long-awaited photos

Alright, so I promised photos weeks (almost) ago. Some photos from the past few weeks...

Ainsley and Nate

Our beetle-loving friend Ainsley has relocated from Berkeley to Canberra. She was in town for a visit to the Queensland Museum and points north, so we met up with her for a night of Mussels from Brussels and Belgian beer. (She broke her foot earlier that week in a bike accident and was a good sport to hobble around the Brisbane CBD in search of a good place to eat.)

Manly's version of Ecto 1

For Halloween, we took the train out to Manly, a seaside town that was holding a Halloween festival (complete with firebreathers and belly dancers). We ate at a yummy fish and chips place (Nate continued on his mission to rid the world of barramundi) and saw countless pint-sized Spidermans (Spidermen?).

Now they tell us! The magpie isn't quite so comical in real life when it's screeching and diving at your head.

Photos of our apartment!

The front door. Our apartment is 1/3 of a converted Queenslander house, so the entrance is at the back of the property. Up the steps, not through the wooden gate. It's a highset house, so it's supposed to keep cool in summer. We'll just see about that...
The kitchen
The lounge (taken from the kitchen). Yes, the fridge is in the lounge. Not much room in the kitchen for it!
The bathroom (mermaid shower curtain purchased on sale at Target.) just off from the lounge. It has a funny galley door that slides open.
Guest bedroom/office and adjoining sunroom. It's full of packaging material at the moment. Nothing else to put in there until our things arrive!
Our bedroom with the crib sort of set up.Sunroom that adjoins our bedroom with fan and diaper changing area (let's hope this kid doesn't arrive too soon - we're not quite ready).
Our neighborhood
Me, with 4 1/2 weeks to go until the due date. Black is slimming, no? (Sorry for the half-smile. I was half asleep.)
The belly (and chest!) from my point of view. No feet in sight.

We're getting settled in the apartment, still getting used to the neighborhood and the quirks that come with living in a converted house. Nate's got a tough commute until his bike arrives with the rest of our things (about an hour if he times it right with the bus) and the futon we're sleeping on isn't quite as comfortable as our dear mattress.

Things are scheduled to arrive on November 25, with a couple of days or weeks to get through customs. Anyone want to start wagering on which arrives first? Baby or our stuff? Just our luck, they'll show up on the same day.

So we have a permanent address. If you want it, just e-mail me or Nate. We don't have internet set up yet, so I'm still trekking to the State Library to use their free wireless.

Some pictures from our first few days in Brisbane.

Taken from the plane. The sun rising over the Pacific as we approach Australia.
After all of the warnings we got about choosing our words carefully (see the bottom of the entry), we saw this street sign while looking for an apartment!
The jacarandas are in full bloom all around the city and are absolutely gorgeous! This is on the University of Queensland campus.

The gash on Nate's scalp from the dive-bombing magpie! We have since learned that these attacks are common during nesting season and have even seen warning signs up around town!

Carrie and Jon's house on the hill and right on the edge of Brisbane Forest Park.

The view of the city (it's way out there) from their porch and a cage of guinea pigs out front.

We got caught in a rainstorm on the way home from the supermarket yesterday. We got home pretty soaked, but the rainbow sure was pretty.

Safe and sound on our balcony. The baby has been making quite a ruckus lately. Lots of big kicks into my ribs. Just about 8 weeks to go until Baby Hardy makes his (or her) debut!

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!