The Tasmanian Devil does exist, and it has the jaw strength of a crocodile.

So on to last weekend. I started my job at ASADA (Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency) last Thursday. It's an entry level position but so far it's good. I deal with the negative results that we get, entering them into the database and filing them away, in the new year I will be doing some work with the legal team as well when I'm not busy. Right now I'm busy back filing to try and clear stuff out before we break for Christmas.

Last weekend we finished up our Christmas shopping and made an attempt at getting a Christmas tree, a whole lot harder than I would have though. We only found one this past Thursday and let me say, it doesn't look like a regular Christmas tree at all, it's just weird.

Sunday Andrew went with me to a Swedish Christmas service, sadly it was in Swedish so neither Andrew nor I could follow along, but it was still really neat, and really cool to hear traditional Christmas songs in Swedish. After the service we met up with Anna, a Swedish girl in my jazzercise class, and her husband Jason to follow the others from the service over to the Swedish embassy. There we had coffee, pepercorker and swedish christmas buns while sitting outside on the patio chatting. Finally they had the Santa Lucia processional through the ambassadors house. It was very sweet to see all the little children dressed up, the one picture I took isn't so good but I didn't want to block anyones view.

As I said, work is going well so far. I get to enjoy flex time, working 9-5 with a half hour lunch and a great Christmas break. We get done this coming Thursday on Christmas Eve, probably around noontime, and we don't go back until the 4th of January, and we get paid for it! Andrew is off during the same time, he actually took a few days leave so he's on holiday now which makes him quite pleased.


Thursday night I met Andrew and some of his workmates at O'Malley's for goodbye drinks for one of the guys. After a drink there we went to a place called Phoenix bar for another quick one while we waited for a table to be made ready for us at Hogg's Breathe Cafe. I really like the Phoenix bar, it was a dark, dirty hole in the wall with a great feel to it. We had a great time at dinner before heading home to crash out.

Friday we made an attempt at getting the Christmas tree inside the house. We got it in with lights on it, all the ornaments up. It looked funny but it was standing. About an hour later I hear Andrew yelling from upstairs and I saw the tree on the floor. All the ornaments had been knocked clear of the tree so we were luck only one was damaged. We arranged it on the floor for the night and my mission the next day was to find a stand. I spent all morning on Saturday calling around trying to find anyone with a tree stand, apparently they don't really use those down here because no one had any. We settled for a large tub and 50L (2 giant bags) of mulch. It managed to work and the tree is still standing.

Saturday afternoon we decided we were in need of a swim so we rode our bikes about 15 minutes down the road to a nature reserve called Pine Island where we settled by the river with some drinks and enjoyed the nice weather before swimming around in the water a bit. A very relaxing way to spend the afternoon.

After Christmas craziness I can tell of our weird aussie celebrations.

New Zealand is the first country to see the sunrise

We're finally back up and running with internet, which we are so grateful for, it has taken us almost two weeks to get it going. So, some backtracking.

We headed to New Zealand early early Saturday morning on the 5th. Our flight was at 6:45am, and we traveled for most of the day. First on to Sydney. To understand what I had to deal with between Kate and Andrew we were given a muffin on the plane and they both proceeded to stick their fingers into mine and Andrew even licked it. Bunch of jerks. Our second flight was better, I threatened them both with my knife to stay away from my food so it was an uneventful flight.

The jerks and my breakfast

Andrew's parents and Uncle Dennis met us at the airport and drove us over a mountain to the harbor on the other side of Christchurch. Dennis has an amazing place on the hillside near the water looking onto the water. It's mostly holiday houses so his neighbors weren't there so they let us use their place, which was real nice, it gave us all a bit more space. Before dinner Kate, Andrew and I went for a walk out to a point with a small hill to get more of a view of the harbor and area around where we were staying.

The driveway up to Dennis' house, the whole area is covered in beautiful flowers
Dennis' house is the one with the red arrow pointed to it and we stayed in the one on the left

They're going to build houses on the point we were out on so of course before building anything, or selling any of the land, they decided to build fences with locked gates at some parts so we had to climb over them to get out if we didn't want to walk all the way back around the hill

The stairs to the top of the hill

Dennis is an amazing cook and we were treated to a three course meal beginning with eggplant stuffed with cheese, garlic and I don't know what else, followed by braised pork loin and salad and finished off with delicious pavlova topped with whipped cream and strawberries. For those who don't know, Pavlova is similar to snow pudding except baked, so it has a crunchy outside and soft inside. It really can't be described through, it's best to just try it.

