As I rapidly approach the six-month mark in my adventure down under,  I realize that I haven’t done a great job documenting my experience thus far.  I’m going to attempt to get up to speed a bit today.  Brace yourself.

The first and most surprising thing to note is:  I love it here.

While this may shock you, since I did move here, I always thought I hated Australians and Australia by extension. These feelings have deep roots.  I had an Australian “roommate” in my year off before college who moved in for 3 short days (after I held the room for him for a month when he was in transit) and then promptly moved elsewhere and stiffed me mid-season in a ski town. Grrr!   That was the land down under’s first strike.

Then an old boyfriend studied abroad in Townsville, and I came to visit him and the college where he lived wouldn’t feed me and I thought I was pregnant the whole time.  Strike two.

Then when I traveled in S. America and elsewhere, I ran into so many drunk and obnoxious Aussie kids on gap year, that I essentially had written the country off as a wasteland of drunks, cane toads, and degenerates.

Fast forward to today.  I love it.  I came here telling everyone I knew that there wasn’t a chance we’d stay longer than the two years that R committed to. I was excited, but admittedly terrified of the move and sure we would not extend our adventure.  Now, we both have great jobs that pay us better than we were paid in the States, we have more vacation, we have better work conditions, and they pay for our health care.  This immediately puts Australia into a competitive position in my mind.

Beyond that, we have amazing travel opportunities.  We spent two weeks backpacking in Tasmania for Christmas and New Year’s. We can get to the beach and the mountains each weekend if we want to.  We’re going to spend Easter camping on Fraser Island – a world heritage site of sand dunes, tropical forests, and dingos. Our upcoming travel plans include Western Australia, New Zealand, and Cairns to hit up the Great Barrier Reef.  If we have some time on a weekend, we hire a car and pop down to Byron Bay – one of the more magical places I have ever spent time and just a 2-hour drive from our house.  It’s simply amazing what is available to us – and we don’t even own a car!  (Though we are pretty seriously considering buying a van and outfitting it with a bed and surfboard rack!)

But the thing that most shocks me is that it turns out I like Australians!!!  I didn’t think they could redeem themselves.  They were in deep in my book and it wasn’t looking good for a comeback, but against all odds they seem to have done it!   Though, in fairness, I have to admit, that I don’t know THAT many Australians.  Brisbane is a multicultural city, despite what anybody says about it being the world’s largest cow town. My coworkers are from Scotland, Wales, England, the U.S., India, France, South Africa, New Zealand…and that’s just at URS.  Walking down the street I hear Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Japanese, and languages I can’t identify.  It’s actually hard to meet Australians.  But though I don’t know a ton of Aussies, those I’ve gotten to know really impress me.  Particularly the men.

I realize this sounds all wrong, so I will explain myself.

I had a friend in college who was a renaissance man.  He grew up with back-to-the-land parents and had been raised with chickens and goats and an industrious outlook on life.  The man canned fruit, and cooked, and could build a porch while baking a blueberry pie and mapping groundwater. No joke.  He was well-spoken and interesting and I was constantly amazed that a guy could do all these things.  He really made me rethink some of my assumptions.  And he was, and still is, an anomaly in the world of American men.  Yet, here in Australia, I have met more than my fair share of men with the same panoply of skills.  Take Mick (yes, that’s actually his name) for example.  He showed me the BEST ways to drink Bundaberg rum with Bundy ginger beer, while talking me through the details of making cheese and bottling tomato sauce.  He wears Hawaiian shirts to work and has a beard that could house a small nation.  He explains me how to speak Australian with a twinkle in his eye, keeps fit, and is always in a good mood. I am enamored with the man.  He really impresses me.  I want to be an intern to his life and learn how to wear hawaiian shirts with authority while making cheese.

And he’s just one example.

(Don’t get me wrong, the women are impressive too.  But women are often impressive and multi-talented. That’s how women roll.)

