A Few of My Favorite Things

New Zealand Part 3

2012-03-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, our final "non-travel" day, we spent some time on the boat again. We started at Furneaux Lodge, a beautiful old lodge. The pictures below are taken there.

This is where we had some tea at the lodge. Notice Dan and I in our silly hats and boatware. We had to ride in a little small boat to get there after getting out of Dave's boat and it had water in the bottom, so my jeans are rolled up.

The water is so clear there - look at these rocks.

We left the lodge and stopped to have a picnic in this cove. Look how beautiful the water is!

This duck and his friends were our entertainment. They had a hard time eating crackers. They had to let them soak in the water and eat off tiny bits. It made for great entertainment!

The morning before we left, we looked out the window to see the 2 black swans that swam by every day and Dan got a picture of them. Very majestic!

If you have the chance to go to New Zealand, you definitely should! We loved it!

New Zealand Part 2

2012-03-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

After our boat ride on Day Friday, we went back to Chris and Dave's house. Here is the view from their driveway. Breathtaking!

This is one of many pukekoes who visit their back garden. They feed them bread a couple of times a day. They are funny little birds, a little like chickens, very skittish. Look at how they eat with their funny "hands."

Then, we went for a walk on Queen Charlotte trail, just down the road from their house. Dave chose to run it - we just hiked.

View from one spot on the trail.

On the second day, we spent the day in the wine country of Marlborough. We went to several different wineries and had a lovely lunch in one of them. We went to the winery where Dave keeps the barrels for his wine and also went to Dave's vineyard. As you'll see from the pictures, it was beautiful.

This is Dave and Dan looking at Dave's grapes.

On the way home, we stopped to see an amazing view of the Sounds!

This tree is filled with Shags, black and white birds that are very pretty, but destroy trees. Look at their nests below.

Looks like this will need to be a 3 part post. I'll post some more maybe even later today.

New Zealand Trip Part 1

2012-03-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit our friends, Dave and Chris, at their home in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. They are near Havelock (where you get the green mussels - yum) and Blenheim, where the airport is. We traveled on New Zealand Air from Sydney to Christchurch and then on to Blenheim. We were on such a small plane and small airport that we could see Dave and Chris in the window of the airport as we were landing! We spent 5 days there (2 really being travel days) and are eager to go back again, and to see more of New Zealand. Chris and Dave were amazing hosts! They entertained us, kept us very well fed, and most importantly, shared great wine under Dave's label. Consider this our tripadvisor recommendation - we give them 5+ stars! Thanks Dave and Chris!

For family and friends who know me well, this is technically my second trip to New Zealand, having just had a business meeting in Queenstown for 1 day (!) the same week. It is also beautiful and I'd like to go back and take Dan there. I've had the chance now to see bits of Queenstown, the cities near Marlborough, Auckland, and Christchurch. Each city looked very different and was beautiful in its own way.

So, what you've all been waiting for - pictures! And, Nate, thanks for pestering me to put up a new post!

This is the view from Chris and Dave's back garden! Beautiful!

On our second day, Dave drove us out to Lochmara Lodge by boat. It is beautiful and we had a wonderful breakfast of eggs with smoked salmon from New Zealand.

Dan and I outside the Lodge.

This is in Picton, where we also went by boat. It was a cloudy day to start, but sure turned into a gorgeous day.

Dan and I in Picton - me being good by wearing a hat to avoid the super-strong sun.

Dan and Dave on the boat.

This must have been a regatta or some kind of sailboat race we saw on the way home.

These are some boat docks and small boats near their house.

The neighbors' sheep!

We'll post some more later. We really enjoyed this trip!

Chinese Festival

2012-02-17T23:57:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since we've posted. We've had a buys couple of months. In January, we participated in the Chinese New Year Festival in several ways. First, we went to Chinatown and ate yum cha several times. Then, we went with Tom and Ellen to see the Chinese Friendship Gardens. They are very beautiful and were a gift from China to Sydney. They are in Darling Harbour, which is kind of a tourist area, but very beautiful too.

This is called Dinosaur rock.

This is Darling Harbour.

We are headed to visit some friends in New Zealand later this week and will be sure to post some pictures!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

We've not posted in awhile. It's amazing how busy you can be doing a lot of nothing. We've both enjoyed a nice break from work and job-hunting. We have spent some nice time with friends here over the holidays, everything from Christmas breakfast with friends to nights at our local pub with friends.

