G'day from Melbourne!

So I made it to Melbourne without a single hitch!  I had a bit of time to rest at LAX before my flight - you know, paint my nails, brush my teeth, sort through the Cali photos, charge all my electronics :) - and was then on my way to Auckland.  And I must now declare my new found love for Air New Zealand.  For an economy/coach ticket I have never been more comfortable or gotten more sleep.  The seats reclined (I would guess) more than 30 degrees and I had a leg rest like a lazy boy come out from under my seat and a vertically adjustable headrest that could fit a shorter person like me.  I had no need for my normal travel pillow or the sweatshirt, scarf, and gloves I had ready in case it was too cold.  They brought me my vegetarian meal right to my seat without asking and I got to eat a full 45 minutes before my other seat mates and then I was asleep with my complimentary glass of white wine!   I had my own TV with access to dozens of American tv shows and movies, and so I was able to actually finish a movie we'd started watching in San Diego, but that I'd fallen asleep during, the Ides of March.  One other highlight was the safety video at takeoff featuring Richard Simmons and some of the players from the All Blacks rugby team... So good I enjoyed watching it a second time from AKL to MEL!  And it was such a smooth 13 hour flight that I think I would have to prefer it to many of the 2-5 hour flights I'm accustomed to in the States.  Sleeping was so much easier!  I'm here in Melbourne now, 15 hours ahead of the east coast and 18 hours ahead of the west coast and I think I might be able to miss the jet lag entirely!  Oh, and I have declared that I am one day younger right now too.  I flew out of LAX at dark and flew through the pitch black (but could see soooo many stars over the Pacific still) and landed in Auckland just in time for sunrise missing an entire day and an entire sun.  So I'm now one day younger until I come back to the US!

So first impressions of Melbourne...

It's expensive.  Bus transportation out of Melbourne to my host in the city center was $17 Australian which is pretty near to $17 American - and that was for the bus!  I saw a billboard on the way for McDonald's and instead of a dollar menu it looks like they are advertising a "loose change" menu for $2.  Haven't been to one yet so I don't know what's on it for a comparison though.  Hot chocolate at the cafe I was at earlier was 5.40 and tea was 4.70.

It's sooo livable!  Minus the expensive thing (I'm sure they must have a higher minimum wage) I have been loving just walking around the city!  I got to the city at noon, met my host, and have taken to walking around on foot with a map and highlights my host pointed out.  Sooo much within walking distance!  It's not quite manhattan sized, but it's large and they still manage to fit tree lined medians on many of the roads and make a number of streets pedestrian only.  And sooo many people are out and about in the afternoon.  I've been out since 3pm and you would think it was 5 or 6.  And I love how there are benches and benches everywhere!

Lots of languages are spoken here.  I'm guessing the ones I am not understanding are of an Oriental nature.  And the whole city feels soooo cosmopolitan ... Everyone is walking and in so many different kinds of clothes/outfits and it looks really like anything goes in a good way!  I've been casually looking for a better jacket in about a half dozen stores already (though I have passed more than 50 stores that I could have looked in...again, very livable!) and I've seen such a variety of styles on the racks.  I don't know that much about fashion, but the styles look much more sophisticated than what I had been seeing at the Tampa malls.  Even the Billabong store here carries some styles that I'm sure they must not sell in the US.

The streets smell sooooo good with so many different kinds of cuisines!  I can't even begin to name all of the ones I saw.  I am doing dinner with my host tonight so I can't ruin my appetite right now, but I am soooo tempted!

I am going to get in trouble with the driving on the left side of the road convention.  As a pedestrian I am of course used to walking on the right on sidewalks, but I have to keep moving back to the left side with each approaching pedestrian.  Even once on the left I find I am naturally drifting back to the right side again and again!  It's so weird to see drivers sitting on the right side of their cars too.  It looks like a ghost is driving the car when you look in and see the left side front seat completely empty!  And seeing cars making right turns out of a left lane is weird too.  I am now legitimately scared for the car rental I have reserved next week to do the Great Ocean Road coast road trip.

