Splish splash

Our house in the middle of the street is our house.

If you can imagine a place that just keeps getting better, maybe Disneyland or the beach, you can imagine our house. In the past four weeks we’ve been here, things continue to amaze me. Firstly, we moved in and the fireplace worked, the landlord told me there was a bunch of cut wood in the back and to use it. Needless to say the house has been warm at night and has a wonderful cabin feel when the fire’s raging. The weather however has abruptly turned and the fireplace hasn’t been needed so we’ve packed up our indoor attitudes, Drew (one of our roommates) bought a BBQ, and we spend a lot of time outdoors. The one “crapy” tennis court in our back yard is the one we use daily now to play a game I’ve termed sockis. It’s a combination of soccer tennis and volleyball. No hands are allowed but you can pass to your partner in an attempt to smash the ball down on the other teams court. It’s a great game and I’ve walked away many times a dirt color, as sweat and dust mix nicely on skin. To top all this off we’ve finally found a church to attend, which is about 1 km away full of extremely welcoming people who love the Lord.

Drew is like a large child who loves games. He is also very driven when he puts his mind to things. The other day he came home from a visit to K-mart, with a vision: Our back yard with a 10-foot diameter pool plunked between a picnic table and a tennis court.

Yesterday he bought a pool from K-mart. It was filled this afternoon and by 4:00 I was splashing around with a smile on my face.

C.

Happy Birthday Mom

It’s my mom’s birthday today (at home). I’ve just been thinking about how blessed I am to have a Mom like her. While on the other side of the world I can still see her running around accommodating everyone around her with only an hour here or there to enjoy a book, soon to be by the fire by the looks of the weather in Vancouver. She sacrifices daily, I can’t remember the last time I heard her make a solid request that we all do something she wants to do. The last time I remember her spoiling herself was on a shopping trip with my auntie Gina who most likely encouraged her to spend as much as she wanted. I bet when Gina found out how much she wanted to spend on herself she made it her own personal campaign to quadruple the amount because it would have only maybe bought her one complete outfit. I remember how happy my mom was when she got home with many many outfits and got to show them off. She looked fantastic; she basically glowed in her beautiful new dresses, her smile and fancy shoes. I think she even waved the receipt in my dads face as if to say see I can spend money too. That was probably 3 years ago now and I bet she hasn’t gone on a spending spree since unless it was with one of her girls where all the spending done, was on them. My dad likes to spoil her though and gets her wonderful presents but the point is, she doesn’t ask for them. My mom’s been one of my greatest role models, as time passes I can see how much she’s influenced my life, I can’t say I’ll ever be as sacrificial as her but it’s something that makes me think every time I want to be super selfish. In Australia the sun’s shining for you Mom, it’s a beautiful day to celebrate your birthday. You should do what you want today and smile while you’re doing it. I love you.

C.

Stupid drama

We've begun another round of midterms! I can't believe how time is passing; It seems like we've just finished first semester, and now we can see the finish line for our first year. Things have been a little bit stressful lately, primarily due to our landlord. He has invited us to take him to court if we want to see our damage deposit again. I don't care about the money that he's attempting to steal from us, I'm mostly angry because we're being screwed for doing nothing wrong and this is distracting for Colin during exams. We've contacted the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association for advice, and I'm hoping that they're supportive and helpful. My mom suggested not paying our last two weeks rent because she knew that we wouldn't see our damage deposit again (which was the amount of 2 weeks rent, and residing in India with our landlord) and I insisted that he was an honest fellow. Next time I won't be so naive and I'll listen to my mom. Fortunately, because we're renting a home legitimately through a real estate agency, our current damage deposit has been registered with a bond agency, who serve as an impartial board only concerned with damage and damage alone.

Hopefully we can get our money back and get this guy into a bit of trouble.

Our house looks awesome, I'll have to tidy it up and take some pictures later this week.

E.

bug proofing

So far our new house has been fantastic and we've done a great job of furnishing it thus far-mostly for free too. Sometimes when I'm just sitting, I'll look around me and admire what a beautiful home it is, and consider myself very blessed to live here. The one downside to our lovely abode is that it was built sometime between 1880 and 1920, so there are lots of nooks and crannies. Being that it's still "cold" outside, we haven't seen too many bugs yet, but I know they're coming. It'll still be terrifying, but at least I'm not going into summer completely ignorant. I just found my first cockroach of the season near the toilet and it never ceases to amaze me how such an awkward, disgusting creature can move so quickly.