From Christmas through end of January (Australia day), things are pretty quiet here. I have said to my American friends, think about if Christmas were in June, that's kind of what this is like. Kids are out of school, everyone is going on vacation. I go back to work on Jan 3 and Dan resumes the job hunt. We decided to explore our local, Rozelle and Balmain, shops and restaurants this week. We certainly enjoyed a few pubs, especially, The London Hotel. Most of the shops were closed. I guess this is the time that most people take their vacations.

We are having some friends over on New Year's Day for Mexican food and jalapeno margaritas. I couldn't find any fresh jalapenos, so we are trying something new with the kind in the jar.

We ate here last night with friends Universal Restaurant. We had these amazing desserts, but the pictures did not turn out very well. Dan had one called Queen Bee, which had a scoop of ice cream with fairy frost on it, that's what they call cotton candy here. I had one called, Snap, Crackle, Pop, that looked like a bowl of cocoa crispies in milk with a slice of "bacon" on it, which was chocolate. For the third dessert, I have to first explain what ice cream treats are called here. Traditional ice cream treats here are called very different things. One of these treats is called golden gaytime. Our friend ordered gaytime with nuts as her dessert, which was basically a deconstructed version of the traditional ice cream. Very yummy, nuts, chocolate, ice cream! I have had one of the paddle pops too. It's like a fruit pop filled with jelly in the centre...way too sweet for me!

Finally, we booked our vacations to New Zealand and back home to the US (in Feb and March respectively). Can't wait to see everyone!

We're going to see fireworks tonight. I'll try to post some pics! Happy New Year!

Jervis Bay Trip

2011-12-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since we've written. I have been sick, yes, again, and then working like a fiend. Dan's been busy networking and starting to look for jobs. He's even had a couple of interviews. With Christmas around the corner and rainy days seeming never ending in Sydney (yes, it is unusual apparently), we decided to take a family trip and head down the Great Pacific Drive for a trip south to Jervis Bay.

We took the doggies and headed about 140 km, or a little over 70 miles. It was a gorgeous drive! It was a slow drive too. The speed limit is 100 max, or about 50 miles per hour. Usually, you are going slower. I think our average GPS speed said 65 km, or less than 40 mph. Anyway, it took us several hours and we enjoyed the drive, but were very glad to see where we were staying. It was a house just down the road from Hyam's Beach, noted in a world record book to be the whitest sand in the world.

Here is the view from the living area.

This is a picture of the beach right in front of our house, the whitest sand in the world. It was a partly cloudy day, but the water was so clear and the dogs enjoyed walking on the rocks! It was too cold to swim, about 70 degrees, but we enjoyed the beach every day.

We also thoroughly enjoyed watching the cockatoos and lorikeets from the porch every day with a glass of wine. Here are some of our favourite pictures of them. There were even black cockatoos there, but our pictures didn't turn out as well.

We spent two days resting and exploring Booderee National Park. It is breathtaking. We stopped at multiple beaches and spots, including Murray's Beach, Green Patch, the Lighthouse, Cave Beach. We loved them all. We will definitely come back here. Here are a few pictures. We did actually see about 10 kangaroos by a campfire BBQ, including a red one, but didn't snap a picture.

Before we even got to Murray's Beach, we saw an echidna. He looks kind of like a porcupine, but has a bill like a duck (kind of). He is a little hard to see here.

These are 2 black cockatoos, also right outside Murray's Beach, hard to see how cool they are.

This is our first view of Murray's Beach...aaahhh!

Just one example of the interesting little caves and things on the beach.

Here I am near a big piece of dead wood.

The water was crystal clear on all the beaches except where it was so deep that it looked almost black.

We seen kookaburras a lot in Sydney, but this was an especially close up picture.

Something slimy and weird that washed up...maybe some kind of algae? Kind of pretty.

This is what all the rocks in the water looked like.

These are the little snails on parts of these rocks under water.

These are the little jellyfish on the shore.

This is me trying to get pictures of surfers and missing them all!

This is Dan near the lighthouse where the track ends.

The views from the lighthouse were breathtaking for 180 degrees.

And, on our way back from the lighthouse to our house on our last full day, we hit the motherload! A roo very close to us! We got one shot of it and the lighting was a bit funny, but here she/he is!

This was an amazing place and one of the most beautiful I've seen in the world. We will definitely be back here again!

Sculptures by the Sea part 2

2011-11-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some more of the great pieces of art we saw!

