Milo, otherwise known as Alimento Fortificado Sabor a Chocolate

Our new home in Charlotte is quite close to the Latino part of town, so our supermarkets are lots of fun to wander around. The closest supermarket to our house, in fact, has all its signs in Spanish first, with tiny little English translations underneath! As usual, when you first walk in, it's the fruit and veg area, but this supermarket has so many vegies I've never seen before. Lots of chillies and cactus leaves and who knows what else (because the signs are in Spanish!). I was wandering through the aisles the other day, when I saw something very familiar:

Ahhh... a taste of home!!

Goodbye Augusta.... Hello Charlotte!

Goodbye Augusta! Photo above shows Dustin all clean and dressed-up after he came back from the closing attorney's office... and me, in my cleaning/scrubbing/moving/dog-walking outfit!!

Since I last saw wrote, things have been completely crazy. Dustin decided it would be a good idea to go visit his parents before we left Augusta, so we did that, then came back to Augusta TWO days before the closing on our house. We had arranged for a friend of a friend to help us move our stuff into the U-Haul truck... and on the day, he never showed up!! So, when it came to the final walk-through before signing over the house, I was still scrubbing and sweeping and mopping frantically. In fact, I was still cleaning the house while Dustin was at the attorney's!! Of course, it all got done eventually, and at 8am on Friday morning (Friday the 13th!!), we left Augusta for the last time and headed off to Charlotte.

Being Friday the 13th, of course we had some challenges with our new house purchase in Charlotte. As we were driving, Dustin was on the phone the whole time with our real estate agent and our mortgage broker. Our closing was scheduled for 1pm on Friday, but come 4pm, it still hadn't happened. Among the problems were the fact that the bank didn't order an appraisal until THAT MORNING!! and even worse, the closing attorney couldn't leave his office because there was a crazed madman with a GUN running loose in his area. Can you believe all of this could happen? Meanwhile, we're sitting in the real estate agent's office with Bonnie, and all of our worldly possessions sitting in a U-Haul truck in the parking lot, and it's looking like we'll be homeless for three days until the house closing can go through on Monday. Luckily, the house seller was a really nice guy and he ended up agreeing to letting us move in that day and closing on Monday.

So, since then, we've been extremely busy trying to move in and make the house the way we want it. Dustin's dad and his best friend arrived on Saturday night, and spent the next three days working 14-hour days to build us a storage shed and a fence to keep Bonnie in. Since then, we've put up fans in every room and new light fixtures throughout the house. There have also been little things like trying to unpack!! Even though the house is still a complete mess with boxes and tools and half-completed projects in every room, it's slowly starting to feel like our home. Bonnie LOVES the fact that she now has a big back yard to relax in and has doggie neighbors on all sides, both of which are new developments for her.

Dustin started his first shift today, and in keeping with our current run of luck, has 6 overnight shifts in a row. Ugh. Since he's started working, I figured it's time for me to start looking for a job also, so I sent out a few applications today. I'm hoping that my job search won't be too long or depressing, so keep your fingers crossed for me. In the meantime, I think I'll apply to volunteer at the local art museum. Starting Saturday, there's an exhibit of couture (Chanel, Valentino, etc) which sounds like it would be amazing to see.

In between all the house renovations, we've also had to go to lots of social gatherings to meet Dustin's new coworkers. There have been some really fun events like whitewater rafting (this is where the US Olympic team trains), lake parties with water skiing, Symphony in the Park (just like back home in Adelaide!!) and lots of BBQs. The people here are all extremely friendly and take great care to make the spouses feel included in everything. So, let's hope that Charlotte will be much more enjoyable than stinky old stuck-up Augusta!

(I just realised we don't have a photo of the new house! Will post one ASAP!)

My caduceus tattoo!!

We had Dustin's graduation ceremony a few weeks ago. As you'd expect, it's a pretty big deal. There is a black-tie graduation dinner, then two graduation ceremonies with receptions afterwards. At the graduation dinner, I wore a strapless dress, but we were running late, so I didn't have time to cover my tattoo like I normally would for this type of outing. Anyway, after the meal, the Dean of the School of Medicine stands up to give his speech. He's rambling on about something, I don't know, I was zoning out completely... when I suddenly heard him say something about a young woman who's here tonight, with a caduceus tattoo (a caduceus is that snake and staff symbol that is used to as the symbol of the medical profession). He was saying how that showed true commitment to the discipline of medicine, and while he wasn't recommending that we all go out and get tattoos, we should all show the same commitment to our profession.... As you'll have realized, he was talking about me and my dragon tattoo!! I spent the rest of the night trying to avoid him and all the people who came up to me to say, "I thought it was a dragon?"...

Move like nobody's looking?

Yet again, I start by apologising for the email silence from my end. Usually I complain of having no news. This time, however, there are several big news items!

As everyone knows, we spent 5 weeks back home in Australia, which was WONDERFUL. I was a little saddened to find that some things had changed (it was much more expensive than I remembered), but most importantly, the Farmers Union Iced Coffee still tasted the same! We went to the Sunshine Coast, took a trip from Darwin down to Alice Springs, caught up with everyone back in Adelaide, took a quick side-trip over to the Grampians, then spent a few days in Sydney before flying out. It was so good to see everyone again and very, very hard to leave again. I'm hoping it won't be another 4 years before we come home again.

