Home Sweet Home at last

Goodbye hotel, goodbye bad restaurant food... goodbye housekeeping (the thing I'll miss the most). After what seems like forever but is in reality only a speck of time in the big picture, we have an apartment to live in. We actually moved in a while ago but I've been waiting to get connected to that great wide world of technology that links us all.

We were so keen to get in we were bringing in suitcases while the folks setting everything up were still putting furniture together and packing the cupboards for us. It's pretty basic - just enough of everything to get by, and if you were alone and at work all the time you probably wouldn't need more, but we're all here, and I need my kitchen stuff. I was mighty pleased when our boxes arrived ten days later, at which point I discovered that all the things I packed, the things I thought I'd packed, and the things I thought I'd forgotten were not the same. After a helpful warning from GS to bring kitchen tongs - I forgot them. Turns out I should have also packed more doonas, towels and handy household stuff. Not to mention Madura tea leaves (I can't tell you how much I miss a fresh cup of tea made with leaves, not a teabag), hundreds and thousands (for the upcoming Wee Child's birthday) and marmite (that's a hint, but I think there may be some already on the way). However, though not a keen shopper, I'm not averse to a bit of bargain hunting, and if we have to spend a bit of our cash to help prop up this enormous consumer economy, so be it.

Apart from tongs, which I found at a delicious (and deliciously expensive) kitchenware store, I've got to do something about all this beige here. It turns out even I can have too much beige. The carpet is beige, the walls are offwhite, the furniture is pale wood, the towels and sheets are yellow-cream, the shower curtain is off-white with a dull beige pattern, the blankets are barely visible amongst all this as they blend in perfectly. The only splodge of colour (and it is a splodge) is a dirty brown/forest green/khaki patterned comforter (doona with a permanent cover) on each bed. Same colour in both rooms. And of course the classy plastic green fig tree in the corner of the lounge...MmmmMmmm.

We've replaced all the electrical equipment we couldn't bring with us, thanks to my father-in-law's favourite discount stores, Costco and Best Buy. We joined up straight away and went crazy. Not just electricals, but BIG, GIANT boxes, containers and packets of food and grocery items. We may have bought a tad too much tomato sauce (ketchup) - in our spending frenzy we grabbed a twin pack of 1.8 litre bottles. That's two x 1.8 litre bottles. The Wee Child is going to have to eat a lot of sausages and sauce to take care of that. But it's a store of magnitude. You feel like a teeny tot in the land of the giant consumer product. DH (Darling Husband) picked up a tin of tuna - 6 inches across and 3 inches high. That's some tuna sandwich lunch! So as you can imagine, we have purchased enough of the basics to last the entire tour of duty here.

There is always more shopping to be done though. The fall weather is upon us and it's as warm as a Melbourne winter. I'm back in the same clothing I was wearing before we left and we are advised it will get much colder. I've put WC (Wee Child) in school - she started today and I spent most of this morning doing my deserted mother sobbing - and they've told me I have to get snow pants and snow boots soon. I don't even know what they are. So I'll be hitting the stores and outlet malls looking for winter gear for all of us just for this one winter. Not sure we'll ever need it back in Oz unless we go to Tassie or go skiiing. It will be interesting to see just how keen we all are to walk to work and school once the real weather gets here...!

DH's (Darling Husband) office is a mere 10 minutes walk from our apartment block, but for the first couple of weeks he drove the company car. That, and the burger lunches he loves so much, conspired to add some noticeable pounds around the middle. After a bit of gentle teasing from me (Ha! Yeah right!) he's taken to walking and gone back to salad lunches. I wonder how long he'll keep it up once the snow starts?

The view from our apartment window is rather lovely. I can see DH's office building just up the street, and I get a beautiful view over the treetops. As fall (autumn) gets underway we're going to have a spectacular range of colours to look at. If only the leaf-blower guys would just give up! There are a bisquillion large oak and other trees here and falling leaves are a state tourist attraction - so why don't we just leave them on the ground where they fall, rather than blow them into the next street, every single morning! A fruitless task at this time of year. And it buggers up my sleep-ins.

There is so much more to be said about living in a foreign country, and I will get around to writing it all in the fullness of time. Suffice to say, we're here, we miss home, but we're looking forward to the rest of our adventure.