Thursday morning Daniel needed to do some work so Naomi and I walked 5 minutes to a park we’d seen a few days before. It was interesting to be around the toddler/mom/park scene in Australia. Pretty much the same as the toddler/mom/park scene in America, except for the curly accent, and the fact that they’re very friendly, especially toward Americans (not sure why they’re so into us, as most of the rest of the world generally resents us, or at least is mildly disdainful, in my experience.) Naomi had a wonderful time racing around the park, shrieking, climbing on a small ropes course, going “Up! Down!” on the see-saw with Mommy and even petting a big black dog. We’ve been back to this park several times since.

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We came home for lunch and a nap, and not halfway thru the nap I was wishing I’d zipped her home earlier to start the nap, as someone in the unit above us decided to drill their way to the other side of the world, but upped the ante by starting on the 4th floor of our building rather than starting on the ground floor. I myself had just laid down for a nap, and gave it a dedicated 10 minutes more before giving up, which sadly indicates how tired I was, rather than my forbearance. Of course Naomi woke up screaming, and while Daniel attended to her I went upstairs to try and ascertain when peace and quiet might be restored to us. Surprisingly, when I reached the 4th floor, the noise was still coming from above. So I went up to the 5th floor and knocked on the door out of which the noise was coming. An older man answered the door with a compassionate, “I’ve woken the baby haven’t I?” I was somewhat taken aback by how kind he was, as he explained that he was demolishing all the tile in the shower and bathroom, and would be working through the next day (Friday), but he assured me that that didn’t mean it was over then. After that, the builders would come. Perfect. I thanked him and as he apolgized again, saying he had kids and knew how hard it was when naps are disturbed, I told him I knew he was just doing his job.

Nap time being over, we decided to head to Ikea to pick up a few things. Our apartment comes “fully fitted” as the British say, but it’s fitted for adults not toddlers, so there were a few more things we needed (plus Daniel needed to get some work-related things like a desk). So we headed to the train station. We bought tickets and were told which platform to go to, arriving just in time for the train to pull away. Again. (This was probably the 3rd time in a row this had happened to us in the last few days.) However, it turned out that the train we’d been instructed to take was actually not as direct as a different train about 15 minutes later, so it was actually a good mistake.

Naomi had a great time on the train. Since the ride was a good half hour, we went upstairs on the train, and at each station she enjoyed looking down at all the “buh-buh” (people), and describing them to us (were they sitting? wearing hats? eating? were they babies or mommies or daddies? For the record, we are working on teaching her that men and women are not all mommies and daddies, but she’s skeptical.)

 

We arrived at our stop and the adventure continued as we weren’t sure which way the Ikea was. Thankfully Daniel is good at telling directions from where the sun is (even in the southern hemisphere in winter), and we headed the right direction. I noticed how beautifully golden and clear the evening light was on the eucalyptus trees lining our path, and realized that if we have direct sunlight here (ie. if it’s not overcast or raining) it always looks that way. It is another thing that really nourishes my soul. I really like how clean Sydney is (as compared to another Southern California metropolis I call home…).

We entered the mall and a quick diaper check rerouted us to a “parents room” located where the bathrooms were. Once the glass doors slid open with the push of a button, our jaws dropped at how elaborate and comfortable it was (and we have since seen a few others around Sydney! This city is VERY kid-friendly … and nursing-mom-friendly, and toddler-friendly…) There was a miniature gated playground, with a kids music video playing on a TV above. There were multiple stalls marked “breastfeeding rooms” with big comfy armchairs, coat hooks and tables. There was a toddler toilet bathroom, which had an adult-sized toilet and sink, as well as toddler-sized ones. There were several counters for changing diapers, with free disposable changing pads, and pictures painted on the ceiling above each station, facing the right direction for the baby to see (unfortunately these counters are a bit short for Naomi, and her legs hang off and she doesn’t like them). There was a microwave and small kitchen for heating up and preparing bottles or baby food. This place was legit.

(In fact, we’ve been back to Ikea again since then, and when Naomi was having a hard time I just took her to the Parents Room to play while Daniel shopped.)

Clean diaper in place, we proceeded onward toward Ikea. On the way, we passed a large food court. I must admit that, since leaving downtown Sydney, fast food and restaurant prices seem slightly more reasonable. Still very steep, but not obscene like in the business district (which is I suppose true of most downtown areas).

