Somehow the last couple months have slipped past and it's almost the end of October already. How did that happen?!? Admittedly I have been pretty busy but I'm still not sure where the time has gone. So, here's the quick and dirty on the last couple months Down Under.
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| Sunrise on the City and the Yarra River |
Towards the end of September I made the annual pilgrimage to the Royal Melbourne Show. It runs for eleven days and is akin to the big state fairs in the Midwest. While the Minnesota State Fair is known for everything-on-a-stick, the Royal Melbourne Show is all about show bags. These are bags filled with candy, action figures, athletic gear, pretty much anything that you can think of really. Most of them are actually a good deal in that if you were to buy everything in it separately, it would be significantly more expensive. That being said, I'm not sure why anyone needs most of the stuff that you can get in these bags but they are quite the thing at the show. It's not uncommon to see families walking around the show weighed down with 10-15 bags. Despite my naysaying, I did break down and get one show bag after much deliberation as to which one (last year I resisted). I got the "crafty" bag so it came with a ball of yarn, some knitting patterns, a fat quarter, a tea towel, a fleece (a white one from a sheep not polar fleece), a box of tea, a commemorative tin, chocolate sauce, slivered almonds and a kilogram of flour, plus the swanky canvas tote bag that it all came in. I must have missed the flour when I was reading the description because I hadn't been expecting to haul that around with me all day. Needless to say, while I didn't really need any of it, for $25 it wasn't a bad deal.
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| These are cakes. |
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| Competitor in the Prince of Wales Cup |
The last Friday in September is Grand Final Friday. It is the day before the Grand Final for Australian Rules Football and the city of Melbourne (but nowhere else in the country) takes it as a public holiday, supposedly so that more people can go to the parade through the CBD (aka downtown). It would be like if the Super Bowl were hosted in the same city every year and just that city took the Friday before the Super Bowl off as a public holiday. It's odd but I'm not going to complain about getting a paid day off from work. Since I don't really care that much about footy, I took an extra day off and went over to Wellington to spend the long weekend with Ross.
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| I really miss the view from our apartment in Welly. |
Ross is probably *fingers crossed* going to be moving to Australia in late December to write up his dissertation, so this trip was probably my last to Wellington until Ross defends his PhD sometime next year. As such, we had a laid back weekend and did the kind of things that we used to do when I lived there. We wandered through the botanical gardens, walked along the waterfront, went to the Night Market, saw a movie, and went to some of our favorite restaurants. I also caught up with almost everyone that I know in Wellington, so it was a really nice trip. Plus, the weather was great for three of the four days that I was there, which is practically unheard of in Wellington.
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| Tulips at the Botanical Garden |
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| Wandering along the waterfront |
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| Night Market |
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| Central Park |
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| Wellington waterfront views |
October has been pretty busy too but for different reasons. I ran a half marathon last weekend and was dying towards the end because it was probably close to 80 degrees by the time that I was finishing. Honestly, who has a half marathon start at 8 a.m. this late in spring? Last year I did the 10 km at the same event and I remember feeling sorry for everyone who was still running (e.g. - the people doing the half and the slower marathoners) when I was taking the tram home. Next year, if I remember this rant about the temperature, maybe I'll skip the Melb Marathon Festival. Who am I kidding? I'm sure I'll register for it as soon as they email me so that I can get the early-bird discount...
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| This is what all of the trees on my street look like currently. |
I've mainly been busy this month looking for an apartment for Ross and I. When I first moved to Melbourne last August, I wasn't sure if my work visa extension was going to be approved, so I found a woman who was subletting a room and have lived with her since. As such, this is my first foray into the world of Australian real estate and, let me tell you, it's like the Hunger Games out there. The realtors will schedule a 15-minute inspection period at some random time and everyone who is interested in the apartment shows up then. I went to one inspection where there were probably 40 other people all trying to look at a one-bedroom apartment at the same time. It's madness! Plus the inspection times will often be during the week at, say, 12:30, so you have to take your lunch hour to run over to see the apartment. This is all compounded by the fact that I don't own a car, so on the weekends I have to strategically plan out which inspections I want to go to because there will often be multiple at the same time and I can only cover so much ground in a limited time frame via public transit and my own two feet. Yesterday I missed my tram because I stayed at one inspection too long, so I ended up running to a different stop, taking the tram for 20 minutes and then running to the apartment and I barely made it for the next inspection. At this point, I've inspected 8 apartments and had 4 or 5 inspections cancelled on me because someone else signed a lease on the place. It's crazy. Plus (last complaint about Oz rentals, I swear) 95% of apartments don't come with a refrigerator, even though there is a pretty good chance that they will have a dishwasher and/or washing machine. Apparently it's pretty standard for you to have to supply your own fridge... BYOF? It's super weird.
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| Pretty St Kilda harbor views |
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| Rainbow street in St Kilda |
Anyway, Ross is coming to Melbs to visit in early November so I'm hoping to have an apartment squared away by then. After that I'm going back to the States (for the first time since we moved abroad in June 2016) for Thanksgiving, so November is going to be pretty full on. Until next time!
