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
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