Three Months In!

As of a few days ago, we've now been living in San Francisco for THREE MONTHS!!! It's gone so quickly, yet also feels like it's been decades since we saw Sydney. There are definitely things that we've really been loving, and things that are less desirable. 

Things I/we love have included:

~The convenience of this city and country. Robert's developed an Amazon addiction; he's bought a lot off there so far, and I guess I can't argue with their slightly cheaper prices and quick delivery! But aside from online services, there's just everything right outside our door. Literally. 

~BALLET!!! As I've mentioned before, it's something that I simply thought I'd never do again as there aren't really any accessible adult classes in Sydney. It has really been a small dream come true for me. 

~The city's diversity. Regardless of your racial background, your gender, sexuality or whatever else, San Francisco is pretty accepting of anyone. Which is very important to me and can make or break a place for me. I've had a few experiences in my life of very non-diverse places and they've just been horrible for me. I'll never go back to that. So it's great to be living in (probably) one of the few cities that don't support Donald Trump "values". 

~SNOOPY!!! Most people know how much I love Snoopy. More of this to follow when I've finished going through some photos..!

~It's been amazing to see Robert in the hub of his industry. I can definitely see how much more opportunity is here for his career. (If anyone's interested in a hilarious parody of SF and the tech industry, watch Silicon Valley. The humour can be pretty crude at times, but it's hilarious, whether you're a techie or not! It's the only thing I watch on a weekly basis!)

~Arts support! I love, love, LOVE how SF tries to really value the arts and artists of various types. I feel like things I do and love are actually legit here. If we do stay here, I look forward to (hopefully) building myself a career in a place that might actually take me seriously!

~The Kids' Creativity Museum. This place is a few blocks away from where we live, and it's basically been a second home to our toddler and me! Since I'm (still) not really confident enough to drive on my own, he and I walk everywhere during the week. This place is awesome.

~The playgrounds here are so great. They're all gated (anyone with a toddler would understand how useful this is!), and the equipment is mostly awesome! 

~The real estate. OK, the prices of real estate here are HORRIBLE, but I like the style of the homes around here. We don't live in one, but the old Victorian style I really like. 

~It's similar to Sydney, but also different. This is good because I wanted/needed an adventure, but I'm not adventurous enough to live in a place that's too different to what I'm used to. I didn't want to have to learn another language or bring a family up in a place that's just completely foreign to me. 

~THE LACK OF GIANT BUGS AND SPIDERS!!! As someone with a big phobia of bugs, I'm much less afraid of nature here. Haha!

~The weather. It's so much more temperate than Sydney. We're in the middle of Spring, and most days are quite cool.

And then on the other hand, less desirable things have been:

~As mentioned above, the real estate costs here are AWFUL. Whether you're buying or renting. We thought Sydney was expensive; Sydney is cheap in comparison.

~Coffee and cheese are terrible here. I don't think Americans understand either.

~Being so far away from family. This was always going to be an obvious one. Sure, we've regularly been Skyping my family, and Robert's mum's learnt how to use her phone to message him. We share videos via Facebook chat with my sister in law of all our kids, and we also use TinyBeans (a calendar for privately sharing photos and videos of your family) with our immediate family, where we upload pics and videos daily. But it's not the same as being able to see them in person. And I miss them a lot. (Can someone please hurry up and make teleportation a thing?!!!) Plus, if something happens to someone, we obviously can't rush to help and vice versa. ALSO, and this is most important, WE DON'T HAVE ANY BABYSITTERS! Haha. I know there are apps and services available to find babysitters, but I don't trust people, let alone someone to look after my child! The only people I would have left him with in Sydney were my parents, my mother in law (if she lived closer), my sister and my sister in law (if she'd lived closer, also). And that was in Sydney! I just don't trust people. Ha...

~Parts of this city are rather dirty. Sydney wasn't perfect, but I think with the homeless issue here and the fact that so many people have pets, the place can get a bit dirty. I think they try to keep it as clean as possible, which is much appreciated, but there's only so much you can do sometimes!

~Driving. I dunno if I'm ever going to be used to everything being backwards!!

~The possibility of earthquakes. Don't think I need to say more!

I was going to post some pictures from our trip to the SCHULZ MUSEUM the other day, but I haven't finished going through them and my laptop's very slow at the moment, so I think I'll keep that for a separate post. :-) 

Three months. Time's flying by too quickly! 

xoxo

Exploration Can be a Tad Boring at Times...!

The weather here is slowly warming up. We're now a few weeks into Spring here, and I must say that I'm quite enjoying the weather more than Sydney's. Usually the first few weeks of Spring in Sydney mean 30+ degrees celsius as well as humidity. Well, it has in recent years, and I usually hate it and the oncoming of summer. This past weekend was described as being "warm", and we've just had a couple of days of 25 or so degrees, which has been quite nice. Thankfully, it also cools down quite considerably in the evenings here, too.

