Sunday, March 16, 2008

3 years in Australia!

as you've probably guessed from the title, I am now celebrating my 3 year anniversary of arriving down under. It's hard to believe how much has happened in this time. Since I've been here I've met so many great people, I've become a permanent resident, and an auntie! And even more amazing, I've married a wonderful man. Sometimes life has a knack of throwing some fantastic things at you when it was the last thing you expected...I never imagined I'd end up living here when just over 3 years ago I packed up my life and went travelling for a year...you just never know! Of course I miss my family and friends, but I really do have such a great life over here, sometimes it's hard to imagine being anywhere else. But nothing is set in stone, and we will just have to see where in the world we will end up settling down!
Here are a couple of extracts from my blog when I arrived here:
I'm finally here in Sydney after a couple of pretty scary flights. The first one from Bangkok to Singapore was awful, it was so bumpy, I was almost in tears (I'm really not a good flyer at the best of times) The second flight was a lot smoother, but still really bumpy in parts, apparently it's like that a lot when you fly in the tropics, at least now I haven't got to fly again for a while!!The landing was quite spectacular, about 30 mins before we touched down just above the dark clouds we could see strips of orange, yellows and blues, and then we saw the sun coming up whilst flying past the Harbour bridge and the Opera house, that was quite an experience, it made the flight all worthwhile. So I was picked up at the airport by Grant, the flight came through a bit early so he wasn't at the gate right away, I did panic a bit cos I wasn't 100% sure what he looked like! Anyway, we found each other in the end. I've met his son and daughter now, it's funny meeting family that I've never seen before! They are all really nice and friendly and have made me feel really welcome. I had a sleep for a couple of hours, then we went to a shopping mall for some groceries, I'm looking forward to going back there and spending a bit more time (and money!) We're going out for dinner tonight, we're eating Italian which I haven't had for over a month so I'm looking forward to that.
The next day Grant took me on the bus into the city center, it only takes half an hour to get there which isn't too bad, he says they hardly ever venture into the city. We saw quite a lot there, I got a really good first impression of Sydney. Lots of cool shops, I saw the Harbour bridge, the Opera House, and lots of other parts of the city, we were walking around for over 3 hours, trouble was it was raining all day, so we both got a bit wet!! We saw lots of people spilling out of the pubs celebrating St Paddys day. It hasn't really sunk in that I'm here yet, obviously seeing the harbour helped a bit, but it all seems a bit surreal somehow.