Sydney Adventures

Emily and I have been in Sydney for about a month now. We have been living in Stanmore, Wollstonecraft, and now Elizabeth Bay. We started in Stanmore, an inner west suburb for our first three weeks in a very small city apartment . From Stanmore we had a front row view to the approach of Sydney's airport. Resting on my pillow my pillow, I could see the logos on the underside of the wings on the plains as they buzzed our roof: Qantas, Jetstar, Tiger Airways, et el.  From 6am to 11pm we had constant aircraft noise, making conservation with another person in the same room sometimes impossible.  When we were not having problems communicating with humans we were communicating with the spiders to go away! We had two large Hunstman spiders visit our kitchen, one resting on the soy sauce at the same time we needed that bottle of sodium for our sushi, sending Emily across the room like a Samurai on full inverse banzai. The Stanmore apartment was super tiny and we never really unpacked our bags. The car was always full of stuff and we were constantly worried about  getting a ticket in  the two hour parking on the street we were staying on. We did not have a resident's parking permit (that's another story!)

 Last week we stayed in Wollstonecraft, near North Sydney. It was an amazingly clean house with heaps of space on a quiet street. The back of the house had a balcony overlooking bush like setting of a public park. Birds were chirping and no parking hassles. We agreed to stay one week because we put money down for a apartment in Elizabeth Bay and just needed a place to crash. We were relaxing, watching the sunset on our first night when we met one of our flatmates.  He was middle aged and turned out to be really creepy. We were expecting privacy and all this guy wanted to do was pepper Emily with questions and act like I was not even there. Things got worse later in the week when the landlady informed us that we needed to leave the room by Friday at noon, which was a real problem because we both worked all day.  We were moving into our Liz Bay place Saturday which left us nowhere to live Friday night.

We ended up staying at Emily's friend's house in Newtown which turned out to be an epic disaster. It turned out to be a party house and we had to wait for everyone to drink and go out before we could claim the broken futons in the lounge room we were expecting to sleep on. After wiping potato chip crumbs off the cushions we discovered that overnight road works were underway, including someone using a concrete saw right under the lounge window for several hours. I worked early that Saturday and Emily was woken up by the flatmates cooking vodka omelets at 8 am. We finally moved into out own apartment in Elizabeth Bay last Saturday afternoon.. We enjoy the place, it's a little old, but in a central location, only two stops from the CBD, and has a nice park nearby. Parking is a problem which is no surprise but we were really shocked to discover a mold farm growing behind the entertainment center requiring several hours of cleaning. We have been through a lot the past month, moistly struggling to find a place to live and securing full time work. We have signed a sub-lease until January 29th and this place should give us a good base for more Sydney adventures.

Why I Enjoy Traveling

I have recently moved to Sydney from Nowra after two months. Being in Sydney reminds me that I am instill in a foreign country. Nowra was eerily similar to living in small town Nebraska. Its good to know that where I came from is no different than other places on the other side of the world, There is nothing wrong with that. When traveling in a condensed period of time people make decisions that could last a lifetime. When traveling over a long period of time each decision I make feel like an earth shattering decision, knowing that I have only so much time before my work visa runs out. My last night in Nowra I was asked if traveling helps self confidence, and I was not sure how to answer. After several days of thinking about this I have come to the conclusion that I now fell less self confident because I now realize that where I am from is not all that cool and the I don't really feel any more special than any other guy next to me.

Recently my girlfriend and I, who I met in New Zealand decided to give ourselves another chance. Her name is Emily and she is from South Carolina. We met over a year ago and it seems like everywhere we turn we have similarities. When we met in New Zealand she was just starting her working holiday, at the same time I was just finishing up. I recently talked to a guy who told me that when traveling as a couple it seems like 10 years of a relationship is compressed into 10 days. I can totally relate to that. We have relocated to Sydney together and we are both looking for full time work. Emily does promotions for a living and I am doing the construction thing again. She always finds employment easily. We both admit that we would have never met each other if we were not traveling. She is my first long term girlfriend and I made a litany of mistakes he first time around that I have now corrected. Everyone has their reasons to travel. I have never really been sure of my reasons, but I am very sure that I would be very happy to travel with Emily anytime.