Maybe in Oz

Today we reached a big milestone in the house building journey - the land settled.  As of 2 pm today, we became 20% owners of this beautiful block of weeds!  All thanks to some fluke timing and a chat while looking at a display home, some texts, and a large pile of money. Our lovely little pile of weeds It's funny how painless and straight forward buying the land was compared to finalising a house design.  We're still working with the custom builder on potential house designs.  We got the preliminary design the other day, and it made me feel like we had taken a few steps backwards again.  The dream kitchen layout was missing, and we seemed to have gained a laundry room and lost a bedroom.  The way this builder prices the house by the square meter means the extra space that doesn't make sense gets quite spendy.  So we had a meeting with the salesman and draftsman and sent them back to the drawing board.  I'm hoping the next iteration is mor...

Today we bought a little rectangle of swamp land.  It doesn't look like much now, but hopefully by this time next year it will be our beautiful new home. A couple weeks after we got our citizenship we decided it was time to start looking at buying a house.  We talked about putting together a two year plan to buy something, and then that following Tuesday I started looking at stuff to get an idea of price.  And then all of a sudden we were looking at open houses that following Saturday and realizing that it made much more sense to buy land and build a new house in our current area than it did to buy an existing property closer to my work.  The stuff near work was small, run down, and expensive, where a new build would cost less and would be exactly what we want.  We were already used to commuting to the suburbs and like the area, so we weren't going to have to make a huge lifestyle change. As much as it makes me nervous to think we could be buying at the top ...

Our citizenship ceremony just happened to be a few days before Phil's 40th birthday so it seemed like a good excuse to have a party.  We even had a very distinguished guest in attendance - the Queen! Her Majesty Besides Her Majesty, lots of friends and adopted family joined us in the celebration.  We announced our footy teams - I picked the Geelong Cats because, well, cats and Phil picked the St Kilda Saints because we went to a lot of their matches for work when we first moved here.  We toasted, had cake, a few drinks, and lots of laughs. Toasting our friends Footy scarves Don't drop the cake! When you move to the other side of the world, you're forced to start from scratch meeting new people.  We were lucky, when we moved over we knew 3 people.  Looking around that day, it was neat to see how far we've come in just a few years.  One friend we met at an American Expat meet up group dinner that no one else showed up to.  She invited u...

We had our Australian citizenship ceremony a month ago now and I'm just getting around to looking at the pictures.  It was a fun evening that we were honored to share with some friends and family who played a huge role in us wanting to stay. Just before the ceremony I was thinking about why we chose to get citizenship.  There are a few financial reasons it made sense, but really, I think the main reason we wanted to get citizenship was because we could.  Most people only get citizenship once in their lives and they're hardly going to remember it.  It's not common that people get the opportunity to become citizens of another country, especially one as great as this.  So of course we had to. The word "ceremony" made me think of something grand and formal, but it was not quite the case.  It was held at the Narre Warren Community Centre, a basic room with 110 chairs for the new citizens and maybe 40 chairs for those in the audience.  To begin, a bag...

When we first moved to Australia, we were immediately adopted my mother's long time Australian friend and therefore her family.  They took me in for a couple months when I first arrived and helped me get used to driving on the other side of the road, the Aussie accent, and various other intricacies of learning to live in another country.  Since then they have included us in family events and Christmas lunch every year, and we have come to consider them our Aussie family.  Growing up, my extended family would always end up adopting in-laws, exchange students, and various distant relatives to the point where they became the family that I always considered part of certain holiday traditions.  Being on the other side of the fence now, I really appreciate how nice it is to be included in such an extended family.   The matriarch and patriarch of our Aussie family Last weekend the youngest from our Aussie family got married and we were honored to be there to cele...

I was introduced to a new word the other day - Sneans.  According to Urban dictionary, it is the highly attractive combination of sneakers and jeans.  Apparently it is a very American tourist thing that Aussies, Kiwis, and various forms of Irish like to give us grief for.  It has its own hash tag and Facebook page dedicated to making fun of people wearing #sneans.   My coworkers gave the typical example of a middle aged man wearing light colored jeans and white New Balance sneakers together.  I can understand, that's definitely a look.  Throw in a tucked in t-shirt and a belt with a giant Iphone strapped on and it makes quite a statement.  But they also insisted sneans extends to any form of sneakers with any form of jeans.   At first I protested - what's wrong with wearing sneakers with jeans?  Lets say you're on a long weekend in Tasmania, where you may go wine tasting and hiking all in one day.  Sneakers seem like the only appr...

Just when I think we have learned all the nuances of living in Australia, I get thrown another curve ball.  Last week I took a two day first aid training course, and I quickly realised that while we may have learned quite a bit of Aussie speak, we still have far to go with medical Aussie speak.  I'm used to Ibuprofin being Panadol, but besides that we haven't really had to converse in medical terms that much. I realised this on day one of the class when I found myself asking once again what a word the instructor had just said meant.  I think it was Ventalin - apparently that's what Aussies call an inhaler. I'm pretty sure it's a brand name like Kleenex is, but it took me awhile and a few funny faces to figure out what they were talking about.  Then the instructor asked what a normal body temperature was and I said 98.6.  Everyone else looked at me funny as they said 36 and I laughed realising that I hadn't had to deal with temperature in Celsius yet.   ...

As a going away gift Phil's work gave him a $100 Gold Class gift card.  Gold Class is the upmarket way to go see a movie.  It's a small theatre that seats less than 30 people and everyone gets a recliner.  There is wait staff ready to serve you snacks, drinks, and meals as you wish. We had heard about Gold Class and the gift card was a perfect excuse to try it out.  Turns out the tickets were $40 each plus a $10 booking fee.  $90 to go see a movie.  Ridiculous. The Gold Class Theatre lounge When we arrived at the theatre we were ushered towards the Gold Class wing.  There we approached a check in booth similar to airport lounge and were brought inside this bizarre waiting area.  We were seated at a table and handed menus.  How strange.  The waiter came back and took our order for both before the movie and then halfway through (food and drink not included in the ticket price).  After a few minutes of sitting around wondering ...

When we first moved here it seemed like every few weeks or so people would put all of this crap on their front lawns and then it would magically disappear a few days later.  We found it really odd and kept wondering what was going on.  We finally learned about hard rubbish collection, which is apparently when the council comes around and picks up anything you want to get rid of.  And I mean ANYTHING.  We have seen all kinds of things stacked outside people's houses - bikes, mattresses, tvs,  furniture, appliances, children... This used to be on a set day but councils have recently required that you call in and book a hard rubbish collection.  It would appear that our neighbours have not received the memo considering their crap has been outside now for over a month and I saw the hard rubbish trucks drive by early one morning without so much as slowing down past that house.  It sure makes me wonder, do these people not notice this pile of trash that's ...