Ikea looked just like it does in every country – their familiar (if blaring) blue and yellow was quite comforting. Even more comforting were their prices – pretty comparable to the stores in the US. Of course, when we got dinner, we paid the usual $0.99 for a cinnamon roll, only to find that it was about a quarter of the size of the ones back home, with only a few teeny drops of icing, and hard as a cookie. Not quite the same. Shopping was stressful though, as this Ikea was probably 3 times bigger than the one we’re used to at home (which is itself mammoth), and with an overtired toddler whose nap had been cut short, it was hard to find everything we needed. (Note: Daniel doesn’t agree that it was any bigger than our home store. I stand by my original estimation. The place was huge.) I had to turn on tunnel vision to focus on getting what we needed while keeping Naomi as happy as possible, and ignoring all the other people around us and worrying about what they thought (if you know me, this is hard for me).

We finally made it to check-out (after a very productive pause in the “As Is” section to pick up a few extra things). Naomi was running in circles both physically and vocally, so she and I played on a pushcart while Daniel used his spatial reasoning skillz to fit all of our many purchases into his pack.

We were all set to go, and began to walk away from the shopping cart we’d been using, when I realized I was supposed to be pushing something. The stroller! With the diaper bag and all my credit cards and other important things in it. I had no idea when we’d left it behind. I backtracked… and backtracked… and backtracked some more all the way back to linens, where we must have been over an hour ago, and there was the stroller. (Thank goodness!)

We finally made our way toward the mall exit… when we saw a sign for Target. Target?! Really?

We followed the sign and saw the familiar red and white bull’s eye, except the font wasn’t quite right and it had a period at the end of the word: “Target.” Okay.

We went inside and were able to find a few more things we’d been unable to find at Ikea, most notably a bathtub for Naomi (as this place only has a shower with no tub and Naomi refuses to shower).

 

So in the end, on the train ride home we both looked ridiculous: Daniel with a backpack about as big as himself, and me with my bathtub. We got a lot of smiles on the way back to the train station.

I went to a women’s bible study this morning. This past Sunday Daniel, Naomi and I did end up visiting St. John’s, the Anglican church that Google Maps claimed was a 5-minute walk from our house. It is in fact a 5-min walk, and Anglican, and I think it will be a lovely church home for us for the next 3 months. When I initially realized that living in a new country for 3 months meant I couldn’t take communion each week at my home church, my heart sank. It could potentially take us 3 months just to find a new church here, forget about feeling at home or connected there. Then later I realized that, since no church is perfect, if we can manage to find a church that seems biblical and at least somewhat alive, we should just plant there regardless of any other quirks it may have, and not worry about finding “the best church” (whatever the heck that is anyway). As long as the church worships the same God we do, it’s more important that we connect with other believers for 3 months, than that we find the church with the fewest points of conflict.

So back to the women’s Bible study. I’m really glad I went. It was really nice to connect with other women. Most of them are young moms too, so there was nursery care for Naomi. Except they call nursery “creche,” which threw me at first. (I remember years ago when I felt somewhat sophisticated after realizing that our church calls the Nativity scene that’s set out at the front of the church during Christmas a “creche” – it sounded so foreign and elegant. So why were these people talking about a Nativity scene during August? I know it’s winter here, but they still celebrate Christmas in December don’t they?)

That was only one of many things that caused the whole morning to be simultaneously both pleasant and refreshing, and stressful and anxiety-producing. I was surprised at how stressed I was the whole time! I mean, all the women were incredibly kind people whom I would like to get to know better. They made me feel very welcome, they were saying things I believe and agree with about God, they were speaking English, etc. … but half the time I couldn’t for the life of me make out what they were saying! I cannot believe how hard it is to feel comfortable in a peer setting when there is a difference as  subtle as that of an accent. That little way they have of twisting their words made it really difficult over the course of the 2 hours I was there, to just relax in conversation. It’s anxiety-producing enough (for an introvert like me, at least) to be in a new social setting where you know no one but would like to make friends. But if you can’t understand 40% of what they’re saying, it’s even harder to feel at ease. The accent issue was underscored by small differences in phrasing for certain things. For example, the woman next to me kept mentioning “Caesars.” This one was pretty easy actually, since she is pregnant – Caesarean sections. Another one was, “How are you going?” This is the Australian version of, “How are you doing?” Instead of “stroller” there’s “pram,” instead of “diaper” there’s “nappy,” and “tea” is I think a catch-all for snack and/or supper, as the toddlers all had “morning tea” this morning… which meant crackers. Little things like that really threw me, because it made me pause for a second to think, “Wait. What did they just say?” and while I was puzzling over that and double checking that I heard them right, I was missing the next 5 seconds of what they’re saying, so I got even further lost.

