What to do when the Tram is free

Public Transport was free all day today so we decided to spend the day on the beachfront!

St Kilda is famous for all kinds of things. They have the nicest beaches, beautiful houses and cake shops! We rode the tram down to the beach front, walked along the beaches, picked up seashells, found Luna park which is an artsy fun mini theme park that is only open on the weekends during winter :( (We will definitely be back for the rides and elephant ears when it's warmer.) Of course the weather was amazing. Sunny and WARM! We played in the sand a bit and I resisted dipping my feet in the water for about 20 minutes. haha. It felt like icewater.

A group of local boys were playing footy on the beach. There were a few brave swimmers but not many.
We walked down historical Acland St, the home of Melbourne's famous cake shops. We indulged of course, it was HARD to choose but soo yummy. Literally the entire store front was filled with desserts.

We walked through a few of the neighborhoods and found an amazing church built in 1860. There were fireworks at Docklands as well tonight so we rode the tram over and spent a sweet family moment snuggling in the cold watching the fireworks light up the boys' faces. It was a beautiful day.

Settling in

Well I finally feel like we are settling into our new life here. The Uni is just over a mile's walk from our apartment and depending on the day James hoofs it once or twice a day. He doesn't start until at least 10 and finishes usually around 4 and one day until 6pm. He's taking 4 courses, 3 anthropology and 1 natural resource. He had his first assignment due today. A photo (I took) depicting a "natural environment" and a description of how he views that particular environment.

Awesome, yeah? (that's my aussie accent btw)

The boys and I have also settled into a routine at home. Breakfast followed by 1/2 hr of Bananas in Pajamas. Then Cavan works on schoolwork, while Declan does "skoool" next to him in a coloring book. Pick up the apartment. Lunch. Playground. That's my favorite time of the day. We head out to various playgrounds and the local library. Thursdays are story-time which we attended the first time today. The boys loved it and we plan on making it a weekly occurrence. There is so much to do and see here that the boys and I have been mapping them out and will try to do everything at least once before we start repeating things. There are two great play areas within 4 blocks of our apartment though just in case. (both playgrounds are approximately 1 mi). Then home again for dinner. I've been cooking.
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Yeah, wanted to give some of you who are familiar with my cooking expertise a chance to recover :) Seriously though James is an amazing cook, WHY would I learn? But I'm learning now and finding that cooking is fun and easy. I LOVE that we can walk 3 blocks to the market and get fresh local everything for the next few meals.

After dinner we settle in for some good ol Aussie TV. Master Chef has been rocking our world for two weeks and the Season Finale was Sunday. Adam, the winner, is an AMAZING chef and hopes to have a restaurant open in Sydney by Nov. It's sad that we wouldn't be able to attend, but the host of the show owns an amazing place called Quay here in the docklands of Melbourne City. The runner up Callum will be moving to Melbourne and cooking at Quay until December. Maybe we will get a chance to go.. (wink wink, ahem, James).
The other show I feel really warrants a mention is The Farmer Wants a Wife! lol 6 farmers from the most isolated places in AU have each chosen 6 possible partners to meet. Yesterday they limited it to three, and those three will be moving to the respective farms in the Aussie version of the Bachelor! I LOVE it! There are good old croppers, ranchers, a pearl farmer, a WOMAN! and a drover (cattle driver) Seriously great TV. Oh yeah and a new Skins season starts this weekend Tiff!!!

I won something!

The Unilodge had a community program that arranges activities for residents ranging from bussed day trips, group dinners out at local restaurants and trips to new release movies with discounted tickets. Tonight they played Remember Me, a romantic umm drama, down in the rec room and surprisingly enough James didn't really care for seeing it ;) They provided popcorn, drinks and pizza which was a treat because I had no idea.

I decided to step out of my comfort zone and go watch it by myself. It was a good call though. I met some of the other residents and made plans to hang out with a fun Brazilian girl that I had sat next to. We had to supply our room numbers when we first came downstairs and they were going to raffle off the DVD when the movie was over. After the movie they put the bowl in front of me and asked me to draw a ticket. Of course I drew my own number, lol! They ruled it fair game since they were holding the bowl above my head and there was no way I could've seen it. WOOHOO me! So I'll be bringing home an officially Australian copy of Remember Me. And James will end up having to watch it anyway hehe :)

Colorful Money

Yes the bills do get progressively bigger with the dollar amount. We're getting used to the $1 and $2 dollar coins. It's kind of funny to watch us pay for small things. It took a bit for us to get smooth at it :)

