Enjoying Sydney

A few days before we left Charleston, we were having a couple drinks with our friends Brad and Mae (currently scheduled as our first visitors to Australia this July), when Brad brought to our attention to the fact that we would not be settled again for at least 4 or 5 weeks. This consisted of another week and a half in the states spent moving out and visiting family as well as finding a place to live in Sydney. Thanks to some good luck, it only took about 3 1/2 weeks from that night to finally feel settled in Sydney, although it felt like much longer. Needless to say, when the time came to sit back and relax on the couch, we were more than relieved.

It was now time to really start enjoying the city we had worked so hard to get to. And so, on our first free weekend we headed out early Saturday morning for a 9.1k bushwalk from the Spit Bridge to Manly Beach. This nature walk hugs the harbor as it winds its way through countless overlooks granting amazing views of the harbor and Downtown Sydney. The beginning of the walk passes some high-end homes overlooking the water before traversing through more remote areas including beaches, cliff overlooks, a lighthouse, a rainforest, a national park and eventually the Manly Wharf and Manly Beach. The most incredible part of this walk is how much prime real estate is protected green space. Despite being in the heart of the biggest city in Australia, it's easy to feel like you're a hundred miles from the nearest town. That is until you turn the corner and come face to face with arguably the most beautiful harbor in the world framed by Downtown Sydney. And then, a few more steps, and you're back in the rainforest passing giant walls of exposed rock far removed from the civilized world. Eventually you round the corner and see Manly Wharf in the distance. The remainder of the walk takes you by the wharf, before heading through the bustling streets of Manly to a spectacular beach. Relative to the well known Bondi Beach, Manly is more of a locals hangout. This is not to imply that Manly is a quiet little beach community. It isn't. There are countless shops, restaurants, bars and lots and lots of people. It is a city beach. That being said, Manly has not been overdeveloped with high-rise hotels, condos or kitchy surf shops every ten feet. Rather, Manly is a beach community with lots of character and plenty to do. It is a great place to spend the day.

Over the next couple weeks, we began taking a long walk nearly every night after work. We quickly discovered that Sydney has parks and bushwalks everywhere. For example, one mile from our house is Balls Head Reserve, a large forested area that was formerly home to a local aboriginal community. Like the walk to Manly, sections of Balls Head Reserve feel like they are in middle of nowhere, while other sections provide incredible harbor and city views. There are several trails that traverse the ridge of the reserve giving you elevated views. In fact, Sydney is full of these types of parks. Literally, they are everywhere. In the North Sydney area, there are roughly 7 peninsulas jutting down into the harbor. As expected, the best views of the harbor and the city are at the tip of each peninsula. However, instead of developing these areas with homes, 5 of the 7 tips are public spaces. And they are amazing. There are so many parks, that is easy to find yourself all alone at an overlook witnessing one of the best sunsets you have ever seen. This is exactly what happened to us One evening at Balls Head Reserve. The sunset over the harbor was phenomenal (pictured above), and we were able to enjoy all by ourselves. This truly is a great city.

The First Two Weeks

And so begins what is certain to be another long blog post in which an attempt is made to summarize our experiences during our first two weeks Down Under. At some point, we will get caught up to present day, and the length of our posts will decrease significantly. Until then, a comfortable seat is recommended.

Arrival
We arrived in Sydney at roughly 8am on a Thursday. Keep in mind; we left on our journey at 2:25 pm on a Tuesday. So yes, the rumors are true, it is a very long flight to Australia. The total travel time was somewhere around 24 hours, but it honestly did not seem that bad. The flight from LA to Sydney was just over 14 hours. Crossing the date line was interesting as Wednesday February 24th did not exist for us. On the other hand, we will have two of the same day when we return. Our first day was a battle to stay awake and fight the jet lag. We had been awake for nearly 30 hours, and it was 8 in the morning. Sleep deprivation has an odd effect on the mind, and we generally felt uneasy and slightly dizzy. We managed to stay awake all day before falling into a 14 hour coma that night.

House Hunting
The next morning we felt as good as one can after such a long journey, and began a week of relentlessly searching for a place to live. For all you landlords out there, the remainder of this paragraph may cause extreme forms of envy. The rental market in Sydney is not like it is in the States, in fact, it's quite the opposite. Rather than jump at the opportunity to show a potential tenant a property (as I have done countless times), the landlord (or usually their agent) simply schedule a 15 to 20 minute time on a Saturday to view the property. During this narrow window, somewhere between 15 and 20 people show up to view the property, and the landlord generally receives three or four rental applications. I know that sounds hard to believe; I was a complete skeptic myself, but it's true. We showed up to view the first property on our list before the agent arrived, and it looked more like the building was having a fire drill as opposed to a property inspection. There were at least 20 people there to look at a small overpriced 1 bedroom apartment for $450/week. That's right, $450/week. They quote rental prices here by the week not the month. I can't blame them; $450 sounds much better than the monthly rate of $1,950. Anyway, we looked at several places that Saturday, and near the end we found one that we loved. Although it was our favorite place we had seen all day, it was also the cheapest. As there were 15 other people at the inspection, we did not hesitate to grab rental applications and get things rolling. On Monday, we showed up at the property manager's office bright and early to submit our applications. Knowing we would have competition, we did not have high hopes for getting our first choice. Late that afternoon, we heard back from the agent. The place was ours.