It is a very healthy city.  Besides everyone walking everywhere, I saw people of all ages running.  Women walking the streets in business clothes and sneakers.  People carrying gym bags on their commutes and again many, many bikers.

I brought the wrong camera with me for my wandering this afternoon so I don't have any photos yet, but I'm sitting now in one of the arcades (pedestrian outdoor malls) in the CBD (central business district) enjoying pomegranate frozen yogurt and people watching during the early 4pm rush hour. (Though this will be posted later when I have free internet at my host, Jarrod's.  Internet rates are expensive in australia i had heard (and have now seen) and there's no free wifi at Starbucks here :)

But ah, I really love this city so much already.  Going to start figuring out how to adjust the next month to spend more time here.  I'm going to a bar/venue tonight for soul dancing night with my host and friends and then I head to Philip Island tomorrow with my host again and a bunch of his friends for the Tough Mudder race.  I will be playing tourist and not running (why would I want to carry a tire and run through fire and mud?) but I will get to participate in all of the after party festivities!  Looking forward to it!

TTFN, ta ta for now!

Almost time to leave for the land down under!!  First stop is Melbourne with a getaway to Philip Island as well as a couple day road trip along the Great Ocean Road!  Very, very excited!!

And if you didn't already hear, Mla and I had truly the most wonderful time the past 11 days in California!  There are no words to express how much gratitude I feel for the amazing experience we shared and all of the positive forces that came together to give us the extraordinary time together.  Too many highlights to name, but surfing in the Pacific again, meeting amazing CouchSurfing hosts, spending time at my favorite gardens in the world in Encinitas, seeing coastlines that I didn't know existed in this country, seeing family and old friends and having amazing weather the whole time when it was supposed to rain like 9 of the 11 days were all just frosting on the cake.  Feeling very confident about the next 7 weeks!!

Thanks for reading and all of your support you guys!!

Next time from Oz!

California Love continued

California Love

Hollywood Spotting

So without even trying, Mila and I saw kourtney kardashian and Scott disick walking out of the Ralph Lauren store on Robertson Blvd.  We were on a hunt for some frozen yogurt on our way back from the griffith observatory and I saw the black SUV immediately in front of us whip to the curb and park.  Two camera guys jump out running to the sidewalk to prep their cameras.  Then just ahead walking out of the store was a couple I actually didn't recognize.  I got a really good look at the guy in a purple shirt thinking he was the star but never recognizing him.  Mila got a good look at the girl and confidently proclaimed the girl a Kardashian, but I wasn't convinced.  Thanks to smartphones and a Google image search for Kourtney Kardashian's husband and I can state positively now that we saw kourtney and scott.  And I laugh as I write this...what do I really care?  I'm just happy with my vegan froyo from Milky's.  Yum!!!!

sent from my droid

Test, test, test!

Trying out the posting via email!  Mila and I had the best time in Santa Barbara last night and this morning!  Mila volunteered for a photo shoot with our host and I got to spend some quiet time on the beach!  More photos to come later but we say hi for now!

sent from my droid

California Adventure

Posting via email now.  I had a very lovely post typed up about the past 4 days in California and how I have fallen in love again (with California) and how many miles we've traveled, and little anecdotes here and there and some gushing about my niece Marin, but....... more ipad problems ensued... the google vs apple battle continued and post was lost, but awesome Couchsurfing host Phil has helped me persevere!  Posts will pretty exclusively be photo based from now on.... hope that's ok!

love,
Annie

The REAL reason why I am using a blog

So some people have asked if I plan to email everyone each time I add a new post and well that tends to launch me into the same story each time, so I thought I would share that with everyone, because the truth is that, no, please don't expect emails every time there is a new post.

So I bought an iPad for traveling purposes.  My 2008 MacBookPro was unfortunately just not going to cut it.  It only very recently received an upgrade to Snow Leopard (only to still be two OS releases behind Mountain Lion very soon), weighs in at WAYYY TOO many pounds, and has a battery lifespan barely long enough to allow me to walk outside to check my snail mail.  So enter the iPad.  It was supposed to make my life easier.  I thought it would be the best way to ensure I could email my family (read: my mom) and let everyone know I was still alive and having fun.  So I set about trying to make sure I could send these emails as effortlessly as possible, but I quickly discovered that it was not going to be effortless.