I have been so pleasantly surprised to learn that Australians are fabulous.  It’s refreshing and makes me reconsider my earlier intentions of cutting and running at the two year mark.  I love the attitude here.  People are caring and neighborly.  People are conscious of the community.  I love their humor. It’s subtle and understated.  I like understatement.  I don’t practice understatement, but I appreciate it in other people. I never thought I would call Aussies understated. See?  The miracles abound.

Sure, I realize it’s not a perfect place.  Australia has many problems, to be sure.  They have a fascination with including more vowels in words than necessary, and they have something against he letter z.  They lack an ozone.  There are saltwater crocodiles poised at the ready to take you on a death-roll into the depths of a billabong if you’re not watchful and spiders hide under the toilet seats to get you at your most vulnerable.  The beer is really not all that good. I could go on and venture into the darker depths of  the issues, but suffice it to say, the place is not without its faults.

Nevertheless, I am so happy to be here.  It feels so nice to be proven wrong in your assumptions.  I enjoy myself more and more as the time passes.

Last weekend we had a friend from the states here visiting and we took him down to Byron Bay for a couple days before showing him around Brisbane. You could tell he really didn’t want to leave and head back to Portland after a few days surfing and taking in sun on the gorgeous beaches of Queensland.  It was nice to see it with fresh eyes again through his experience.   It reminds me of how lucky I am to live in this place, with an interesting and meaningful job, with an incredible man who I am lucky to have in my life,  sharing this adventure day in and day out in our little Queenslander with funky pink leather couches and lizards on the walls.

I love it here.

My office is a war zone.

It might be hard to see upon first glance.  The desk is relatively clean, organized.  IKEA standard fare.   The accordion folders hold our files.  I am the keeper of files.  This is what I do.  Printer.  Trays of papers.  Pens. My painting experiments and quotes pinned to the walls – reminding me to keep doing art.  Telling me to “shoot straight, ride hard, and dance well, so that I can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”  I appreciate that sentiment. Corners are filled with camping gear in boxes, side walls with various wall art we haven’t decided where to hang.  On the floor lies an unfinished painting.  It stares at me and I think it’s getting grouchy.

The office is the physical manifestation of the ongoing struggle in my head to prioritize my priorities.  I have a file of writings – things I have been working on for a long time, policy papers, articles that mean things to me,  lists of ideas for the future, paperweights made of rocks from my travels to jog my memory of times past and inspire my creativity.  One drawer of my desk holder old photos, correspondence, cards from people I care about, and my camera supplies – I still need to take that digital photo class.  Another drawer holds my CV – in the many forms it now takes.  I’ll have to update it yet again, now that I’m an environmental scientist.  Yes, I’m a scientist.  A wearer of many hats, I am.

And on the floor is the painting.  South Park.  South Park.

South Park, the inspirer.

R began a book about South Park.  It was burgled.  A thief may at this moment be perusing the environmental history of that space, written in the careful, methodical, and exacting tone of an engineer and lover of mountains.  Perhaps it will give him pause as the painting does me.

The painting sprung forth from my mind as a gift idea a year ago.  It was birthed antipodally in the search for a reminder of home, and a filler of wall space, and a bringer of pink tones to match the free pink couches.  It sits on my floor, waiting for me to add details.  But more so, it sits on the floor reminding me to pause.

I’ve had three-quarters of a year of freedom to do whatever the hell I wanted.  I biked across the northwestern US.  I hiked the Olympics.  I learned to surf in Nicaragua.  I volunteered with preschoolers and played in the mud with them.  I spent more one-on-one time with my dad than I have in years.  I thought about my life and the crazy turns and twists it has carried me on over the last year.  I thought about the future, and I thought about the past.

I started work this week doing something I like.  I am excited.  I am using my education.  I hope I can do meaningful work and feel proud of my contribution.  But each day, it will still be work that takes me away from self-reflection for the better part of my waking hours.

And so, the painting sits there, beckoning.  Asking me to consider it.  To consider my choices.  To consider my life and it’s parts.

My office may be a war zone.  But it’s a war worth fighting, between the parts of me that I cherish – my creativity – and the parts that bring me a paycheck.  Sure, they overlap at times, but it’s still a war.

I will let you know who comes out victorious – and I’ll post the painting when it’s done.