Both Dustin and I were APPALLED to see our holiday photos when we got home. We have put on SO MUCH WEIGHT!! You know how you don't really notice since it happens so slowly? We're now trying to run around the neighbourhood on a regular basis. Our timing sucks, since summer is definitely already here. 90% humidity and 35 degrees at 10pm are not fun running conditions. Ugh.

When we came back to Augusta, we immediately began the house sale process. We'd planned to try to sell the house ourselves for a few weeks, and if that wasn't very successful, then we'd suck it up and agree to pay a real estate agent 3% commission to advertise it for us. Luckily, we were able to find quite a few interested parties on our own and now have a signed contract. We are scheduled to move out of Sande Hill Place on the 12th of June, which is rapidly approaching!

At the same time, we also had to start the house-hunting process in Charlotte. We're extremely lucky, in that Charlotte is only 2.5 hours away from Augusta, so rather than having to fly, we've been driving. We've been going over for a LONG day trip, and also taking Bonnie on her first motel stay overnight. House-hunting in Charlotte was a big shock after being in Augusta. We had to rapidly downscale our expectations, which left us in a dilemma: do we pick the nicer suburb with the small, not-so-nice house, or pick the big, new house way out in the suburbs? I had hoped that we might live in the city itself, but a tiny 1-bedroom apartment was close to $200K, so that idea was quickly abandoned. We were lucky, in the end. We found a house in a nice neighbourhood, close to everything, completely renovated inside, for a really good price. It's a bit older and smaller than we had initially hoped, but there is a good chance that the house's value will appreciate quite quickly, since it's close to the new light rail system and a few other up-and-coming areas. Closing date for the Charlotte house is Friday the 13th (!!), which will give us a week to unpack and move in before Dustin starts work on Friday the 20th.

We'll probably be changing the phone numbers to North Carolina numbers, so as soon as that's done, I'll send out change of address info for y'all.

Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful fun we had in Oz. I miss everyone so much. Hope you can come visit us in Charlotte soon!

V. xx

First leg of the trip

We're scheduled to leave the Sunshine Coast tomorrow, so our first leg is almost up. We've spent all of the time here just spending time with my Dad. This is Dustin's fourth visit to this area, so there wasn't anything touristy planned.

Our flight from LA was turbulent the whole trip. I've never had such a bad flight. And it took us over an hour to land in Sydney because of the high winds (runway was changed five times!). When we landed, we were told that because of the winds, Sydney Airport was down to one runway only. Amazing. We arrived in Queensland, though, with no problems at all.

Someone observed that all of my "things to do when I get home" were food-related. That is truly what I've missed most about being away from Australia. Culinary highlights so far have been fish and chips from the fishermans' co-op by the river, cheesymite scrolls, Farmers Union Iced Coffee, lamingtons, Tim Tams, Lift and Solo (for some reason, America doesn't have lemon squash which we'd think would be extremely popular over there). We still haven't been to a pie shop, but I think that's planned for tomorrow...

Dustin went surfing with my brother on the weekend, which was something he was really looking forward to doing. I did the typical chick thing and stayed on the beach.

We fly out to Darwin tomorrow, for the second leg of our trip. We'll be spending a week and a half in the Northern Territory, which is something we're both really excited about. As nice as it's been to spend time here, we've been here so many times before. We're looking forward to seeing new sights!

Stay tuned for further updates...

We're coming home!!!

I am so, so happy to say that we are coming home!!! After four years, I am finally going to be able to go to a pub for a cold beer and fish & chips, drive on the right (ie, CORRECT!) side of the road, and hear my own accent again.

Well, actually, it may not be such a familiar accent. I had to call a tour company in Australia last night, and the girl I spoke to sounded so weird. As she was talking, I thought to myself, "Did I ever sound like that??"

Right now, here is the list of MUST DO's:

1. Go to a bakery as soon as the plane lands. Order a pie, custard tart and iced coffee.

2. Go to Coles. Buy Cherry Ripes, licorice bullets, raspberry cordial, Cheezels, Minties, Snakes Alive, Lift lemon squash, and try not to eat them all in the first day!

3. Go to the Anzac Day Dawn Service.

4. Go to the beach.

5. Go to the Art Gallery in Adelaide and look for my favourite paintings.

6. Go back to Coles and buy lots and lots of lollies and chocolate to hoard when I come back to America. )-:

So, here is the rough plan of what we're doing: We'll spend time on the Sunshine Coast with family, then fly up to Darwin. We're joining a camping tour around Kakadu, then down to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, before flying down to Adelaide. Will be spending most of our time in Adelaide, before flying to Sydney for a day or two, then back to the U.S.

Ok, so after re-reading this post, it's ridiculously disjointed. But that just shows how excited I am!!! Can't wait to come home and see everyone again...

We found out!!

We're going to Charlotte, North Carolina!!!!



And I just quit my job!!!



WHAT AN AWESOME DAY!!!