And there was great rejoicing

Hello friends,

I started this on Wednesday…

Well, today is a big day to celebrate for us. It represents the “almost” end of almost a 4 month struggle for us. We finally have access to medicare in Australia!!! I realize that this doesn’t sound all that exciting to most, but brother, it is for pregnant foreigners. And despite the fact that it is temporary at the moment, it will cover our butts at least until our wee one is born. It would take me a day and a night to describe the decisions we’ve had to come to, choices we’ve been forced to make and fitful nights with niggling thoughts of “what will we do if…”, over the short time that we’ve known that we were going to have a baby knowing that we were moving to Australia. So I’ll spare you. I’m just thankful that this means that we can register at a hospital in the public system, so we for sure won’t be having a baby on the side of the road somewhere (well, we might, but it wouldn’t be planned that way), or paying 1000-3000$ a night in a private hospital (that cost is for 1 person, and a baby counts as another…it would add up quickly). Mom and Dad Jardine, please breathe a sigh of relief with us, and maybe klink a glass of Amstel Light or two...Or Elephant. Whatever’s in your fridge these days. I think that the wee one must be happy to have some of the pressure off, I felt the critter moving around lots today. Perhaps klinking their own glass. Tim and I are going to eat steak later. A great way to celebrate. A celebratory cheeseburger might enter the picture later on this week as well. As for now, I’m contently listening to John Prine with a smile on my face and a bit of weight off of my shoulders. Feeling quite thankful.

Tim is a smart bickie (Aussie term for cookie) and has taken a keen liking to navigating around the country, if only in theory, since we’ve arrived. I calculated the other day that of the free time that Tim has, roughly 30% of it is spent either looking at the city maps book, or online checking out busroutes. Actually, he cut his morning busride down by ½ and hour over this past week due to some hard-core research. The other day a new friend of ours (Peter, a former Vancouverite who owns a car but chooses to use the bus system for the most part), gave us a ride home from a late-night meeting. The whole conversation home was between Tim and Peter about which buses were the best to take from the city to the university. I’m telling you, this was no amateur bus conversation. Bus numbers were flying left, right and centre. I actually couldn’t contribute anything to the conversation (and felt slightly intimidated) because I take 3 buses in this city and for the life of me couldn’t tell you what their numbers were. Especially in a fast-paced bus conversation. I should tell you that Peter is very eerily similar to Tim. Right down to the short-sleeve scientist shirts that make up the majority of Tim’s wardrobe, and neutral nature…Peter’s hairline is a bit more advanced in recession though. We do like Peter a lot.

I should also say that Tim’s new-found hobby of navigating has made our traveling a lot easier. We never wait for busses long, and he knows exactly where we’re going, all of the time. It actually makes me a better navigator as well. So our experiment in public transport isn’t going all that badly, although we’ve had our eyes on the used car section in the weekend paper. Just in case.

So what we’ve done these past couple of weeks…I’ll start with last weekend, when we visited Lone Pine Koala Park. Yes, we are still on the hunt for a Koala in the wild. And we were led to believe that this is what we would find at Lone Pine. Unfortunately, we discovered when we got there that it was another glorified zoo. It’s hard to believe that in Australia, the land of Koalas and Kangaroos, that we’re paying to see them in captivity. Do people pay to see moose in captivity in Canada? I think I remember seeing a moose at the zoo at Upper Clements Park as a kid, but I led a sheltered life…It just seems like an odd thing to have in a zoo... Either way, we saw lots of Australian animals at Lone Pine (Dingoes, lizzies, crocs, etc.). And actually the Kangaroos were kept in huge pastures where you could actually walk around and mingle with them. So I tried to mingle best I could. See picture. We decided following that trip that we would go back to the Koala Rehabilitation Park that we’d gone to weeks before (where we unsuccessfully sought Koalas in the wild), crossing our fingers for better luck. It was a nice walk despite our lack of finding Koalas, so I think we’re gonna do that soon.