Then, add to that the difference in pronunciation of words and phrases I AM familiar with, and it’s quite a mess (British accent is hard enough – have you ever tried watching British TV? That’s a lot of what it’s like. For me personally, it’s not usually very hard to understand a British accent in general, but then on TV they talk faster and their voices sometimes go quieter [like we all do in more familiar conversations], plus they have a slightly different sense of humor, so I’m always sort of on the edge of my seat with my head cocked to the side, trying to catch what they’re saying. That’s how I felt today.)

Then of course I don’t know a lot of popular Australian figures like people in entertainment or government. This was one place I got pretty lost in the Bible study, as someone made reference to a local politician. In the first place I couldn’t even understand the name she said, so I spent a few minutes just figuring out that she was talking about a person, then another few moments puzzling over whether this was a world figure I should know, or if it was a member of the church, or what. BUT, I made sure to look up the name of the Australian prime minister because I figure I should at least know who that is, right? She lives down the street from me, after all. So now hopefully if someone mentions Julia Gillard I will be totally in the know.

But, all that aside, I was really glad I went. Naomi had a great time after her initial separation anxiety (in which she took me by the hand to each and every toy, so I could play with it with her). It was really good to be around other Christian young moms, and I have really missed being part of a Bible study. They meet every Tuesday morning, and on Thursday mornings there is a play group, and I’m looking forward to being involved in both of those times. It will add some nice structure to Naomi’s and my week, and I’m looking forward to getting to know some of the women better. I’m sure after awhile I’ll get more familiar with the Australian twang too. :)

Well the good news is: I am typing this from our apartment. And I’m not choking on cigarette smoke.

We came back today, after leaving all the windows wide open for 48 hrs, after having the furniture and carpet steam cleaned, and after arming ourselves with an ionizer (air purifier). I was honestly pretty nervous about coming back. I woke up feeling like today was a big presentation for school, or my first day at a new job or something. On the one hand, I reeeeally wanted to be able to cook my own food and not have to agonize at each meal over spending $30 for something really not enough. I wanted to be able to unpack my clothes from the suitcase (and do some laundry!). I wanted to be a little further outside of the big city, where the 3 of us kind of stick out like sore thumbs in the morning as we squeeze past the army of businessmen and women dressed head to toe in black, bustling to work, on our way to breakfast in the Queen Victoria Building (that mall with the stained glass ceiling). One cafe in the QVB quickly became “our place” because Daniel can order a reasonably sized breakfast sandwich there for about $9, a latte for $4, and if we pay $5 more we can get another large side of eggs and some baked beans that Naomi and I can split, along with bits from his sandwich. That’s still about $20 for a breakfast that’s juuust enough for us, but it’s at least not paying for a bunch of other stuff we don’t want, like $8 for an entire breakfast sandwich for Naomi, when she’ll just ignore the bread and all the other stuff on the sandwich but the egg anyway. (We realized this morning that we’ve actually become “regulars” there, and neither of us has ever been a regular anywhere in our whole life. But when the cook came out to double check that we didn’t want baked beans today (we skipped them today, as opposed to the last 3 mornings), we were kind of awestruck that they’d remembered us, especially with the long line of customers at the counter. But I guess when you have a somewhat unique order, and you order it every day around the same time for 4 days, they start to remember you.)

So anyway, I will sort of miss that cafe. But not enough to make me go back and pay $20 for it if I don’t have to. I’m thrilled that tomorrow morning I get to finally make some oatmeal again!

 

So on the one hand I was excited to move back in here to the apartment. One of my favorite things about this place is the sound of the parrots who live in a palm tree next door to us. They fly around, flashing their bright red and green and blue, and calling the most beautiful, tropical-sounding call. It really makes me feel like I am in another country. And I adore the gardens of the house below us. We are allowed to peek over the wall because we’re on the 3rd story, but inside the walls are exquisitely manicured little lawns, trees and paths. Another house beyond it reminds me of an elegant hobbit hole, because all the windows are circular, and they kind of grow up out of the house under smoothly curving eaves. And of course there is The View, with all the ferries waltzing across the sapphire harbor, and the cars and trains zipping along the bridge.

