September

Tuesday, 30.09.2008

This is what the Australians call an "organic speed hump"... The picture was apparently taken in NSW, not very far away from where we are living...

Sunday, 28.09.2008

We had a very Australian weekend. We went swimming on Saturday morning. Sarah is slowly getting a bit used to being in the pool. In the afternoon Nick sprayed a spider/insect spray outside around the patio and actually saw and killed a red back spider. They are quite small and usually not aggressive, but a bite would be absolute agony and potentially lethal. The hospitals have antidote, though, and people haven't died from a bite for many years.
Today it was about 30°C and we went to the beach in Coledale. We chose the beach simply for the fact that it had some shady trees. Sarah enjoyed playing with sand and water, but was a bit scared of the cold waves. We also saw our first kangaroo in the wild today - unfortunately it wasn't bouncing around anymore - road kill... In the evening we broke in the barbeque. Sarah and I had 'Weisswurst' and Nick had Tasmanian salmon and prawns. Now we are sitting on the sofa singing 'Waltzing Matilda' - it can't get more Australian!

Sarah 'enjoying' the swimming pool

Happy to be back on dry land

On the way to the beach

Which beach shall we pick?

At the beach

Making friends with a German-Aussie girl

Barbie!!!

Friday, 26.09.2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSHUA!

Sunday, 21.09.2008

Well, we had a great Sunday travelling into the cold breezy loftiness that is the BLUE MOUNTAINSSSSS. A sort of miniature and wooded version of the Grand Canyon. The peaks lie below 1100m, and the spectacle sneaks up on you as not a ridge but a gorge. The view across from Katoomba and the 'three sisters' is pretty spectacular none-the-less. We had a snoop around the visitors centre and bought some tat that we will duly be passing off to you all as presents, and then popped off for a picnic before going into the valley for a hike. The walk followed a river down past numerous Japanese and Dutch tourists. It had been nearly 7 weeks since my last "dag", so I was long overdue. Sarah rode down in the back carrier, which she really enjoyed. I even got a head massage for the trip back to the top. We then stopped for a couple of hours at the Tomah Botanic Gardens. This was just like spring time in Europe; birdsong and bluebells. We also saw the Wollemi pine, a prehistoric tree, a surviving dinosaur plant to go with crocodiles. All in all, a really fantastic day. -Nick

Our trip: Camden (not on map) - Penrith - Katoomba - Mt. Victoria - Bell - Mt. Tomah - Richmond - Penrith - Camden

The Three Sisters, Katoomba

Sarah enjoying the view

Picnic in the Blue Mountains

Sarah is exploring

Bushwalk, Katoomba

Kookaburra

Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens

Saturday, 20.09.2008

On Thursday Sarah and I went to the second "shrimp" swimming lesson. This time the water was nicely warm and we did the whole 30 min. lesson, but Sarah was continuously crying. Apparently that's normal for the first few lessons and they get over it soon. This morning I took Sarah swimming again, to see how she would be without the swimming teacher making her do things. She was fine as long as she could cling on to me, but sitting in her swimming ring (which she has used a couple of times before without problems) was a definite NO. But she is slowly getting a bit more relaxed with being in the pool. In the afternoon we played outside on our patio with water. Sarah was running around naked (it was around 30ºC), filling water into watering cans and buckets and emptying them over herself or us...
Tomorrow we are planning to go to the blue mountains.

Monday, 15.09.2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOMINIC!

Today I cycled to the post office after dropping Sarah off at the child care centre. It is about a 20 minute ride, up and down hills. On the way I was attacked by a bird. First he just tried to scare me, but then he really tried to go for my head from behind. I had to get off my bike and defend myself with my bag! Luckily a lady with a dog came and explained that this is completely 'normal' and the dog seemed to scare the bird away. It was probably an Australian Magpie. It's a fairly big bird and they defend their nests by swooping at people if they get into their nesting area! What a place is this here - not only deadly jellyfish, sharks, spiders, snakes, but also you get attacked from the air by birds!! I think Hitchcock must have been here before he filmed 'The Birds'. So I risked my life just to get some stamps for birthday cards for Inez and Joshua...
I also joined up with the local gym today and had my first lesson in Pilates. Quite painful but it's supposed to be good. I am also planning to try Bodypump, Bodystep and go swimming regularly as they have some really nice pools. It's the same place where I also take Sarah for her swimming lessons. And they only charge 25 AUD (15 EUR) per fortnight and no join-up or cancellation fees.