And finished this on Friday…

This past weekend we only had a part of Saturday to explore the city as Tim had to attend a “crocodile awareness training” session, to get prepared for his fieldwork coming up in May. He’ll relay his croc related survival tips in a later entry. I’ve really wanted to take the train since we’ve been here (the only train I’ve ever taken is the SkyTrain in Vancouver, which is more bus-like than train-like…or so I thought), so we decided that we’d take the train to an area called Cleveland for a Saturday afternoon jaunt. It was nice. Cleveland is basically an area along the Queensland eastern coastline that’s sheltered by Stradbroke Island and Moreton Island, which actually makes the beaches along the Cleveland coast quite rocky (not as much wave action on the shores). The heart of Cleveland is really a man-made delta of sorts, containing lots and lots of winding channels which allow more water-front properties to be developed and sold in the area. Tim and I aren’t typically impressed by that sort of thing, it was rather surreal to see so many huge mansion-like houses side-by-side along the channels, each with their own private dock for their own private boat. It makes me wonder how people do it, but maybe we’ll feel differently when we’re ready to retire, who knows? We spent most of our time in a park along the coast, trying to identify birds and soaking up the rays on that beautiful day. Perhaps the best part of the day was when we stopped for supper on the way back. There is a little place nearby called Thai Flavors, and it’s amazing. The restaurant itself doesn’t hold more than 6 tables inside of it, with some tables outside as well, but the cute little husband and wife team have a great rapport with customers, that might be the clincher. We’ve only been there once, but we’ve been told by others that once you’ve had a conversation with them they don’t forget names, no matter how long it is since you’ve been there. The food is amazing, and this is in a land where you could get Thai food around every bend, so it says a lot that it actually stands out. And despite the fact that there were other patrons in the restaurant when we got there, and there was always a line-up at the counter for take-away orders, we were served very well. It’s yet another place that I will take anyone who decides to make a jaunt over to this side of the planet to visit. Are you enticed yet?

These past couple of weeks Tim and I have both had meetings that have brought us into the downtown area at night. And we’re discovering that the city itself actually holds just as much promise for adventure as perhaps the wilderness that we’ve been seeking. Neither of us have ever been around such a huge hive of activity and simply for people-watching, it offers a vast array of interesting features. One place that we’ve had to be a lot it seems, is an area of the city called the west-end. It’s full of a lot of our favorite things, namely great restaurants, but lots of great art places, fair-trade type shops and maybe it just has a vibe of a way of life that we like. It seems like people care about issues like food production, treating all humans as human, etc. There’s a market there on Saturdays that we’ll be checking out this weekend. It could be interesting as it’s been described to us by a number of people as “an attractor for ‘weird’ folks”…I think that might translate into “people that attend that market are different than me and I don’t like it”, but we’ll see. Maybe it is a freak-show. We’re excited to see! Maybe we’re weird too. Who knows? Who cares?

Speaking of city incidents, last night I was coming home from a meeting in the city and was waiting for the bus chatting with a friend who was also attending the same meeting. In mid-sentence I screamed out loud…We’re not talking a little scream here, it was an “I’m petrified” scream, I even shocked myself. It turns out that while listening to my friend, I was subconsciously watching a group of business-type people j-walk across the street from the opposite side that we were on. There were 2 guys and 2 girls, all businessed up. Three of them were quicker than one of the ladies. This was on a straight street, so all cars would have been able to see them. But as they were about half way across, this bus starts barreling towards them. I was watching this, and half-listening to my friend at this point, but I couldn’t believe that the bus was actually picking up speed. I thought for sure that the 3 in front would be hit, there was just no time for this bus to stop, but they made it across, and then you see this girl, like a deer in headlights trying to get across the street in what seemed like slow-motion, trying to get out of the way of this bus, which she narrowly did, and that’s what led to my involuntary scream. And people around me were laughing. Apparently hitting pedestrians is a game for drivers here. Maybe I’m not cut out for the city life afterall. I think I could have delivered a baby in my shock. But I didn’t, thankfully.

