What a whirlwind of a week this first week has been. It's gone so quickly. Between managing to secure an apartment to even starting to look for a car, I feel like I'm slowly getting to know our new city. The weather has been such an awesome relief, having come from horribly hot and humid Sydney. It's been a lovely temperate 20 degrees celsius or so here.
Some first impressions of our new home:
We've been lucky to have been staying in a place that's pretty much in the city. It's just outside of the crazy hustle and bustle, but with just a short walk, we can find ourselves in the thick of it. Which is great; I love being around... things! And since we don't yet have a car, and I'm not a fan of public transport, it's been great to be able to just walk a few blocks and find ourselves... somewhere. And for anyone who's reading this who also has kids: the playgrounds here are awesome! They're all gated and have that rubber-y sort of ground, so it's easy for kids to run around freely. The other thing that's just across the road from us is the kids' creativity museum. We don't really have anything similar in Sydney; it's not really a museum per se, it's more like a big activity centre where kids can play, do various arts and crafts and then have their work displayed in a gallery in upstairs levels. The grounds of this place are also home to an ice skating rink, a carousel, a bowling alley and a playground. It's great!
This sounds a bit sad, but Americans who travel to Australia must find Australia so boring! Everything here is like Australia but on steroids; everything's big and there's more of it! The buildings are huge, there are literally hundreds of TV channels (but they have to get cable here; there's no free-to-air), the supermarkets have more products and more variety, mail is delivered on weekends within 1-2 days, and just... everything is bigger! Their idea of a "small" coffee is Australia's idea of a large! (Plus, whipped cream is just automatically added!) In some ways, this is awesome, in others, it seems overwhelming at the moment. I do like how it's so easy to get something, though!
I feel like I fit in pretty well here. Being racially Asian, married to a caucasian husband with a(n obviously) half-Asian child, I was very conscious of the demographic/s of the area we were moving to. I have experienced racism in my lifetime, and it's horrible. I don't wish it on anyone, let alone my own family. There was no way I was going to move somewhere that wasn't diverse enough so that I felt like I just blended in. But it's good here. There are people of all sorts of backgrounds. There's a lot of Chinese, Spanish and everything in between! So I think my little family is good. :-)
Some downsides are: the coffee (big deal for me! LOL!). It's terrible. I've described it to people as being sugar milk. I often need to order a double shot just to be able to get a significant taste and effect of the coffee itself. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, they put whipped cream on top! Why, I'd have no idea. The TV is also... interesting. Although we have 1000 channels on the TV here, there's often nothing worth watching!! I was also confused as to why they felt like they needed to re-dub some of the characters on Thomas the Tank Engine so they have American accents. What's more, is that everything on TV here is American. I'm used to Aussie TV that includes Australian, American, British, Asian and whatever else. Everything here is American. Sure, they obviously have more shows/movies created here, but there's no variety at all. It's a bit scary, really... Plus real estate is awful!!! It's so insanely expensive, and as I mentioned in my last post, there's an increasing no. of homeless people around. It's a bad cycle...
I'm also getting very anxious about learning to drive on the opposite side of the road...!
But other than that, I'd say our first week has been pretty good. Robert has been working like a crazy person setting up his office, interviewing people, talking on the phone (too much) to banks, etc. etc.
This week I intend to (hopefully) meet up with some people who I've briefly said hi to online and get mr toddler socialising a bit. I also want to check out the shopping more because it's just amazing here! I also can't wait to move into our own place next weekend and to really get settled. Can't believe it's already been a week! Time flies...!
xoxo
Some first impressions of our new home:
We've been lucky to have been staying in a place that's pretty much in the city. It's just outside of the crazy hustle and bustle, but with just a short walk, we can find ourselves in the thick of it. Which is great; I love being around... things! And since we don't yet have a car, and I'm not a fan of public transport, it's been great to be able to just walk a few blocks and find ourselves... somewhere. And for anyone who's reading this who also has kids: the playgrounds here are awesome! They're all gated and have that rubber-y sort of ground, so it's easy for kids to run around freely. The other thing that's just across the road from us is the kids' creativity museum. We don't really have anything similar in Sydney; it's not really a museum per se, it's more like a big activity centre where kids can play, do various arts and crafts and then have their work displayed in a gallery in upstairs levels. The grounds of this place are also home to an ice skating rink, a carousel, a bowling alley and a playground. It's great!
This sounds a bit sad, but Americans who travel to Australia must find Australia so boring! Everything here is like Australia but on steroids; everything's big and there's more of it! The buildings are huge, there are literally hundreds of TV channels (but they have to get cable here; there's no free-to-air), the supermarkets have more products and more variety, mail is delivered on weekends within 1-2 days, and just... everything is bigger! Their idea of a "small" coffee is Australia's idea of a large! (Plus, whipped cream is just automatically added!) In some ways, this is awesome, in others, it seems overwhelming at the moment. I do like how it's so easy to get something, though!
I feel like I fit in pretty well here. Being racially Asian, married to a caucasian husband with a(n obviously) half-Asian child, I was very conscious of the demographic/s of the area we were moving to. I have experienced racism in my lifetime, and it's horrible. I don't wish it on anyone, let alone my own family. There was no way I was going to move somewhere that wasn't diverse enough so that I felt like I just blended in. But it's good here. There are people of all sorts of backgrounds. There's a lot of Chinese, Spanish and everything in between! So I think my little family is good. :-)
Some downsides are: the coffee (big deal for me! LOL!). It's terrible. I've described it to people as being sugar milk. I often need to order a double shot just to be able to get a significant taste and effect of the coffee itself. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, they put whipped cream on top! Why, I'd have no idea. The TV is also... interesting. Although we have 1000 channels on the TV here, there's often nothing worth watching!! I was also confused as to why they felt like they needed to re-dub some of the characters on Thomas the Tank Engine so they have American accents. What's more, is that everything on TV here is American. I'm used to Aussie TV that includes Australian, American, British, Asian and whatever else. Everything here is American. Sure, they obviously have more shows/movies created here, but there's no variety at all. It's a bit scary, really... Plus real estate is awful!!! It's so insanely expensive, and as I mentioned in my last post, there's an increasing no. of homeless people around. It's a bad cycle...
I'm also getting very anxious about learning to drive on the opposite side of the road...!
But other than that, I'd say our first week has been pretty good. Robert has been working like a crazy person setting up his office, interviewing people, talking on the phone (too much) to banks, etc. etc.
This week I intend to (hopefully) meet up with some people who I've briefly said hi to online and get mr toddler socialising a bit. I also want to check out the shopping more because it's just amazing here! I also can't wait to move into our own place next weekend and to really get settled. Can't believe it's already been a week! Time flies...!
xoxo
Sounds like you have been having fun :)
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