Around the World and Back

Greetings from our Great Australian Adventure! Ten months in Melbourne was over in the blink of an eye and we found ourselves back on the road once again. I have to give a shoutout to all our amazing friends in Melbourne for such a wonderful send-off! It was so bittersweet finishing our time in Melbourne and leaving a new home again. The end of our Melbourne times included: Christmas in July, ringing in my 29th birthday with a 10k fun run with Geneva and Tim (who moved to Melbourne a few weeks before we left!), lots of farewell drinks with friends, a custom-made veggie pie date with our with our beloved flatmate Abbey, and a fancy dinner date for Brian and me at Chin Chin, courtesy of our generous co-workers at Top Paddock. Very special times :) Our last month went by wayyyy too fast and we had so much fun savoring our city as much as possible. After plenty of ups and downs with work, my injury, and taking longer than expected (as always) to get settled, we found a wonderful niche there and can look back on it with such fond memories… thank you so much to everyone who spent time with us, gave us jobs, and took us in as friends. We love you!! Come visit us in Seattle :)

The first stop of our trip was Adelaide, South Australia. Most friends responded to our announcement to travel to Adelaide with, "……" and "boring, why?", which oddly gave me even more of an impression that we would like it. I heard it was a city filled with parks, and most seemed to claim it didn't have much of a night life, so that kind of sold me (kidding, not kidding). When we first arrived, the cab ride from the airport to our friends' house in the suburb of Norwood seemed to confirm the majority opinion- it looked a little like a town full of strip malls. But as soon as we arrived at Mel and Dan's, saw their darling house, and explored the neighborhood a little, we started to really like Adelaide. I found an organic shop a few blocks away from their house so I pretty much liked the city based on that (kidding, not kidding). We also spent an evening at a vegan cafe with Mel and Dan while their friend Rich played piano, and even gave us a free copy of his CD (which provided the best possible soundtrack to our upcoming road trip). Bliss (which also happens to be the name of the cafe)!

Reasons why I love Adelaide: wine, parks, markets, Mel & Dan, organic shops, hidden-gem cafes, and more wine.

In the week we were there, we basically just walked around the parks, cooked, went for morning runs, had great chats with Mel and Dan, went wine tasting in the Barossa Valley, drank coffee at the Melbourne cafe we found in the city, and spent time at Cafe Troppo, a place I hope to model my future cafe on one day.

We had such a lovely time there and felt the size of the city suited us well. I didn't find the city boring at all, and I especially enjoyed its proximity to wine regions! One weekend we drove with Dan up to the Barossa valley to go wine tasting with a Top Paddock friend, Hai, who had driven to Adelaide for a long weekend with his brother and 2 friends. So me and the 6 boys spent a rainy day in the Barossa, tasting some of the country's best shirazes… complete with a picnic lunch of treats from the Central Market and Vietnamese banh mi courtesy of Hai and his friends. What a lovely day!

One of the best parts of our time in SA was a short car trip we took to the Flinders Ranges. Proud moment for me, driving Mr. Quist around for 3 days despite my hatred and fear of driving (I'm getting better!!). That being said, the trip out there was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever done. We spent our first night in the town of Quorn, which was delightfully charming. The camp where we slept in a basic cabin had a kitchen but no utensils, so we weren't able to cook any of the food we brought and had to eat our meals at the pub, which delivered in every expectation I had of a country pub. I am actually still dreaming about the pizza we ate there. Sorry, brain drifting back to food again, as per usual…

Brian convinced me to wake up at 4:30 so we could drive out to Dutchman's Stern for a sunrise hike, which was such a great start to the day. Afterwards we got some coffee and toast at a little old lady cafe in Quorn, then started out on our drive deeper into the Flinders Ranges. We stopped for 3 hikes throughout the day, saw Aboriginal Cave paintings, lots of wildlife, and caught the sunset against dusty red hills. It was a wonderful day, followed by another tasty dinner and chats with our new bartender friend at the Austral pub. The next morning we were headed back to Adelaide, stopping in Port Augusta for the Arid Botanical Gardens and a few pit stops in little country towns for snacks and fuel.

