Well, here goes. This may take awhile. As it turns out, moving to another country, starting a job, looking for a place to live, and essentially starting all over again in the furniture and home good department (no pun intended) can be quite time consuming. That said, it has been a whirlwind adventure so far, and now that we have all of the aforementioned mostly accomplished -we finally have some time to slow down. So, now I can attempt to address to myriad of questions that have been asked of us so far.
So, first of all – we had a corporate rental for the first month…which sounds like it should be refreshing. And it was…for the first few days. And then I started my job and we came to experience firsthand the absolute insanity that is the rental market anywhere within a 50 mile radius of Sydney. Let me just fill you in. Basically what happens is that the rental is listed online, and an open inspection is scheduled – which is Australia speak for an open house. The inspection is usually scheduled for a 15 minute window. And the favorite thing of agents to do (as we learned) is to list the rental a week or so ahead of the day they plan to show it – and then they post the date/time of the showing 24 hours or so prior to the inspection. So, as you may imagine, you pretty much have to be attached to the website nonstop to make sure you don’t miss inspections on the place you want. And if you do manage to get to the inspection on time and on the right day, you’ll be there with the 50+ other people that are interested in the place….and you all take a look at it in the 15 minute window. Then you submit an application – which you have to have looking like you’re the best tenants in the world to even be reviewed by the real estate agent. If you pass that hurdle, your application gets sent on to the owner with any other “acceptable” applications (as determined by the agent), and the owner then picks who they like best. So, as we learned, you have to be pretty aggressive and for really competitive places, you basically have to offer something extra. Like for our place now, we ended up offering $20 more per week (because rent is per week here) than asking price…because someone else already offered $10 per week. But that’s what you do when you want a place here. It’s a little bit madness, but we’ve got a really nice, roomy place, and we’re happy. We were also handicapped by the fact that we had such a narrow time window to work in – normally people are looking for months for a new place here. We had about 3 weeks.
Anyway, on that topic, our new apartment is great. It’s not quite as close to the city as we’d hoped – but that was the trade-off we made in the end to be close to my job. It was either a long commute to work and a place close to the city – or the opposite. So, we ended up deciding a long commute wasn’t the way I should be spending my valuable time away from work – especially when I was so used to spending so much time with Avery. I think it was totally the right decision. We’re only about 20 minutes from downtown on the express bus (which stops pretty much at our front door), and I get to walk to work – also 20 minutes. Plus, I get a great workout walking to and from work every day. Our place is two bedrooms, two bathrooms, plus a study (which is kind of a thing here, it seems – essentially the same as a bedroom but without a door). We have TONS of natural light and two balconies. We have a nice big kitchen, laundry in our apartment (for which we had to buy a front loading washer – yes!), etc. One of the less desirable elements is a neighbor on this floor who is a big fan of curry, but it usually doesn’t waft into our apartment – just out in the hallway. The building has a great rooftop deck with a pool…although it’s headed into autumn here (they definitely do not call it “fall”!), so we’ll be waiting a few more months to try it out. Right now, we’re still waiting on most of our furniture – we have a couch, a mattress, Avery’s bed, and tv. That’s it. I thought it’d be a bit tough for me because I like things to be together and comfortable – but I’m kind of enjoying the minimalist thing we have going on at the moment….at least until we get our furniture in this week. Lucas is super excited because our furniture was all purchased from a local retailer who markets locally made 100% wood furniture – and it is all really nice. Plus, we got to pick the stain color. So, it’s kind of like we designed our own furniture – certainly an improvement over all the hand me down stuff we had in Nashville (not that we weren’t appreciative of that stuff….I loved it too…but it’s just funny how different this place will be furniture wise).
As far as actual Australian adventures, so far we’ve mostly been limited to downtown Sydney, the inside of buses, and grocery stores. I started work a week after we got here, and as I said, our other time was occupied with the rental search. Lucas and my mom got out a bit more than I did. I’ve been to Bondi Beach so far – which was beautiful, Darling Harbour, the Opera House and surrounding area. Lucas and my mom also went to Manly Beach with Avery, did the Sydney Aquarium, and some other places that I can’t think of at the moment. We really need to post some pictures – which we will soon, but we just finally got the internet up and running this past weekend. Internet is strange here – rather than unlimited downloads for a monthly fee, they max out here at some many GB per month. While we were in the short-term rental, we only had 2 GB for the whole month – and we sucked that all up looking at rentals. So, that’s why no pictures, limited facebook updates, etc. Anyway, the weekend before my mom left, we rented a car and took an absolutely AMAZING trip down the Grand Pacific Highway – driving along the beautiful coastline south of Sydney. We came back up the inland route through Kangaroo Valley, Bowral, etc. We ate lunch at a lawn bowling club (which seems to be a big thing here…but for old people). We have really awesome pictures of the trip we need to post. It was awesome and the best way to spend the last weekend with my mom.
