we're here!

Sorry it's been so long with an update. Things moved pretty quickly once we got visa approval. Let me see if I can sum up the past couple of weeks...

We moved out of our apartment and in with Tara. She was so wonderful to give up her bedroom for a week! Thanks Tara!

After the movers showed up on Friday the 10th, we stayed with Eddie and Lisa (and their rascally kitties) for two nights. The movers took our mattress, so we needed to crash on their futon.

Then we went to my sister Becky's in Palo Alto for Sunday night to watch football and hang out with our kitties one last time. My parents came up from Kingsburg on Monday to have a bon voyage lunch and give us a few more hugs.

We got on the plane Monday night and landed in Oz Wednesday morning. Nate's boss Shaun was there to pick us up at the Brisbane Airport. After a quick stop off at Nate's new office (to drop off about 200 microscope slides), Shaun dropped us off at our temporary digs.

Our temp. apartment is within walking distance of an enormous mall (the public library is a floor above a gym) where we got cell phones, set up a bank account and went grocery shopping at Woolworths (not at all like the U.S. Woolworths). That first night there was a fantastic storm. We turned down the lights and watched the lightning from the balcony.

Thursday through Saturday we spent getting acquainted with our new city! We rode around on the public train for a while, trying to figure out the best place to get our apartment. We looked at a couple of places, but neither of them seemed quite right, so the search continues.

[While walking through a park on Saturday, Nate was dive-bombed by a magpie! It left a gash on his scalp and we quickened our pace to get out of there. I thought the bird was going for Nate's shiny new glasses, but we learned that it's mating season and that's just what the magpies do! We'll be sure to carry a tennis racket the next time we go for any park walks...]

Yesterday (Sunday) we were invited up for lunch and a bush walk by a new colleague of Nate's - Carrie. She lives up in the hills west of town in a spectacular little house with an amazing view of the city. She and her partner, Jon, have two kitties ('hairy beasts' as Carrie referred to them), a pen full of 'chooks' (chickens) and three or four pens full of guinea pigs (they sell them to the vet store in town). I held a couple of two week old babies and we heard the whole tribe oinking and squeaking ('cuy! cuy!') at dinnertime.

It was great to take a day off from walking around the city to walk around the bush. Carrie and Jon are great and were so gracious to host us. Carrie is a British expat and Jon has lived in this area for nearly his whole life. They answered a lot of our questions and offered advice and suggestions about places to live and visit and contacts for doctors and hospitals for the impending arrival of the baby.

We finished up the night by driving up to Mt. Coot-tha for ice cream and to watch the sun set. A perfect end to a perfect day.

Nate went into work this morning and I trekked over to the public library (not the one in the mall - the nice big new one in Brisbane CBD) to use the free internet.

Australia is kind of like bizarro America. Things look pretty similar, but they're not quite the same. Burger King is called Hungry Jack's and a value meal costs $7. They are constantly showing reruns of Two and a Half Men and the only American news we get is Fox News.

That's all for now. Got to get on finding a place to live so we can set up our little nest. I promise to update more frequently (and with pictures). Thanks for all of the calls and visits in our last couple of weeks in the States!