First there was a process just to learn how to get my gmail contacts to show up in the Mail or Gmail app. (One Apple store genius said it wasn't possible and another trip later, another genius said it was.  Ultimately, thank you YouTube tutorial).  Then there was discovering that my iPad still couldn't send emails to a group of contacts I had created in my Gmail contacts (created from my laptop).  Then there was the app download called MailShot that was supposed to let me send emails to a group of contacts at a time, but somewhere in there I got lost with the various lists called Contacts, All Contacts, Exchange Contacts, and Phone contacts and never could find my comprehensive list of gmail contacts from which I wanted to pull.  I read somewhere that there is still another workaround involving 10 more steps and emailing all of your contacts as the subject line, but all I thought was ‘headache.’  I thought technology was supposed to make life easier!  Apple, I am not happy with you right now.

So here I am, half a dozen trips to the Apple store later, writing a blog instead.  I thought blogs were for young people, but having to use one feels like admitting defeat to technology that is too new for the 26 year old me.

Does the SPEED UP make me want to SLOW DOWN?

What timing!  My incredibly beautiful and intelligent sister Rachel gave me an article to read when we stopped in DC on Saturday (That's a lie.  She gave me 3 articles actually and had specific reading homework for just about all of us in the family, which reminds me, Beth, I was supposed to leave you with an article about elephant abuse.  Eeek!) and I cannot imagine a more perfect time for me to read the article.  Just when I was starting to feel a bit apprehensive about not knowing when I might start working again, this article on the Speed Up (explanation coming below) makes me actually want to delay going back to work even longer!

The article was published in Mother Jones last year, but I found a link to share here.  (Make sure to read the 6 heart-wrenching personal stories (surgeons, teachers, etc.) and all of the graphs linked to in a black outlined box on the right side.)  It discusses a trend in employment practices in the U.S. whereby "more is done with less."  Responsibilities grow, while pay stagnates, and keep growing to the point that there is no such thing as a work-life balance anymore.  Employers promote individuals to new positions, but do not backfill their old position, so now the same person is doing two 60 hour a week jobs.  I cannot say anything any better than the article already does, so I just recommend reading it, but I can definitely echo the sentiments.  Speaking from my experience in my old department this "speedup" was definitely the case and it's almost uncanny how many parallels I can draw.

I'm also not sure what to do other than speak up about it because it sure doesn't make me excited to go back to working if this is what "working" is going to be like.  As the authors say, "admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery."

The Move

So I just did what might be the last upload of photos from my cell phone to my computer in more than 6 months (it gets shut off from Los Angeles in less than 2 weeks and the laptop never leaves Rochester) and have a couple photos to show from the move :)  It's crazy how the "big move" feels so long ago - I think that must be what happens when you get sick and time slows down - but I haven't even been home a full 4 days.

Playing tour guide in Tampa the day before the move... (dirty clothes, dirty hair, no make-up... it was moving week!)

This was about 80% of my stuff.  Waiting to go into the van the next day....

This was the all important packing test of my backpack... Still much heavier than I would like it to be!!

Pria was packed the night before (filled with pretty much just clothes and bedding) 

and the van was packed in the weeee hours the next morning and then we were off!

Pria did not like the cold in North Carolina Saturday morning.  From 83 degrees to 35 degrees.  This was my reminder that I would not be getting anywhere close to 55mpg in the cold!  

(I definitely do not get to see that warning light often in Florida :)

Oh, hello DC!  I so rarely get to drive into DC from the South, 

but coming in with this view is magnificent!

Navigating to Rachel's apartment in Capitol Hill.  BEAUTIFUL day in DC!

Visiting Beth for dinner!!

Proof that all of my stuff made it back safely.... 

and mostly into the basement within 24 hours to mom's delight.

And this was the beach I was relaxing on just 7 days ago.... Oh, Florida... minus your bugs and humidity you do have what I need to live: sunshine, sand, and surf.