Getting on with it

Hello blogfans (or dan & dad if its only going to those who have subscribed)
we have now been here about 11 days so time for an update on what we have been up to. I cant promise it will be that exciting but i can assure you it'll be more interesting than the if we were doing this in Loughborough! So we have started to settle here now and things are really good. Aussie life is certainly less stressful and less formal than back home or at least it has been for us. Of course I am not on holiday and have done my first week in work that has gone quite well even if i took a day off for a brief case of the man-flu (sad, I know). The people at work are all really friendly and there have been lots of long lunches and extended coffee breaks. This last week was mainly about meeting people and getting my IT account set up etc and now that is all sorted I will be doing some experiments (for the first time in about 5 years!) this week. I am also going away on a post-doc retreat for one day into the Adelaide Hills, not sure what they will be like, apparently they have arranged for some motivational speakers to come along and then there will be a team building exercise (which i will try and avoid). One thing that is nice about work here compared to the UK is that academics and students mix a lot more together. Anyway enough of the work stuff. Emma and Dylan have had a great week exploring Adelaide (by public transport). They have been swimming, to the zoo and to kindergym to name but a few of the activities. The zoo seems to have been a bit of a hit and Dylan can now make all sorts of animal noises although we dont know what noise a kangeroo makes?? Emma also managed to make a friend - Suzie from Newcastle - who is over here for 18 months with her husband and two kids so that has been good. She is even meeting another person from a mums in adelaide webpage - Natalie - for coffee this week (at least that's what she tells me). One thing that is much better than home is that I have less formal timetable so each day we have breakfast all together and then we usually meet in town late afternoon and come home and have tea together which is great. As we live next door to a load of great food shops we buy our tea each night and all eat the same thing. We have gone a bit mad on the tropical fruit recently but Dylan's been eating lots of new things including sushi, olives and baby eggplant. The food is really great here, and we are certainly eating much better. To help with the general fitness theme "operation smaller-belly" officially started this week when we joined the brand new, rather expensive but next door to our flat, gym. Only been a few times so far but its a start. Money has been rather pouring out a little this week. Unfortunately Emma got a bad toothache this week and needed emergency dental treatment which cost £100 and worse was to follow when we found out she needed root canal at £700 - ouch! Worse still if this had happened a few months back at home it would have been free. As for Dylan news, he has been in great form despite 3 new teeth on the way, he is loving all the new parks and activities I think. He also got his haircut in a posh salon although the close crop looked like something you'd get from a backstreet barber. This weekends activities were a day on the beach (see pic) and 'Baby Proms' which was a classical music concert for tots which he seemed to love - although we got an insight into his personality when approx. 100 babies all sat and listened to the music on their mums knees whilst Dylan ran around, arms waving singing 'bo bo bo bo'. Chilled and relaxed he is not. Ok, I have waffled on long enough now, I think that covers it, the weather has been great all week, today was supposed to be a bad weather day and it was 22 degrees and a little overcast at times, s'pose we can live with that. And just to finish off, the grumpy old man in me feels obliged to mention somethings that are not so good just to readdress the balance a little and not make it seem that everything is brilliant (although it mainly is, honest). Here a few not so good things

• flies, lots of em, always hassling your face, think we might need hats with corks soon
• crossing roads is a bit of an ordeal as you wait for ages.....at the crossing points
• their telly really is bad...
• the dentists are rip off merchants

that's about it, its a bit slow to upload pics so i'll mainly put them here (www.flickr.com/photos/dylanmooney). Take care, enjoy the autumn sunshine I keep hearing about and cheerio til next time. The Mooneys x

Settling in

Hello
had lots of feedback on our blog. Mainly postive, i think, so we'll stick with it, probably sending an update once a week (apparently if you fill in your email address on the site i think it will mail you when we update). So we have been here now about 4 days and so far it is all really positive. Adelaide seems like a really nice place. It is a city probably similar in size to Leicester. The weather has been great which has helped. It has mainly been around 25 degrees which is nice although we had one day at about 34 degrees when we all melted. Strangely it gets quite cold at night and we have been using the air con as a heater! Most people seem to stay indoors between 12-3 to avoid the sun. Anyway we have avoided the sunburn so far. We are living in North Adelaide which is about 15 mins walk from the city centre. Its a really nice area with lots of coffee shops (tried most of these) and bars (tried none of these). We have a 2 bed apartment on the second floor which is fun when you have to carry Dylan and the stroller. It is all open plan which makes a change but everyone seems quite happy with it. I especially like the 40 inch HD plasma TV although it only seems to show rubbish (actually emma is quite happy that she can see the latest episodes of neighbours). The first few days were mainly spent sleeping and not venturing too far but we are all on aussie time now and even dylan is sleeping through which is great. The first few days with Dylan jetlagged were funny (see pic of him falling asleep whilst eating). Next door to the apartment is a little shopping centre which has a deli, supermarket, newsagent, bakery and sushi bar. Dylan had sushi yesterday and loved it! The city centre is fairly standard although different to the U.K. in that they dont have many chain stores, mainly independent ones. They do have a Woolies but that is a supermarket here. On sunday we visited the beach at Glenelg which is about 30 mins away, nice seaside place although it was very busy and a bit windy. Yesterday was my first day in work and that went really well. I have my own office and all the staff went out of there way to be friendly. It was also the first time I have had a safety induction that included a warning about getting brown snakes (2nd most venomous in Australia) in your office! The campus I am mainly based at is about 4m out of the city centre in the foothills. Its quite rural, surrounded by trees with Kaolas in them. Emma took Dylan swimming yesterday. The aquatic centre is something else. 5 different kiddy pools + slides, diving pools, olympic standard pool. We now have 12 weeks to turn him into a baby 'Thorp-edo'. It is taking some getting used to being without a car as everything is quite spreadout so we have been using the buses and trams. They are relatively frequent and you pay by the hour rather than by distance - £1 for 2 hrs - so pretty cheap. We have so far avoided the creepy crawlies although emma thinks she got biten by a spider. She is still alive so I am not sure about that one. Oh and Dylan HATES having sunscreen put on everyday. Think that is about it so far (jordache will be pleased i kept it brief). I'll end with a few bullet points (I am a lecturer after all) on some of the main differences (so far) here and home.

