Day Three: Saturday

Jeremy & Harper

Oh dear lord! A giant spider fell on me in the laundry last night, on the face! AHHHHHH! I swiped it off, but it got away. Lucky for me Jeremy found it and killed it. When I talked to Mum and Dad last night (Blair and Candy) I told them about it and Mum asked me when I was catching the next flight home.

Spider that fell on my face that Jeremy hunted down

Thought we had an avocado tree in our backyard but it turns out it was just a rock on the ground that just looked like one. I am a little sketchy about going up to things right now after the spider incident.

Jeremy went out today to try and find us a new place to live. The way rental property works here is that you have 15 minutes to go see a property at a given time set by the property management. If you like the place you then put in an application to rent the property along with bank statements, citizenship and a whole slew of other documents. I met him at the last place and it was pretty scary the "show" condition these places are in. Jeremy thinks he found us a place to live on Howard Street. We walked by it on our way to "the Spot" to have lunch and gelato. It looks nice, but again hard to tell. It did make me "homesick" for our old house that had such great curb appeal as this one does not.

11 Howard Street

Harper and I went out today while Jeremy was house hunting and I totally got lost. I went to find a place to buy a hair dryer and took a wrong turn somewhere. But thankfully we found our way out! Funny side note; our Graco stroller is WAY too big to fit into any of the stores here. All of the prams that I have seen are the really fancy ones that are over 1k in the States. I really want my McClaren in the container ship!

The "Spot"

The "Spot"

Interesting things we discovered today:

-to get a cell phone you have to prove your Visa status, have a local bank account and health care (you have to prove it with a medical card)

-IPhones are free with your phone contract

-You can fry your Chi even with an adapter here, you have to have a voltage converter

-You don't tip at restaurants, the staff make $15 an hour, get health insurance and get retirement payments that don't go away when they change places of work

-at 5:30pm every night bats fly over head, they are huge, & we don't know where they are going

Beautiful tree on our walk today

Day Two: Friday

Woke up at what we thought was 6am, turns out the clock in our flat was not reset after daylight savings and it was actually 5am. Getting up that early on my own was something new. We soon figured out the time and Harper and I went back to bed. It is funny, but what Jeremy was feeling yesterday, the dizziness and “off kilter-ness” I now understood. I felt like I had just gotten off a rollercoaster or a long boat ride. It is as if my center of gravity is completely off track. It must be the gravitational pull of being on the other side of the planet, but who knows. At least we are not jetlagged and Harper has adjusted beautifully. We almost have her back on her old schedule!

I hate that I don’t have Internet access yet, but very happy that the adapters that I purchased before our trip our working on our laptops as I would have gone a little more bonkers not being able to access photos and write. I feel almost naked without my Iphone. I feel like my connection to the outside world has been amputated. Kind of like when we go on vacation and purposefully leave our phones at home. Only, it’s a permanent vacation! Hopefully the phone and Internet issues will be solved soon.

A few photos of our flat....

Hallway looking from the lounge to the front door, aka Harpers runway

kitchen

kitchen

Harper's room, we moved one of the beds to the study to make room for her crib

Around 10am, Jeremy’s dear friend Tommy came over and picked up the Grace family for a little adventure. We loaded up Harper in her car seat and I went to the wrong side of the car to get into the passenger front seat! I have a feeling that is going to be happening for a while. When Tommy started driving I got a little carsick from the “off” felling of being on the left side of the car with no wheel in front of me. I can’t even begin to tell you how weird it was driving on the other side of the road! They have the oddest street lines here. That is going to have to be an entry on its own.

Tommy drove us around Bondi, Bronte, Coogee, Clovelly and then drove through Centennial Park and caught a glimpse of the Harbor Bridge. Jeremy saw the Sydney Opera House but I missed it. We stopped at Bronte Beach and had a lovely brunch at a café right across the street from the ocean and watched surfers on the huge waves due to the inclement weather we experienced today. I had a wonderful Eggs Benedict served with organic eggs so the center yolks were orange, a little shock for me as I have never seen that before, and it was served with a small salad. Jeremy had an ABC omelet (avocado, bacon and cheese) and it came with “brown” bread (wheat) and the omelet was served on top of the toast. When the set it down Jeremy asked where his toast was, yep we are defiantly not from here. The lattes were wonderful and my tea just great. Side note; the lattes are served in glasses like water would be served in.

We really wish Tommy didn’t work away from Sydney so much so we could see him more. His diary for the next few months is so booked we probably won’t be able to make it out to his home for a barbeque until June. Tommy is a stand-up comedian if I haven’t mentioned that before. We are waiting to hear him on a weekly radio show he does. He said that is going to give us a little “shout out.” Will update on that later.

Well it’s 4:30pm and we are still waiting for our 7 bags that American Airlines lost…..

5pm Sydney time, our bags are finally here! Never been so happy to see so much luggage. Jeremy is unpacking as I type. Tommy’s show just started so off to listen!

