A Grand New Adventure

Taking in the view a little walk from our
new home in Sydney

A little over a week ago we left the United States for Australia.

We never truly expected to have another chance to live abroad, but when Steve had a new opportunity with Ernst & Young arise, we knew we had to say yes. We once again felt the wide range of emotions about leaving family and friends, U.S. familiarities, our jobs and so many other things. Yet, we felt the excitement on the other end of having new experiences, learning about a new culture, making new lifelong friends, and of course new travel opportunities!

As every situation is uniquely different there are things about this move abroad that made it both easier and more difficult than moving to Switzerland. It is significantly easier from the respect that Australians speak English. I also spent a summer here in college doing an internship, which gave me some basic level of familiarity. It was also easier simply because we have moved abroad before, while the terms and arrangements from Ernst & Young are slightly different than before, it still certainly gives you a level of comfort to know that you've done it before and can do it again. It is more difficult simply because it is further from the U.S., providing more challenges for us to go back and forth and we expect for visitors to come as well. Another challenge we face is feeling like we really do not know anyone here in making this move. Steve knows a few people that he will be working with from e-introductions and we know some people who used to live here, but we feel like we are starting from scratch for the most part. We luckily knew a few people that lived in Zurich prior to our arrival and quickly met a whole contingency of U.S. expats shortly after our arrival. This group of people became our family and some of our closest friends. We shared many common experiences and learned our way in Switzerland together. While we expect it to be difficult at first, we hope it does not take long to find some new, great friends here in the land of Oz.

Our adventure really started days after we arrived back from our vacation to Costa Rica and Panama in mid-June. And really by adventure, I mean adventures. First, we found out we were pregnant. Yes, that's right, we've moved abroad again while expecting. There's no way we could ever plan this, seriously a God thing right here, somehow telling us we are not meant to have kids in the United States. So within days of returning home and finding out I was pregnant, Steve found out about this opportunity in Sydney, and as you can guess it by mid-July he was offered and accepted it.

Come August we had a huge moving sale, our St. Louis house was sold and we moved to a temporary apartment in St. Louis. While we initially expected to do a small container shipment with furniture and household items like we did to Switzerland, at the last minute we had a change of heart as we found out just how long it would take to arrive: 10 to 15 weeks (and that's IF all goes as planned and doesn't get stuck in customs). Let's just say that even if our container had a month head start on us leaving the country, this pregnant lady had no intentions of sleeping on a blow up mattress for another couple months while we waited for our bed to arrive. As a result we really did get rid of most everything, with the exception of what could fit in a small storage space and the boxes we ended up shipping with us.

While it took a little longer than expected our visas were officially approved on September 18 and two days later we booked a flight for the following weekend on the 27th. Despite the fact that we had already done so much by moving out of our house a month earlier, somehow there is always a lot still to be done at the last minute. Luckily my last day at work had been a week earlier and it gave me a little extra time to prepare, with my trusty three year old side kick by my side. By the time we finished up our last few things and shipped all 30 boxes (10 more than we had hoped to ship), packed our six suitcases and said all our final good byes we were more than ready to set off.

Ok, you can only really be so ready to take a 30 hour trip with a three year old. The toll of the past few weeks was taking its course as Steve and I both had bad colds as well, but luckily none of it had affected Emma. She was eager and ready to go on the "big flight" to Australia that we had been talking about for the past month plus. We too, were so thankful to finally have checked everything off our to do list and finally be on our way.

Steve was smiling here in St. Louis with all our luggage, he wasn't smiling quite as much by the time we got to Sydney...

Unfortunately when you book so last minute your travel options are not always as ideal as you would like and we ended up with a 7.5 hour layover in Los Angeles. Note to self or any of our future visitors: fly through Dallas (as had been recommended to us previously). Los Angeles was terrible. And while Emma did phenomenally well on the flights, let's just say some three year old beastliness showed itself during that layover. We were thankful when she finally passed out for the "night" about an hour before we boarded the flight leaving LA. However, it didn't help us out as much as we hoped as we sat on the plane for an extra two hours waiting for the flight to take off. Evidently that little truck that pushes your plane back from the gate is a big deal and when it's broken and the airport is extremely busy it takes a long time to get a replacement truck...

Emma enjoying the Magic House exhibit at Lambert

Luckily we found another play area in LAX and Emma made about 10 new friends during our three hour play session

Some 16 hours or so after boarding the flight in LA we finally arrived in Sydney, and note to self again, always be awake for the sunrise landing as it's amazingly beautiful as the plane circles over all of greater Sydney coming in. A few more long lines and we were safely through customs, all six checked suitcases, car seat and stroller arrived safely and we didn't get stopped for bringing in any apples (ask me sometime about my previous experience in New Zealand and you'll understand). We found a super size taxi and made our way to our temporary home for the next two weeks in the heart of downtown Sydney.

We were all thankful for the iPad and the headphones on the planes...

While it was only 10 am on Tuesday morning in Sydney (we left on Sunday morning St. Louis time), we were obviously all pretty exhausted despite actually getting what can be called semi-decent sleep for flying economy. Nonetheless Emma went straight to what she does best, organizing. We had hardly been in the temporary apartment but 10 minutes and she had to unpack her suitcase and start to unpack her parents' suitcases too. She finally stopped once all our swimsuits were found so that we could go swimming, because when your temporary living arrangement has a pool, you of course go immediately swimming!

