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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 – 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 – 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…
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Aussie Expats Update – Road Trip? COMPLETE!
Happy Monday everyone! I decided late last week that since we’d be getting home over the weekend (and I had a 2000 word essay to write) I would delay the final road trip blog post until after we finished. And thus, we arrived back into Lawton yesterday afternoon with 9100 miles total on the car (14,560 km: a third of the way around the earth!), a crack in our damn windscreen (more on that later) and a huge sense of relief because there’ll be no more driving for a while. On to the recap then, and a quick warning that we’ve crammed a lot into the past 10 days: be prepared…
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Aussie Expats Update – Five Weeks Into the Roadtrip!
Happy St Patrick’s Day everybody! I’m finding it a bit challenging to write a blog post right now, because my whole head feels as though it’s filled with rocks… Wading my way through neck-deep Structuralism in my Literary Theory subject at uni has put me firmly in struggletown, and I have some mild regret about choosing this particular subject. Regardless, we are currently motoring our way down the interstate and leaving Utah behind as we head towards Bryce Canyon to see some rocks! I hope everyone enjoyed James’s excellent post last week: I don’t think it was until after he had finished the long slog that he realised just how…
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Aussie Expats Update – Part 3 of our Roadtrip
Woooop, the end of week 3! Wow, are we getting around a heap and seeing a lot: we’re 21 days and 4000 miles (6400 km) into the road trip to end all road trips (seriously, after this, we’re pretty sure we’ll never really want to drive again), and are currently on our way to Knoxville. So, on to the recap! Luckily for us, our Day 14 trip from Savannah to Charleston wasn’t too long (just a little under 2 hours), which meant we had some time to do a bit of training in the morning: my frog hops and transition into handstands are really coming along. [A weird thing to be excited about,…
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Aussie Expats Update – Our Big Southern USA Roadtrip, Part 2!
We’re back again for the week 2 update of our epic US road trip! We arrived in the Keys last Friday via Key Largo, where we impulsively decided to book in for a jetskiing adventure on Saturday and followed it up with feasting on an incredible lunch of steak sandwich and fish and chips. If you haven’t had fish for eight months—because how the hell can you trust ‘fresh’ fish in landlocked and rustic Oklahoma?—then believe me when I say, you’re happy to have fish. And this Mahi Mahi was juicy and delicious (and also deep-fried). We gorged ourselves and then gorged a little more with some Key Lime pie…
