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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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Why We Need to Be ‘Political’ Now
Happy Monday everyone, I can hear the cheers, the crowd’s going wild because—yes!—after far too long, the interminable Quiet on the Australian Front is being broken by a blog post: huzzah! So welcome back to another iteration of Deep Monday everyone. Now, this today’s thoughts were prompted by a Facebook post shared by fantasy writer Isobelle Carmody over the weekend which really resonated with me (the link is here, if you’d like to take a look at it). Then, of course, I didn’t save it, so while trying to figure out where I saw it, I headed to faithful Google, and happened to stumble across this article too, which is…
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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 – 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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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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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…