It sure didn't take long to find the swimsuit for the indoor pool at the apartment

By the time early afternoon arrived we were all ready to call it a day and crash but we dragged Emma around the city a little bit in order for a bank account to get opened and to eat dinner. By keeping her up until 6 pm we had hopes she would at least sleep until 3 or 4 am, boy were we wrong when she came in our room at 11:58 pm and said "I'm not tired anymore." I managed to get her to lay in bed for another two hours but by 2 am she was up and ready to go. And so it began.

The view from our temporary apartment

The rest of our week was filled with early mornings, a cranky child by 9 or 10 am (7 am on that first day), followed by the pursuit to find an apartment for us to move into within the next couple of weeks while simultaneously learning to navigate Sydney's public transportation.

Emma loves helping to tell us when it's a "green man" and "red man"

When you're jet lagged you're lucky if you make it to dinner, but the chances of finishing it are slim

Wednesday left us all feeling deflated between jet lag, colds turning to sinus and ear infections, and three less than stellar apartment viewings. We quickly were getting a sense of just where our rental budget put us, and as I had read many a story of other expats doing, by the following morning we had decided to increase our budget.

We really thought our expectations were in check, especially after living in one of the few countries that is more expensive in the world. Yet, the online pictures of the apartments we viewed had done exactly what they should, made them look a lot nicer and larger than they actually were. We already knew that in the areas of the city we wanted to live we would most likely be keeping to a two bedroom property, but we had hoped to still find at least 800 square feet or so. Instead we were finding more of 600 or 700 square feet.

Emma at least enjoyed apartment hunting for all the new parks we found along the way

The giant slide at the playground in Darling Harbour

Thankfully the slightly increased budget and five more apartment viewings on Thursday gave us more hope. Although none were an exact match (not that we expected to find an exact match in such a short amount of time), we found one that was pretty good, and we decided to apply. Perhaps we jumped the gun a little bit, but given our short time window and our knowledge of the Australian rental market we had no time to waste. You can only view or "inspect" an apartment within a 10 - 20 minute block of time designated by the listing agent. At that time you can expect as many as 20 other people to be looking at the apartment also. There is no time to waste, get the details you want and then dash home and apply as quickly as possible if you really like it. If you think you are really going to like it, some people may go so far as to come with application in hand to the "inspection."

So when we found one we were pretty happy with on Thursday afternoon we didn't dare risk the apartment going to a second inspection on Saturday. As you can imagine weekday viewings are really the time to see the property if you can, as from what we've been told it can be absolute chaos on a Saturday and you truly need to immediately apply if you have any hopes of getting it. On top of that, as we found to be the case in Switzerland, the odds can really be against you as an expat. Aside from just an application we had to turn in copies of our passports, birth certificates, previous bank statements, Steve's work contract, personal and professional references, a family overview statement, and past rental references and proof of timely payments. Somehow within a couple hours of submitting everything on Friday morning we had an unofficial acceptance and by Friday afternoon the application was officially accepted. We had a short window of doubt and thinking this all went way too easily and considered backing out and looking elsewhere, but then thought better of it and decided to move forward. Somehow after reading numerous stories of people making countless applications, our application had been accepted on the first try. We had the same dumb luck in Switzerland. Perhaps we are just not picky enough or perhaps we are really that ideal of candidate, let's hope we don't regret anything after we move in!

Emma seems to like the local cookies here...

No matter what turns out we were thankful to have the hunt over and to be able to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend here in Oz. It meant Steve had today (Monday) off of work as well, so what did we do? Well we went to the beach three days in a row and three different beaches. While spring is only beginning they had summer like weather in the low 90's and we weren't the only ones who headed to the beach, it felt a little like the other 5 million Sydney residents did the same thing. Luckily there are tons of Sydney beaches to explore and we, of course, chose to hit some of the most popular ones - Bondi, Manly and Balmoral. Emma found herself at home in no time and I think it's safe to say we have found one of what will become our new favorite family activities.

Welcome to Bondi Beach

She didn't wear a swimsuit this day, but she still wanted to be buried in the sand

Welcome to Manly Beach

Oh thank goodness, I was so worried Emma wouldn't find Frozen here... no not really.

We couldn't get her to stop.

If you spend all morning at the beach followed by nonstop bouncing in a bounce house, you're going to need to eat a gigantic ice cream cone.

Third stop: Balmoral Beach, a little quieter spot from the big ocean waves

So what's on tap for this week? Well we'll continue to live in our temporary apartment until we can move into ours the middle of next week. Steve unfortunately has to start work tomorrow, oh wait, that's probably a good thing since that is what's got us here and will hopefully continue to pay us to stay. So Emma and I will play and explore a new playground every day per her request. I'll attempt to get the Australian healthcare system better figured out and find a new doctor. And we'll get ready to Ikea, Gumtree (Australia's slightly nicer version of craigslist), and Target Australia shop (yes there's Target here, no it's not exactly the same, but based on their website they at least have a few similarities to my favorite go to back in the states). While we have a lot of boxes arriving soon with many of our household items, we don't have any furniture and Emma is awful excited for her new Ikea bed that she picked out two months ago.

She has enjoyed looking at the Ikea catalog maybe a little too much.

Let's start the countdown until move in date, I can't wait, nearly two months of temporary living for this pregnant momma is about as much as she can handle. Oh and that Ikea food sounds pretty good about right now too...

Here's to many more adventures and Friday fun nights that include teaching Emma to like seafood!