the daily(ish)

I make no apologies for hating pigeons and openly shoo and kick in their direction to get them to move away from me.

I don't think I'd be so blantantly aggressive towards Sydney's park birds...

日本のための祈り

Like everyone, I've been keeping up with the tragedy in Japan and praying constantly for our friends that live there, the family of our Japanese friend and every single person affected.

The magnitude of the loss, fear and uncertainty that the Japanese people are experiencing breaks my heart in a hundred pieces.

This morning in the Sydney Morning Herald I read a blog from a woman living in Sendai. She was talking about how the community has banded together to help one another and how strangers were helping strangers survive. In closing she said:

"And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself..."

I cried openly at the hotel lounge when I read this article. I cried, not because of the hardship she and her neighbors were facing, but instead I wept tears of joy in knowing we humans are capable of so much love and kindness. I couldn't help but cry tears of happiness because God is answering all our prayers for the people of Japan- His hand in on each of them, bringing forth their best selves to care for one another.

You can the entire blog here on Ode Magazine.

Grrrrrrrreat

Barrier Reef!

That's where we are off to this weekend! Did you know the Great Barrier Reef is the largest structure in the world built by living organisms? Me either, but I'm researching today in preparation, so I thought I'd share.

Packing up makes me realize that we're officially back on the road again. It's weird knowing this is one of our last rounds. Granted, we may be on the road for the entirety of 2012, but even so, there are only 4 more rounds after this one! 4! 4 more possible places to live before we press the "play" button on our life back home. Crazy.

But...until then I'm just going to keep enjoying this opportunity to the absolute fullest, because we're not promised another minute, much less another day.

the daily(ish)

lobby lights...

the daily(ish)

Saw this beaut in a parking lot in Atlanta...



I kept looking for a decal of a pet store or some kind of logo, but apparently the owner just really loves sea creatures.

the daily(ish)

Spring is springing up in Atlanta and I have to admit, I was sad to leave the blossoms...



Fall is beginning here in Australia, but I haven't seen any fall color yet.

zzzzzzzzzzz...

I just had to go on and on about how well we were doing with our jet lag, didn't I?

I guess I was right about the exhaustion letting me sleep so long the first night because we were both awake at 1am and then again at 5am. After about 30 or so minutes we decided not to fight it and just get up and go to the gym. Of course this could have been due to the fact that Jules was conked out at 7:45pm and I pulled out the toothpicks that were holding up my eyelids at 8:30pm.

We're going to try walking around tonight, maybe grabbing dinner outside of the hotel or something to try to stay awake longer. It's pointless really, but you never give up trying to rid yourself of the lag. You think you can somehow trick your body into getting on track, but the theory that you need 1 day for every hour difference always holds true for us. We'll spend the next two weeks wrestling with it and then like flipping a switch we'll be staying up until midnight and fighting over who's turn it is to get in the shower first in the morning.

It's almost noon here and I've been researching weekends all morning. I'm now dying for a nap. Dying.

Will I listen to my body and lie down? No, I'm going to do the stupid thing and go out and walk around. Even though I've just written it down and know it's an unfair fight- I still think I can overcome the lag!!

7pm bedtime, here I come.

the daily(ish)

1st day in Sydney and I get burned...



I'd be miffed if I wasn't so flippin' happy not to be freezing my tail off in Poland right now.

where the women glow and the men thunder

We've arrived in Australia!! 20+ hours of travel is never easy, but we decided to pay the piper and use miles to move up to the front of the plane so, it could have been worse. I didn't get a ton of sleep due to the incredible amount of turbulence that plagued almost our entire flight from LAX --> SYD, but I did catch up on 4 movies, so not a total loss.

We arrived around 8:30am and ended up having to wait almost 4 hours before our room was ready. Not exactly cool when you'd give your right arm (your stinky, funky, "been in a plane for 20+ hours" arm) for a shower. We did see Chuy from Chelsea Lately getting in a cab when we arrived though, so that was cool. I would have asked for a picture, but I didn't want him telling some story about a greasy American girl who smelled like a goat approaching him in Australia. According to the bellman, Chelsea had just left the day before.

dang. it.

After we got into a room and freshened up, we met up with El Diablo's friend from Spain who's lived in Sydney for a year. He graciously played tour guide and took us down to the harbor to see the bridge and famous Opera House...





We then made our way to "the Rocks" neighbohood and found a table at a German beer garden to enjoy the glorious Sydney sunshine.

We'd only been out for 4 or so hours, but we were all hitting the wall and decided to head back to the hotel. We popped up to the lounge to hang with the rest of the team and have a couple of nightcaps before crashing.

Amazingly enough, the Wife and I stayed up until 9pm and only woke up once at 5am before sleeping until a more Godly hour. This is a HUGE jet lag accomplishment. Or I was just wiped from only sleeping a whopping 3 hours (in 20-30 minute increments) on the way over. We're currently 15 hours ahead due to you guys springing forward this weekend. Apparently, we'll be 16 again when Sydney does their daylight savings in April. I'm sure we'll struggle for a couple of weeks getting on track, but I'm feeling pretty human-like today and that's better than I expected.

Australia has always been the Wife's #1 location she wanted to visit in all the world and from the moment the landing gear dropped out of the bottom of the plane, she's been estatic...



which in turn makes me estatic. We've got some pretty high expectations this round and so far we're thinking it is going to live up to the hype.

Photos from the day...




p.s.- I've got a lot of catching up to do and had all but abandoned the blog while working at home. Sorry!! I promise to get caught up!!

ch.ch.changes

Very excited to announce we're now headed down under instead of to cold Poland this week. We literally just found out today. I have to say I'm pretty sad to be missing a weekend with our dear friend in Paris and seeing our other European friends and even a little sad not to be going to Argentina...but I'm so flippin' excited to be going to Australia!