Ok, so not a sculpture, but I couldn't help getting this ocean shot. So beautiful with this smooth rock over it...

This is a good example about lack of perspective. It is probably about the size of a car or larger, but there was no point of reference.

This was one of my favourites. I took several shots of it. It is hard to see how beautiful the granite it is made of it and how shiny.

Really recommend this to anyone who has the chance to see it!

Beach Weekend and Sculptures by the Sea

2011-11-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful weekend! Nearly 80 degrees (which feels VERY hot in Australia), sunny, and lots of fun activities. On Saturday, we drove out to Dee Why Beach, a beach north of the city about 24 km from us (12 miles) and set up a shady tent-like thing Dan bought (kind of a portable cabana) and laid in lounge chair and enjoyed the beach. So relaxing!

Here is our view from our personal 'cabana.' We had a lovely lunch on a small cafe with a view here as well.

Today was a beautiful day too. We went with our friends Ellen and Tom (who said we could use their names on here) and walked the Sculpture by the Sea. This is an annual event where artists display amazing sculptures along the beach from Tamarama Beach to Bondi Beach (about 10 miles from us maybe). We parked at Clovelly beach, so walked even further. We arrived at about 9 am, which we all agreed was too late. The sun is just so strong here! We recommended getting there by 8 or so. We ran into our neighbors and friends who got there at half past seven, probably best if you want to walk both ways. We walked it one way and then enjoyed a late breakfast in a cafe at Bondi Beach and caught a taxi to our car...Lazy? Maybe. Smart, I think so! I apologize in advance. I'm posting A LOT of pictures. I know, at least, our friends Jerry and Rich at home will really want to see this. We thought of them the whole walk and know they would have greatly enjoyed the combo of both art and thes sea - two of their favourite things. We miss you both! So, here goes, so amazingly beautiful!

At Clovelly Beach, we saw cute little Aussie kids going to swim/surf class. Look how they ALL wear green caps due to sun exposure and sensitivity to skin cancer here.

Ellen and Tom at the beginning of the walk.

This old cemetery has a great view! What a beautiful spot to be laid to rest.

Dan and I right before we entered the exhibits.

The first sculpture we saw and one of my favourites!

This was made out of recycled tires.

This was made out of pieces of firewood.

I'll post more in the next post. Think I have a lot of pictures here!

Sydney Botanical Garden

2011-10-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was an amazingly, beautiful day. We went with our friends E. and T. and spent a lazy afternoon walking through some of it. We saw lots of interesting wildife (flying foxes/bats, eels, cockatoos, and more). Here are some of our pictures.

These are just some pretty flowers and Dan wanted to take my picture. I think it was about 80 degrees that day and of course, we were walking so I do have a little glow about me...

These are the flying foxes. They are very scary and are awake in the day (see) and they are HUGE! They fly around and above your heads like birds and their wing span is several feet. There are TONS of them in the garden. E, T, and Dan thought their faces are cute, so zoom in, but I just think they are creepy.

The botanical garden has a great view of the Opera House (where I will see Kathy Griffin next month!) and the Harbour Bridge.

Also, there are cockatoos everywhere in the trees. Very beautiful! Some people were feeding them and they'd land on their heads or shoulders. While they were doing that, one almost landed on my head! Not a fan...

Some beautiful poppies in the garden, reminded us of Athens, Greece.

We spent some time in the succulent gardens because T used to collect them. I like the pretty ones with flowes and he likes the prickly dangerous ones. Hmmm, what does that say about our personalities : )

This is Dan and I at Macquarie's Chair. Apparently, Mrs. Macquarie really liked to walk through the gardens and her husband had a big rock carved into a chair for her. There is probably more of a story to it, but that's what T told us.

On Tuesday, we joined a group of friends at the Night Noodle Market that was part of the Sydney International Food Festival. They set up lanterns and booths with various Asian food in Hyde park each week day evening for 2 weeks. You go booth to booth and by dumplings, noodle bowls, kebabs, etc. Really fun!

We'll post some pictures of the party later this weekend.

Settled in

2011-10-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pictures of our house as we get more settled in. It is definitely starting to feel like home.

Our kichen, including the little white bar stools we bought here.

Our home office. We bought this book shelf at a neat little store in Newtown called Newtown Furniture Haven, very good wood stuff. We got our desk there too.

Our living room and the art we purchased in Croatia.

This is our eating area. We decided to buy this little small table and chairs since we typically use our living room more and we have dining outside.