The view from Dennis' couch

The view from our bedroom

The neighbors house we got to stay in

Andrew likes to look creepy

Crazy flowers growing in New Zealand

Sunday we got up and headed on a drive to one of Andrew's aunts houses for the annual Walker family Christmas party. Luckily Kate and Andrew didn't know most of the people there either so we made friends with one of his cousins and sat around drinking and chatting for the afternoon. At the end of the day someone pulled out some family video footage they had found recently and we were treated to some very old school pictures of the family, including Andrew's dad at probably only a year old after his confirmation playing in the yard, it was really pretty neat to see and made me want to see some of our old family videos.

Monday we drove down to Wiamate, which is about 3 hours down from Christchurch. This is the town Andrew's mom is from and his grandmother still lives in. She was sick when I first arrived in Australia and has been moved into a nursing home which she is still adjusting to. Wiamate is a small town, a cross between East Andover, NH and Franklin (for those who have been). There is one main street with a few shops including a cafe or two and about three bars. The first day we just bummed around and met Andrew's uncle Les and one of Judy's (Andrew's moms) friends for drinks.

There is a famous racehorse name Phar Lap, and he was from the area where Andrew's grandmother lives

This is the main street of the town

The house that Andrew's grandparents bought after the war and Judy grew up in

Tuesday we wandered around the town a while, popping into the second hand shops, including one where I bought an old brownie camera that seems to be in working condition. We went to see Andrew's grandmother in the afternoon, she was either waiting for us at one of the non-exit doors or waiting to make a break for it. It turns out that she has made a few breakouts before, although she doesn't remember doing it. She showed us around the home and her room and we had some tea before we headed out to meet Les for dinner and drinks.

Wednesday Kate, Andrew and I were heading out so we said our goodbyes to Andrew's grandmother and Les before beginning our long journey home. We took a bus for over 2 hours, a plane for 3 and another plane for half an hour before driving another half hour home to crash for a while before all three of us had to get up for our public service jobs. (I'm a public servant now).

We made a quite beach stop before our bus trip up the coast

Following up tomorrow will be the new job and catching up on the past week.

And we end with a video about New Zealanders that cracks us up.
Beached Az

Australian law: It is illegal to wear hot pink pants after midday Sunday.

It has been a packed week, hence the lateness of this blog. Last Wednesday Andrew and I moved in to our new place. It’s a two story, three bedroom, two bath townhouse. We’ve already settled in nicely, we’re just missing the main furniture for the guest bedroom and the office/music room to get it all together, and of course hanging things on the wall, but all in good time.

Thursday Andrew and I went down to King O’Malley’s pub in the city for a Movember party. Movember is to bring awareness to prostate cancer and men’s depression. To do this guys grow mustaches and people donate money for them to do this throughout the month of November. Of course Andrew had to participate, thank god it’s gone now but it was a month of ridicule at Andrew’s silly mustache. A lot of the people at the party dressed up to highlight the mustaches, we had builders, 1920s gangsters, the Swedish chef from The Muppets, 1970s cops and so on. It was quite a group. So I could fit in a bit I bought a fake mustache to wear for the night. It worked pretty well and I even got called out by the politician hosting the event as a nominee for Miss Movember. Since I was nominated I had to get up on stage with three other girls, all the guys we were with said I was robbed when I didn’t when but it was all just good fun to even be nominated.







Friday was Andrew’s big department Christmas party. I had to work but after I had Andrew’s mom drive me into the city and drop me off at one of the pubs to meet some of Andrew’s friends Jamie, Dave and Steve. The four of us hung around with people from their department for a while before we decided it might finally be time to head over to King O’Malley’s to meet up with Andrew and some of his other friends. We journeyed on to a few different pubs eventually before finally hailing a cab home.


Saturday we did a bit of shopping to get some stuff for the house and some things for the Thanksgiving meal I was making on Sunday. We also had to move some more furniture over and Andrew’s computer which made him really happy, he quickly set up his computer and projector so we could watch tv giant size. It works really well, with surround sound and everything. I tried making the sticky buns for Thanksgiving like Jess and I used to do with Mom every year, last year in London they turned out great…this year, not so much. I don’t know what I did wrong but they were not good. It was a bad start to my first Thanksgiving where I was going to have to cook a whole turkey for the first time by myself.

