Merry Christmas from downunder

What a relief it was to land in Melbourne.  The last few weeks have been a mixture of catching up on some much needed sleep, eating lots, drinking more and trying to figure out what needs to be done to make the move across the world.  My brother, Bryan, and Lani kindly put us up in Melbourne for the week, giving us the best bedroom for when you need your sleep, also known as the bat cave, which has no windows and would let us sleep until lunchtime, just what we needed!  Other tasks in Melbourne included the important stuff like applying for visas, looking for work, checking out suburbs to live, nearby dog beaches for our Lebowski and setting up bank accounts and the equally important task of figuring out which aussie beers will be our beer of choice come June.   We did lots of walking around to get the feel of the place and while we still have a lot more to explore, I think we may have found just the spot we were looking for.   20 minute walk to Bryan and Lani’s, a couple of blocks from the beach, walking distance to bars, restaurants, and lots of places to run the dog with a view to boot.  Watch this space…

Bryan and Lani were both in the final push to get their work done before Christmas, so they were pretty flat out, but made time to take us and show us some of their favorite spots.  Some bars, local markets and to the pier where the famous St Kilda fairy penguins come to nest every night.  They were so cute! The water rats, not so much.  Bryan managed to score me a job with his architect firm, photographing a museum that he designed (polly woodside museum) which was a welcomed piece of income and kept me busy for a few days. It was amazing to see something that he worked on for so long come to life.  It is a strange but exciting feeling to know that the next time we fly into Melbourne we will have all of our possessions in tow.  Thank you Bryan and Lani for being our tourguides/headhunters/realtors for the last week.  You are Legends!

Arriving in NZ is always very special and this time was no different.  Having not seen my Kiwi relatives for over 18 months we were eager to get there and catch up with everyone.  We were not so eagar to get back on an overnight flight that only lasted 3.5 hours.  It meant pulling another all-nighter, especially as Greg had some guy next to him that was so sick he sounded like should have been isolated in a hospital. He was snoring both when asleep and when awake and coughing and spluttering all the way.  It seems air transport will not be our friend on this trip. So we arrived to the familiar view of Lake Taupo from Mum and Dad’s house.  Which is both my most comforting and my most photographed view.  After a few days of R&R we drove a couple of hours to Ohope to visit my Auntie Linny and uncle Pete (to-be).   They just built a house that is right on a beautiful wild beach that goes on for miles.  The beach inspired us to go for a morning run (pre-emptive for all the Christmas food) and Greg an afternoon dip (found out about the sharks lurking there a few hours after).  I think we need to just assume that the ocean over here is deadly unless we are told otherwise.  Luckily the water was so cold, Greg was in and out before a fin came into sight.  We had a lovely dinner catching up and picturing how Lin and Pete’s up coming wedding will be.   Bryan, Lani and Merinda flew in the next day and the next week was basically eating and drinking (again), playing family games, our Grandparents out drinking us every time , a bit of golf, bit of tennis, and basking in the sun and catching up with family friends. 

Christmas in New Zealand is like hearing Christmas music in July.   It is always a strange feeling waking up on Christmas morning to a warm sunny day, eating outdoors and listening to walking in a winter wonder land.  But wonderfully strange. 

With so much going on in our lives in the last couple of months and so many huge decisions to make, we haven’t had a minute to think of the epic trip that we have been dreaming about.  And when we only started to think about it the night before we are due to fly out, a surge of emotions overwhelmed us.  A mixture of excitement, fear and the basic feeling of oh Shit, we are not ready to fly out in 24 hours.  So we will repack the backpacks once more and be on our way to Chile.  Fingers crossed this flight goes according to plan, Auckland direct to Santiago, surely that can’t go wrong… can it?

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, here is to a fantastic  2012! 

What a crazy week.  It has been a complete whirlwind adventure and our adventure has not even yet begun.  To anyone out there who has bold plans to either pack up all their belongings, sell their house, plan a 5 month trip to South America, plan a cross country trip with their dog, relocate their business abroad,  or relocating their dog to the other side of the world, I would definitely NOT recommend trying to do all of them at once.  I’ll skip past the part where we drove 9 hours to get to Philly for Thanksgiving on the Wednesday night and the 6.5 hours we drove to get back to Boston on the following Saturday.  Sunday was a day filled with separating stuff to ship to Melbourne via ocean liner, stuff to bring travelling for the next 6 months, stuff to bring to Melbourne now & stuff to leave in Philly to bring on our road trip with Lebowski.  We also were able to pull away for a few hours to say goodbye to some great friends we’ve made in our 3 years in Boston. 