Financially Unprepared
Like in the states, we were required to pay our first months rent and deposit before finalizing a lease agreement. We planned to meet on a Wednesday to do this, giving us two days to transfer US dollars into Australian ones. What ensued was a stressful, headache producing process that entailed numerous phone calls to our bank as well as an exchange company. I will spare you the details, but if you ever move to Australia or any country for that matter, exchange money before you go. After delaying our move-in date by a day, we finally got word that the money should be in our account early Thursday morning. The news was reassuring, but I was less than confident we would have Aussie Dollars the following day. We checked out of our short-term housing Thursday morning, and made a nerve-racking walk to our new bank. If the money was there, we were off to the property manager's office to sign the
lease, pay our money, and move into our place. If the money was not there, we were off to find another hotel and spend the day worrying the property manager would lose patience with us and lease the property to someone else. Finding a rental property here is no easy task, and the thought of starting over was not a good one. Luckily when we got to the bank, we were welcomed by an account filled with Australian Dollars. The transfer had arrived, and within hours, we were in our new place.

Starting from Scratch
The next week few days was spent acquiring all the things we would need for our new home. It was not a short list and included furniture, dishware, electronics, small appliances, washing machine, refrigerator(typically not provided by the landlord), etc... As expected, this was at times a stressful process. Especially during the
assembly our IKEA furniture, which generally consisted of me misplacing my tools and exhausting my vocabulary of four-letter words. Overall, we were able to acquire everything we needed in a few days, and after nearly two weeks in Australia we were very close to being settled in.

As you can probably tell, our first couple weeks were high-stress. However, with all that had to be done, things went really well for us. We were very fortunate to end up in such a great apartment, and in such a short period of time. Not to mention how much fun we had exploring our new city during our first few days here.

From the Beginning

I'm going to go ahead and apologize for this ridiculously long post. Anyway, here goes.

In 2001, I took a seven week journey through Europe. From that moment forward, travel has been a necessity. Even when I couldn’t afford it, I found ways to travel as much as possible. If I wasn’t on vacation, I was definitely planning one. Not so much to get away from work, but to see as many parts of the world as possible. After a two week trip to Argentina and Peru in 2006, I became determined to live abroad. I first thought of going to Buenos Aires for six months, maybe a year. However, a struggling economy, and the lack of a savings account (thanks to excessive travel) kept me grounded. It didn’t take much research to realize how difficult it would be moving overseas, and I eventually became convinced that it would not happen.

Not long after Blake and I began dating, we discovered that we shared a love for travel. Within a few months of being together, we went out west and spent a week and a half driving and camping our way from Seattle to Portland. Three months later we were in South Africa. A couple of weeks of travel here and there was great, but it wasn’t enough. We constantly began discussing how exciting it would be to live abroad. At some unknown point, it changed from something we just talked about, to something we actually pursued. I use the word “we” loosely, as our pursuit consisted of Blake applying for jobs and me giving pep talks whenever a setback arose.

The main question we had in our pursuit to live abroad was where to go. Europe was appealing in several ways: the science is good, it isn’t too far from the states, it has amazing cities, and it would be easy to travel through several countries. There is that whole language barrier thing, but we were convinced we could handle it. What really deterred us from looking in Europe was the cold winters. I like the cold almost as much as I love black olives, palmetto bugs, and Montezuma’s Revenge. With Europe out of the picture, we turned our attention to warmer climates, and it wasn’t long before Australia was at the top of the list.

Our first choice in Oz was Brisbane, mainly because of the Florida like weather. Blake applied for a highly competitive fellowship at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) that required a lenghty application. In addition, Blake collborated with a QUT professor to develop a project she would work on. The second choice was a job in Sydney, and it consisted of a relatively short application and a phone interview. Thanks to our inability to convert the time change, Blake’s first impression was her voicemail recording. We were expecting the phone to ring at 9:00 pm; it actually rang at 7:00 pm, and we missed the call. After several minutes of freaking out and frantically researching how to call Australia, it rang again. I don’t know how the interview went (I was confined to the upstairs bedroom); however, Blake thought she bombed it. We chalked it up to a good learning experience, and waited with crossed fingers for an offer from QUT.