But then, on the other hand, the last time I’d been in our apartment I’d wanted to grab my sleeping child and run out of the place screaming because it smelled so bad. And a few of you had told me some horror stories of failing to get smoke smells out of apartments, so I was pretty worried that all the steam cleaning and airing out and ionizing wouldn’t really do any good, and then what would we do? I was pretty nervous. And I knew that even if things went great that first day, I’d best wait a few days to see if the smell really was really gone, or if it had just temporarily been overpowered by the detergent in the steam cleaning fluid or something.

And I still am kind of holding my breath, but …so far so good. We walked in this morning and the place actually didn’t even smell neutral – it smelled wonderful! All the steam cleaning detergent probably did that, but still – nice! Now that we’ve closed the windows up for several hours and run the ionizer, it still smells fine. I’m so relieved! I don’t smell cigarettes, and I can actually feel very comfortable here.

And there are so many things I am falling in love with.

I can walk 5 minutes from my front door and get on either a ferry or a train, which will take me almost anywhere in Sydney – the zoo, the grocery store, downtown, the beach, you name it – in about 20 minutes. And it’s a gorgeous ride. Naomi doesn’t have to be strapped into a car seat, I don’t have to deal with traffic or people cutting me off – it’s really pleasant.

A few doors over from us is a private boys’ school called St Aloysius’ College. Through the glass I can see this gorgeous life-sized bronze statue. I haven’t gotten a real good look yet, but it’s sort of like a Pieta, except it’s not Mary holding Jesus, it’s a man (I’m guessing it’s St Aloysius). It stirs my soul, and I feel so lucky to get to look at it when I walk anywhere.

Walking home from the ferry landing, we always pass this cool tree:

I’m not sure if you can tell from the picture or not, but it’s basically growing out of this wall, climbing down about 10 feet of it with its roots. Awesome.

The prime minister of Australia lives down the street from us. At least whenever he’s in Sydney. I ran past his house today. Rumor is, we live in the safest neighborhood in Sydney.

In the grocery store, they say “capsicum” instead of sweet pepper. Fun, huh.

The groceries are all normal size, not super sized like in the US. When you buy a container of yogurt or a package of chicken breasts or a loaf of bread, it’s smaller, and it just makes you want to eat normal-sized portions of it. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s true. Even the dumpsters are smaller – on my run today, it must have been trash day because all the neighborhood had their trash cans dragged out to the curb and each one seemed not much bigger than about what Naomi would comfortably fit inside, standing up. And that’s just how people live here – smaller. And it’s just kind of nice.

There are lots of other, little, things too, that aren’t very interesting to mention – the cute grocery store nearby, all the great-looking cafes a couple blocks away that we want to try, the park with the awesome playground.

But of course, then there are the things that are just … weird. I know – to be culturally sensitive I should say “different,” so you can sub that word in if it makes you feel better.

All the door knobs in our apartment are level with my chest, as is the top of our refrigerator. Well, that’s an exaggeration. The fridge is about up to my arm pits, when you include the freezer, and about as wide as me. So that’s not bad: we have friends in Europe with a dorm fridge for their 3-bedroom house. And as for the door knobs, I guess we won’t have any problems with Naomi opening doors she’s not supposed to because they’re all waaaay above her head.

I mentioned that our apartment building has an elevator, which is nice. But it sort of reminds me of a little old man who’s not quite on his game anymore after all these years: whenever the elevator arrives, you’re never sure whether he will be lined up evenly with the floor, or whether he will be 2 or 5 or 10 inches above or below it, causing you to have to take a big step and do some maneuvering with the stroller. He’s not exactly precise. But he tries. Plus he never responds the first time you push the button telling him which floor to go to. I still haven’t yet figured out what he’s looking for – I know one push isn’t enough, and sometimes two isn’t enough either. It seems like you have to wait a few seconds, at least, between pushes, but I’m not sure. Twice now I’ve gotten in on the ground floor, pushed “3” (twice), and then been mysteriously taken up to some other floor like 7 or 5, because someone else had called for it and the elevator decided to introduce me to a neighbor rather than deposit me on my own floor. He keeps me guessing. I suppose he’s trying to teach me to respect my elders.

