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Aussie Expats Update – Do Expats Get Homesick? (and Interesting Aussie Facts!)
Helllloooo world. If anyone was stumped by the question posed in the title for this blog post, let me put you out of your misery: yes, yes expats get homesick. Ta da! It’s probably not really all that surprising, but I actually haven’t been homesick for the most part, so this recent longing for Australia has been a bit of a shock to the system. Though it might be supposed that expats moving between Western, English-speaking nations might be less susceptible to issues with culture adjustment, psychological studies have shown that this is in fact not completely true. For me, its the little differences that make it quite challenging to…
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Writers to Keep Your Eye on
Happy Friday anyone! I’m sure you’ve all heard of #FF (Follow Friday) before in some form or another: it happens on Twitter and invariably I miss it because I’m pretty average at getting around Twitter and doing the tweet thing with any great regularity. Anyway I’m well aware that I’ve been failing in the ‘get around other people’s blogs and read their awesome work’ recently, so I’ve decided to rectify that by taking today’s blog post as an opportunity to showcase some writers you should all be checking out—I want to use this platform to promote and amplify the voices of my brilliant fellow writers, and I hope you take…
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Aussie Expats Update – Writing, Revising and Rehab: Just Another Week!
The end of another week! It always feels like a bit of a shock to reach Friday again. Of course, since I’m on uni break, the time seems to be flying past… And, of course, I’m not getting anywhere near as much done as I wanted to. Every day seems to be jam-packed (though I’ll confess that I’ve managed to find some time for a few naps here and there, in the interests of somehow continuing to be a nice person), and then I reach the end of it and realise that there are things I wanted to get to that I didn’t. The best thing to do is to…
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Writing Writing Writing: Wearing Down the Keys
Happy Monday everyone! Never ones to sit still for long (apparently: this forever-travelling lifestyle is quite a new one for us!), I’m already neck-deep in planning our next adventure in just under a month’s time. Still, I’m also cherishing the chance to enjoy somewhat more lazy days with no study hanging over my head, especially since there are plenty of little ‘to do’ items that I’d like to tick off while I’m on a break. Regardless of everything else, what features highest on my priority list is, of course, writing—which, for the purpose of this list, includes working on editing my behemoth of a novel—and I’m feeling really excited about…
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Aussie Expats Update – Frolicking, Food (Poisoning), and Fredericksburg: A Week in DC!
Happy Friday from Washington DC! It’s been a strange and somewhat tumultuous week in the nation’s capital, but I’ve finally sat myself down to chronicle our triumphs and woes! We arrived Saturday evening after two flights—neither of which saw us seated next to one another, a state of affairs I didn’t particularly enjoy, but James may have, seeing as he got a rest from my shenanigans!—and a lamentable lack of delicious airport snacks. I was hanging out for some Cinnabon, having promised to illicitly introduce Zac and Lauren to their tasty treats, but we didn’t see any… still, I have high hopes for the return journey! Despite being a self-confessed…
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Aussie Expats Update – I’m on Uni Break!
HAPPY FRIDAY WORLD! (It’s a holiday here, hence the energetic greeting). I have finally pulled myself together and written an update about our lives in recent times! To be fair, I did do one a month ago… And have since been persuading myself that nothing enough had happened for me to warrant me putting the energy into writing another, which isn’t a hard thing to do when your days have felt as though they are being measured in ‘words to write’ for university assignments. That being said, I am now finished with uni for Trimester 1! I’ve written and submitted 5000 words in the past week (comprising two exams and…
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Society Needs to Do Better: Informing, Protecting and Saving Women
Hello Everyone! So strap yourselves in for a return to Deep Mondays (I do recognise that today is Tuesday, but this post was intended for Monday, it just got held up a little!). I wanted to put together a blog post about something that has been preying on me a little recently, and part of the reason why I wanted to put this together was precisely that sometimes, as a writer, it is so easy to feel something, to want to do something, even to write something, and then to let it fall by the wayside. Sometimes, following through is hard. But, that being said, I felt strongly enough about this…
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Rules Are Made to be Broken
Happy Monday world! Despite my recent failings in terms of keeping this blog post running smoothly along, I have returned with a post: hurray! WordPress reminded me yesterday that it is now 1 year since I first created this blog out of the ether that is the internet, and I thought that, at the very least, I should drag my sorry self together and write a blog post in honour of that milestone. So, I was scrolling through the infinite pages of wisdom, inanity and cat videos that is Facebook (or at least, my Facebook feed), when I stumbled on the below image, courtesy of the Australian Writers’ Centre: It…
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Aussie Expats Update – Costa Rica, Dogs, and an American ANZAC Day
For the first time since we got home from our big roadtrip, I feel as though I actually have something to talk about in the weekly update! Pheeeee-ew. A relief for all and sundry. We spent last weekend in Costa Rica because my current visa requires me to leave the country every 12 months (thanks America). It probably sounds a touch more glamorous than it really was, as we’d had a huge week last week (featuring reduced sleeping times and variable routine that left us a bit worn out) and necessitated a great deal of travel. We were up at 0300 on Friday to get up to OKC for our…
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Owing a Debt That Can Never be Repaid: Anzac Day 2017
Today in Australia (and thus in my heart) is Anzac Day. As James and I returned from Oklahoma City late last night, I read a news article reporting the defacing of a north Melbourne RSL’s war memorial. Vandals had used red spray paint to scrawl ‘War is Murder’ and anarchy symbols across it. On today of all days, I wanted to use this platform to share some thoughts about what perpetuates the idea that such actions are permissible. At it’s very fundamentals, I disagree with war. If we remove everything else from the equation, and present the bare facts of warfare, the idea of two groups of people killing one…