Since being in Australia, I haven't seen too many gigantic spiders, and the ones I have seen haven't been in my home. Since we've moved into this house I've had a reoccurring daydream where I walk into a room and there's a spider so big that he can talk. He invites me in and talks like a creepy 65 year old blues singer. It's incredibly frightening. He also looks sort of like he could be a puppet on Sesame Street. Every time I have the daydream I am reminded that I need to start blocking off many of our nooks and crannies, but I just never seem to get around to it.

Colin and I were supposed to be refunded our damage deposit back from our old landlord yesterday but have yet to see it in our account. Something tells me we're going to have problems with him. I just wrote him a firm email conveying our disappointment in his tardiness (don't worry, I didn't use the word 'tardy') and I'm hoping it'll be a real zinger. I'll be holding my breath!

E.

Busted

I’m trying to think of the best way to sum everything up that has happened but there is just too much. Here are the highlights:

Wednesday afternoon I felt sort of down with the whole housing scene and went to the movie store to get a few rentals since it was $1 Wednesday (yes, even new releases!). Came home and Colin says that we have to leave asap to check out a house. We jump in the car, pick up one of our roommates and meet the real estate agent by 4:30.

The house is phenomenal. Perfect location. Huge size. 3 tennis courts in our BACKYARD!!!! The exact rent we wanted to pay. I asked the real estate agent how many people had already applied and he said that we were the only ones looking at it. I asked him how that was possible and he said that he had already done the open houses, found renters, and then they dropped out at the last second. So now, instead of opening up the house again on the weekend, he thought he’d phone us back because we had called so many times about the house.

I told him that we’d have all 4 of our applications and supporting documents in to him by Thursday morning and he said he’d let us know by Thursday night!

We got the phone call, got the house, and signed the lease on Saturday. One of our roommates moved in on Saturday, and we’ll be moving in Wednesday this week. The last week has been a blur of trying to find furniture and we still don’t have a fridge, but it’s slowly coming along. The last 3 weeks has been solely dedicated to finding a place to live and now to furnish and I’m pretty pooped out, but elated that it’s almost over.

Here are a few pictures of the house:

The room with the large bay window is our bedroom!

You may be wondering why we have 3 tennis courts in our backyard and it's because our landlord rents them out to a coach who teaches kids. The courts are so far from our house that we can't see them from the house. The coach doesn't use the courts that often and only has 5 students at the moment, so we get the courts the rest of the time!

On Saturday we picked up some free “sofa couches” but couldn’t fit them in our car, so we tied them on top of our wagon instead. We still had to sign the lease so we went to the real estate agency with our new furniture on the roof, hillbilly style. Unfortunately we forgot they were up there and tried to park in the underground parking. Our wagon now sports two dents on the roof and a lesson well learned. On the bright side, it wasn’t ME driving! (Though I was the first to suggest parking there).

After we signed the lease we booked it over to our new house to unload some of our goodies that we had on the roof and in the back seat, one of which being my soccer ball. We were playing with all of our various balls in the house, and I accidently overshot my tiny kick at the wall, managing to break our first window within two hours of signing out lease. I think our roommates must think we’re complete idiots.

That’s what we’ve been up to.

E.

HOMED!

We miraculously found a place Wednesday night, applied this morning, and we're signing a lease on Saturday. Pictures and explanation to come!!

E.

Homeless

Our weekends have been filled with many hours of house searching. We’ve filled out a couple of applications but have no idea how people are chosen, which is sort of frustrating. I asked a real estate agency and was told that they just run all the applicants background checks, then give all the information to the owner of the property, and he/she chooses you. I sort of feel like a puppy at the pound waiting for someone to find me worthy, or maybe I’m the deflated old dog that doesn’t even catch your eye when you walk by. I don’t know! We’ll probably have to move to a shady hotel in a week but I’m okay with that as long as it’s just temporary. Last night I counted how many times I’ve moved and the number is 11 in the last 7 years, not including 3 summers of camp, living out of a Rubbermaid and in a barn. That’s a lot of effort spent moving stuff around. I look forward to the day we stay in one place for a while.

Work has been going well but one of our staff has left to take care of a terminally ill aunt and will be gone until the end. Everyone has been covering her shifts and I’ve been getting more hours than I know what to do with. My days are usually 7-7 and I’m super appreciative for the time, especially because I like my job and it doesn’t feel like 12 hours when I’m there. Yesterday one of my coworkers used “crikey” in a real sentence, and I almost peed my pants I was so happy. It was my first Australian crikey.

Last weekend we went to The Argyle for a birthday party, and it was the most beautiful bar I’ve ever been to. I want to design a house that looks just like it. I didn’t bring a camera but here is a glimpse of how awesome this one small section of it is. Please note: Hanging glass booth in center where DJ does his thing. I'll try and get a picture of the bathroom area, I know the Canadians were taking pictures of it. We're a classy bunch.

E.