The view from our bedroom. I don't think we've shared that before.

Our bedroom

Please come visit us! We have a nice room for you.

Our third bedroom, also known as my shoe closet : )

This is probably incredibly boring for anyone except our family, so apologies for that, but they have all been asking to see this. I'm really missing all of you right now and am especially jealous that Angie, Aunt Jill, and Grammy are all in Virginia. Have fun tonight!

Almost home!

2011-10-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

We are very excited that our goods will finally arrive from customs this week. It will be great to get rid of our rent a centre funiture and to have a better bed to sleep on, as well as to get all of our dishes and cookware. And, the doggies will be here next Sunday, so we should be able to get the house all set up prior to them coming home. So, hopefully it will feel like home to them.

Here is the link to the dog walker who has provided them visits while in quarantine. They have been amazing and you'll see the dogs seem to be having a lot of fun!

Dan is calling home to his folks right now and we begin our ritual of morning phone calls home. We miss home, but have been getting a dose of it on the cable we now have installed. I'm watching the View right now and watched the US today show yesterday. It's a fun reminder of home. However, we are enjoying a few Australian shows and some of the British shows, as well. In general, there is not as much choice in cable as we have back home.

We'll post some pics after we get our house in order next week!

Are you OK?

2011-09-09T23:45:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on my deck out back reading a good book this morning and look what I saw...Are they asking me? Haven't seen skywriting since I was a little kid, I think. I thought when it started that it was going to be a marriage proposal or something, but then it was just a simple question. I wonder who it was meant for?

Anyway, we have had a very nice Saturday. We went to the Orange Grove Farmer's market this morning. Here in Australia most neighborhoods have small markets on the weekend in the school parking lots. We are lucky enough to live 2 blocks from an organice one and we really enjoyed it today. We bought some great natural lotion, lemon pepper goat cheese, some mandarin oranges, flowers picked today, lime hummus, feta/rocket/rosemary chicken sausages (yes, you can get rocket in everything here), and some great looking asian salad mix. We are definitely not ordering produce from Woolie's anymore. There is so much great stuff at this market! This will definitely become a Saturday ritual for us. We walked to the local coffee shop, Divi, and then went to the market. Definitely a good thing to eat before you go there! So many yummy treats. Can't wait to go back next week!

And, other good news, Dan bought a completely overpriced, but said to be amazing, grill today. So, our deck is all set up with umbrella, chairs, and BBQ now. He even got the overpriced accessories to match : ) He'll have fun cooking those sausages for our friend, E and T tonight - our first visitors, by the way. Looking forward to playing some games with them tonight, like Uno and stuff like that. Dan made some amazing margaritas last night, so we may have to repeat that tonight! I just made a salad with our salad mix, goat cheese, some tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions - can't wait to eat it.

Here are the pretty fresh flowers we got. Dan made the vase out of a water bottle that he cut! No, our crate has not yet arrived. Forecasted to be here Oct 4. And, that's our new little dining set it is sitting on.

This is our new outdoor set minus grill, since Dan bought it later.

Here are some of the plants we were lucky enough to get that the owners left for us - fresh herbs, basil, mint, thyme, sage, cilantro.

The dogs are in quarantine now. Dan will go see them on Tuesday. Apparently they are doing well. The dog walker starts looking after them on Monday, so we'll have a link to post of them for you to see. We're definitely settling in. We are OK. Thanks to whoever asked.

New Stuff

2011-09-08T02:53:00.000-07:00

This is sort of a short, random list of stuff...Good news - dogs are finally on their way! Then, they'll have 30 days of quarantine, so they should be home with us by about October 9. I had my first domestic business trip in Australia, traveled to Melbourne. Can you imagine leaving your house at 6:15 am for a 7:30 flight and being able to catch an earlier flight?? This is my new travel life and I am loving it. Domestic air travel is a delight here. And, I have no status on Qantas, yet could fit my bag on...And, they gave me breakfast for a 1.5 hour flight...It is quite lavish this Australian travel, so I'm a big fan already.

We are in the new house, have a real phone, no internet or TV yet...long story, but we should have it soon. Even though we are on a Rent a Centre bed and sofa, it is still better than our hotel room. I was invited by several co-workers for lunch, coffee, drinks, etc. I must have passed the secret 4 week test...not sure. So, on all fronts all things going fairly well. Will post some pics of the house when it looks a little nicer. We have 2 guest rooms for you friends and family! Will post when dogs get here safely. We have someone we've paid to look in on them every day, so that is really nice.

