LAST WEEK IN MELBOURNE AND COMING HOME

It's never easy leaving a place, especially one that you call home. The transition from living in Melbourne to living back in Saskatchewan has be tough for me. For most of July, I travelled to the Outback and more of the East Coast. It's funny when I meet people, often the initial conversation revolves around where 'home' is for everyone. I would have never guessed that I would struggle to answer this question, but I did. After a year of living in Melbourne, I can't help but consider it my home although I would never leave Canada out of the conversation. 

Maybe you're wondering, what made Melbourne home and why was it hard to part with? You see, the strange things about clichés is that they are often clichés for a reason; they either work or are completely true. Here's my cliché: Home is where the heart it. Where family is. You name it. Melbourne is my home because of this. My family was there. My heart was there. 

Sure, I miss the pace of the city, the fact that no one knew my name or could recognize me. I miss Bourke Street filled with buskers, lane-way short cuts and cute cafes. I miss being able to sit on my balcony and admire the sunrise or the city night lights. I miss my independence and freedom which I gratefully admired and exhausted in my time away. But, in our year together, Jenna and Eric, have become my family and they are solely what I miss most about living in Melbourne. 

Possibly the worst thing about being home is that nothing has changed. While I've gone off, explored many gorgeous parts of the world, made a life in Melbourne, changed the way I thought of certain things, grown as an individual and began my first teaching career, I came home only to find that everything is familiar and in a year, has gone unchanged. I reckon that was my biggest disappointment aside from the fact that no one here can truly relate to my experiences, the feelings I've felt or my love for adventure.

Our last week in  Melbourne as a family was possibly one of the best weeks we had. We took in the beauty of our city, ate out, went to a musical, went to our last Woodlock show, admired the talent on Bourke Street and hung out with all our mates! Here's a video with a few clips that showcase what we were up to. I miss Melbourne and my mates!

Cheers,

x x x

WE GOT A PLACE TO LIVE!

So here's one thing I already love about living in Melbourne.. when I let my hair air dry, it dries beautifully straight! Ah I love it! At home my hair would never dry like this. It takes much less time to get ready in the morning!!

Here's one thing that kinda sucks..I have yet to find a good, reasonably priced coffee place. But I'm not giving up hope yet, I just need to do some more searching! 

Yesterday was a good day. Not only because it was my birthday but also because after four days of searching, we landed ourselves an apartment! We were so lucky that we stumbled across an ad online by a lovely lady who was willing to accommodate us. She met us at the apartment we wanted to look at on Monday morning and not only did she tell us everything we needed to know about the apartment and area but also gave us information about where we need to travel and places we need to see! I am so happy to have found Carol because she is really looking after us. The other agents we went to see either wanted thousands of dollars to 'hold' the apartment (which Carol said is highly illegal) or only came to open the door and never said a word. 

The apartment is fully furnished with absolutely everything we need in it right down to hair dryers! She is going to buy us new chairs and other things for our apartment. We will be on the thirteenth floor with a view of Lonsdale Street. We are also in a prime location right downtown next to two really big malls, transportation and basically everything we will need! YAY!!

We also had to go to the Victorian Institute of Teaching for some information on our teaching certificates for here. On the 24th floor of the building is the first time we've been able to see the ocean so far! Hoping to get a closer view very soon! 

 We are so excited to get out of this hostel tomorrow morning and move into our new place! If we get the keys today we will probably go to Big W and the Reject Store (dollar store) to get some bedding and other small items for a place so that it's ready for us tomorrow!

This afternoon we are headed into the city to do an orientation for our teaching jobs! I am looking forward to start working and I'm looking into a part time job on the side for the first bit to help pay for our rent. I just want to see first what my school work load will be first! 

Oh yeah, last night we found this crazy mirror. It kept us amused for at least 10 minutes. The security guard watched us the whole time and suggested we just take the mirror with us. Ha Ha Ha.

CHEERS!

From: San Francisco To: Melbourne

The past two days have been filled with tons of adventure. However, when I think of adventure my mind tends to head for fun and exciting experiences. Our adventure so far has been an exciting adventure in the opposite kind of way.

Wednesday started off really well as we flew from Regina to Calgary and Calgary to San Francisco. Those flights were short and easy. Then came the eight hour wait until our 10:45pm departure to Sydney. We killed time in the airport mainly by eating, charging our phones and soaking up all the free Wi-Fi!

Finally we boarded the plane. I was already so tired and I was asleep before we were even in the air. I woke up just in time for the hot meal and stayed awake long enough to eat it and go back to sleep again. I slept pretty well the whole 15 hour flight except for about three hours. We arrived in Sydney this morning (Friday) at 6:30am. Not only is it weird that we totally never got a Thursday at all but also this sixteen hour time difference is going to be screwing me up a lot! We had an hour until we boadred out next flight to Melbourne, which is where I lucked out getting three seats to myself!!

