I’m not gonna lie, I was feeling pretty back and forth for a
long time about living here but it is FINALLY, FINALLY starting to feel like
home now. I feel like I have grown so much as a person the past nine or so
months and it’s pretty surreal to type this blog post sitting on the balcony of
our new apartment on our sweet ass new patio furniture next to our new grill
that we don’t have to share with 300 other people (sorry old apartment
complex!).
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| Montalto Vineyard, Oct 14th |
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| Montalto Vineyard, Oct 14th |
We have worked extremely hard to get to where we are and it’s
taken the better part of a year to get to a place where we’re comfortably
living again. It’s super sweet to have real furniture and not be basically
living in someone’s spare bedroom! It’s nice too to finally be able to
comfortably sit outside – winter here is nothing compared to home, but houses
here are not equipped for the cold at all (we have basically one space heater
that’s attached to the wall in the kitchen) so the winter was pretty effing
miserable.
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| BBQ at a Brewery on the Peninsula |
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| St Kilda Beach Volleyball - the New Thursday Night Hangout |
I’m pretty sure we are going to have the go-to spot all
summer though, with our new furniture, grill and our homebrew on tap! I’ve also
started my gardening career, so it will add some nice additions to our outdoor
area. There is a ton of sun and dust from living right over an extremely busy
road, so we may not be able to grow much other than cacti!
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| My New Balcony Garden |
Regis got a car almost two weeks ago now meaning we can
finally drive to run errands, and more importantly we can go on our adventures
on our own terms! We were both super happy to go pick up furniture for our
patio. Next up on the list is another bed so our visitors coming have somewhere
to sleep (and my new favorite, this egg chair!)!
Our visitor season is coming up, and I’m so excited to say
that my mom went through with buying the plane ticket to Melbourne! No one in
my family is much of a traveler, mainly due to money and lack of time off, but
I am so proud of both my mom and my sister for taking the time to plan out a
visit here and buying plane tickets! My brother and sister turned 26 yesterday
and I felt a lot of guilt about not being able to spend time with them – so some
family time is going to be much needed.
Regis traveled for work for about six weeks straight and I’m
pretty sure I was going nuts for a while, but we have been back to basically
normal (whatever normal is for us!!) for about a month. Some new beers are
being brewed, and we’ve finally made a few other friends! We even went on a
trip recently with them to the Mornington Peninsula that was a nice relaxing
getaway away from the city. We went back to the Peninsula this past weekend to
go back to the hot springs I mentioned in our last post, and we also went to a
couple other places we went when we were on holiday here.
It was a huge “holy crap” moment when we went to Montalto
Vineyard – I think that was the point on our holiday two years ago where we
both decided it’d be worth it to actually go through with moving to Australia,
no matter how difficult it would be and it was basically one of the most
surreal experiences I’ve ever had going back there as a resident and not a
tourist. Most of the stuff we’ve done here hasn’t seemed like huge leaps or
bounds, but looking at it all now is insane, we have really accomplished a lot
and set up a new life in a pretty short amount of time. It’s a hell of a lot of
work though and I am not trying to move anytime soon!!
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| Montalto Vineyard |
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| The Cups Estate |
I honestly don’t have too much more to add at the moment,
but hope you all enjoy these pictures of the beginning of a gorgeous Australian
summer!
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| Rye, Victoria |
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| St Andrew's Beach, Victoria |
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| Parrots on our Balcony! |
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| St Andrew's Beach, Victoria |
Until next time, guys! Regis is up.
-L
