Waking Up in Oz

New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour was a blast. We spent the day/night at Yarranabbe Park in Darling Point, one of the only parks that allows you to bring your own booze. It was great to wear a tank top and shorts and not worry about looking like crap. Normally New Year’s Eve means buying a new dress and is the most dressed up I get all year, so this was a very welcome change for me. We celebrated with just about every nationality imaginable and only one Aussie (who was our visitor Brad from Adelaide). I guess the Sydneysiders want nothing to do with the chaos of trying to claim a spot around the harbour. There were tons of people wearing flags as capes… Ireland, Canada, Italy, Iceland. I can only imagine the shit we would get if we draped ourselves in American flags.

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We spent the rest of the weekend showing our visitors, Kathryn and Brad, around Sydney and doing all of the touristy stuff. It was weird playing tour guide, but made me realize how familiar I already am with the city. I’ve only been here 2 months but I feel so comfortable getting around. It’s starting to feel more like where I live and not just where I’m visiting. Of course, some people still look at me like I have two heads when I open my mouth, so I suppose I’ll always be a bit of an outsider.

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I think another reason I’m feeling more like a resident and not a visitor is we’ve made a few different groups of friends. Granted, only one of those groups are Aussies, the other two are Kiwis and American/Irish/Scottish. Our social calendar is filling up nicely, which is good and bad since both Mandi and I are still unemployed and a night out is easily $100. My New Year’s resolution is to make more girl friends. As much as I like hanging out with dudes, sometimes you just want to sit around and gossip with girls. The only girl friend we have here is Teneal, but she doesn’t count since I knew her before I got here. We have plans to meet up with fellow expat Kate this week, but that’s sort of cheating since she’s American. How the heck do you make female friends?

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In true Kerry and Mandi fashion, Murphy’s Law has continued to apply to anything we touch. My mom sent a care package a few weeks ago containing mostly practical things: dryer sheets (which you can’t get here!), a huge supply of Dunkin Donuts coffee, Reese’s peanut butter cups, an umbrella (not sure why she sent that, must think they just walk around in the rain here), and Downy wrinkle release (Kelly, this probably comes as no surprise to you). The day the package arrived, our dryer stopped working, rendering my jumbo supply of dryer sheets completely useless. We’ve had to line dry our laundry, which feels very Little House on the Prairie. The only plus is the entire apartment smells like clean laundry while the clothes are drying. Since EVERYTHING here shuts down for weeks over the holidays, we couldn’t even put in a maintenance request with our leasing office until yesterday when it reopened. Which brings me to our next problem…

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I woke up in the middle of the night with a cockroach crawling on my arm. I’ve always heard there are all sorts of bugs crawling on you during the night and you just don’t realize it, which is bad enough to think about, but to be jolted out of slumber with a cockroach the size of a fun size Snickers bar on your arm is terrifying. We’d noticed cockroaches partying in our kitchen a few days ago and immediately launched an assault on them with a time-released bug spray. After seeing a few dead cockroaches the next day we thought it had done the trick it appears there are still roaches chilling in my room. Which is not only disgusting, but also reflects poorly on me and I’m sure you’re all wondering what kind of filth I’m living in to have cockroaches roaming on my body at night. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since our nightmare temporary roommate moved in we’ve noticed roaches. We came home on New Year’s Eve to discover he’d apparently had a fiesta and made tacos, leaving uncooked and cooked ground beef all over the place and it looked like he used taco seasoning as confetti to ring in the new year. The mess sat there for 48 hours until Kathryn wrote him a note to clean up after himself. I think within those 48 hours an announcement was made to all of the roaches in the neighborhood that there was free Mexican food in our apartment. I’ll once again direct you to Mandi’s latest post if you want to catch up on the latest of Bollywood’s shenanigans. He committed the ultimate crime and stole our last roll of toilet paper. It’s war.

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EDITED: I have a special/somewhat desperate request. I’m dying to make twice baked potaotes but can’t find anything resembling a proper potato for making a baked potato. I can’t find anything with thick skin similar to a good old Idaho potato. Any idea what type of potato will suffice and where I can find it? I also need any tips on where to find black beans. This is clearly a major crisis and I’ll appreciate any and all help!