I'm late posting this week's blog. We are busy looking at flats to rent. Ours is a very small one bedroom that is furnished. It was only ever meant as a temporary stop gap until we figure out where we want to live. Our lease finishes on the first of May but we are hoping to organise something now. We were hoping to get a two bedroom flat but it seems that we can only afford a crap one. So we may go with a flash one bedroom - with a very good sofa bed for visitors of course! We have found one we really like that is quite large and it has a decent kitchen - it even has a dishwasher. It is with the same real estate company as we are with now, so we may be able to break our lease early and move soon. There are pictures on the web of it, but I don't want to publish our address on the web like this - Mum has the URL if you are interested.
I am quite fussy about flats too. I refuse to live somewhere without a washing machine - I'm not sitting in laundromats all weekend. Heating is a consideration as well. It is quite expensive in some places. One flat quoted $500 a month in winter! We hardly heat our flat at the moment - being in a large block of flats and on the third floor it stays quite warm - infact sometimes we have to open the windows to cool it down.
It is Sunday morning and Pete is in bed sick. I am thinking about going to go to the gym. The gym is quite incredible. It is nine storeys high and I've heard that it is the biggest in the world, but I'm not sure if that's true. (Correction: the gym was the world's biggest when it was built in 1932 - though the architecture is a faked 1700s look - so from the outside you think it's a church - click here for a picture). It has to be big because it is too cold to exercise outside. In true American style I catch the lift up 4 floors to get to the fitness center and avoid the stairs. I got an Ipod nano for my birthday so I listen to that at the gym. I quite like talking books to listen to - otherwise it gets a bit boring. We live only two blocks from the gym which makes it very easy to go often. Pete goes most days. I would like to go every morning but I never wake up early enough. I used to be a morning person in Australia, but have turned into a night person lately - very bizarre. Maybe it is due to my new American lifestyle of drinking lots of diet coke!
It has snowed again, which is unusual for March. It still a bit weird to us. The other day I took my lunch to work, which started to freeze on the way - I put it in the fridge to warm up. When buying a bottle of red wine the shop owner told me to make sure I warm it up before I drink it.
Hair styles are also a bit of a puzzle. There are very few women my age with short hair. It seems the uniform is hair, at least shoulder length, tied up in a pony tail. I think this is a 'New England' thing. (New England is the name of the region we live in, being the northeast of the US). I think short hair is more common in other parts of the US. New England is a bit old school - think country clubs. Older women have short hair. I think the idea is that you have long hair until you get older and then it is respectable to cut your hair short?!? Still trying to figure it out.
We feel like we are getting the hang of this place though. There are lots of PhD students at work so plenty of people to hang out with. The biggest annoyance is having to live on a PhD student type budget again. My pay is less than what I got at CSIRO, and Pete is still waiting on his work permit. He has received the first document, but the second is taking ages - we thought it would only be a matter of days. We are back to learning where the free dinners are on campus and the cheap/free beer. Our yuppie lifestyle of Hobart is very far away - certainly no Saturday morning breakfasts at Sugo. I'm not sure how anyone copes as a postdoc with kids. Once Pete starts full time work we will be rich again - teachers of course get paid more than postdocs!
OK, time to get dressed for the gym before we look at more flats this afternoon.
Jaci xx
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