I treated myself to a 1-hour massage, with hot stones on Thursday.  It was indulgence at it’s best, and the really exciting part is that I parted with zero hard-earned cash for this treat.  It came courtesy of my lovely mother.  An indulgence indeed – to celebrate my new job!  And, that in the “heat” of the moment, I couldn’t help but think R should share in the bliss (I apologize, but my fingers got the better of me with that pun).  So, next week, he’ll be doing the same – courtesy of me!

The reason I am starting a post on the human foot with this non sequitur about my massage, is that I recalled something on that table.  At the outset of the massage, they gave me an image of the human form and told me to circle the areas where I wanted to focus.  Being in near-constant IT band distress, I circled my lower back, hips, abdomen, and butt.  Then, to clarify,  I wrote “IT band” in big letters.  Reading my note,  Jacinta, the masseuse looked up quizzically and asked “What does this mean?” Not a good sign.  As I fumbled through a description of my issues, I tried to ramp down expectations.

But, one would be hard-pressed to turn down a free massage.  In fact, I will NEVER EVER do that.  Massage is the way to my heart, and probably a few other things.  So, I laid on the table and let Jacinta have her way with me.  As she made her way through my various trouble spots, I withdrew some initial judgment.  The girl, while perhaps not perfectly trained, was good.

When she got to my feet I nearly melted into the table.

Since coming to Australia, my feet have enjoyed a renaissance of sorts.  Between the daily running of errands sans car in Brisbane, miles (kilometres?) pounded out marathon training, yoga 3-5 times a week, a new-found swimming habit, and my uncompromising zumba routine (the part of my workout plan LEAST likely to be skipped), I am on my feet a lot.  Not just on my feet, but on my bare or sandal-clad feet. Walking, the way feet were designed to walk.  Spreading my toes. Strengthening my arches.  And, it shows.  My feet look muscular in a new and exciting way.  My outside arch is developing into something visible.  My feet, which have long been something just to get me around, are now something I love!

Of course, this comes with some side-effects.  For example, each night when I wake around 1-3 a.m. and stagger out of the bedroom for a glass of water or a trip to the bathroom I find myself hobbling with Achilles tendons rigid, feet inflexible, and calves straining.  The poor puppies are tired.  I hadn’t realized the full extent of their strain, until Jacinta took them firmly in her hands and gave them some massage love. This was the catalyst for my deep thoughts on the human foot.

Feet are a funny part of the body that I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with.  Upon entry to this world, my legs were a tangled mess.  I  don’t know all the details of this, but I know it was solved by putting a newborn in plaster casts to straighten her misshapen gams.  From then on I was wearing orthodics to save me from a destiny of rolled ankles and pigeon-toes.  This, while not overly damaging, has made me a bit self-conscious of my legs.  I never stood equally-weighted on both feet, fearing my knock-knees would be obvious.  Rather, I developed a confident hip-jutting that kept my secrets. I embraced a scandalous habit of swaying my hips as I walked in order to disguise my pigeon toes.  I stared longingly at girls with a little bit of bow-leggedness.  Ah, to have knees that didn’t touch.

All my life, I thought this bit of vanity was a rather meaningless reflection on an insecure child.  Later in life, suffering IT band cramps that can be debilitating, I wonder if there was more to it.  Might things might have been different if I had lived my life a bit more shoeless and fancy-free?

As I write this, I am looking at the bare bottoms of R’s feet.  He has “pads” as he calls them.  Like a dog. They seem pretty useful.  He runs almost daily without shoes.  His feet are lean, toes spread, legs strong.  He has NEVER suffered an overuse injury from running.  Not one time in his many ultra-marathons, Ironmans, and various other races.  From him I draw some inspiration.  Perhaps if I follow in his footsteps (literally), someday I will be barefoot and injury-free.

Twisting around bone, muscles strain to find purchase in wet sand

A valiant struggle intermittently lost in the pettifog of life force, wetness, within the swells

Fresh rainwater slips overtop viscose brine, muddles, recedes again

A driving rain—a walk on the beach.