 

I’ll leave it to Katie to fill you in on the details, but the quick update is that we finally moved into the apartment. After 48 hours of airing the place out (fortunately there are a lot of windows to allow for a good breeze), and some major steam cleaning (sofas, pillows, both mattresses, and the carpet for the second time), the place doesn’t smell like smoke. At least not much. There’s a little lingering smell, but we’re hoping our new ionizing air purifier can take care of that. So far it seems to be doing a good job. So it’s with great relief that we are now spending our first night in the apartment.

The main thing worth mentioning right now is the view from this place. I just took these photos a couple minutes ago and I still can’t believe this is the view from our living room.

We’re here! We landed in Sydney about 10 am on Friday morning. We were able to find a taxi with a car seat pretty easily (apparently lots of taxis here have one). The weather was beautiful – sunny and clear, although the days are noticeably shorter than what we’ve been used to lately (since it is after all winter here). Needless to say, there have been a lot of highs and lows the last 3 days.

It was a tiring 24 hrs of travel, but Naomi did great. She only slept about 6 hrs on the plane (compared to her usual 12/night), so things were a bit dicey on the flight and the following day.

Now however I think she’s pretty caught up on sleep and really seems to be doing better overcoming her jet lag than any of the rest of us. Here are the standings, at present:

Friday night sleep –

Naomi: 8:00 pm – 6:00 am (+ 3 hr midday nap) = 13 hrs
Daniel: 9:30 pm – 6:00 am = 8.5 hrs
Katie: 9:30 pm – 2:30 am (+ 1.5 hr midday nap) = 6.5 hrs

Saturday night sleep –

Naomi: 7:30 – 5:30 (+ 3 hr midday nap) = 13 hrs
Daniel: 8:00 – 4:30 = 8.5 hrs
Katie: 8:00 – 4:30 = 8.5 hrs

Grand Total –

Naomi: 26 hrs
Daniel: 17 hrs
Katie: 15 hrs

So, as you can see, Naomi is clearly winning. But I must admit… we don’t really mind. If you don’t know how much more tolerable an overtired 32-year-old is compared to an overtired 1-year-old, then I’m not going to try to explain it to you.

We stayed at a hotel the first night, since we needed to get in touch with a realtor to pick up our apartment key. We didn’t actually get over to the apartment itself that day because of other things that needed doing that day. We spent an hour or so that first day figuring out how to make calls from the company cell phone here in Sydney, and it reminded me afresh what it feels like to be a nomad in a foreign place – it’s so hard to remember that feeling when we’re home, in our own culture, where we know lots of people and know how to get the things we need. It’s easy to not notice little subtleties like that in our daily life, and it can be a bit unnerving when suddenly the grounds for that confident familiarity are gone. It made me feel very tiny.

After dragging Naomi out of napping dreamland (ugh! Jet lag is such a drag but especially hard to watch your little kiddos struggle with it), we decided to go outside to enjoy the beautiful afternoon. Our hotel is in Darling Harbour (love that name), quite near the water. We walked a few blocks and arrived at a great little waterfront area (it reminded me of Seaport Village in San Diego) with lots of restaurants lined up opposite the water, which were beginning to fill up with the Friday night happy-hour-after-work crowd. All the restaurants were laughably expensive (Sydney is expensive in general and these places were on the waterfront to boot), so we went to Subway – still $7 for a 6-inch but better than anything else. We ate on a bench by the water and had a great time.

Naomi enjoyed interacting with the seagulls and some other little kids there. Then she insisted that I take her into one of the restaurants so we could watch people, then watch a game of Aussie style football on TV (“Ball! Ball! Yayyyyy! Happy!”), and pretend to play some video games. It was starting to get dark by then, so we headed back to the hotel and were all in bed by about 9 or so.

Positively delirious with jet lag, we made it til about 2:30 am before Naomi came in bed with us; I didn’t go back to sleep after that but Naomi and Daniel did – til about 6am. Not bad for the first day of jet lag!

Saturday morning, after getting dressed, we got downstairs and walked a short distance before realizing that, hard as it may be to believe, the $35/person hotel buffet was probably our best bet for breakfast. Hello, sticker shock. Did I mention I’m looking forward to having my own kitchen and cooking our meals? Not that other places were charging more than that, but it was something like $8 for a muffin, versus $35 for whatever-you-want-nourishing-options, and with a toddler’s precarious food moods, I didn’t want to risk $8 on a muffin that there was an 80% chance of her refusing.

