As I begin to write this [any more this is
a necessary preface since my writing has become very piece meal], it was one
year ago today that Ruthie and I left the United States. Well, technically, we’re in that magical zone
of time where if you wanted to calculate it out to exactly a year, it would
actually be tomorrow, by our current date scheme, we left on the afternoon of
the 23rd and that’s today.
My grand design for this blog was that
there would be routine postings about insights to Aussie life and how it was
different from American life. And then
at the half-way point and the end of the trip, I’d come up with some sort of recap. Obviously, the former has fallen a bit short
of routine. So this is my attempt to not
fall short on the midpoint recap. After my second afternoon of hacking away at the keyboard, I realised just how long this entry has become. So I've made the decision to break it into installments. Bonus: I just figured out how to write an entry and backdate it! Thus this entry will be dated on the one-year mark.
Looking at the big picture, what’s
changed? In the US, we both had
jobs; here, I work full time, and Ruthie kinda sorta has a part time job. In the US, we lived in a two-story
townhouse in suburbia; here, we live in a 4th floor apartment at the
border of a beach and the very fringe of a city. Ruthie took one sewing class in the US; here, she’s
taking classes every Thursday and occasionally on Tuesdays. I regularly took pottery classes in the US; here, I’ve
taken one. We played on and practically
ran a co-ed roller derby team back home; here we play on and I help coach a
co-ed roller derby team [in this case, I coach more than I play]. In the US, we had two cars and a motorcycle
as our primary means of transportation [with emphasis on the two cars]; here we
regularly use one car, a bicycle, public transit, and a motorcycle [well the
motorcycle gets used much less presently on account of it being winter]. A week-long snapshot of life in the US would
consist of work, derby, video games, and being social; here it’s really not
much different.
It’s that last sentiment which I find
pretty amazing. We’ve travelled 10,000
miles away, and we’ve more or less continued on with the life to which we were
accustomed. Work, derby, video games,
friends, hobbies. Naturally, there is a
fair bit of blending between some of those categories, but that’s okay.
If I’m honest, I’ll admit that we’re
homesick. It’s not an overwhelming
feeling where you can’t focus on anything else, because if that were the case
we wouldn’t still be here. Instead, it’s
more like a low grade ache kind of feeling, where things come up to distract
your attention, but in the quiet minutes of nothing between closing the book
you’ve been reading and actually falling asleep you realise you hadn’t thought
about it all day, but it’s still there.
I’d say most often it comes up when Ruthie and I are driving in the car
to or from derby, and most commonly it comes in the form of “I miss my mommy”
or “I miss our girls.” While those are
Ruthie’s words, I can’t deny the sentiment.
With that little bit of unpleasantness
aside, I have one more whinge: the weather.
Having been raised in a region of the United States that’s supposed to
have four seasons, this winter has to be the longest winter I’ve ever
experienced. It’s become pretty apparent
that neither of us would survive places like London
or Seattle
where it rains frequently. Winter isn’t
particularly cold down here. [This is
actually a bit of a relief, since we expected it to be fairly warm most of the
year and didn’t pack many heavy winter clothes.] But I’ve decided that’s part of the
problem. At home, when it gets cold,
temperatures drop to close to freezing or below. In order to ward off that cold, you bundle up
with your heavy coat, scarf, gloves, hat, what have you. Here, though, it’s not quite as cold, so
you’re in that weird place between not having enough layers and having too
many. Add on top of that the threat that
it could rain on you at any moment.
Look, Ruthie and I have come to accept it for what it is [“weird” comes
out of our mouth more often than not], but that doesn’t mean we’re all that
comfortable. I, for one, strongly
dislike wind. It makes my extremities
cold, which I then torture Ruthie with, so she’s learned to be not so much a
fan of wind either. But all of that
whinging also means that I’ve also procured myself some pretty cool new duds
including a water resistant dark lime green hoodie and a traffic cone orange
light weight parka.
On the opposite end of the spectrum of cold
rain is the sunshine. During the summer
[also weird to have the 4th of January be so blazing hot like it was
this year], you can barely spend time outside without risk of getting a
sunburn. All thanks to the lovely hole
in the ozone that exists in this part of the world [apparently it’s worse over
NZ]. This year, Ruthie managed to get a
sunburn on her hands through the windscreen.
One doesn’t really think to apply sunscreen when just going for a
drive. Apparently application at all
times truly is necessary. Now that it’s
winter and I miss the heat, though, the sun feels fantastic. It’s not quite as burny during the winter,
which is nice. No, now that it’s winter,
the sun is quite a welcoming thing. Not
only for the break in the dreary weather, but the literal warmth felt from it
despite the cold air. Sure, it’s lovely
to see the sun on a cold winter’s day back home – but not like this. Even on a sunny day, you’ve got to remain
buttoned up against the cold winter’s day.
Here, though, you need layers.
Which is really the lesson learned for living in Melbourne: wear layers at all times. During the summer, despite the heat, and now
that the drought is over, you never know when the blazing sun will go away and
you’ll need a light jacket for the evening or if it rains. During the winter, they might call for rain,
but it’ll be sunny up until, and sometimes even during, and immediately after,
the rain. So you’ll need an umbrella, or
coat to don, and then back down to whatever was keeping you comfortable during
the bright sunshine in 45°F. Layers.
-EP
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