Nannying!

So I have started two different nannying jobs, and both of them are quite fun. It's really nice to hang out with babies! And it's been strange and interesting, after spending so much time where every kid I encounter has some sort of issue for me to assess/treat, to spend some time with typically-developing kids. Every time they do anything age-appropriate, my first instinct is "Wow! You're a genius!"

The first I started with is Heath, who will be 1 year old later this month. He is super cute, starting the drunken-sailor stage of walking, starting to use some consistent word approximations and quite interested in the world. (I should get permission from these parents to post pictures, because both of these kids are ridiculously cute). His family is from Tasmania. I've heard that people from Tasmania are a little crazy, but they are both quite laid-back.

They live in a suburb quite a ways out from where I live, so I have to take the bus up there. The upside of this, of course, is seeing a completely different part of Canberra from where I'm living. We live in a suburb called O'Connor, which is quite close to the university, and not too far from the city center-- also across the street from a school and a Polish cultural center that hosts a variety of unrelated events from DJ dance parties to live music to...who knows what, but older ladies dressed up in nice clothes. Harrison (the suburb where this family is) is on the outskirts of Canberra, and looks a lot like what I sort of pictured Australia to look like.



Vaguely deserted, rolling hills with short stubby vegetation, etc. All of the gravel I've seen here is red clay gravel. It's spring, so the trees and flowers are all blooming or dumping pollen. It is SO QUIET out there that you can hear swarms of bees in the flowers from several paces back. The quiet was a bit eerie at first, but I'm coming to like it. I at least prefer it to the GIANT SCREAMING FLOCKS of sulphur-crested cockatoos we have in our neighborhood.



The second family lives much closer to me, and they're kind of ridiculously nice. Their baby, Lola, is 8 months old, and also ridiculously cute. She's not quite crawling yet, but wants desperately to be mobile. She loves being held up so she can pretend to walk across the floor. So far I've just been there with her mom as well, learning their routine etc. Actually, because Lola naps when I'm there one of the days, I got paid to watch What Not to Wear and drink cappuccino (both of which the mother kind of insisted that I do) while the baby slept. Which is basically the perfect job.

I also just got an offer today to manage the creche (nursery) for a program for refugee women to learn fashion design/creation skills for the next two weeks-- not sure if it will work out exactly, with the times they want me and the times I'm already booked for sitting, but it sounds like a pretty amazing program, and right up my alley. http://nosweatfashions.com/ I hope it works out!

So I mentioned I'm awful at blogging....

So at least none of you should be surprised at how short-lived the "regular" updates were. Time to play some serious catch-up here! I'll have to do several entries so none of them are these mammoth six-page long things that nobody will read, so expect several upcoming updates!

A bike!

 So I bought a bike! It's nothing fancy, but I think it is super cute. And it has a basket! It's a Ruby Belle retro bike, and looks like one of those semi-annoying fixed-gear numbers that only really works on superflat areas like Ocracoke, but it does indeed have gears.

 I rode around town for about an hour and a half after getting it, exploring various routes. I managed to find the coffee shop up in Lyneham that we went to the other day, and various other paths around town.

This may not be interesting to people in cities with reasonable biking culture, but this is still pretty novel to me: there are covered, locked bike cages all over the place, including one in the apartment complex. A perfect secure location to leave my bike at night without worrying about rust and rain and theft and stuff.

One of my stops on my grand exploration of the town was to investigate the weird brown patches we saw in the satellite view of the athletic fields next door to our complex: 

 They are in deed just weird brown patches in the middle. Any guesses as to what these may be, anyone?

Another thing that I have yet to identify is the massive drifts of this white, snow-like substance that the air is FULL of and collects in on the ground so that it quite literally looks like it's been snowing. It's light and kind of looks like Polyfill. Pollen of some sort, probably?

In other news: I am annoyed with Speech Pathology Australia, or rather with my debit card's ability to interact with them, because they're trying to process my application fee and my card keeps getting declined. I KNOW that it's not inherently something wrong with using my card in Australia, because I literally just used it to buy a bike today in Australia. I hope I can figure it out before too long.

Last night Travis and I went to Tu Do, the delicious Vietnamese place in the O'Connor shops just next door, where I discovered a vegetarian dish that I like quite a bit-- I'd mostly been disappointed with the veggie options there this summer/winter. (It's Bun Cha Gio, for those who know/care-- it was essentially vermicelli rice noodles with lettuce and chopped up spring rolls, with fish sauce.)

Now I am off to the grocery store (just next door) to figure out something delicious for dinner!

Getting Settled

I made it to Australia! After initial flight drama in the Greensboro airport, of all places, which involved the first leg of my flight being canceled and being put onto a different airline with different baggage fees, etc, I made each of my flights without difficulty. I flew United for the Los Angeles - Sydney flight, and don't know that I'll be doing that again. While they did have free wine, which is always a nice feature, they just had a central movie screen, and on my previous flights to/from Australia I depended a lot on the massive selection of movies to keep my brain occupied for the 14+ hours of flight. And, unlike both Delta and Virgin Australia (my flights to/from Australia, respectively, on the last trip out), they didn't have a vegetarian option for dinner unless you had specifically ordered it ahead of time. On the whole it wasn't too bad, and I had good seat-mates and a convenient aisle seat near the bathrooms. Aisle seats, I have decided, are mandatory for my enjoyment of flying these days. Seeing the views out the windows is nice, but freedom to get up without disturbing one's neighbor is VERY important.

I'm almost totally over my jetlag. We've had two GORGEOUS days (yesterday in the upper 60s and today in the mid-70s) and I think spending time outside in the sun is helping. It's gorgeous spring here, too, with everything bright green and starting to flower. I need to get out and take a proper walk with my camera tomorrow!

Yesterday we went to a nice coffee shop in Lyneham (pronounced Line-um, like the Lynams) called The Front, where I was reminded that an "iced chai" here actually means chai with ice cream, which was deliciously more decadent than I'd planned). We've gotten to hang out with several of Travis's friends (who are-- at least I hope-- becoming my friends too). Saturday, we went to Costco with Dennis (another math postdoc) and his wife Janice, and their delightful 3-year-old son Adrian. That night, Catherine, a sociology grad student, made dinner at her place. Last night (Sunday) we got delicious Indian food with Katja and Ravi, two other math postdocs.

Today was quite a busy day-- I opened an Australian bank account, looked at some bikes I may buy, got information about getting a proper cell phone plan (which may be delayed until I get my Australian debit card), and wandered around the mall for a while. Dennis and Janice had given us some fresh herbs from their garden when we saw them Saturday, so we made a brown butter sage sauce and some delightful ravioli tonight, which turned out quite nicely! I want to make pumpkin ravioli from scratch soon and try it again.

Two photos of the week for my first week here:

 A dorm on the ANU campus: Toad Hall!

This sign struck me as hilarious. It says "DRINK AND DRIVE / IT'S A CRIME."