Let me tell you a couple of the delights our $70 bought us, so I feel a bit better about the $70:

Daniel tried a piece of honeycomb. For real. He thought it was chewy, but good. I thought it was too sweet, but I don’t like sweets so don’t mind me.

There was a gorgeous spread of fruit purees, surrounding an enormous dish of plain yogurt – bright gold mango, bright green kiwi dotted with black seeds, pale yellow pineapple, deep red raspberry, bitty pieces of apple. Perfect for our miniature yogurt-lover.

Except she decided she only wanted fruit. Grapes, actually. Or, as she calls them, “Beeps.”

Daniel unfortunately didn’t notice the little sign describing his choice of frittata as having salmon in it, so he was turned off frittata for good. More for me.

There is not enough brie cheese in this world. But the hotel put in a good effort to remedy this problem at the buffet. Loved it.

We enjoyed watching Naomi try lychee for the first time, although when she realized they weren’t grapes she quickly lost interest.

Naomi decided to put a hold on her grape addiction long enough to take a few bites of congee, which I believe is like oatmeal made out of rice. All I know is it was served in the Japanese food section and it looked more like oatmeal than anything else there. And there was dried coconut, dried pear bits and raisins to mix in, which probably canceled out any of the Japanese-ness that might have been left in it after having been displayed next to a vat of baked beans.

After breakfast we decided to go out and explore while pretending to actually try and accomplish important errands. We found Queen Victoria Plaza, whose beauty you might understand when I tell you it is a mall but it has a stained glass ceiling.

Next we found Paddy’s Market, which we’d heard is where locals buy their food for “normal” prices. It was like an outdoor Asian market (only it was indoor), and we had a great time checking it out and buying some fruits and veggies at admittedly very normal prices, even from our point of view. And the produce was really beautiful – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen carrots that were deeper orange, or fatter or more perfect than the ones in the bottom of my fridge right now. In fact, my lunch yesterday was one of these huge carrots with peanut butter on it, and if you know me I don’t usually skimp on lunch (of course I still had a $35 breakfast buffet in my tummy). I have to get used to reading prices as per kilogram, though, rather than per pound. It’ll be fun to go back there and experiment with new Asian vegetables like the million shapes/sizes/colors of mushrooms, or purple yams or different green beans I didn’t recognize.

 

Paddy’s Market doesn’t sell all types of groceries, only fresh produce, but there was a grocery store nearby where we picked up some other things to help us get through the first few days. You know, things we can’t live without like RAISINS (the addiction normally in force when Naomi is not being distracted by grapes). But don’t forget to call them sultanas, or the grocer won’t know what you’re talking about (nor will the second grocer he asks for help).

We came back to the hotel, packed up, checked out, and headed by taxi (exorbitant amount of luggage, in tow) over to our apartment, arriving in the early afternoon.

Now when I say “exorbitant,” you may retort, “You’re moving! Of course you’ll have lots of luggage!” But since my husband prides himself on packing light, let me defend his reputation by explaining that not ALL of this luggage is ours. Two of the (extra-large) pieces belong to Daniel’s company.  In fact, when we arrived in Brisbane (en route to Sydney), airline security informed me that one of them – that big “bench” Naomi is perched on in the photo – contained firearms. Really?? I was honestly a bit taken aback at first, since Daniel and a co-worker had packed it so… maybe it did? They knew it was firearms because it was a hard-shell locked box. Hm. Okay. We got a pretty suspicious and thorough going-through of our luggage, especially that piece, by a customs officer who managed to look even more like Daniel Craig, the most recent 007 actor than my Daniel does. (And he also looked like Daniel’s Uncle Don, somehow). Of course, when 007 opened the big, suspicious-looking case of “firearms,” I think he was slightly surprised to find that it was almost completely filled with diapers (plus a few pieces of scuba gear nestled in between).

Back to our apartment. An immediate perk we’re thrilled with is that you can get from the street all the way to our front door on the 3rd floor without having to lift a stroller (due to ramps and an elevator). And our neighborhood is amazing. Kirribilli is apparently kind of known as an upper-end part of Sydney, especially when it comes to residential areas. And it is lovely. But then you see our apartment building and you kind of go, “Oh.” It’s a pretty hideous red brick square, poking straight up into the sky by about 7 stories, ugly as all get-out. I guess that means it’s the best place in Kirribilli to live, because then you are inside of it looking out at all this loveliness, rather than outside of it looking at how ugly it is.

