner - it was a good thing Bones had a resume. The owner reviewed the resume and accepted us, phew! They called us back 10 minutes later to tell us we were approved. It was the same feeling as when Chris got the job offer in Australia!  

Once we accepted, in order to take the apartment off the market we put down one week's rent....well actually Oscar and Jules put down one weeks rent since our back account hasn't cleared yet. Thanks guys! Next week we sign the lease and out down a bond, which is 4 weeks rent.

Looking back and during these were our game plan.  

-Its a relationship game. The agent is basically making a decision if they want to give you the apartment or not. They need to like you, especially since we have a dog. We went out of our way to email thank yous, talk with the agent before we even looked at the place, not complain/point out things we don't like etc.  

-Present yourself well...don't look like a slob.

-Be prepared, especially if you have a dog. The pet resume is hands down what got us the place (I know it sounds crazy) and personal/rental references. The concern with a dog is size, barking and shedding. We were lucky we had landlord references that targeted these items.  

Enough about the process, here are the photos of our new place. The best part of the place is the patio - its 33 sq meters (that means big)! 

Bones is going to love this place

The other awesome part about our place is it comes with a fridge and washer/dryer combo. Usually you have to buy these on your own and then the travel with you from place to place. I think that is the strangest part about the rental process honestly, but luckily we don't have to worry about it.

Living room looking at the front door, kitchen and stairs to bedroom and bathroom

living room looking out to patio, there are two sections a shaded and larger sunny area

The kitchen, with gas stove! All the appliances are hidden, there is a dishwasher in there

Bedroom, with lots of closet space!

Bathroom, with the laundry to the right

Its a two level - 1 bed, 1 bath, 1 parking with storage. It is brand new and I really feel like we lucked out!

Layout, ou can really see how big the patio is!

We are really excited about our place and hope you come visit!  I didn't really mention the area, its about a 20 minute bus ride to work for Chris. We are in Waterloo on Danks Street, close to Surry Hills, look it up on a map!  

Road Trip - Day 37 & 38: San Diego and LA

The last two days of the road trip really centered around getting to LA on time for our flight and seeing a few more friends along the way! And this time we had Bone Crusher along for the ride, on my lap specifically since our car is jam packed. He is only 19 pounds, but man that gets heavy!

Shane, one of Chris' college buddies, is in the process of moving to San Diego for work and was there for the week so we changed our plans of going straight to LA and went San Diego for the night. Its always a good time seeing Shane. Lots of our friends are in process of big life changes, moving across the country, having babies, etc. It's a nice feeling to see an old friend when everything is changing, it just feels like its all ok and will work out - if that makes any sense.

Bones' first time to the beach (no, Lake Michigan does not count) - La Jolla

Bones wanted to eat the seagulls and the sea lions in the background

After San Diego, we headed up to LA. Holy traffic - it took us 4 hours! Glynn & Charlie were nice enough to let us stay with them in their awesome West Hollywood pad (I think) with Bone Crusher. I think he might like Charlie as much as Chris and me.

He stayed at Charlie's door for at least 15 minutes after Charlie went to bed

We went to dinner with KK, my college friend, at Goldie's! It was really good - the turned the music up at 9 PM and I felt old because I wanted to ask the DJ to turn it down. Oh LA :) I'm gonna miss you KK, you have to come visit! We will see her again before our flight takes off tonight.

One of my Fav's - Katie K! 

 We went to brunch with Bone Crusher at BLD...and we saw Jonah Hill. We were pretty excited to see a celebrity - we were to shy to say hi.

Brunch at BLD (breakfast, lunch, dinner), SOOOOO good!

Thanks Glynn and Charlie for hosting us - Bone Crusher loved your house!  

Bones Chillin' with Lobster

And super exciting, Ian and Emily booked their flights to visit us down under in February! Our first confirmed visitors - can't wait!  

Road Trip - Day 32 - 36: Tucson, AZ

I always love coming to Tucson! I stopped calling Tucson "home" after a few years of being in Chicago, but now since we are technically homeless and unemployed, this is the closest place to home :)

Not only did we get to see my Mom, but we also got to see Bone Crusher! After almost 6 weeks in Arizona, to say he was excited was an understatement! He did lots of showing off in the pool, diving for balls, chasing lizards and harassing the cats!

Water pup

Victory!  

My Mom will probably be mortified that I am putting this pic up of Reily because it is not representative of him at all, but its too funny! He is the most mild mannered, gentle dog, until you get bones in the mix, which should be no surprise to anyone. This is actually a play action shot, they never stop playing. I think they are going to miss each other big time!  

Reily can fit Bones' whole head in his mouth!

We did all of the normal delicous Tucson spots - Rosa's (best white people Mexican food EVER!), Beyond Bread (yummy), La Salsa (fish tacos and salsa bar), El Charro (Chris' new favorite Tucson place) and Pastiche, where I worked in college. Pastiche had a serious makeover! Its open and the bar is expanded, loved it, we missed Julie and Pat, but we got to see Peyton!

Peyton even let me behind the bar, Rickster never would have done that :)

The El Charro Patio 

And then we tried some new places downtown - which is completly different than even a year ago.  We went to Thunder Canyon Brewery, Reily's, Hub (OMG, the ice cream is so good!) and tried to go to Pizzeria Bianco (a James Beard Chef's restaurant) that just opened that week, but the wait was too long.

Downtown Tucson, so hip right now

My mom also threw a little party for friends and family to say goodbye - it was awesome to see everyone - Lisa, Rob, Colin, Uncle Nicky, Holly, Sue and Jerry all where there.  I didn't take any photos....my cousin did, she of course did not send them to me....I hope she is reading this and feeling bad :)

The trip ended with us selling our trusty dissel Jetta - La Jetta Blunt at Car Max. They gave us a great offer and it only took 38 minutes to sell our car!

La Jetta got us though the whole road trip (well not to LA) with no issues! However, she was the source of our one and only fight on the road - I wanted to take her mid trip to get checked out, you know, just in case there was an issue, I didn't want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere America. And on the other side, Chris thought that was dumb, if something was wrong he didn't want to know. Well, he was right, I was wrong.

It's been real

Thanks Mama for everything! We took over the house for five days packing and re-packing for hours on end. Bone Crusher also ruled the roost, we are forever grateful for you taking care of our furry kid while we had a crazy road trip adventure! 

Mama - AKA Shorty!  

Peace out Tucson, see you in a few years! Love you Mama!