• Weather better no doubt
• People generally friendlier
• Most things a bit cheaper (except baby stuff)
• Less commercial overall
• Cars are a lot older here and about 50% have boy racer exhausts
• No congestion on roads
• Public parks are everywhere and better maintained.
• TV is definitely worse here but i guess we didnt come for that
• Relatively easy to avoid the gloom and doom of the current football season

Ok, time to sign out and get an iced coffee. cheerio - The Mooneys

The Journey

hello
decided to run with this for a bit as a way of keeping in touch. We have of course landed in Adelaide so while it is all fresh in the memory (its oh so fresh), let me tell you about a few of the the epic 3 day journey highlights and lowlights. I'll save the first impressions of Adelaide til the next post although i should point out it is currently 5am here and we have been up 2 hrs already so not quite on aussie time yet...

So we set off last monday morning and headed to heathrow early to avoid the rush hour traffic. This meant we spent most of the day in a place near heathrow called heston which is truly one of the grimest places i have ever been too. The only redeeming features was a great kiddies play centre that Dylan ran riot in for a few hrs. The next phase of the journey was the heathrow experience which was probably the worst of the whole trip. Check in was +1hr and Dylan cried through most of it. The place was mega crowded, hot and full of stressed people (us included). Security was a nightmare, bags searched, medicines confiscated, full body searches for us etc. We had to open all the food and milk for Dylan and taste it (effectively spoiling it for the 12 hr flight). The departure lounge was full and we holed up in the only available seats in an irish bar and tried to keep Dylan from crying for 2 hrs til we boarded. We flew on the new 800 seater A380 which was very nice, we got good seats on the top deck and thankfully Dylan fell alseep shortly after take off. And amazingly he then slept for the next 9 hrs which was great. This meant we only had a few hrs of books, toys and breadsticks til we landed in Singapore. Changi Airport is the opposite of Heathrow - spacious, clean, friendly people and within an hr or so we were at the Shangri-La. This is certainly the best hotel we have ever stayed in, nothing was too much trouble. Dylan was treated like a god (think C-3P0 to the Ewoks if you know Star Wars). He has given toys, shown around, basically treated like a VIP. So we had a great time here. Great food with free beer (although we could only manage one), outdoor swimming at night in 30 degree temps and generally really friendly people. It was then on to Adelaide. The highlight of the trip was boarding the plane in Singapore, Emma and I were geared up for another 12 hr flight until the captain announced the flight to Adelaide was 6 hrs. The other passengers looked at us weirdly as we celebrated ONLY a 6 hr flight with a 1 year old. Dylan fell asleep before take off and slept for 3 hrs. Unfortunately that was it on the sleep front and it then took every book, toy, cartoon, food and air hostess to keep him occupied for the next three hours. By the end of it he was throughly fed up, shattered and a bit worse for wear, but so were we. Arrival in Australia was not a short process - 2 hrs after landing before we cleared customs and passport control. They seem to be more concerned about people smuggling in biscuits than drugs or illegal immigrants. Suffice to say we made it, even managed to get HIPP organic baby lasagne through (Yes!) and were greated on the other side by Annie, my contact at the university. From here we were rapidly whisked to the apartment where we checked in and promptly slept for 6 hrs. So overall it wasnt too bad. I mean if i had the choice I would rather run over hot coals or even the marathon again then do it it again, but Dylan did really well and we made it. Of course, its 2 days on and we are all far from settled but I'll save that for next time. By the way, it was 33 degrees yesterday ! speak soon, The Mooneys

The Departure Lounge

Hello
I am still undecide as to whether this is actually a good idea and an easy way to keep in touch with all our family or hideously naff and likely to lead to lots of ribbing at a later date. So until I work out which one (although I guess its going to be both) I'll give it a go.

I guess the aim of this is to be a home for any updates of stuff we have been up to plus a few nice pics as and when we have them. No pics as yet but I guess we have been up to lots of the planning side of things and we are now pretty much ready for departure on monday. The main source of grief was the visa as we had the wrong one (thanks to the university travel agent) and after much expensive photocopying courtesy of a local solicitor plus a few letters from both Adelaide and Nottingham universities saying they agreed to the trip we finally have our visa. Emma has been busy trawling websites for advice on what we can and cannot get through security checks at the airport - very little it seems in terms of essential baby stuff so that should be fun. And we have finally sorted all the other issues with insurance, bills, cars etc. Basically lots of planning for only a short (13 week) trip.

Anyway we are now all set we think, a few more goodbyes this weekend then its time to begin the adventure starting with the small matter of a 4 day journey and a 24 hr flight, the calpol is on stand by...

more to follow