The real chaos all kicked off on Monday morning when our friendly neighborhood movers came in to package up all our stuff to be shipped out to Melbourne.  I know what you’re thinking…lazy bastards, pack up your own stuff.  The reality is that it wasn’t an option due to all the customs requirement so that’s that.  Anywho, with Jo finishing up editing her final wedding and the movers wrapping away, I was concluding business at work and saying my goodbyes to colleagues at Ranor.  Tuesday was the day the stress level peaked as the movers filled up their truck with our every possession and sure enough the buyer of our house came within the hour for her walk-through.  Of course she was accompanied by her real estate agent.  As far as agents go, she was by far the worst human being I have ever met.  Immediately she began rattling off a list of things that needed to be removed from the premises before she would release our funds to us.  So our Tuesday night into Wednesday morning went something like this:

1.       Made our “bed” to sleep on
2.        Disassembled shelving to dispose of
3.       Started a fire to dispose of shelving
4.       Laid out everything to pack for traveling
5.       Loaded up car of miscellaneous stuff to dump
6.       Poured a glass of wine
7.       Started packing
8.       Brought Lebowski to say goodbye to our awesome neighbors (thanks Bob, Jean, Julie,  John and Ellie for everything)
9.       Made a late night run to deposit said goods into local dumpster
10.   Continued packing
11.   Slept for a few hours
12.   Continued cleaning in the morning
13.   Cursed out horrible real estate lady
14.   Packed up Maxima with whatever possessions we had left
15.   Picked up house check
16.   Dropped off plates at RMV

And finally we were ready to leave Watertown in our rear view mirror.  I’d have to say it was a very sad time locking the door for the final time.  We loved that house, had great neighbors, made some life-long friends and learned a lot about both photography and engineering respectively.  It was a great run but the three of us are looking forward to our next great challenge/adventure: conquering Melbourne.

We drove away that afternoon thinking we would have a nice smooth ride down to Philly that we would break in half and spend the night somewhere in Connecticut so I wasn’t struggling to stay awake while driving.  Our “smooth ride” became rougher and rougher as our rear brake caliper seized and just as we pulled into our luxury accommodation (Motel 6), the piston ruptured and we were spitting brake fluid onto the parking lot.  By 2 pm the following afternoon, we were back on our way south with new calipers, brakes and rotors.  The only stop came 5 miles down the highway when a wicked vibration had me pulled over to tighten lug nuts (apparently not included in their final bill for the brake work).

Our final few days in Philly before flying out were spent as some great quality time with both family and friends.  Tim and Steph graciously put us up while we settled Lebowski into their place (thanks again guys!) The next few days were filled great company, drinks and food. A big group dinner followed by “a few” drinks and a rousing game of Catch Phrase at Tim & Steph’s place had us geared up to repack our things one last time on Sunday afternoon for our Monday flight. 

Monday morning would be the most difficult as it would be the last time we would have a family walk with our Little Dude for a half a year.  We’ll definitely miss his morning licks and goofy ways.  He always puts a smile on our face no matter how loudly he howls or how many socks he steals.  We know he’ll be in great care with Tim, Steph & Charlie watching over him until we return.

My parents were good enough to take Monday off to make the start of our journey to Melbourne as easy as door to door service from Lansdale to JFK airport.  Unfortunately that’s where things stopped being easy and started being pushy – we were flying Air China.  Our itinerary claims that with two flights (JFK to Bejing & Bejing to Melbourne) with a 5 hour layover, we would arrive in Australia after a 30 hour journey.  In actuality our trip went a bit like this:

-          Take off from JFK 3 hours late
-          Sleep for a good 8 hours on the flight
-          Wake up when the plane lands
-          Discover that the plane decided to land in Harbin rather than Beijing, (there was not a single     
            announcement in English, nor did the pilot, air hostess or any airport staff speak English, just to make                   things more interesting! We were dealing with a lot of blank stares.)
-          Find out that we will be staying the night in Harbin due to record fog and smog in Beijing
-          Be the last ones through immigration to receive our one day stay permit as we were kindly shoved aside by hundreds of locals
-          Load onto the last bus from the airport to a hotel as we were shoved aside from loading the previous 4 buses (a bit of a theme developing here)
-          Arrive at hotel 5 hours after diverted landing
-          Get two hours of sleep and a much needed shower
-          Bus back to airport
-          Board plane to Beijing and depart two hours late
-          Arrive in Beijing, collect luggage, and beg three different AirChina employees to rebook our tickets onto   different flight to Melbourne departing in one hour (ticket counter que was about an hour and a half wait)
-          Board plane to Shanghai (don’t ask why)
-          Change planes in Shanghai and depart for Melbourne.

So after all the diversions and confusion, we finally arrived to a smiling Bryan at Melbourne airport after a short 54 hour journey.  I think next time we’ll pay the extra $500 per ticket to fly through L.A.