My new home

Before I left Orlando, everyone asked me to start a blog so they could experience my adventures in Australia through my blog.  Well, after a little over a month I finally figured this thing out.  So to put everyone up to speed this is what has happened so far...

We arrived in Australia on July 6th after a long trek halfway across the world that lasted over 30 hours.  Needless to say when we landed I had no idea what day it was and really wanted to shower.  We arrived at our hotel after paying $70 for a taxi with all 8 of our bags.  We were feeling ready for lunch, but it was much earlier than we had thought, so we had breakfast again.  After a few days of requiring afternoon naps like a small child we adjusted to the time change.

During our first week here, we had so much to do:
*Fill out more paperwork for Mark's job
*Open a bank account
*Find a place to live
*Buy furniture for our new house + so much other stuff you don't realize is essential for a home
*Buy a refrigerator and washing machine (haven't quite figured this out yet, but a dryer is usually included, but not the washer???)
*Set up all of our utilities
*Get cell phones
*Figure out how to pay for all of this stuff when the majority of your money is in US dollars (we have learned there was probably a better way to take care of the money stuff, now we'll know for next time)

Luckily the house search wasn't too bad considering there were not that many options.  Once we factored in price and location we were left with one apartment, which by the way is the smallest home I have ever had.  You think paying the outrageous price for our little home you would have everything you needed, except heating and air conditioning.  Since it is winter here, it was quite chilly in our house.  It would have been very entertaining for someone to watch us walk around our tiny home looking for the thermostat only to realize there wasn't one.  Space heaters were quickly added to our list of essential items.  For those who don't know how cold natured I am, I usually like the temp in the upper 70's, nearing 80, so the low 60 something it was in our apartment was just not working for me.

We did finally get just about everything we needed, unfortunately all of our furniture needed to be assembled, so this kept us busy for a while.  After a month we are still waiting on our chairs for our kitchen table and really hoping we get those soon.  For now we use the ottoman and the desk chair.  I'll post some pics of our house soon, just finishing up an art project to make our walls look less boring.

Here is one of our first pictures taken in Australia:

The Sydney Harbor Bridge with the Opera House over Mark's shoulder.