Time & Temp Conversions

@ home --Melbourne
July 20th July 20th
12:00 AM 5:00 PM
1:00 AM 6:00 PM
2:00 AM 7:00 PM
3:00 AM 8:00 PM
4:00 AM 9:00 PM
5:00 AM 10:00 PM
6:00 AM 11:00 PM
7:00 AM 12:00 AM 21st
8:00 AM 1:00 AM 21st
9:00 AM 2:00 AM 21st
10:00 AM 3:00 AM 21st
11:00 AM 4:00 AM 21st
12:00 PM 5:00 AM 21st
1:00 PM 6:00 AM 21st
2:00 PM 7:00 AM 21st
3:00 PM 8:00 AM 21st
4:00 PM 9:00 AM 21st
5:00 PM 10:00 AM 21st
6:00 PM 11:00 AM 21st
7:00 PM 12:00 PM 21st
8:00 PM 1:00 PM 21st
9:00 PM 2:00 PM 21st
10:00 PM 3:00 PM 21st
11:00 PM 4:00 PM 21st
12:00 AM 21st 5:00 PM 21st

Footy and Weather

There was a lot of this going on!
ETA* that's not my photo! We were way up at the top on the stands lol! I borrowed this from a Footy Advertisement

Weather:

It's COLD! Joanna! You weren't kidding when you said it's the wind that will get you. Today is was 13 C. about 55 F. It's fine if the sun is out but as soon as the wind picks up it will chill you to the bone! We get bits of sun, mostly clouds and bits of rain every day. We're told though the worst of winter is about over and it will start to get nicer soon.

James went to orientation today and all four of us are going to the Uni on friday to take a look around. We're planning on just doing a bit more sightseeing before he starts classes next week. We've made a few friends now and are mostly doing & seeing things upon recommendation of locals or people who've been before. They're the ones who know what's up! We literally just walk around and head for things that are interesting, and if we need to eat we stop someone and ask what's good in that area. It's hit or miss on some things ;) but if they like it enough to point us that way than it's usually good, and sometimes great!

Seeing the City

I imagine that any large city has tons of fun stuff to do. We’re finding that Melbourne isn’t lacking in that respect. Australian rules football is HUGE here. We went to a game on Saturday upon recommendation of the reception people at the hotel. The Melbourne Cricket Grounds hosts Footy, as they affectionately call it, in the Cricket off-season. The St. Kilda Saints vs. The Collingwood Magpies were local teams fighting for first place in the league. It was supposed to be a really tough evenly matched game. The Magpies SPANKED the Saints by 50+ points! There were over 80,000 people there. It was crazy! If you’ve never seen Aussie Football, Youtube it! We were lucky enough to sit in front of a fun helpful family who taught us the rules & attempted to explain what was going on. It’s very hard to follow, but those guys are extreme athletes thats for sure. The gist of it is practically anything goes, the field is round and can vary from 150 yards to 180+, you can’t actually throw the ball you have to either kick it or pass it by holding it in one hand and hitting it with your other fist and the fans are just as dedicated as we are back in the states!

On the afternoons that we have sun we’ve been doing lots just walking with no particular aim. We spent Friday afternoon walking in the Royal Botanical Gardens. When your there you can easily forget your in the middle of a very large city. We didn’t have the camera that day but we’ll be frequenting them a lot so I promise to take pictures soon
The Queen Victoria Market is a 3 block radius of fantastic local vendors. Pikes in Seattle comes to mind only this is bigger. It runs 5 days a week and will be where we get most of our food. We got Kiwis from New Zealand on Sunday the size of large apples for $1 ea. We also picked up some hot jelly doughnuts that were covered in cane sugar. I’m going to have to make sure we don’t get them every time we go. ☺

The food is great as well. While we were in the hotel with no kitchenette we made it a goal to eat small & have no leftovers, as well as try a variety of things. We’ve had Kabobs, a Turkish sandwich which was AMAZING. Good call Paul on the recommendation. We tried sausage rolls on recommendation they were, um, interesting. Our personal favorite so far and the only place we’ve been to twice has been Pie Face. A small coffee & pie shop with yummy coffee and rock your world meat pies. Think rich delicious handheld potpies but better than you can really imagine.

So everyone take a minute to look up some footy & tell me what you think. We’ve decided it looks like professional keep-away.

1. The boys @ the Melbourne Cricket Grounds
2.Declan enjoying lunch at one of the many sidewalk/alley way cafes
3.Our tiny home for the 1st week. And one very sleepy child :)
4. Declan and I went traipsing around looking for Federation Square, the home of Melbourne's information center & some of their many museums and show buildings. Currently showing things like The Work of Tim Burton and ABBA WORLD. yep, ABBA. We went 4 blocks the wrong way at first so when we finally found it we sat, had a treat and just looked around and appreciated the city.
5.St. Pauls Cathedral- one of the many beautiful historical buildings here in Melbourne

Our home for the next 5 months!