We were so grateful to have my mom here to help us get settled in, watch Avery while we were rushing around Sydney searching for a place to live, figuring out how to grocery shop without a car, and the many other things we’ve started to get used to that come with living in another country. As soon as we returned from that trip, we spend Sunday evening (while we still had the rental car) moving into our new place….which should have taken only one trip because we only had our luggage to move…but we had a Hyundai Getz! Google that if you really want to see a small car. =) So, we moved in to our place and spent our first official night here on Monday night. My mom had to go home on Wednesday – and it was really sad to see her go because it was great to have her here. But now we’re on our own…and how did we spend our first weekend in our new place (because we just moved on Sunday night/Monday night last week), you ask? A glorious little bit of nothing. After about two months of nonstop movement, it was nice.
Anyway, we’re settling in nicely. Avery really likes our new place and seems to have adjusted with almost no problem at all. Lucas is enjoying the stay-at-home daddy role for now, and he will probably start looking for a job in about a month…but for now, we both like not having to rush it. Lucas hasn’t had the chance to stay at home with Avery for an extended time since she was born, and he’s really enjoying his time with her. We’re adjusting to the big differences….I don’t know that we’ve really had a lot of time or perspective to notice the smaller, more subtle things yet. So, what big differences have we noticed, you ask? Allow me to list some for you. =)
1.) Food is more expensive, as everyone says. But it’s not really that expensive. Certain things are really expensive you wouldn’t expect – like shaving cream, hairspray, cereal, cheese, and condiments. Some things are even more expensive than we expected – a case of Coke cans is over $20. But those are really the sorts of things we don’t need to spend money on anyway. Other things aren’t so bad or are even cheaper than home – like steak (we had three big t-bones the last night my mom was here for $17).
2.) Eating out is definitely more expensive. We figure this is a product of the fact minimum wage is over $17/hour…and just have adjusted our expectations accordingly when going out.
3.) Except for Thursdays, shops pretty much close by 5pm. Grocery stores are open later, but if you walk through a mall at 6p – you will see every single shop closed. It makes it pretty difficult when you’re trying to work and buy stuff for a new apartment at the same time! It is an interesting statement on the power of the worker versus the corporation in this country though. I mentioned Thursdays because that is “shopping night” – shops are open until later on Thursdays. So, the mall is a little insane on Thursday nights.
4.) Target here is pretty terrible compared to the US. It’s one of the things I definitely miss. On that note, buying non-food items at grocery stores here (which you would never do in the US because they’re overpriced) is not as ridiculous as it would be at home. So, things like crock-pots, Britas, cooking utensils, plastic storage containers, etc. that you would never buy in the US at a grocery store because you could get them for far cheaper elsewhere – here it seems that that is not the case. Unfortunately, we discovered that the hard way – after paying more money for a Brita and some kitchen knives at Target than at the grocery store. Can you believe that?
5.) Driving on the other side of the car and the other side of the road is not as hard to get used to as you’d expect.
6.) Nobody here ever points out “oh, you guys are from the States”. We really thought people would ask us or take an interest in it, but everyone just seems to accept that Sydney’s population is truly international and make no fuss over us at all - which is how we prefer it to be!
7.) TV here is not censored – for nudity or language. It is something to get used to hear swear words on regular tv.
8.) The culture here is a lot more similar to the US than we had expected. Of course, we haven’t had a chance to notice some of the nuances and subtleties yet.
9.) All four wheels on the shopping carts can turn in any direction – which makes for a very interesting trip through the grocery store. Steering has become a workout.
10.) People are generally as friendly as everyone says, the country is not as clean as everyone says (we see litter around just like you do in the States), and kids here really like their spray paint (tagging appears to be quite a popular pastime with teenagers).
11.) Girls wear the absolutely shortest shorts and skirts here I’ve ever seen. Seriously.
12.) Lucas already said it – but it’s so hard to get used to. Light switches are the opposite here – up is off, and down is on. It’s really been one of the hardest things to change habit-wise.
13.) TV here is moderately terrible sometimes. They still show things like “I Dream of Jeannie”, “Diagnosis Murder”, and the like. It’s free (there are about 16 free channels here), but most of them are terrible most of the time. One plus side – they have a channel that shows kids programming about 14 hours everyday (6a-8p or so). It’s really nice for Avery because they have a wake-up segment (which she watches), all the stuff in between (which she doesn’t because we don’t like to have the tv on all day), and a night-night segment. Her favorite is a show called Dirt Girl World. =) That said, sometimes good stuff is on – like right now, “Wedding Crashers” is on.
14.) And because I couldn’t end on #13, the pound key is called the “hash key”, debit card transactions are called “EFTPOS”, and they don’t call khakis khakis….still not sure what the word for that is here. And instead of getting your panties in a bunch, you get your knickers in a knot.
Well, as I sit here and breathe deeply in, smelling the deliciousness of the flowers in bloom just outside the balcony – I think that’s enough info for one little blog post. It’s nice to finally slow down after years of in limbo while I was in school…and then all the preparing we’d spent the last 9 months or so doing to get ready for this move. For the first time in years, I can come home and turn it off – no school stuff to attend to, no plans to be made, no last minute thing to complete…and it’s nice. Just really nice. Well, we’ll post pics soon. For now, I’m loving my job, we’re enjoying Australia, and our little family will keep all of you posted on our little adventure.
Cheers,
Jill
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