Sunday, 14.09.2008

After a really warm (27C) and sunny day yesterday, the weather today was unfortunately quite rainy. We had planned to go to the Blue Mountains, but decided it was better to spent the day at the aquarium in Sydney. It claims to be the number 1 attraction in Australia! Sarah loves looking at fish, so she enjoyed the aquarium even more than the zoo. We saw lots of fish, a turtle, a salt water crocodile, a sea snake, lots of sharks and rays (some absolutely huge, 2-4m long!), seals, penguins, seahorses, huge crayfish and crabs, but strangely no jellyfish. They have lots of tunnels where you walk through the aquariums. After the aquarium we went on the monorail for a little roundtrip through Sydney. At Darling Harbour we came across a Merry-go-round/carrousel and Sarah and I went on it for a little ride.

Getting ready for a sunny day

Sydney Aquarium

Thursday, 11.09.2008

We went to Sarah's 'shrimp' swimming lesson today, but because the pool had been closed for maintenance over the winter and they just reopened it this week, the water was freezing cold. Sarah was just crying continuously so I took her out of the pool after the first couple of minutes. The instructor was wearing a wetsuit even! They shouldn't do lessons for babies and toddlers if the water is that cold.
We also heard from the company that did our air shipment that we were 28kg over our 200kg maximum allowance. That came as a big surprise because we made sure that we took less than 100kg so all the rest must be packaging!! They want to charge us now 780 EUR for the 28kg that we are over. That is about 28 EUR per kg! It would have been much cheaper then to send the stuff with DHL or buy it all new here. And faster, too, as it took 6 weeks to get the stuff out here (yes by air, not by ship). Anyway, we are refusing to pay because we did all we could to stay within the 200kg and we were never told how much it would cost to go over. Let's see what they say...
The picture shows Sarah in her mermaid-poncho-towel on her potty.

Wednesday, 10.09.2008

Sarah hasn't been sleeping very well for the last weeks. She wakes us up a couple of times almost every night. And if she doesn't wake us up we get phone calls in the middle of the night from Europe from people who either seem to forget about the time difference or miscalculate it... Anyway, we are happy about any phone call!
Yesterday our air freight finally arrived!!! Sarah has got her high chair now and a proper bed. We put up some pictures in her room and mobiles, so she would find it a bit more "homely". It's so nice having some more of our stuff here. We also had a potty for Sarah in the air freight. We just put it in the bathroom for Sarah to investigate and get used to the idea to sit on it. Today when we took Sarah's nappy off in order to bath her, she went to the potty, sat down, got up, sat down, got up, sat down and - had a pee in her potty!!
Tomorrow Sarah and I are going for a swimming lesson in the local leisure centre. We joined up for three weeks with the 'shrimps'. I hope Sarah will enjoy being a shrimp!

Sunday, 07.09.2008

Sarah learned a few new words last week: look, oh dear, koala, sit down, blocks.
We finally got a new carpet to replace the smelly carpet in the main bedroom. Now the room smells of carpet glue instead!
We haven't found any more creepy crawlies in the house, but we found a slug in the bath yesterday!
Today is Fathers Day in Australia and we decided to spent it at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. We parked the car near the opera house and circular quay and took the ferry to the zoo. Entrance to the zoo was free for us as Nick's company is a sponsor of the zoo. We took the cable car to take us to the top of the zoo (it's built up a hill) and worked our way down towards the harbour. We spent the whole day at the zoo. Sarah enjoyed it a lot. We saw kangaroos, wallabies, a platypus, koalas, wombats, elephants, leopard seals, fish, gorillas and loads of other animals. We had a fantastic day and will certainly go back!!


Sarah in daddy's shoes	Sydney opera house


View of Sydney with opera house and harbour bridge as seen from the ferry


Kangaroos!	Gorillas


Sarah watching the gorillas	Seals


Leopard seal	Giraffes