Update on the eel/fish debate

Apparently those creatures we saw in the pond are long finned eels - the description I read calls them fish too. Who knew? Well, besides Google.

Funday Sunday

Mike's new wheels carried two of us to the local lawn bowling. You don't even have to bend over to pick up the balls - they've got a tool for that. Again, we don't own enough white (or maybe birthdays) to play this sport, we'll keep searching...
With rain in the forecast, we used our Sunday transportation pass to head to the northern suburb of Manly. After years of teaching kids to look Left-Right-Left, we'll spend 4 months relearning Right-Left-Right.


The forecast was right,there was some rain today, giving this hazy view of Sydney from the ferry to Manly. Apparently, surfers do not care if it is raining.

What is that show about eating obscene amounts of food? Apparently, it's totally natural for some.

Harbor view after playing on the playground in stilettos (of course I packed those!)- no prohibiting sign here, why not?

The ferry ride back included a dolphin watch - can you make out the fin?

And finally, our Funday Sunday ended with dinner at David and Erika's - friends from forever ago in Madison. David played on Mike's softball team back in the day and was in our econ program. Erika has been super, incredibly kind at giving us loads of information about the move here. Not to mention, their 10 year old boys shared their Nerf guns with the under 12 crowd AND donated a pile of books to us - a perfect ending.

One last bus ride to home.

Why the kids are eating well

We have a small kitchen that we're very slowly learning how to keep stocked. The kids are very, very hungry at every meal - perhaps the non-stop activity has something to do with it?

We have contact! We made our first few phone calls to US phones via Skype - so simple! Mike is sporting Steven and Jen's head phones while talking to Lori in Chicago.
Enough lounging! To the bus I say! Mike is off trying to prepay for our bus tickets and Daniel and Charlie are pouring over the, now tattered, Lego Club Magazine that made the trip. Four long months until we see another one of these...

We decided to check out the Entertainment Quarter (EQ) Farmer's market. Lots of yummy stuff - I had my eye on the Mini Dutch Pancakes or the French Crepes, but settled for samples because we already ate breakfast. Check out the flowers! Diane, what zone are we in? We're wondering if spring will bring an explosion of flowers in our neighborhood?


The EQ has stadiums, bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants and so on. For example, for $10 for 5 minutes you can roll around in these large inflated balls in a small pool of water.

There's a playground nearby with the standard equipment (actually really similar to the Glencairn Elementary School offerings) and the standard playground rules. In addition, proper foot attire is required :-). That's Molly in the background eating our picnic lunch!

Mike liked ONE of the fun house mirrors:

The Diamond Dogs of East Lansing may have a defector...I wonder if being a lefty is beneficial in cricket? We waited patiently on the sidelines, but never got invited in. Perhaps it was the lack of all-white clothing?

Centennial Park is a HUGE park in Sydney with lots of ponds and birds. Like the Red Cedar, the birds are "trained" to follow the people in hopes of a handout. Unlike the Red Cedar, there were black swans (with cygnets following behind) and other species we need to learn the names of.

Even the fish (Molly said it was an eel, it was really, really long but had fins, so we don't really know) begged:

Of course, all this writing about what we did has made me hungry - we still have a few of the Mint biscuits Mike discovered (think Thin Mints only Yummier!).

Rain?!

How dare it rain on us?

Bench Hunters International

Our very special friend Madonna has her very "own" bench in a park in Skaneateles. We set out today to find our very own bench. After a while, we felt a bit like Goldilocks, looking for one that was "just right". Care to weigh in?

#1 Simple and Close By
#2 Dramatic whitecaps, but close to the dog park
#3 Post modern
#4 It's a climb, but is it worth it for the views of Coogee Beach?
#5 - High on a ridge, but little back support.

We continued our fruitless (so far) search for a book store or library around - but we did have a wonderful stranger offer 2 of my kids bandaids on the street as they "nursed" their skinned knees!

In other news, the windows in our place were cleaned today - oh what a difference a little 409 makes (we wouldn't know from our Michigan lives, we had to come to Sydney to experience window cleaning).

Hanging our clothes out to dry seems to be an Australian thing, so we're embracing it, along with 2 percent milk all the time and Nutella because it had huge shelf space next to the peanut butter.
We now own two bikes for commuting to work, whatever that is. We bought one in Bondi Beach today, famous for surfing and our own form of extreme sports - 6 ft ledge jumping.
Can you see what they're doing in this photo? Yep, we happened upon Winter Festival at Bondi Beach - some very serious puddles those Aussie's were willing to skate through.

Tourism

Another trip on the 377 - downtown to Market and Elizabeth Street with a David Jones on the corner. David Jones looks a bit like Nordstrom and, 2/2, a kind stranger on the bus confirmed our guess about which stop to get off. We got to the Sydney Aquarium right after it opened and discovered a special Lego on the Loose Exhibit in the Aquarium - what luck for the Dickert-Conlins, who packed a suitcase full of Legos for the 4 month trip. This is the octopus @ Poseidon's elbow.


Oh yea, and they have some live animals there too...like the Polar Bears at the Detroit Zoo, they have tunnels that you walk through with the pools full of animals swimming all around you. It's hard to take pictures of them, but here are a few rays swimming over Charlie's head.

Molly is touching a shark's egg.


And Daniel is way to close for comfort to a Duplo Moby Dick made of 345,000 Duplos (even more than we found in our playroom for Sam!). The scene behind is an elaborate mosaic of the ship's crew made entirely of Legos.

Charlie's hand for scale

Next, off to a Chinese restaurant with very yummy dumplings that the woman seated at our table (they were so busy, they were putting groups together) helped us figure out how to eat and even requested forks for the struggling Americans :-) Don't worry, Mike was managing just fine!

The Queen Victoria Building in downtown Sydney is being "respectfully restored" - notice the scaffolding:


Across the street we tried a bookstore I read about and got some tips on good kids' books. However, we're still struggling with sticker shock: $25(A) for a paperback kids' book. I'll be downloading to my Kindle - buy American :-).

All Work and Some Play

Good morning sunshine! Kiddos were up again around 4:30AM - still working on the adjustment. However, the sunrise from our apartment, over the Pacific, makes it not all bad.

We checked out our offices at the University of New South Wales and learned that there is tea every Friday @ 10:30 AM - how lovely. In addition, we look forward to practicing passive recreation near the library.

We also investigated preschools for Charlie and found a Montessori for him that seems great, if only a bit out of the way. We took a walk after dinner tonight to try to find a "shortcut". Did we mention lots of hills in Coogee? Here's Daniel at the start, outside our place - we have the 2nd floor. Turns out "winter" in Sydney means it gets dark early, so it was a bit dark by the time we returned home.


Mike practiced some anger management on the cell phone guys and we now have 2 working phones. Who will we call? While he was out working on the phone situation, Molly, Daniel and I played as many card games as we could stand, Molly is insatiable, while Charlie took a MUCH needed nap and made it up to 8PM tonight.

Random pretzel art at the lunch table - they're going to love our kids at the South Coogee Public School, so very talented.