We found an apartment! I can't beleive the range of emotions we've gone through today.
We had crummy luck yesterday with just tons of dead ends and an "inspection" of a crappy apartment the size of the breakroom @ my work. The next door down had a swaztica sp? on it...

Today we were determined to make things work. No one was answering any of our email enquires so we hoofed it to three different realtor offices to try our hand that way. We were pretty much told:
No applications could be turned in unless is was for a specific property that had been inspected. (only 5 places had inspections even set 2 for tomorrow and three for Sat)
It would take approximately 3-5 days to process any applications, Most of the leases were for 12 months w/ no flexability and
NO we couldn't really ask questions until the acutal inspection (meaning they wouldn't tell us if the properties would be available for 6 month leases.
Lastly they said they would not even consider our application without a contact number. An email is not sufficient even though we promised to check it faithfully. We did manage to wiggle an application out of one girl, even though she made sure we knew we could not hand it in until the actual inspection date.

Frustrating morning! We did end up getting a local prepaid phone so that would allow us to be "contacted". Which made us annoyed because we hadn't planned on getting a phone. Then went to the hotel to fill out paperwork and rest. While we were reading the application we discovered that rent & bond (deposit) would only be accepted in the form of an Australian bank. MORE FRUSTRATION.

There's pretty much a bank on every corner but we chose the one closest to our hotel. NAB (National Australia Bank) also looked the most fun. They were amazingly nice & helpful. HAPPY again! opening an account was a breeze and did not cost a penny.
* Which by the way they do not have here. yeah. no such thing as pennies. they looked at me funny when I said it doesn't cost a penny. umm yeah duh cause a penny doesn't exsist here
The nice lady @ the cell phone store reccomended trying a place called UniLodge for housing. They're mostly downtown and are student accomadations and she knew someone with kids staying there so we went to check it out. Only she didn't know where it was so we would have to search. Now small amounts of hope.
Found the UniLodge, It's a completly affordable hotel for students. They have one delux studio available and took us up to see it. EXTREME EXCITEMENT WE HAVE FOUND A HOME!!!
Came back down to the front desk to get the paperwork. Only while we were up there the other desk worker gave it to someone else. sad sad sad. We were seriously crushed. I almost started crying. they took our number in case anything opened up but It didn't look like it would. They wished us luck.
Across the street was the City Information Center so we thought we'd go get distracted and get soem info about the city. I happend to ask the desk if there was anything else like the UniLodge and one thought that there were actually several locations. And she knew where one was located! We felt really rushed at that time. Like we had to sprint to the next location before someone else took our spot. It was only 5 blocks away and by some sheer perfection we met Karrie, the manager of UniLodge Swanston. She is an angel and has given us a place to live.
We're in a one bedroom w/ study fully furnished apartment, in a full security building. A 24 desk to help with anything we could possibly need, a rec room, Trips all over Victoria that are included in rent, there are several other children so Karrie says she will organize a trip to the zoo for everyone. She also says she will move two twin beds into the "study for the boys and our room is supposed to only have one twin so we'll get a double..heaven

Early Wake-Ups

We're still waking up at about 4AM. Trying to keep the boys up later & later till we get on schedule. Yesterday we made it to 7PM (1AM US). I'm on the hotel computer charging me $2 for 20 min of internet use. We're frantically searching for apartments. Most of the showings are on Saturday but we only have reservations until tuesday so we're hoping to go to the real estate offices to try to get soemthing worked out earlier. We've been walking crazy amounts even with the busses & trams. Yesterday we walked 15 blocks just to look at one apt. It sucked but there was a great pizza place around the corner so it blanced out. The good thing about all this walking is I burned that pizza slice off twice before we even ate! My calves hurt though and my shoulders from heavy bags & a two year old.

Oh yeah and since I haven't said anything about it yet. Everyone has GREAT accents. Some so thick we can barely understand. My favorite though is foreign language speaking people(example- Chinese or Indian) that speak their first language, then speak Australian-English. It's just one of those things I never thought about until I heard it.It makes me smile.
Talk to you soon