One thing that comes with having no idea of what's around you is the possibility to explore. However, with that comes the chance that you find absolutely nothing! I'd planned for the three of us to head about an hour's drive south on Saturday to attend a kids' book fair at a local high school. The way there was a nice drive and we just happened to pass Google, LinkedIn and NASA on the way. Unfortunately, the event itself was smaller than I was hoping and they didn't have any food stalls. And being the lazy mum that I am, I hadn't brought the toddler any lunch. But no matter, surely there'd be something around, right? After looking up Google Maps, I directed us to what was meant to be a mall. Walking in, it felt like we'd truly entered the zombie apocalypse. There was a terrible looking Chinese place, but other than that, this huge shopping complex was mostly empty. The shops were run down and abandoned. And we were getting hungry. One of the few shops that was open, however, was a games shop that sell Magic the Gathering cards: the game that is my husband's favourite hobby. So at least he got to check something out while we wandered around hoping to find something vaguely edible! Our day was salvaged when we drove another half hour to a different set of shops. Thankfully, I have a relatively patient child, and he behaved himself quite well while we wandered around aimlessly. 

Presidio Picnic! Overlooks the bay. :-)

This weekend also saw us finally get nearish to the Golden Gate Bridge. Sort of. Haha. I managed to drag my little family out this afternoon to The Presidio, which, I guess, is sort of a big national park that contains a lot of things like the Walt Disney Museum, restaurants and other tourist-y things, right near the Bridge. There are also some houses in there. So obviously, we didn't see the whole thing. We just went in to go to the weekly Presidio Picnic which happens on the massive lawn outside the Disney Museum. A heap of food trucks (which are very popular in the city) set themselves up and you set up your own picnic on the lawn that's on the bay. We weren't there for very long as we then headed to the playground a bit further up, but it was a good thing to do, and it's awesome that it happens every Sunday! This is also the closest we've been to the bridge. Haha. 

I have also been slowly getting some practise driving! I'm pleasantly surprised that driving a manual car hasn't really been an issue at all. The hardest thing is getting used to being on the other side of the road. Oh, and also the stop signs. They don't have round-a-bouts here. Instead, their intersections have stop signs and cars just take turns going. It's a bit unnerving, but I guess I'll get used to it...

Anyway, this blog hasn't been written very well. I'm a bit tired! But thanks again for reading! 

xoxo

P.S. I saw a lovely penthouse available for sale in SF advertised today. It's only $8.5 million! HA!

House!!!

So after having been here for only two and a half days, we have scored ourselves an apartment! Woo hoo! After a week of being homeless, I was really starting to get sick of it! It's a place that Robert had been eyeing off for a few weeks, we saw it yesterday, filled in an application last night and managed to beat another keen guy and (apparently) someone else in trying to get it! We met the owner/s of the place today, and they're a couple who have a two year old and another on the way, so it's great to know that they had a toddler in the place and that it's suitable to Mr 17 months who thinks he's boss of wherever he goes.  (As a side note, it's sad to understand why there's been an increasing no. of homeless people in this city when you see how crazy real estate prices are here. I didn't think any other place could make Sydney look cheap, but San Fran does...! We have a two bedroom inner-city apartment for which we will be paying more rent than a single person's yearly salary! Although the computing and tech industry probably had a huge impact on these costs, I'm still awesomely proud of where my husband's going in his career in the industry. Oh, the irony...) But, like I said, I was already sick of being homeless, so I'm just excited that it didn't take long for us to secure a place at all! So we have a place to call "home". It's also only a few blocks away from Robert's office, so he won't need to spend much time or money on commuting, which is great! I think he was always aiming to walk to and from work, even if he needed to go a couple of KMs, but a few blocks makes that so much easier!

And excuse the D&M, but it got me thinking last night (when I couldn't sleep at 1am) of the idea of "home". I've been referring to Sydney as "home" and I probably always will. Yet, I always felt like a small part of me belonged in Korea, so I consider it to be mildly a second "home" country as well... yet now we live here, and depending on how long we're here for, our baby may end up considering this his "home", regardless of how I feel. Maybe that's all irrelevant, but it's a weird feeling of displacement when you realise that you're not quite sure where your "home" truly lies...

*Ahem*, excuse that side note. Heh.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to explore much. Between finding a place to live and adjusting to the other side of the world, time's gone by a bit quickly. But I'm hoping to venture into the city a bit tomorrow and find some places where Mr 17 months can run around and burn off energy a bit.

Right. Well, it's 9pm and I'm basically ready for bed. Haha. 

Oh, and I actually had an alright coffee today...! #priorities

xoxo