Hello, Richmond!

Hopefully it's the last time for the foreseeable future, but we have finally found another apartment and moved! We officially live in Richmond as of a couple of weeks ago.

My dad thought that meant we moved to Virginia, but that is not the case (when I googled to be a smartass, turns out there are a lot more places named Richmond than I was expecting!) We moved a few kilometers north-ish of where we were currently living, which can be a quick drive in the middle of the night, an hour drive in peak hour Melbourne traffic (seriously) or a bus or tram ride away from our old spot in St Kilda:

The blue dot is us!

We are technically a bit closer to the city, but my commute to work is about 10ish mins longer because of the tram being a bit slower - I am so fine with it though because our new place is awesome! It took us about six months to find an apartment we were both happy with, and it was an extremely long, disheartening and drawn out process. I wrote a blog post when we were first here about how it works here - it is so much different than back in the US. I went to several open houses that were during work hours thinking it'd be sneaky and about 20-30 people still showed up to them! We ended up outsmarting the system and going to an open house that only had shitty pictures on realestate.com.au (basically the only way you can find somewhere to live here) - no one else showed up and the place was so nice, so we ended up getting it!

We have a giant kitchen, a garage and a little back courtyard now! It's a really nice layout, we have both been wanting a townhouse for a while and it was pretty hard to find one that was reasonably priced and not super far from the city, but we did it! The real estate process is such a pain in the ass, so hopefully we are here for a while!

We also decided to treat ourselves and buy a new fridge that dispenses ice. I find it hilarious that ice is basically non-existent in Australia - I joke around with Regis that there must be a shortage of it because if you get a drink anywhere, no one puts it in your glass. Now we have endless ice at home!

We haven't been up to much exciting stuff - since you can only take leave here if you accrue it, we haven't had leave in forever and won't till probably Christmas because we both started new jobs. I'm dying to go somewhere - I still haven't been outside if Victoria yet! We're going to Sydney at the end of October for a three day weekend, which I'm super excited about.

I went to a hula hoop retreat about a month and a half ago, which was AMAZING. I had so much fun - I am so used to being the weird friend that hula hoops, so it was super cool to meet other girls that do it too and learn some new stuff. We stayed in a buddhist temple in the mountains, and it was really peaceful. There were tons of cool workshops and we did yoga every morning. I want to start going to more stuff like that - it really put me out of my comfort zone but I got back feeling like I picked up so much and made some new friends out of it too! I met a couple new instructors I really liked too - I had so much fun learning from one of them, I signed up for her course - at the end we are going to be performing, and also filming a music video - stay tuned for the link in November!

We also took a fun little weekend trip with our friends to Torquay - it's a town on the Great Ocean Road. We stayed at a cool Airbnb and played cards and ate way too much good food! On the way home, we went to Little Creatures Brewing and did a tour. It was cool learning about how they make all their stuff - bold statement but I think Regis makes a better pale ale!

brewery touring

Other than that, we have basically just been getting used to our new apartment and neighborhood. I ended up picking up a 2nd job bartending at a cool little pub down the street. They serve Austrian food and beer - I basically just go there Wednesdays after I work at my office job till about 11pm. It's only one day a week, and it's nice to have a reason to get out of the house during the work week. It's also cool to meet new people and I'm definitely not complaining about a little extra cash. This past weekend I filled in for someone though and I am absolutely exhausted - so you are lucky to be getting an update from me! ;) I am going to be helping out with their marketing stuff in the near future, which I'm pretty excited about and they even told me they would be interested in serving our beer once we get the proper licensing and stuff - so good opportunities lie ahead!

My main job is going super well too - I have never had the luxury of having a job I choose till this one - and it feels so good to actually enjoy going to work! The company is really great to work for and the people are really nice. There are a lot of small cultural differences here I find really entertaining - every Friday afternoon we all have beers together in the breakroom, which absolutely would not fly back in the states! There is actually a bell they ring at 4pm on the dot, which is code for "stop your work for the week - it's beer thirty!". I've brought a couple of ours in too, which have gone down really well. Another really great thing my company does is pay for the office-based team to go on a team-building trip for Christmas every year. They pay for flights, accommodation, food and whatever activities the team ends up doing - so unheard of to me! This November, my team and I are going to Daylesford, which is a fancy spa/winery area. It should be pretty fun.

Well, I am half asleep and our new spa tub (it is GLORIOUS) is calling my name - so until next time, here are some photos - happy first week of spring!

-L

Torquay Beach

Torquay Beach

Friends!