Sunday we got up bright and early to clean and so I could start cooking. I got the turkey into the oven on time and it made the place smell great. Before we knew it friends started showing up, first came Damien and Bonnie, who just had their first child Connor a little over a month ago. Then Kate showed up and finally Will and Pip, each bringing something with them to help make my day a bit better so I didn’t have to do everything myself.

We let Damien carve the turkey because neither Andrew nor I trusted ourselves to do it. The turkey turned out really well, moist and tasty. After we stuffed ourselves we took a short break lounging in the living room while Will finished baking the apple and blueberry pie he made. It was so delicious and the perfect ending to the meal. I would steal the recipe from Will but he didn’t end up following one, instead he looked at a few of them that Pip printed out and then did what he wanted, it turned out so well.

Everyone went home briefly before Will came back to grab Andrew and I to join Damien and Nathan to go to the Tuggeranong festival which is a weekend festival in the suburb we live in. Ian Moss was playing Sunday night and the boys were really keen to see him, he wasn’t too bad and they did a nice little fireworks display at the end, which was kind of cool. It was a good end to a fun filled weekend.

Monday I received official word that I was hired on a 3 month contract to work at ASADA which is the government sports anti-doping agency. Kate works there and when there was an opening she talked to her boss about me. It’s a big pay raise and government work means I get some great public holidays. I have to talk to my boss about what I can do to keep the job, it probably means getting my permanent resident visa a few months before I was going to but if it means keeping the government job it will be completely worth it. With the offer on the table I told my boss at the motor village that I was giving my notice. She was very understanding and happy for me, everyone at the motor village was really happy for me. So I start next Thursday, which will be awesome. I work in Kate’s team, which is just three of us. Stephen, our boss, made sure to ask us both if we would be ok working together, so it pays off big time that we get along so well.

I’ve been trying to keep up with jazzercise as much as I can, I went once this week and even stood in the front row. Instead of going for a second night I instead went to something called “Personal touch” which is done by the jazzercise people and I got a free trial of since I’m new. It’s a small class and you work on muscles, so we did a lot of stretches, moves with weights and resistance bands. Most of the moves engaged our core which means today my ribs have been so sore, I can hardly bend over without feeling a pull. I know it means the exercises are working but it’s killer right now.

Tomorrow morning Andrew, Kate and I get up at the crack of down to catch a plane over to New Zealand. Both Andrew’s parents are from there and we’re going over to see the relatives and go to the Walker Christmas party, which is held this weekend every year. So it’s going to be a big meet-the-relatives go round, only fair since Andrew did it with my entire family last year after we’d only known each other a few weeks.

I will tell all about the New Zealand trip and starting my new job next weekend.

The Sydney Opera House roof weighs more than 161,000 tons.

This week Andrew and I signed a year lease on a fancy new townhouse that we get to move in to. It is two stories (which is very rare here), with 3 bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. There is also a two car garage that connects directly into the house. The bedrooms and bathrooms are downstairs with the lounge, dining room and kitchen are upstairs above the garage, which is nice because that means there are no rooms on top of the bedrooms in case someone needs to get up early or stays up late. We're really excited about moving it and can't wait to be in there.

We moved out yesterday, and it was way too hot but we got it done. Now we are staying with Andrew's parents until we can move in next Wednesday. It's quite a full house at the moment which makes things real interesting.

Last weekend we all went down to Sydney for Saturday because for a few weeks every year they put sculptures along the beach/cliff side between some of the beaches. We got there early and wandered around looking at all of them before having some lunch along the beach.

Some of the sculptures and views along the beach walk:

Bondi beach

this straw was one of our favorites

the little man on the left on the rock is actually a scultpure

The eyes were cool and creepy all at once

There were a few of these all made out of wire, it was really intricate

This isn't actually a sculpture but the home of a homeless man with the best view in Sydney

From there Andrew, Kate and I went in to the city to see some of the sites before meeting back up with the parents for dinner in the harbor at this great seafood place that was right next to the bridge looking at the Sydney Opera House. It was an incredibly long day, I kept dozing off on the way home and we all collapsed pretty quickly once we got home.

Andrew's favorite sculpture

We found these cool bridge cages in an alley as part of a city wide installation of art:

Opera House close up

Our restaurant is where the red arrow is pointing on the right of the bridge

The view from our table

Since we were so exhausted we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing which was nice for a change.

Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

Not too many changes but I have bought a car (yay!). It's a Mazda that is older then I am, an '82, cute little red hatchback, although it has yet to be named. It took me a little bit to get used to because it has a manual choke which I've never dealt with before so I actually flooded the car the first time I tried to drive it from home.

Work is still going well. I love getting paychecks so that's all good :)

Last weekend Andrew and I saw two houses on Saturday, not too bad but not exactly what we are looking for. I had to work Saturday night so that was a bit of a bust but we made up for it on Sunday by visiting a local vineyard. Last weekend was a big festival at all the vineyards with jazz and open houses so we went to the closest one for the afternoon. They had use try about 20 different wines and explained the whole process for to us. After the tasting we picked up a little picnic hamper and sat out in the sun on the grounds of the vineyard and listened to the jazz band play while we ate locally made quiche and spicy zucchini spread. It was kind of romantic, which is different for us, but really nice.

This week I started going to jazzercise with Andrew's mom. It's a lot of fun, hard to keep up with all the moves but good exercise and a good social activity too so I'll definitely keep it up. We're getting ready to head to Sydney for Saturday which should be good fun. Not much else to tell, hopefully more soon.

There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia, and only some 20 million people.

Quick correction from last week: Andrew's car is a manual, not automatic

Another busy week coming to a close. Last Saturday Andrew and I went to the wedding of one of Andrew's best friends, Will's, sister. It was a lovely ceremony outside at one of the local universities. That evening I went out Kate for a night with the girls. We had dinner and went to a few drinks. It was really nice to have girl time. And at the end of the night we were a bit hungry again so we made our way to the glowing light of a 24-hour Mcdonald's. Much to our excitement they told us that we couldn't come in but had to walk through the drive-thru instead. All through college you'd hear stories of people trying to do this at McDonald's and getting yelled at and now we were told to, we giggled all the way through line in-between cars and two guys on bicycles ahead of us. Definitely a good way to end the evening.

Sunday Andrew, Simon and I went on the mission of finding me an automatic car...we were sadly defeated. Then we went over to Will's parents house for a bbq to celebrate the wedding from the day before. Everyone was very nice and welcoming and I felt right at home. Will's parents have built an elaborate backyard perfect for gatherings. The excitement of last weekend was they got to test out the new outdoor pizza oven they just had installed. There was also a pool, a nice sculptural water feature. My favorite part, hands down, was the porch. It was a nice wide two-story porch, we were on the ground level sitting around a table made from a large metal tub which could be filled with ice and drinks as there is a hole in the middle to grab the cold drinks from. The chairs were also made from metal tubs, cut with arm rests and comfortable padded. Added to that, on either side of the table, attached to the second floor were two heaters so we stayed nice and toasty while it rained around us. Very nicely done.

Monday was my first day of work down at Canberra Motor Village as a receptionist. I've done four shifts this week and already received my first paycheck. The work isn't too bad, I answer phones, take reservations, answer questions, check emails, check people in and out and deal with general questions. The staff is all pretty young which is cool, and everyone is friendly. It's nice to have something to do with my day and to make a bit of money, pay is actually pretty good in Australia as the average casual rate is $20/hr, and that's just for a weekday, it goes up on Saturday, up even more on Sunday, and even more on public holidays. A good start I'd say :)

Tomorrow Andrew and I are off to look at two apartments and hopefully pick one of them as our future place, and I'm going to go check out two automatic cars, one of which will soon be mine. Things are very much settling in to place, now I just have to settle in with a group of friends, I've joined a book club but there won't be a meeting until mid-November, a photographic society but their last meeting until February is mid-November so I'll wait to join, and even a knitting club which I'll start going to as soon as I've decided what to knit next, any suggestions are welcome.

More to come once things have been sussed out.

First week in a foreign country - amusing titles are set aside

flying out of Sydney along the coast

flying into Canberra

My first week in Canberra flew by. I spent a few hours in the Sydney airport relaxing and refreshing myself after my 16-hour flight over from LA. It was a quick 26-minute flight over to Canberra. I sat at the back of the plane so I was the last person off. Andrew said that he would be the first person I saw when I got into the airport so I excitedly looked for him as I came down the escalator even though my plane got in about 10 minutes early. I started walking down the terminal looking for him, he was easy to spot wearing the same jeans, jacket and sneakers he had in London. He was using an internet terminal to kill time until my plane came in so I snuck up behind him. He felt really bad that he wasn’t there waiting because he had flowers and a stuffed kangaroo for me.