Each time I'm on a plane I quickly remember how much I appreciate for air travel and how thankful I am that I have been able to travel in the past and continue to travel far and wide! On our landing I was so pumped, filling with happiness and ready to enjoy our first day in out new city! We were actually able to hook up our phones to a network at the airport so we got unlimited data, calling and text on our phones instantly! I am so happy we decided to get that done first.

We taxied to our real estate agents office where we signed some more documents and were handed our keys. She told us its not a bad walk and that we would be able to want to our new apartment. So we did. Uphill. Three blocks. Four bags. We arrive at our apartment, opened the door and instantly felt sick. Now, I don't exactly want to explain in detail what we saw today but just imagine the most filthy, disgusting apartment ever. Yeah. So we left our heavy luggage in the room and walked back to the agency. That conversation ended in negative terms as there apparently wasn't anything she could do to help us out. What really ticks me off is that we started paying for the place on July 24th which meant the apartment should have been cleaned prior to that date regardless.

After many FaceTime calls and conversations back and forth with different people, we found a hostel to stay at in the time being as the original apartment is not fit to stay in at all. We could tell someone had been told about our frustration and trouble as when we went back to collect our luggage there were pillows and linens laying on the beds which meant, someone had gotten into our apartment and that someone expected us to live in that filthy place. Also what scares me is that that filthy place was someone's definition of clean. Yikes! Before we left we documented and took pictures of the apartment so that we can be sure to get our money back!! 

It was heaven to finally have a shower! Something that we had longed for after arriving in Melbourne! We got word once at the hostel that we would get a new realtor and be able to look at a place tomorrow and hopefully be out of this hostel by Tuesday. We have kept our bills for this hostel and cab rides in hopes that someone can reimburse us for the troubles we have gone through.

Anyways, it is time for bed now, even though it is only eight, it has been a long day. We went out and walked around this evening as well. It is quite chilly here as it is only about 8*C today! Ahh! It's been quite the adventure so far.

G'night Mates!

Little Miss Organized

Now that I am in the process of packing most of my belongings to be stored for a year, I have a lot of work to do because I have A LOT of belongings! 

I've started packing up my craft/work room which holds many papers, folders, teacher files and resources. I originally shoved everything into a big Rubbermaid container and put the lid on. Well, yesterday I thought of something that I needed to take out of said bin and it wasn't pretty. I quickly became overwhelmed at the mess that I have made by tossing everything into the container. So, I looked around for the best ways to organize everything. I found a teacher online who "binder-ized" all of her school stuff and everything had been perfectly labelled and colour coded. Next thing I know I'm off to the store to buy some binders! 

Check out where the Binder-izing Project came from! CLICK HERE!

I downloaded her completely customizable templates for the binders from TeachersPayTeachers. The best part is that I had enough TpT credits to get them for a nice discount! 

Full Customizable Binder-izing Kit

Standard Binder-izing Kit Freebie

I was able to make up 10 perfectly perfect binders within an hour. Everything is completely organized and will be easy to access. I can't wait until I am back here teaching and I will have a beautiful organized system of all my papers and files. This is seriously the best way to store everything and it takes up little space!!  

I love how these can go on a shelf and you can tell EXACTLY what is in each binder! AMAZING!

I'm so excited to have this binder-zing system and will definitely always use it! It's too just brilliant! 

Paper Work - Ick!

This past week and a half I have been keeping busy with getting everything ready (try to anyway) for Australia. 

If you didn't know, I am moving to Australia mid-July for a year where I will be teaching, travelling and having a marvellous amount of fun! I will be living, for the most part, in Melbourne, which is a massive city holding more than four million people! Wow! I couldn't be more excited, but with moving to a foreign country comes a lot of paper work and frustration. 

Last week I got all the requirements sent to me that I needed to complete. Get a RCMP finger print criminal record check, get my Visa application sent in and get my Victoria Institute of Teaching (VIT) documents together. Well, the finger printing was a breeze, although it left quite a mark on my credit card! Next, I completed the Visa Application online, which took a while as I was VERY SUPER careful to answer each question carefully and reread everything over FIVE times. Still, they sent me back an email which stated I needed a health assessment. THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN! Totally threw me off, but I thought about it through the weekend and finally today I accepted that I needed one and made an appointment with the only qualified physician in Saskatchewan - In Saskatoon! Not only would this be a three hour drive but it also would cost me THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE DOLLARS! WHAT?! So today, I was a little frustrated and a lot worried about how I would pay for this appointment. When I got home from work, I called the lady who is taking me to Australia, she said that there is no way I would need to get a health assessment  so I searched the Visa website. IT WAS TRUE! According to the requirements set out by the Australian Migration Law, there was no way I needed a health assessment! (It pays to do your research!) I politely emailed the immigration officer back and within two hours she replied saying she had made a mistake and I really didn't need a health assessment. I sure hope that doesn't happen often, those mistakes, because those are expensive mistakes to be making!

Now that all that confusion is out of the way, I am now able to continue with more paper work on my day off tomorrow! It looks like I will be working a lot with my scanner and making copies of all the documents that are required by the VIT. Once this paper work is out of my way, I will be even more excited to go to Australia, this paper work is boggin' me down!