Tommy just mentioned us “On Air!” Pretty cool since we have only been here 24 hours and we are being announced by a celebrity J

Landing in Australia

Eagle, we have landed!

After being trolleyed to the customs area, I collected the pram that we gate checked while Jeremy dealt with our missing baggage. Qantas was so wonderful, they gave us $300 to make up for American Airlines losing our bags. After getting through customs via the Express Lane (yea Harper), we were greeted by Prem, Jeremy’s new boss and his dear high school friend Tommy Dean at the airport. Tommy was on his way to catch a flight to do a TV. show so we only had a moment to say hello. Prem wanted to make sure that the driver was there to take us to our new home and welcome us to UNSW. How many new bosses do this?! She is just wonderful and I was very glad to finally meet her.

After going to baggage services and filing our claim for our lost baggage our driver loaded us up and drove us to 34 High Street, our temporary home. It was bit strange and little “sea-sick” to drive on the “other” side of the road. We were reminded several times that it wasn’t the “wrong” side; it was the “other” side. It was just really weird turning and the road lines are very different than the states (a zigzag indicates a pedestrian crossing ahead). One interesting thing, the street signs are green, nice to see something familiar. Sydney so far looks like a mix of Miami and San Diego with the weather and palm trees.

Morgan and Harper on the car ride to 34 High Street

We arrived at our new flat and were greeted by a member of Prem’s staff to let us in and it was not as bad as I was expecting, a lot like college. It was not as clean as I would have preferred, but it was bigger than I thought. After taking the tour Jeremy and I, along with Harper, went to go purchase cleaning supplies and I spent the next few hours fighting jet lag and scouring the apartment. The cleaning supplies here smell different here. In fact it just smells a little different here in general. I am sure that it will go away in a few weeks. We really wanted to go see the beach today but we will do that later this week. I wish they had a better vacuum here. I miss my Dyson!

Harper enjoying a little no clothes time at the new flat

Harper learning what a drawer is, she learned quickly that it can smash your fingers!

We were able to have a little USA normalization by watching M.A.S.H. on television and by listening to American music on the radio. Pretty much all the music we have heard here is from America. When shopping at the grocery store Jeremy I were amazed by how much everything costs here. We were just going down each aisle with our mouths open, we must have looked really out of place. For example, Suave shampoo, which in the States is only $1-2, is over $6AU here. I purchased Pantene because it was cheaper!

Jeremy on the "sweets" aisle, the carts here are four wheel drive and you pass on the left

Yes Mum, there are ceiling fans here :) Jet-lag didn't really get to me, but Jeremy and Harper did take a long nap today. I am trying to think that it is mind over matter.

Flight from Dallas, Texas to Sydney, Australia via L.A.

After a lovely dinner at Cool River in the airport we hopped over to the gate and waited for our delayed American Airlines flight (shocker, they are ALWAYS late). When the pilot finally was ready to leave he went on the intercom and gave us a 5-minute detailed speech as to why he was late. We were not amused. We landed in Los Angeles with just moments to board our Sydney flight. Qantas on the other hand, was amazing. The moment we got off the AA flight they came for us and guided us to a trolley and got us to our flight. I am still amazed as to how wonderful the ground crew was!

crossing the international dateline

We were in the 63^rd row of the 747, which would be the back of the plane for those of you not familiar with “economy” or coach as Americans are used to. Jeremy was across the aisle from Harper and I and ended up having the whole row to himself. That came in handy later when I took a sleeping pill and laid out for 7 hours. Again, I cannot express to you how WONDERFUL the Qantas flight crew was to us. Anything we needed, done. Play with the baby, gave us extra snacks, drinks, done. They even had a trolley waiting for us at the other end of our flight to drive us to customs since they knew something we didn’t. That something was…all of our 7 bags were still in L.A.!

Almost time to board...

April 25th we loaded up the last of our things in Jeremy’s rental and in my Benz, cleaned the home that we had lived in for the last 9 months and hit the road for Garland to spend the last two days of our stay in the states at my parents. I didn’t get sad when leaving the neighborhood or Kingwood so much, but I was sad to leave the house that we worked so hard on and that we had brought Harper home from the hospital. We couldn’t have asked for better or nicer neighbors, but on to better and more adventures. I just don’t see us as “suburban” folk and I believe that we did need to live in one to realize that about ourselves. I will always love the photos and feeling we had when we purchased it, but I would rather live in a flat in the city than a house in the “burbs.” I really hope the new owners enjoy the house and all that we did to it. I would hate to think they came in and changed everything that we did! But again, not my house anymore and not my 2500 square feet to clean either!!!!

We had two wonderful days with my parents and we had some of the most amazing meals cooked on my Dad’s new EGG cooker thing. It’s kind of like a barbecue but not. But it does great things to ribs. It was a bit hard to leave on the 27th to the airport, as I had to repack all of our things, but mostly leaving my parents. They drove us to the airport and left us at the giant wishbone at the DFW international gate.