Back From Vacation

Hey Everyone,

We just got back from a week on vacation (or in Mere's case, a typical week) with Mere's mom and aunt.

We spent a couple of days in the Great Barrier Reef on Hamilton Island where we got to snorkel and scuba dive. The second part of the week we drove (without dying) to Hunter Valley which is the wine country in New South Wales. I'll post about these this weekend with a bunch of photos.

Before we left, Mere took time out of her busy schedule to play tour guide and show her mom and aunt around Sydney. They got on one of those hop on hop off buses that take you around different parts of the city and you can explore on foot and just jump on the next bus. They easily saw more of the city in 3 hours than we have in our 4-5 months living here.

We spent a day at the Taronga Zoo, which is right across the harbor from Circular Quay.

You can see the opera house behind the Giraffe's head.

The zoo is located in a suburb of Sydney called Mosman, which is Mere's mom's maiden name, so naturally we spent some time walking around. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a T-shirt shop for Mere's mom since Mosman is a pretty expensive upscale suburb with only boutique fashion shops. We did find a place where Mere fit in:

Visitors!

We got our first visitors from the States this week as Mere's mom and aunt flew in to escape the 3 ft of Snow in Boston. We are heading to Hamilton Island and the Whitsundays Islands and to the Great Barrier Reef on Sunday.


Now only if we could somehow get a way for Jax to come visit...tho Mere has found a way to compensate for his absence:

(Don't tell Jax)

Also, we hopefully (fingers crossed) finally have our internet set up so we should be able to post more frequently and upload most of the photos we've taken. 

GUMTREE - Australian for Craigslist

THE BACHELOR/ETTE

One of the things you don’t really account for when moving to a new place, is how hard it is to make friends once you are over 30. Most people still maintain their lifelong and college friends and don’t have a need to meet new people (especially true for most Australians).

We joke that since we’ve been together so long that we forget the initial dating struggles with how long to call after the first date, whether I should call first or wait for her, etc… We now get to re-live that uncertainty trying to make new friends. Luckily for us, Sydney is full of ex-pats from all over the world in a similar situation.

Also luckily there is Gumtree, which is a much, MUCH less creepier version than Craigslist. I came home from work one day and Mere announced, much to my horror, that she had put a want ad on Craigslist to try for friends. All I could think of was all the sketchy personal ads on Craigslist and the whole Craigslist killer story about the kid from BU who would look for massages on Craigslist then rob/kill the masseuse to pay off his gambling debts - thanks internet! (I believe this is now a Lifetime movie?)

Turns out since there are only 20 million people in the entire country of Australia, it weeds out a lot of the crazies you get back home. We’ve met a bunch of nice people, some of which we still see regularly. We hit it off with the first couple we met, so our expectations have been unrealistically high since then. We did get an email response from one couple wanting to know if we were a ‘we’re looking to grab dinner’ couple or a ‘we’re looking to shoot a porno’ couple. You can’t weed out all of the weirdoes.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH MARK LAPIERRE (and Mere)

As some of you know, I joined Mere getting Scuba certified over Australia day weekend in time for when Mere’s mom visits (in just over 1 week!) and we take a trip up to the Great Barrier Reef.

Such a cool experience breathing underwater. Mere will be sure to bring her underwater camera to the reef to take some photos. Also, everyone who works at the dive shop is super nice, and we regularly meet some of them for beers on the weekends.

But the best part of getting Scuba certified is now I have a reason to go into the Diver Jim’s store up the street from where I grew up in Belmont! Lived close by for about 29 years and never set foot in. Cross it off the bucket list!

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

Saw the below sign outside the church by our apartment.

Probably not too helpful if you are trying to learn since you can’t speak (and almost certainly can’t read) English.

Lastly, for those back home bracing for the snowstorm (14-20 inches forecasted for Friday), good luck, stay warm and be safe. Here is a picture of a rainbow I saw on my commute to work (sorry):