I'm totally sold on South Australia. We had so much fun visiting our friends, going for hikes, seeing wildlife up close, finding hidden gems, getting attacked by magpies. It turns out they are very territorial and will swoop down on you TO PECK YOUR EYES OUT if you cross through their territory. Brian narrowly escaped with both his eyes still intact after making the mistake of trying to cross through a massive train track area between our camp and Quorn's town center; unfortunately I was a little too shocked about what I was seeing to get any pics mid-swoop. ;)

I think the photos speak for themselves about what a good time we had there; enjoy! The next stop for us was a flight to Cairns in Far North Queensland! More on that next post… xo

Adelaide's bean

Dan and Brian sampling cheese and pate at the market

at Cafe Troppo, enjoying the sun and rose

at the National Wine Centre, Adelaide

a motley crew of wine-tasters: Kiwi, Vietnamese, and American ;)

vines in the Barossa Valley

on our sunrise hike in Dutchman's Stern

a site for Aboriginal cave paintings

cave paintings

we love you, Mel and Dan! xo

photographic evidence ;)

NZ moment

driving around in the Flinders Ranges

billabong

Brian's fav pic

sunset in the ranges

cute little Quorn

this lady protected us from the magpie with her broom

near the arid botanic gardens

a little pit stop in SA

arid botanic gardens

the best drive.

Wah wah... I'm kidding you guys… but only kind of. All I mean when I say my life is boring is that our 8 months in Melbourne hasn't been as adventure-packed as our 8 months of traveling New Zealand. Perhaps coming to an expensive city such as this one to "save up money for traveling" wasn't our best-laid plan. Perhaps we got it right the first time (NZ); being a bit broke for long periods of time but having the freedom to travel and be out in nature before settling in a city to work. But, what's done is done, and we're going to have to work with what we've got when we finally get back on the road again in 6ish weeks.

Although living abroad has been an amazing challenge, full of personal growth and other cliches, it hasn't been without its struggles (as you all know). Our time in Melbourne is a good representation of that sentiment, which is what inspired the title of this blog post. Life here in this city is not much different than life back at home, especially as we haven't had the time or funds to get out much. Hopefully things will come together in the next month or so for us to have a great time seeing a bit of this massive country before we get the boot on October 3! I guess what I'm trying to express is, although it's pretty cool to be living life on the other side of the world, you shouldn't be TOO jealous of our life here (in Melbourne, specifically), because it's really not much different than your life at home. That being said, hopefully the traveling segment of our year here will be something to inspire you. Until then, on with the daily grind.

However, there has been time for a bit of fun! 97% of our life here is made up of working, commuting by train and tram, budgeting, watching movies in bed, physiotherapy (for me, that is), and drinking coffee, and the other 3% of it is made up of daydreaming (me again) about Wellington. And for Brian's birthday we were able to spend a week there! In the contest for which city wins my heart, Wellington beats Melbourne by a long shot, which may seem strange to those who have been to (or lived in) both places. Melbourne seems potentially like a better city in many ways: it's waaaaaaaay bigger so technically has more to offer, has about a million cafes and restaurants with a very high standard for coffee (ahem) and cuisine, has great diversity (which is one factor where Melbourne wins in my mind), has an amazing art and music scene, and has an extensive transportation system. My two main reasons for loving Wellington? 1. The size, which for me is perfect, and allows for easy walkability all over the city, and 2. Urban hiking/BEAUTY. The restorative power of mountains, hills, water, and a wild coastline cannot be underestimated. Maybe it's just the Pacific Northwesterner in me. Whatever it is, I need more of it in my life! I'd love to be able to step outside and be on a hike within minutes, without having to sort out transportation there and back/make a whole day of it, etc. Wellington makes that all possible!

