Back

I realize it's been quite some time, a near eternity in fact, since I last posted. The summer just turned out to be crazy, crazy busy and I just didn't have the blogging bug in me. To be perfectly honest, I'm not really feeling it now, but I'm hoping that if I start writing again, the juices will flow, and I'll get my groove back.

We've just returned from a two-week adventure to Australia. We had originally planned this journey for December, but then started pricing plane tickets. Turns out, it's way, way cheaper to go in July, when it's winter Down Under--so much cheaper that we did the whole trip for what the plane tickets alone would have cost in December. Hard to argue with that kind of math: we checked our calendars, figured two weeks of vacation was good enough, and off we went!

The flight from LA to Sydney is 15 hours, but the way the time zones work, you lose a whole day. So we left LA at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 16th, were on the plane for 15 hours (ugh--I think long distance running is good training for long-haul travel, you just try not to think about how miserable you are and make it through) and landed in Sydney at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 18th. Totally skipped July 17th. Can't say that I really missed it though--probably because it's not my birthday. When we got to Sydney, Garion kept saying "is this real? are we really in Australia?" And I have to say, I completely agreed. There's something weird about ensconcing your self in a metal tube for 15 hours and then magically coming out on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD. Discombobulated is the best way to describe my state of mind upon stepping off the plane: the sun was in the wrong part of the sky, it was winter--but still July, Saturday, but felt like Thursday, and people drive on the left side of the street, which is totally disconcerting until you get the hang of it. We crossed streets very, very carefully for a few days.

We spent the first week and Tasmania where we visited some good friends that we met when Moses was in graduate school. As an added bonus, another friend from Moses' graduate program was also there, so we had a little UofA planetary reunion. Tasmania is cool and wet, very similar to the pacific northwest, and very beautiful. I'd love to go back in the summer and really spend sometime hiking and backpacking there. Some incredibly large percentage of Tassie (everything in Australia has a nickname) is set aside as National Park or World Heritage land. In fact, the whole southwestern chunk of Tassie is completely uninhabited.

My favorite part of Tassie and the highlight of our whole trip was the night we headed to the beach after dark (because it's winter there, this was maybe 5:30 p.m.). At this beach, if you are relatively quiet, you can watch Fairy Penguins come in from the water to their nests on the beach. Our group consisted of four adults and four kids under the age of 6, so "quiet" was a little hard to achieve. We saw them though, and it was amazing. I so wish that I had a picture to share but, obviously, it was dark.

Our second week was spent in Sydney, where we discovered that we are not really so much cut out for big city life. Keeping track of Garion (who refused to hold hands) was exhausting and we ended up spending a lot of time at the beach. We enjoyed the city nonetheless and I can say that we've really BEEN to Sydney. The Opera House is beautiful, but I think like any iconic building, smaller in real life than you think it's going to be. Sydney was a little warmer than Tasmania and I imagine that in the summer the beaches there must be fantastic.

The trip home was tortuous. We had an August 2nd that was about 48 hours long. Jet lag hasn't been too bad though and it is oh so nice to be home!

Here's a link for photos of our trip.