Tag: new york city

Seis Años

Six years and three continents ago we left the fair shores of Sydney, so young so naive I did not expect to be away so long. The few trips back to Sydney were often bitter-sweet though we were wooed on our last trip back at Christmas. The notion of settling back in Australia isn’t totally foreign though it’s getting a little ahead of ourselves at the moment.

We’ve had an amazing adventure so far. Seen and done loads of crazy shit we’d probably not have a chance to were we based in Sydney. It can be a struggle initially getting settled improving once we assimilate. We have a unique vantage point to interact, developing a picture of a place different to the harried view often seen from tourist reference points. I make it sound like we’ve been living amongst lost tribes in the Amazon but London and New York so far are markedly different from our native land.

We blew through London last weekend, catching up with old and new friends. As mentioned in my last post, I miss London. Having spent over 5 years there it’s our closest reference point for home. Learning the lay of the land and how to deal with the natives makes things so much easier. Patience has never been one of my strong points so New York is still taking a little getting used to. I struggled at the start with London, had such a vehement dislike of the place… oh how things change.

If home is where your heart is though I think mine is somewhere in the Basque and Catalonian regions of Spain or the south of Italy… or is that just my stomach? Visnja once described in her inimmitable way that family & friends at home said she’d lost her compass. It’s such an apt description of our current state.

Update: just realised this was post #500…

Fall update

It’s about 7 weeks since we got to NYC already? Managed to get over most of the hurdles that come with starting life in a new country. Starting to settle in and enjoying our neighbourhood. Painfully continuing to wait for Sam’s Employment Authorization (3-4 months to process…wtf?) before she gets to stop playing homemaker and go earn some greens.

The move into the apartment was painless. The removalists (is that the correct term for unpackers?) unloaded our container, unpacked most stuff and cleared out the boxes in a few hours. The biggest drama  was getting the larger of our couches over the patio from upstairs. We had a few casualties with the glass on a framed print smashed and another had a chunk taken out of it. Otherwise not too bad. Read more…