December 10th was almost the worst day of vacation ever. I was in Fort Lauderdale for an appraisal class, and Blake had come down to meet me. It was my last day of class, and we were headed for South Beach for a weekend of sun and relaxation. Blake, who at this point was checking her email every seven seconds for an email from Australia, got the news we were waiting on. It had been six weeks since the application to QUT was submitted and over two weeks since the interview. Take my word for it, when you’re waiting on news that will decide which hemisphere you will be living in, a few weeks feels like an eternity. By mere coincidence, Blake got word from both jobs on the same day. It was a good thing, because the first email notified her that she did not get the fellowship in Brisbane. This had been her primary focus for months, and this would have been a Miami-ruining bit of news were it not for the second email. Despite being late to a phone interview, and thinking that she bombed it, Blake got the offer from Sydney. We spent the weekend celebrating the news, as our journey had finally began.

Despite what you might think, planning to move 9,510 miles away can be a difficult task. With so many things to take into consideration, an endless supply of questions crosses your mind: What neighborhood should we live in? How do I obtain health insurance? How long is the flight? Will they have cake doughnuts? Will I have to acquire a taste for Vegemite*, possibly the worst food ever created?

Our to do list was at least three meters (apx. 9.84 feet) long, but without a doubt, the most stressful task was obtaining the visa. It would be a lie to say that the misery that was our visa application was not self-inflicted. Running head first into a wall would have been less painful. In an attempt to prepare ourselves for the task at hand, we spent hours researching information online. I learned that the only motivation for writing in a forum titled “moving to Australia” is an experience that makes one feel like a character in a Friday the 13th movie. Several people had been waiting months for their visa, for others it had been over a year. Some people even sold their homes and were now forced to stay with their parents until the visa came through. People reported having to pay for expensive medical exams as well as provide several of the following certified documents: birth certificate, college transcript, passport, drivers license, criminal records in any state lived in over the past decade, resumes, list of references, marriage certificates, the dreaded Form 80, and the FBI criminal history background check.

When it comes to tasks such as this, I have always thought of myself as one who over prepares. And then I met Blake. I don’t want to use the word slave driver, but we acquired every single document listed above faster than that guy in the micro machines commercials could talk. There was a better chance of winning the lottery than actually needing some of the documents we prepared. Keep in mind that the visa application only asks for a few documents up front, and occasionally they will follow up with a request for additional paperwork. Nevertheless, we were prepared for the Spanish Inquisition.

The visa application was submitted on January 13. Within 24 hours of submitting the vias application, Blake’s average time between checking her email account was down to three seconds. After several days had passed without even an acknowledgement that our application had been received, panic set in. In my head I began drafting what I would post to the online forum. In an attempt to see friends before leaving as well as distract ourselves from the visa process, we headed to Washington D. C. for a great weekend. We woke up on Saturday morning to snowfall, and it didn’t stop until a foot was on the ground. During an indoor break from the cold, Blake was on the computer when I heard her say “oh my god.” From the look of disbelief on her face, I was sure that someone had died. “We got it, we got the visa” she screamed, finally smiling. And there was much rejoicing.

It was January 29th when we got the visa, and it couldn’t have been a more convenient time. To my knowledge there is only one place to physically pick up an Australian Visa in the United States, and it is located 11.1** miles from where we were staying. Waiting on the postal service was completely out of the question, and we drove to the Australian Embassy on Monday morning. We were excited to have interaction with actual Australians, although the first guy we encountered sounded more like he was from Ohio. After a bit of a wait, an Australian girl returned with an accent and our visa. It was final. The remainder of the day consisted of a nine hour drive, and at least as much time spent discussing our plans for leaving.

We returned from D.C on February 1, and we left Charleston on February 16th. Those 15 days were chaos, and I could go on and on about how much we had to do before leaving, but I won’t. We tried to see as many friends as we could before leaving, and Lindsay and Rory helped us out by organizing a get together Downtown. Some couldn’t make it because something happened that night that I had not seen in my nearly eight years in Charleston. Snow. And lots of it. Downtown got three inches and Summerville nearly eight. People were having snowball fights in the streets; one even got arrested, despite the “let him go” chant we started outside the bar. We had a great night, and seeing snow on palm trees was the icing on the cake.

From Charleston we headed to Nashville and Kentucky for several days before leaving. Our time at home was bittersweet. We were able to see so many good friends and family members; however, we had to say goodbye to them all. We plan to be back home at least once a year, and we will probably see several friends and family members as often as we did while living in Charleston. Nevertheless, there is something about moving to the other side of the globe that makes the goodbyes a bit more difficult.

Additional Notes:
*Vegemite: A reddish-brown, almost black yeast extract (by-product of beer manufacturing) with various vegetable and spice additives. And yes, it tastes as bad as it sounds. Vegemite is considered as much a part of Australia’s heritage as kangaroos, and a vegemite sandwich is the Australian equivalent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

**As its kind of late, and I’m too lazy to actually look up the distance between where we were staying and where we got the visa, 11.1 miles was pulled right out of you know where.