We made it

We survived! It’s been a seriously crazy couple of days. We took off on James & Cavan’s birthday, the 10th. Spokane to Seattle where we spent the night & visited with James’ Aunt Penni, Uncle Kim, his cousin Arielle and sweet baby Colter. We left Seattle the next day @ 3pm arriving in LA @ 5. Our flight from Seattle was easy once we got started. Declan was asleep before we even took off. They had us all sitting apart so that was stressful, but we ended up together literally shuffling seats as we boarded.
We arrived in the domestic terminal @ LAX. We then had to take a shuttle to the International terminal. While we did that we met a friendly couple from Melbourne who shared all kinds of tips about the city with us. The wait for our long flight to Sydney was fun. We sat a gate away from the boarding gate so we could spread out & relax. A fun dance group who had come from Perth to the US to perform @ Disney Land sat close and the teen girls fell in love with Cav & Dec and played with them, making our wait seem shorter while simultaneously exhausting the kids! It was awesome. Our flight left LA at 10:30PM and was estimated to take 15 hours. The AirBus is the most amazing invention Ever! We had a middle section all to ourselves. Each seat had a touch screen with a personal entertainment system that blew my mind. There was an interactive map & travel section sowing our flight pattern and allowing us to search AU maps. There was a camera attached to the Tail of the plane so we could watch our take off & landing. That was the highlight of the boys’ trip I think. We had new release movies, classics, foreign films and Australian movies & documentaries. TV shows, books on tape, all kinds of music & radio channels and games. They even had a kids menu with kid movies & TV shows, and games as well. Every seat had a phone in the handle and the back of the phone was a controller for the games, as well as controlled your lights, air and other fun stuff. There was a power plug in & USB plug in for each seat as well as a “foot hammock” attached to the seat in front of you. The meals were amazing, we were served dinner at about 11:30PM(4:30PM AU) then we slept for about 8 hours. We woke up about 2AM AU (7AM US) which left only 4 ½ hours until we reached Sydney. The boys did amazing. When we weren’t eating or watching shows we went for aisle walks. There was a yummy snack & drink bar that was help yourself.
*insert- we are sitting in our hotel room while I type this up. The news is on, we’re learning name/location pronunciations. Sting is playing here in Melbourne and I commented on it. Cavan just yelled from the bathroom that “No mom, the stink’s not Melbourne, it’s me, I’m pooping.” Now he’s singing a dragon fight poop song ☺ The boys are making this trip sooo funny.

Qantas Airlines was amazing. Sydney customs, not so much. We arrived in Sydney @ 6AM AU. We had to get through Immigration, collect our baggage, go through Customs, recheck our bags, take a shuttle to the Domestic Terminal and be ready to board our last flight to Melbourne by 9:10AM. We thought that would be plenty of time. We went through everything without a hitch. It still took 3 hours!! Most of you know the day before leaving, we had some issues with a flight that was supposed to leave Sydney @ 7:45. I’m glad we were put onto a later flight. We would never have made it!
Finally arriving at our Hotel here in Melbourne was amazing. It had been approximately 44hours and 45 minutes since we left our Hotel in Seattle. From the air Melbourne looks like the northwest, surprisingly Spokane-like. The suburbs are spread out, farmland mixed with forests. We took a bus from Tullamarine Airport to Downtown CBD. Then we took a smaller shuttle to our hotel. Mom, you would be so proud of my bus & shuttle skills! For the rest of you I have until now refused to take the Pullman bus because I hadn’t before and IT’S SCARY if you’ve never done it! (Yes I am in my mid 20’s, really it’s my parent’s fault, right?!?) We’ve yet to take the wonderful mix of Trams, Shuttles, Busses and Trains. But we will be today so I’ll let you know how it goes.
Buying Internet from the hotel or any “internet café’s” is expensive here so we are in search of free wi-fi until we can get our service started. I’m getting this post ready & saved on the computer until we can jump online and post it. It might be a bit until we get constant service so be patient & you’ll here from us soon.
*Cara- During our entire trip so far we’ve experienced people with serious personal space issues. Just thought I’d let you know it’s everywhere and I now consider it to be a serious pet peeve! ;)

The Big Move

We're headed off on Saturday and it's so close! Packing is just about finished. Visas issued, passports in order, itinerary's printed and organized. I've got two days left of work and then we're free!

Cavan and Declan are excited for the plane rides. James and I are less excited than them. :) 19+ hours in a plane over two days is going to be an adventure in itself. Many of you have asked how much we will be taking so just fyi we are only taking clothes & personal stuff. Laptop, camera equipment... maybe a straightener. Whatever we can shove into two big suitcases is it! We'll be bare bones-in it with basic furniture, the boys & I have elaborate plans to make some cardboard furniture & awesomeness. I will consider it an accomplishment if we complete at least one project.

We have not yet found an apartment to put furniture in so the first week will be a mad dash to find our home for the next 5 months. The weather is cooler and in the middle of their winter down there. If we look cold in our pictures we probably are!

We will miss you all so much and Thanks to everyone we got to see before we left & wished us well on our trip! We will see you in about 6 months.