Aussie Expats Update – America, 3 Months In

Welcome back to the end of the week everyone!

Fridays are always a happy light at the end of the tunnel (how this can be the case when I don’t have a job, don’t ask!) and despite James’ avowal of a busy weekend of study, I’m looking forward to at least one sleep in and maybe a Saturday night movie. I know, I know: we make coke-snorting, LSD-taking ravers look tame. It’s just who we are.

When I counted the weeks on the calendar earlier today, it hit me that we’re coming to the end of our third month of Aussie expat life. How crazy that seems! Life, of course, always continues to motor on, and it’s only when you stop to count the days or pay attention to the clock that you realise it’s speeding by. It’s challenging to wrap my head around the fact that we’re likely to be here for over another two years: I have no doubt that we will be thrilled to get back to Aus.

We are desperately missing Aussie beaches!

Of course, it’s always easy to list the things you miss about home when you’re living in another country – especially if you’re certain that your birth country is the greatest on earth. Moving away for any period of time really makes it obvious how much you love the world you grew up in.

There’s been a little more life leeway for the past fortnight while I’ve been on uni break: a nice change! I’ve been getting out and about for ‘wifey’ things in the past week. It brings its own challenges, like the societal expectation of wearing make up and actually having to talk to people. Luckily, the wives of the other foreign officers posted to Fort Sill (French, English, Italian, German, Japanese, Indonesian, Singaporean and more) are really lovely and I’ve clicked with a few of them.

Last Saturday saw the official meet and greet for the new Fort Sill Commanding General’s wife. It was the first time I’d been to a real spouse event, so the hair was straightened (it is so long!), the makeup brushed on and a dress zipped up, with a lot of finger crossing that I wouldn’t be overdressed (or underdressed for that matter). But prepare to have your mind blown.

Guys: there was a receiving line.

Like this woman was the queen or something. We all had to line up to shake her hand and the hands of her daughters. Hardly surprisingly, I found myself with nothing to say. It just seemed completely ridiculous! Duty done, I beat a hasty retreat home for chicken sliders and a movie. I’m a simple fish 🙂 Then on Tuesday there was the Fort Sill Patriot Spouses’ Club super sign up and since once of the other foreign wives made the effort to knock on my door and invite me, I agreed to go. Bonus round for attendance, I met a super cute baby and befriended his really lovely mother. He was probably one of the cutest, chubbiest little baby boys I’d ever seen and though I’m mildly ashamed, I’ll confess that I introduced myself to his mum just to freely coo over him. I may also have offered to babysit. (What can I say? It was a super cute baby, and I like babies.)

On Wednesday (I told you guys I’d been keeping busy!), I met up with Fleur for a morning barre class: my first. It was tough on the legs and core but a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to making it a staple of my week, and maybe adding in Monday morning pilates as well, if our trial next week goes well! Cleaning the house may take a serious backseat on my priorities list if I can build a stronger, more active core and posterior chain. Then I got my creativity on for the evening drawing with Dave and Lee’s sons on the pavement. And the front porch: by the time we finished, they were covered in chalk, we had tentatively agreed that I could be Wonder Woman (I don’t think the boys concurred) and my pirate ships kept getting destroyed by the bigger pirate ships the boys were drawing. C’est la vie!

It’s been a busy week of training for us too and I’m starting to add in some new progressions to my barbell session that have me shaking and sweating all over the place: come on strength and rehab! In other news, I’m fast closing in on the 80 000 word mark for my novel (I assume, since my fountain pen doesn’t have a word count function) and have managed to slog through close to 16 000 words transcribed to my laptop. Of course, I only have a very vague idea of what’s going to happen next, but it means that every day is an adventure! [Disclaimer: this doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes sit there staring at the page, mentally instructing it to tell me what the hell to do next.]

We’re heading to a Singaporean party tomorrow night which should be a lot of fun: James is making a Singaporean flag pavlova (marriage material, right?), so stay tuned for some photos next week!

— Ana.