Chinatown and Sydney Fish Market

2011-09-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we had a very fun tourist day. We started by lunch in Chinatown where we got to see a wonderful display of the Chinese dragon. The "dragon" basically went from door to door doing a very frenetic dance. We tried to take a picture, but it was hard since there was so much movement.

Next, we went to the Fish Market and bought some ingredients for a yummy dinner. On the way, we saw a pretty large bird in the parking lot. We don't know these people who were walking up to it.

The fish market was amazing. So many good fresh fish. We took it home and had a great dinner. On the way home we saw an opportunity to take a shot of the city.

We'll post some pictures of our rental soon. Miss you all!

Pasta!

2011-08-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

Another of our favorite things is food. We had a wonderful day at our friend M's house yesterday making pierogis. Now, I know she has a very detailed blog coming out that has some great detailed pictures and instructions, so I won't steal any of her thunder, but wanted to share a little bit of our experience from my perspective.

First, a pierogi is a Polish pasta (at least that's what I'll call it) that is kind of like a ravioli. Ours was stuffed with potato, cheese, garlic, and carmelized onions (YUM!). So, the brialliant idea behind M's party was to have some friends over, most of us who are also ex pats, and teach us the original Pierogi making process. So, thanks to her for such a brilliant idea! The other outcome was to make sure each of us had quite a few of these delish treats to take home. And finally, at the end of our hard work day, we all got to sit down together and eat these treats with brown butter and carmelized onions over them and baked with real Polish kielbasa (YUM YUM!). Yes, the husbands participated in the eating part. They seemed to enjoy that part very much!

This was such a fun day. We started at about 11 am and were there until after 10 pm. Much of it was spent (by the women, at least) putting together these tasty delights. I learned that I really enjoyed using the hand pasta machine. I see one in my near future! I was really not good at getting the filling in the dough. We kind of worked an assembly-line type process for the final two batches and got pretty efficient.

It was a very fun day, and we have truly made some great friendships with these folks in a very short time. For the women, it felt very old fashioned to be working together so closely on a mutual task, while still chatting it up and learning more about each other. It felt as if we could have been a group of sisters making a big holiday meal or something together all day. So, we have already committed to a similar engagement for Christmas cookies, although do we really want to do that in December, ladies? I guess I can volunteer since we will have air conditioning. We look forward to having you all over and reciprocating such a generous gesture.

And, for those of you out of town, we will have 2 guest rooms (and a study) starting next Saturday! You may want to wait until later September for when we get our crate, though, so you will also have a bed to go with the room! Doggies fly over next Wednesday. And, we're going to sign the papers for the car today. We are getting settled in.

Entertainment

2011-08-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know us know that we love our TV, movies, and music. I thought I'd share a little about what we are enjoying here. If you are expecting some highbrow activites, please discontinue reading this post : )

We are really enjoying the TV here. It makes US reality TV look very minor. Our new favorite is called, The Farmer Wants a Wife . The premise is kind of like the Bachelor (which I never watched before). There are several eligible farmers, even one older good looking man, and they choose 5 or 6 girls and the girls somehow pick them and then they go on dates. This week, the girls all go on the farm! Anyway, we are really enjoying this one. Another one we haven't seen yet is "Are you Fitter Than a Pensioner?" I think this may be British, but we haven't seen it. Presumably, it is seniors competing in physical contests with younger people, maybe out of shape ones. Anyway, I think that could be fun. My father-in-law is 95 and could probably beat me in a race!

Today, we are headed out rental hunting again. We really hope we find something. We're a bit tired of the hotel style living. And, other good news, the doggies get to come out next week. From there, they will go to quarantine for 30 days. Eastern Creek Quarantine is where they will be. Scroll down on the link and you can see some pictures. Dan can go see them on Tues and Thursdays. Bye for now!

Day at the Beach

2011-08-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

So, as most of you know, we love the beach. Yesterday we went to Bondi Beach.

And, you may have been assuming this, but Mollie has been writing most of this. Here's a note from Dan:

We may be adjusting to the time. We stayed up till 10:30 pm Saturday night! Yesterday we went out looking for places to rent. There were a few options that might work. Of course, the one we liked best was at the top of our budget. We are still getting a feel for which neighborhood suits us. There are several people here who have strong feelings tied to neighborhood idenity. There are assumptions about those who live on the north side of the harbor for example which is more suburban. There are some of the locations that are closer to the city center that have some old building charm and quirks. It was a nice day yesterday so after the house search was over we decided to go explore and hang out at a neighborhood near the beach. We had to take a train to a bus to the place.