We loaded everything and headed over to the house. We’re renting a room in a townhouse with Andrew’s friend Simon. The first day we really relaxed, I didn’t unpack much. We met Andrew’s friends Bonnie and Damien for drinks before going out to dinner just the two of us. Bonnie is on the verge of giving birth any day now, she was actually due on Friday but as far as we know still hasn’t had the kid.

Saturday we had breakfast with Andrew’s sister Kate and his dad Paul. His mom is over in New Zealand right now taking care of her sick mother. After breakfast Andrew and I went to explore some of the city before joining Kate to go to a dog park with Kate’s golden retriever, Austin, and their parent’s little dog Jessie. The dogs had a good time running around with other dogs, it was a really nice, large park for them to run off the leads in.

Sunday was my birthday, yay! So Andrew made me breakfast before we grabbed Kate and went over to one of the nature parks Tidbinbilla to check out some animals. Sadly most of them were hiding but we did see a lot of cockatoo which was strange to see out in the wild. There were also emus that run away when you try and get close and a whole lot of kangaroos. On our way out of the park we stopped so I could get close to the kangaroos. They are weird; they lie around like bums, looking kind of similar to deer when they lie down. They didn’t seem to mind us getting close at all, except for the mamma who had a joey in her pouch. We stayed until we got to see them bounce away which makes me the most excited, see the videos at the bottom of this entry. One our way home we stopped at the largest alpine slide in the southern hemisphere and all took a ride down it, loads of fun.



Lots of kangaroo photos:

Emu

My birthday present from Andrew

the flowers Andrew got me from the airport

Monday I had two interviews so Andrew and I drove around a bit in between. My first one was with a golf club as a waitress/beverage/food attendant, they offered me a part-time job but I need something full time so I said I’d think about it since I had a few other interviews. My second interview was with a recruitment agency and the recruiter and I really got on. I really impressed him a lot and he’s on the lookout for jobs for me in the creative/design field doing any kind of work just to get my foot in the door. I actually had a good time chatting with him and left feeling like he’s going to try and find something that will work for me.

Tuesday morning I had another interview with a place called Canberra Motor Village for a receptionist position. After that we were a bit boring, Andrew had to get a haircut so I ran around the mall killing time and then we bought new video games, one being the Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe game which is so much fun. We also had a little cookout down by one of the lakes where they have free bbqs so we got to eat sausages with a nice view of the lake out in the sunshine.

Cook out by the lake

Wednesday we decided to do a quick drive down to the coast to a little town called Batemans Bay. We had some fish and chips and I yelled “mine” at seagulls Finding Nemo style, before we went to find a beach I could put my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time. It was fairly cold but it’s early in the season and there were people on the beach who had been swimming. The day was a bit overcast but I can imagine how beautiful it will look on a sunny day, the landscape looks just like that beach screensaver that comes standard on every computer. We decided to drive down the coast a bit to see some other beaches, there was a great secluded one with a tiny car park so not many people would be able to park there. There were already some surfers out taking advantage of the small waves, which will be great once I get better and get my own board. It was a quick ride back up very windy hills, most over 90 degrees, it was lots of fun to go through but I was glad I wasn’t driving on those sharp corners.

Yummy fish and chip meal we shared

Me going (a bit) into the Pacific Ocean for the first time:

Andrew had to go back to work Thursday so Mr. Walker picked me up to take me around the city a bit. He decided it would be a good chance for me to drive around and he has an automatic car so that made it easy. We went to the top of a hill in Canberra where there is a radio tower that you can go up in and get a birds eye view of the whole city. Mr. Walker took me around and pointed out different parts of the city to me. From there we drove down to the National Library and had some coffee out on a terrace overlooking the main lake. We drove into the city and parked to go meet Andrew for lunch, great burrito place down in the city.

Then Mr. Walker took me on a tour of the embassy area so he could show me the US Embassy which is at least 4 times the size of all the other embassies which only take up one building and the US one takes up such a large number I couldn’t even count them all. When I get a free day I’m going to go check out the inside and see if I get any special benefits for living here, like Thanksgiving dinner or a 4th of July celebration or something. We ran a few errands after that so I know a good fruit and vegetable market, where the local library and grocery store is and how to get home from both.

Friday I got to drive Andrew’s car around for the day, an automatic. It was quite interesting but I managed to make it around without killing myself or anyone else so that’s good. I met Andrew down in the city with some of his friends for drinks. It was good fun and the beginning to the chaotic weekend we have ahead.