Our time in Welly was sooooooooooooo good. The weather even cooperated while we were there and we got plenty of sunny days! We ate at most of our favorite places, drank coffee at our favorite cafes (uh oh… I'm a snob now? Melbourne wins), had some nights out, walked to the top of Mt Vic, ran on Oriental Parade, walked the Southern Walkway for stellar city views, and of course caught up with great friends. Part of the reason I found myself crying all the way from WLG to MEL was because fate has brought so many of our close friends to Wellington all at once, where they are all happily living (I wanted to stay!!!). We had a Store reunion with Ian, Craig, and Amelia, who we hadn't seen for over a year, a Circa reunion with Geneva and Tim, and saw our old gang from Wellington: Mark, Jemma, Caitlin, and Sean. On our last night we had a big dinner at Siem Reap (just like our last night when we moved to Australia) and everyone came out, including some of Brian's Recovery Room co-workers. It was all just… so much joy. So much. We rented a bach at Waikanae beach on the Kapiti coast for Brian's birthday weekend, and ate lots of food, played at the beach, hiked, and relaxed. It was pretty much the best week ever.

So yeah, when we came back to Melbs I had a bit of a freak-out, along the lines of: what-am-I-doing-here-if-I'm-not-happy… but I've thought a lot about it in the last two weeks and I'm feeling better. And now that I'm back in the swing of things I remembered that I AM happy. We have great friends and co-workers, a nice apartment (even though it is infested with ants), and an exciting trip to plan for. We've started to view the next 6-7 weeks as a challenge; the end is in sight work-wise, but until then there is a lot of work to be done and some hard-core money saving. I have a personal goal to appreciate this city and take advantage of all its musical offerings as much as I can in our last time here. Better late than never! I need to debunk my myth that you can't have fun in this city on a budget, because I know the real truth is that I'm not going out and having fun because I'm lazy. So lazy! But anyway, that's what goals are for.

Oh, and for anyone who's been wondering about my arm/hand, it's recovering quite nicely. I've been going to physiotherapy 2-3 days a week and exercising it at home, and it's strong enough now to carry things and do everything almost as well as pre-accident. The best part is that my hand is a freak wax hand (still, which I kind of hope lasts forever), and turns almost completely purple when cold! Great party trick. The only thing that's still not great is that my wrist doesn't bend back barely at all, so I have quite a bit of work to do there. Oh and the asshole who doored me has FINALLY (FINALLY FINALLY) agreed to pay me a bit of money to make up for the deductible I had to pay for my medical bills. The day I finish work at Top Paddock will be the day I am finally free of all ties to this accident and my constant phone calls and monitoring by the TAC. That will be a happy day :)

What other fun things have we done since I last blogged… Oh, Top Paddock was named 'Best New Cafe' in Melbourne by The Age about a week ago... pretty crazy. I can't believe out of the bazillions of cafes in this city somehow we are working at the "best" one. Also funny because, well... it's not the best place to work, haha, ok I'll leave it at that (I won't get too Negative Nancy over here, Brian, if you're reading this). :) Our Store friend Ian came to visit for a few days, and we had a great time playing tourist with him here. We even stumbled upon a DELICIOUS hot pot place in Chinatown, which has put me back on the hunt for dan dan noodles (I'm reaching max capacity for length of time I can be away from 7 Stars Pepper). But really, most of the fun times these days are staff hang-outs after work, dinners out with friends, and our weekly coffee/trip-planning meetings that Brian and I have at one of our local cafes. It's the small things!

Are you asleep yet? I told you my life was boring! For those of you who stuck it out and read this whole post, a treat in two forms: photos, and the official announcement (if there's anyone who missed it on fb) that we'll be back home in SEATTLE on December 3, 2013. That's less than 6 months, people! Clear your schedules, please. I'll probably be heading straight for 7SP, followed by the Noc Noc for 80s night, and of course the Yen Wor for hours and hours of karaoke (lots of lost time to make up for). It's gonna be so great to see you all again! MUCH LOVE xoxo

I went on a weekend road-trip with Abbey through country Victoria to where she grew up on a farm near Mt. Beauty. It was so gorgeous out and all the fall leaves were putting on a show.