This is a picture of a swimming pool in the ocean. People were swimming laps there. Very windy, but beautiful day!

Ok, so you may wonder why I'd put this terrible picture of myself up, but I thought the view was nice. It was really bright sun in my eyes. If anyone has an app to open your eyes up, that would be nice to apply here : )

We ended the day with a bottle of wine (nice Australian Shiraz) on a sofa outside with this view. Really nice day.

Ok, back to me again - we spent most of the morning on the phone with our family and friends. We love and miss you all. And, due to popular demand (especially from Cooper), we wanted to share some things that can kill you in Australia. Since we're speaking of the beach today, let's focus there for the remainder of the blog.

Australia is one of the world's worst places for skin cancer, so I'd say that sunburn and heat stroke are at the top of the list. Also, many beaches have both sharks and box jellyfish! The box jellyfish is one of the most deadly things in the world - also called a seawasp. They are nothing like the jellyfish you get in the Outer Banks, Cooper and Ashley, so don't worry. A salt water crocodile can also kill you. They are very quick. Justin, you should google these things so that Ashley and Cooper can see them. The odds of being hurt or killed by these things are pretty slim, but it is interesting stuff. Here's a link to a fun quiz about dangerous things http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz1955331663d20.html

Well, bye for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Friends and Family

2011-08-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

Along the lines of this favorite things topic, of course, family and friends are at the top. This week we have been missing our family and friends, wanting to call in the evenings, and then realizing that it is the middle of the night! In addition, we've made some new friends. We had a wonderful time on Sunday with our new friends, J., and P. (not sure whether people want their names shared here) and their kids. They came by the apartment, brought us some WONDERFUL goodies, stocked our fridge, and then took us out to yum cha (Australian for dim sum). We learned tons about culture from our new younger friends. We learned how to play some games with their daughter on the iTouch - including Truth or Dare and Fit or Fugly. Apparently, I am fit and am an '8,' not sure what is keeping me from a '10,' but nevertheless. In addition, their son taught us a bit of Mandarin. Anyway, it was a great first day. We really appreciated it and felt very welcome.

Then, on Wednesday, we met with some of the "Yanks Down Under," http://www.yanksdownunder.net/ who arrived on the same flight we did, E and T. Anyway, we went to meet for coffee and then they came over and Dan cooked dinner. It looks like we may meet up with them and another friend we met online on Sunday evening. And, finally, we are even invited to a party on the 27th to learn how to make pierogis! My book club starts on the 2nd of September.

Now, for a few of the random bits that I know our friends and family are all after...on the news the other day, they kept talking about "hoons." We had no idea what this was so finally googled it. Turns out they are hooligans who drive wildly and swerve on the road! Also, I'm attaching some pics of our little temporary apartment for you to see. Very spacious actually, and we had enough closets! The dryer is tiny and steams the room. We just ordered pizza and it has arrived. The food here is great. We have capsicum on the pizza (or peppers for you Americans).

I'll post again soon. We are looking for rentals tomorrow. Wish us luck. We miss you all!

Hello

2011-08-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

So, this is my first post on our blog. Dan and I decided to do this to document our journey to Sydney from Atlanta, Georgia for our friends and family and for those who are also looking to make a significant move like this. So, why the title? The best suggestion I had for a title was, "things that can kill you in australia." I initially liked the idea, but then thought that it seemed a bit negative and wasn't quite sure where the theme would go from there. There sure are a lot of things we have learned that can kill you here, but not sure that's what we wanted to write about...

We just landed yesterday, and this is our first full day in Sydney. I've already started work and we have started to settle into a temporary sort of existence until we find permanent housing. In preparing for this move, one thing we had to do was to prioritize what we would bring to use immediately, use in 2 - 3 months, sell, give away, etc. This process led us to really prioritize what our favorite things were, and suprisingingly they did not include doorbells or brown paper packages tied up with strings. Based on what was most important to us, we had to decide what to do with our things. That's why we have called this blog A Few of My Favorite Things. We will talk about things that we loved at home and hopefully, as we come to know Sydney, things we love here.

For now, I am incredibly jetlagged, and will just say that our favorite things include our friends, family, and of course, our furry friends too. We look forward to going on this journey with you.

Mollie and Dan