When I walked in the door to our unit, two somewhat opposite things hit me at once and I’m still not entirely sure which was more overwhelming. On the one hand, I noticed the view out of the living room window and it was far more incredible than I ever imagined – right in front of our apartment is the harbor with the Opera House directly across from us and the harbor bridge arching up just to our right. The sun was out and with all the sailboats making little white foamy zig-zags across the blue water it almost took my breath away.

Except.

My breath was already taken away by the second thing I noticed when I stepped inside: the overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke. We thought the apartment had been listed as non-smoking but obviously the last tenant had smoked A LOT. We put Naomi down for her nap because she was way overdue, but I really struggled with that because her room smelled so bad. I didn’t want to leave her window open while she napped because – another surprise – there were no screens on her window and, being 3 floors up, I was not about to risk this being the day she learns how to climb out of her pack and play and manages to climb out the window. Did I mention that the blinds didn’t really make the room dark so we cut up a big cardboard moving box we found in there, and strung it up over the window. With that and the ugly pink and purple beaded and tasseled pillows on the faded floral quilt on the bed, and the heavy stench of cigarettes, that room was looking pretty ghetto. But she obviously didn’t mind, and was fast asleep in seconds.

With Naomi down, we opened the rest of the windows in the apartment as wide as we could, and there are a lot of windows. And it was quite breezy. This all bodes well for clearing out a bad smell right? Wrong. Four hours later that stupid apartment smelled as wretched as before.

I’ll also add that the reason we waited til Naomi was asleep to open all the windows is that NONE of the windows have screens. Or bars. And we’re on the 3rd floor. I’m sure they would spoil the view, but it really makes me uncomfortable to have a toddler who loves to climb in a 3rd-story apartment with low, unprotected windows. I think we might just lock the windows and put a broomstick down in the window sill to prevent them from being opened, and just never open them. Oddly enough the balcony is wonderfully safe. It has glass walls which is perfect because then Naomi can see through them, but there are no openings wide enough to be a danger for her.

I went to go lie down for a nap, but when I lay on the bed (which had no sheets, blankets or comforter, and remember it’s pretty cold here now), the smoke smell was so strong that I couldn’t breathe. I was so angry, there was NO way I was going to sleep. I went out into the living room and told Daniel something had to be done. So we spent the next 3 hrs trying to get in touch with his boss in the US, so that she could get us another night at the hotel and also set in motion some solutions to the problem, like talking to the landlady, buying an air purifier or perhaps even buying some new furniture. However, by now it was 10 pm on Friday night in the US, so this failed.

This was a pretty stressful few hours. I was glad Jenn had suggested bringing some pictures and icons from home, because I got out a photo Daniel had taken of the crucifix at our home church (which nourishes my soul), and literally held it in my hands for the next few hours. I was trying not to push Daniel too hard to deal with all of this exactly the way I thought it needed to be dealt with, but I also just wanted to run into Naomi’s room, grab her, and run out of this gross smelling place. I went in there once briefly in the middle of her nap, and the smell was so strong it was hard to walk back out again but I knew she needed the nap and the smell wouldn’t do too much damage in a couple of hours. Eventually, staying close to Jesus through all of it helped me to calm down enough that I tried to take a nap, or at least close my eyes. I listened to a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, which was at least more restful than pacing the floor like I had been doing.

In the end, Naomi woke from her nap, we pulled together a few things, called a taxi, and drove back to the hotel. Where we’ve been ever since. There is more to write, but I’ll stop here for now. Thanks for all your prayers and encouraging emails! It’s truly wonderful to hear from each of you.

So far, in my perusing around maps of Sydney to see some highlights we might want to see or do while there, I have found myself just as fascinated reading the names of spots on the map, just to say the words out loud and hear what they sound like. Some of my personal favorites thus far:

 

Hen and Chicken Bay (which is just beside Breakfast Point, and across from Kissing Point Park)

Wooloomooloo (a town near central Sydney)

Barangaroo (also a town)

Woolahra (ditto)

Darling Harbor

 

Other fun names around town:

 

Bronte (town)

Tennyson Point

Wollstonecraft (town)

Chippendale (town)

Balls Head Bay

Snails Bay

Cockatoo Island, Spectacle Island, Goat Island, Shark Island

Little Sirius Cove

Point Piper

Field of Mars Cemetary

Caloola Reserve (park)