Ben and I have spent three months, almost exactly, in Australia so far. It’s been odd being so removed from most everyone we care about. I’ve never been five hours’ flight away from most of them for more than a few weeks in my life. Odd is a good word for it. It’s an odd feeling knowing that if a friends’ relationship should dissolve, if a relative should have a health crisis, if a relative should die, that it would take $3,000 and several days to reach them. It changes what it means to be supportive.
Our internet is tres flaky right now, and that won’t change till I start working (whole ‘nother story) because strange regulations here require you to have employment in order to give a company your money to get a reliable connection. The absurdity of this aside, it means video-chat has been impossible, so we’re left with emails, chat, and skype-calls.
There have already been several times where I’ve wished I could hop a quick flight to spend the weekend with someone having a hard time, and I know there will be many more. So I write emails, try to stay on top of correspondence, write this blog to give people a sense of what our life is composed of now, and try to chat real-time as frequently as reasonable.
And then five weeks ago Colin decided to visit Oz for two weeks! One week later Alexis decided to visit for two weeks!
It is, again, odd, to go from complete separation to hosting two of the more important people in your life. Shocking, wonderful, exhilarating, exhausting, and odd.
Alexis left a week and a half ago, Colin a week ago, and now I’m letting you know where I’ve been – having a blast vacationing with them, and then recovering. I’m so so happy they were able to visit, and especially that they were able to do so before I (finally) start work. We spent days rooting around tide pools. We walked endless rocky beaches. We took two trips to the Blue Mountains. We encountered fascinating wildlife. We visited the Australian Museum, the Maritime Museum (Colin), the aquarium, Sydney’s tallest building on a beautiful day, took ferries, picnicked, walked islands, explored historical ruins, played in parks, ate interesting food, and generally used every moment.
Colin, Alexis, thank you for visiting Oz! PS you might disagree but I love how utterly disorganized we are in this picture.