American Adventures
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Aussie Expats Update – Diving Blue Hole!
Well: Happy Monday everyone! I’m delighted to inform you all that you’re currently being addressed by a qualified Advanced Open Water diver: no big deal [DISCLAIMER: by this, I actually mean that it is a very big deal and I’m very, very cool]. James and I have just spent the weekend in Santa Rosa, New Mexico doing a series of dives with the excellent instructor crew from Bluewater Divers in OKC in order to qualify for our Advanced dive ticket. New Mexico isn’t really the first place most people think of when brainstorming locations to go scuba diving, but it happens to boast a pretty impressive natural well called Blue…
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Aussie Expats Update – Our Second Thanksgiving
Hellllloooooo world! Well, it feels like it’s been so long since I did a blog post about James and I going on an adventure that I found myself not quite sure what to put in this one. Still, since I failed to put it together and get it out last week, I really had to pull myself together over the weekend to tell you all about our Thanksgiving in Tulsa. Before anything else, I just want to say that we feel beyond fortunate to have met so many kind, generous, and just all-round wonderful people in the time we’ve been living in the US. Our various friends have taken us…
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Aussie Expats Update – Settling Back In Again
Hello everyone, and happy US Friday! Well, not surprisingly, I’ve been a little off the grid lately. Between international travel, trying to stay on top of uni (and not doing a suuuuuper great job), spending time with my family, reading some great books (I finally got to books 2 and 3 in the Outlander series, thanks Granmda!), and just taking things as they come, this blog kind of fell off the priority list. But I’m back now and ready to return to posting some vaguely interesting things with some more regality. As of Monday afternoon, I returned to the US, and I’m rapidly settling back into our regular life here…
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Aussie Expats Update – Scuba-Certified and University-Free!
Hello world!! Posting this is a massive success, so excuse me while I indulge in a moment of well-deserved elation. I’d hoped (but didn’t think I’d actually managed it… and I didn’t) to get this out yesterday as part of our ongoing Friday updates, but the day got away from me, mostly due to a tough exam I had to work on. BUT I have got it out today, and that’s a real cause for celebration. Especially because what was holding me up was my Australian Literature exam… and I have FINALLY finished it, my last assessment for the trimester. I now have three weeks of blissful freedom before starting…
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Aussie Expats Update – Visits, Scuba-Diving, and a Half-Ironman!
Happy Friday, world! Well, well, well… Here we are again. It has been far too long since I posted on this blog, especially because there have been so many interesting things going on for us lately (well, I think they’re interesting: I’m guessing if you’re reading this blog post, you probably do find our lives at least semi-interesting. Or you really love us, one of the two). Anyway, life has been hectic. The title may be a little misleading—unless you know me, in which case you’re likely suffering under no misapprehensions that I might actually have done any kind of endurance event—but the past two weeks have been absolutely packed…
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Aussie Expats Update – 15 Months In!
Hello hello world! Well, it’s been a while since I posted about what James and I have been up to—in part because (again) it’s mostly been the boring stuff, like studying/working, eating, training, sleeping… Casual life stuff. That being said, there have been a few cool adventures we’ve been up to lately that are worth sharing. The last weekend in August saw James’s first big endurance event, the three-day Hotter’n Hell Hundred, a mammoth effort across Friday-Sunday which constituted an event each day: a 20km trail ride on Friday, a 160km road ride on Saturday, and a half marathon (21km) on Sunday. Talk about some distance covered! No one will…
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Aussie Expats Update – White Water Rafting Adventures!
Helllloooo again friends! Well, we’re back in sunny (and hot!) Oklahoma again, settled back into the day to day routine of life here. We arrived home on Monday afternoon after two very long days of driving, having hit about 4500 miles (~7200km) for the trip total, and the rest of this week has been a messy throwing together of a million things that need to be done (and a great number that still haven’t yet been ticked off the list!), like washing and ironing and grocery shopping… And uni. Mostly a lot of uni. And training, because I foolishly decided to do James’s program on Wednesday afternoon and I thought…
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Aussie Expats Update – The Dakotas, Montana and Idaho!
Helloooo from Idaho my friends! Well, we’ve got a leisurely day today, as this is our second of two nights in Idaho Falls, which means our biggest commitment today is… Well, nothing really. Hurray! It’s been a massive week since we left Lawton on Saturday morning, so if you’re here for a ‘what have the expats been doing?’ update, please strap yourself in for plenty of adventuring and lots of photos. I’ve thrown in a Google Maps screen capture of our travel to rafting (our final legs to Boise and then Stanley are on the cards for tomorrow and Sunday!) to show everyone just how far the adventurers are going.…
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Aussie Expats Update – Baseball Games, Shooting Stuff and A New Adventure!
Happy Friday world! Well, we head off for our newest epic journey (ok two weeks is maybe not THAT epic, but we’re pretty awesome and we’re going to tick off a few things as we go) tomorrow morning and I am pumped! We’ve had some wonderful adventures recently, so I actually have something fun to share: phew! Monday before last saw us dressing in people clothes (no uniform for James and out of tracksuit pants for me) to attend a luncheon held by LifeTroops, an Oklahoma faith-based outreach program designed to help service members during their healing from military traumas. There, we had the chance to meet MAJ Andy Cullen…
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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…
