The new apartment

I was waiting to blog until this Saturday because we were supposed to sign the lease on that day, but no luck with the lease yet. This was the first time that Carla had seen this apartment. She was really concerned about the lack of cupboards in the kitchen. I had shown her pictures of the apartment but the pictures did not convey the whole story. There is also an issue of the current tenant wanting to stay a few more days, so we have delayed signing the lease until Monday.

Carla is feeling a bit better today about the lack of storage space. We came up with alternative ways of storing dishes and food, and will look for more ways to optimize what we have to work with. The apartment is only 59 m2 (600 squared feet) which is not much, but you don't get much space here in Sydney. You CAN get a larger place, but as usual, the larger the place, the larger the rent. Our apartment is located in Chatswood, NSW, if you are interested to see where it is in relation to Sydney.

I think that the apartment is pretty nice. It is roomy enough, and since there are just the two of us, there should be plenty of space. The apartment has two balconies, which we can use for storage. There is a long swimming pool at the top of the building with a beautiful view of the neighbourhood. The gym room is tiny, but sufficient for what we need. The train station is only three minutes away, and a large grocery store only seven minutes away. There are two huge malls less than 10 minutes walking distance from our place so we are going to enjoy that. Not that we are big shoppers, but there is a Borders store (Chapters-like bookstore) in one of the malls and I can see us spending a lot of time reading magazines there. :-)

We also have Kmart, Target, Aldi (cheap German grocery store), and several electronics stores in the vicinity/mall. Since we are not planning to get a car for the first next while, it is nice to have all these amenities within walking distance.

Carla's school is about 27 minutes by train, and then another 10 minutes by foot. The good thing about taking the train as opposed to the bus is that there is usually enough seating room on the train, and the train ride is a lot smoother. Carla can sit and do all her required reading on the train. Well, maybe not ALL the reading as she has A LOT of reading to do. Carla is pretty much spending all her free time reading, even weekends are reading days. Reminds me of my MBA days. :-)

I am really happy to see Carla enjoying her law program. She is really getting into it, and is totally eager to learn and understand the material. There is an added difficulty because she is not familiar with Australian legal/legislative system, but she is picking up that knowledge very quickly. I am SO PROUD of her! Go Carla!!!

Our homestay

We are currently living in a homestay here in Sydney for the first month. It was difficult to get any other kind of accommodation on short notice and for short term so homestay was a perfect solution. A homestay is a household where an Australian family hosts international students. Each student has their own room is are provided with breakfast and supper. This particular homestay has eight rooms, six of which are used by international students.

Students get up at different times so we usually don't see anyone in the morning. In the evening, all the students and the Australian family members gather for supper. It is an interesting mix at the table, as there are students from Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand, Japan, Jordan, the host's wife is from Taiwan, and now they have a crazy Croatian/Canadian too! :-)

The stories we hear are amazing, especially since the host was born in South Africa and has traveled all over the world. Then, we compare how in/expensive things are here or at home, or we compare customs and laws between countries. I was trying to explain to them how cold it gets in Canada in the winter, but I don't think they got it. The only way to understand -40 C is to experience it. Brrrr!!!!

We are getting really spoiled here as our host's wife is a great cook. It is great setup for us, we come home and the supper is ready! Almost makes us want to stay here a little longer and not hurry to find an apartment. Not to worry, I am working on finding us an apartment and will probably have one reserved for us this weekend.

I am really looking forward to having a place of our own. It has been almost seven months that we have been living like nomads, sleeping at friend's and family's places. We are very grateful for their hospitality! Hope we can repay the favor in the future.

IKEA

We are getting ready to furnish our apartment (which we still have to find) so today we went to IKEA. The visit to IKEA was supposed to take us only a couple of hours, but we ended up leaving the store five hours later, tired and hungry. That was the biggest IKEA that I had visited so far. Excellent selection of items!

The plan for today was to pick out the main items for the apartment, so that when we are ready to move in, we can just go into IKEA, select the items and then have them delivered to our apartment the next day. My biggest concern was that we would not find anything we liked at IKEA and would have to end up buying furniture from various stores. Well, there was no need for concern as we were able to find the essentials for every room in the house.

We found a kitchen table and chairs, bed frame/matress, pull-out sofa, TV stand, computer desk and chair, fridge, kitchen plates and utensils, and lots more. House furnishings are pretty expensive in Australia, so it was a life-saver to find a store with nice and inexpensive options. Our place is going to look great!

I am going to view several apartments tomorrow morning so wish me luck!

First week in Sydney

It has been a week since we had arrived in Sydney, and we are wiped. Carla had a ton of orientation sessions to go to for her school, and then we would go walking and exploring the city. It is winter here now (high of 18/19 low of 9) but not a winter that I am used to. :-) Few days ago, the temperature went up to 24 C. You have to understand that July here is the equivalent of January in the Northern hemisphere, so I am delighted with their version of January weather!

On Saturday, we went to several showings of apartments for rent. Actually, we saw seven apartments and were very disappointed with the selection. The apartments were either expensive and small ($450 per week) or cheap and disgusting. It looks like we might have to start looking away from downtown. It would be acceptable to find a place on the train line (their version of subway) as the trains run frequently.

People that we met in this past week have been so friendly. They are so easy going. We have already gone to Bondi Beach. You can still see surfers there, trying to catch a wave. Amazing. Surfing in the winter!

Right now, our main focus is finding a place to move into as we don't want to stay in temporary housing for too long. Carla has started school today and will be pretty busy with that for the next 3.5 months. Once we're settled in, I can start focusing my energy on finding a job.

One last thing. The sky here is amazing. On a clear day (which we've had quite a few in the last week) the sky is HUGE and is so blue. I cannot show it to you in pictures, you have to see it!

In Sydney at last

We got into Sydney early in the morning and we were TIRED! This was my third and definitely the worst flight to Australia. The airline that we flew was Delta, and I will never make that mistake again.

Delta had just started flying to Sydney 14 days ago so they had a brand new plane for us. But the plane's in-flight entertainment system and power plug-ins did not work. I usually would not complain about things like that, but when you are stuck on a plane for 15 hours, you need entertainment! To add insult to injury, Delta's service was non-existent. I thought I was being served by Croatian servers! lol I actually miss Air Canada.

Back to the main reason for my post. WE ARE LIVING IN SYDNEY!!!! I love it here. The sky was blue, temperature around 20, and this is their winter. Ahhhhh! I am finally home.

I made Carla go to me to the Circular Quay so that I could see the famous Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a beautiful site, so I had to share it with you.