We’ve got our 20-week ultrasound coming up on Wednesday, which should be fun. We had one before we left Canada at 10 weeks, which was good to confirm that I wasn’t just getting tubby because I was eating too much, but the baby really only had ‘buds’ for arms at that point, and should be a bit more developed by now. At this point we could find out whether we should be referring to ‘it’ as a she or a he, but we’ve decided not to find out. I’m sure that will be a lot harder once we are in the ultrasound room. We like the idea of a good surprise though. And since we’re halfway through the pregnancy, it should all be downhill from here now, hey? Speaking of babies, we live in a great neighborhood.

I’m not sure whether it’s a function of the weather here, but people that live near each other seem to know and like each other, which is more than we could say about Fredericton. We liked our neighbors, but we rarely ever spoke to them, especially when it wasn’t necessary. Looking back, it just seems weird as we typically think of Canadians as friendly. But really, do you know your neighbors? Do you ever invite each other over for supper? Do you ever talk to them for any other reason than either asking them for something or discussing property rights? I am sad to say that in Fredericton, our answers to those questions would have been kinda, no, no, and no. It just didn’t happen. Here, we’ve already dined with 2 of our closest neighbors…And we socially interact with 3 of them on a regular basis. It’s like we have friends living next door (which is what I thought that grown-up life would be like). And how does this tie in with babies? Well, for one, there are a lot of young couples in the area with either children on the way or with small kids. That’s nice. Pretty much any time of day you can see a mom or a dad walking the dog and children around here. Secondly, we had steak the other night (on our celebration of medicare approval day) with our neighbors who were expecting their first child yesterday (the day after we had supper with them), but so far haven’t had it yet. They are fantastic! Admittedly we didn’t know them well prior to the other night, but we had an amazing time with them. They’re ex-pats from Birmingham, England and have been here for about 5 years. So they know the whole deal about leaving family behind and all that goes along with that…it just seems that we had a lot in common. And I guess we do. Even aside from the baby commonality, it seems we’re cut from a similar cloth in relation to life experiences, outlook, etc. We’ll enjoy getting to know them, and their new addition better over at least the 12 months that we’re tied in to this house.

Tim and I have noticed the neighbor thing before (the friendliness here, and less-friendliness in Canada) and we think it might be tied to the fact that because it’s always sunny here, people aren’t dealing with the lack of sunlight blues that I think we all get in Canada over the winter months, and people tend to be outside a lot more, and year-round. There’s just more opportunity to interact. So far we haven’t met anyone that lives nearby that we don’t really connect with, but I’m sure it will happen. For now, we’re just enjoying the fact that we don’t have to go far to enjoy others’ company.

One more thing before I go…I’ve discovered the mumu. It’s hot here, and I’m not getting any skinnier, and big cotton dresses are good for heat and belly-gainage. I tell Tim that me and the old lady across the street (who also has a fondness for the mumu) are on to something.

Lots of love to everyone, our lives are getting busier by the day and we’ve both got lots coming up that is sure to entertain. Hopefully the stories will have nothing to do with encounters of the crocodilian nature. Take care, and come visit!

P.S. Tim and I had some grocery shopping to do this evening, and because of our lateness and our good reasons to celebrate this week, we decided that cheeseburgers would make a nice Friday night supper. We stopped by the Seafood Platter on our way home from the bus station and I went in to order. The girl at the counter said “two cheeseburgers, right?”, and I immediately turned red. She knows what I order. This could mean a couple of things…1) I eat too many cheeseburgers or 2) I’m a tubby pregnant lady that people notice when ordering. Either way, it’s embarrassing. When our order came up she asked “Are our cheeseburgers good? It’s all I ever see you ordering”. Double humiliation. So I could now officially go down there and order ‘the usual’, and they would know what I’m talking about. I sure hope that this cheeseburger thing ends when this pregnancy is over. Otherwise I’m gonna be in trouble.