That's right folks, it's been exactly ONE YEAR since we set foot in Australia. It's been incredible so far, and we can't wait to see what happens next.
Let's do a quick year in review:
-We both found ourselves gainfully employed despite a lot of excellent reasons why that shouldn't have worked out.
-We bought a car, some Irish girl's furniture, and rented an apartment with round walls on the beach.
-We fell in love with cricket, and learned the names and stats of all the Australian and Indian players.
-We experienced our first summer Christmas.
-We vacuumed up spiders the size of our hands.
-We discovered the joys of driving to the Grampians on New Years Eve when it was 42 degree C and we had a car with no A/C.
-We ate cheese, honey, chocolate and chiko rolls in Tasmania.
-I got shipped off to a flood in Queensland with the Red Cross.
-We followed cricket to Sydney and Adelaide.
-We continued to love our jobs.
-We started forgetting what American food tastes like.
-We travelled around VIC and QLD with Carrie.
-We fell in love with the Western Bulldogs and travelled around to watch them play.
-We toured the Northern Territory and fell in love with Outback Australia.
-We found ourselves using words like, "mobile [phone]," "chook," etc.
-We bought a brand new car with about 20 kms on it.
-We decided to attempt to extend our visas and stay an extra year!!!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Crazy week
It's been a crazy week around here. We took an anniversary trip to Golden Beach, VIC... the tiny TINY tiny beach town that we originally planned on moving to when we first planned on moving to Australia.
Then we headed back to work, only to turn around and have Tuesday off for Melbourne Cup Day (well, I did... but Megan works in Geelong, so she didn't get the silly-horse-race-holiday).
Wednesday was sheer craziness because of the US election. Throughout the morning and early afternoon a bunch of people at my office were all glued to our computer screens. We'd switch from CNN to BBC to cbs2chicago to TheAge to every other interactive website we could think of. Megan and I would call each other with updates... "he's up to 180, 190, 200!" Many of my co-workers would update me on the race while I was in meetings, and I did the same for them by slipping an "Obama wins" sheet of paper under the door (and into their teleconference). It was really cool to experience the election from the other side of the world, even though we'd give anything to have been in Grant Park, Chicago that night. Two of us huddled around the only computer with a sound card to watch Obama's speech. We walked away feeling excited about a new era for America. I already started to feel like my coworkers hated America a tiny bit less (haha).
As I walked back to my desk I had a sinking feeling about Prop 8, and shifted all my anxiety to watching that race. I watched the numbers all day, and really didn't get too much work done. Could this thing really pass? It felt so strange watching it from so far away while knowing that just 19 days earlier we had signed our marriage license in CA. When Megan and I got home that night we watched a replay of Obama's speech, and watched the Prop 8 numbers. It didn't look good. We went to sleep worried about waking up to bad news... and that's exactly what happened. I cried immediately and felt so hurt by the whole thing. How could people vote on OUR marriage? How could people judge us and tell us we're wrong? How do the other 18,000 couples feel right now? What about those who couldn't make it to CA in the 4 month window, or who weren't quite ready to marry their partners? We hugged each other a lot that morning, and I cried a lot. Since then we've been angry, frustrated, sad, mad, etc. I've read everything I can find, and find myself wishing we could rally with the GLBT community in CA. We've felt extremely supported by our friends and family, and it's been great to see people coming out of the woodwork and recognizing how unfair Prop 8 really is. I worry about the legal battles ahead. I worry about the feeling that 1 in every 2 people in CA would probably judge us if they saw us walking down the street. I feel sad that our world can't just let us live our lives in peace. But I feel proud to be married to Megan... whether or not there's a piece of paper to support that.
Then we headed back to work, only to turn around and have Tuesday off for Melbourne Cup Day (well, I did... but Megan works in Geelong, so she didn't get the silly-horse-race-holiday).
Wednesday was sheer craziness because of the US election. Throughout the morning and early afternoon a bunch of people at my office were all glued to our computer screens. We'd switch from CNN to BBC to cbs2chicago to TheAge to every other interactive website we could think of. Megan and I would call each other with updates... "he's up to 180, 190, 200!" Many of my co-workers would update me on the race while I was in meetings, and I did the same for them by slipping an "Obama wins" sheet of paper under the door (and into their teleconference). It was really cool to experience the election from the other side of the world, even though we'd give anything to have been in Grant Park, Chicago that night. Two of us huddled around the only computer with a sound card to watch Obama's speech. We walked away feeling excited about a new era for America. I already started to feel like my coworkers hated America a tiny bit less (haha).
As I walked back to my desk I had a sinking feeling about Prop 8, and shifted all my anxiety to watching that race. I watched the numbers all day, and really didn't get too much work done. Could this thing really pass? It felt so strange watching it from so far away while knowing that just 19 days earlier we had signed our marriage license in CA. When Megan and I got home that night we watched a replay of Obama's speech, and watched the Prop 8 numbers. It didn't look good. We went to sleep worried about waking up to bad news... and that's exactly what happened. I cried immediately and felt so hurt by the whole thing. How could people vote on OUR marriage? How could people judge us and tell us we're wrong? How do the other 18,000 couples feel right now? What about those who couldn't make it to CA in the 4 month window, or who weren't quite ready to marry their partners? We hugged each other a lot that morning, and I cried a lot. Since then we've been angry, frustrated, sad, mad, etc. I've read everything I can find, and find myself wishing we could rally with the GLBT community in CA. We've felt extremely supported by our friends and family, and it's been great to see people coming out of the woodwork and recognizing how unfair Prop 8 really is. I worry about the legal battles ahead. I worry about the feeling that 1 in every 2 people in CA would probably judge us if they saw us walking down the street. I feel sad that our world can't just let us live our lives in peace. But I feel proud to be married to Megan... whether or not there's a piece of paper to support that.
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