Practice Packing:

Watching David and Kathryn pack up their house over the last two months did NOT make us envious! They have had to pack 12 years’ worth of stuff (technical term) into 3 x 30kg bags (yes, Aydin, who weighs 25kg, gets 30kg of checked-in luggage…). Luckily they discovered that sending a 20kg box of, say, books to Australia only costs about AU$80.

Well, we’ve been starting our own culling of the useless junk we’ve acquired over the last year, and packing the rest into our bags (limited to 20kg for us! Not fair!).

Why are we finished packing when we have two weeks left over here, you ask? Well, to be honest it’s probably excitement to be home as much as it is an attempt to be organised. We knew for a fact that we wouldn’t be able to fit everything in our packs, so we had to see what needed posting. We’re getting rid of lots of our clothes – having a limited wardrobe for 12 months really wears out your threads! – and we drank the 2kg coffee that I brought over here. But we’ve been fanatical customers of the Book Depository and bought/received 15-20 books since arriving here (!), and despite our whingeing about the local fashion, we’ve also managed to buy some new clothes.

We’ve been pretty brutal with our wardrobes – most of it is being given away or thrown out (possible the former, followed by the latter). And the books, along with some other random stuff, is in the box you can see above. We’re hoping it’s under the 10kg postal limit!

The rest somehow fit into our packs! It’s a miracle. But… now we have to unpack everything so we can continue living normally for the next 2 weeks!

Going home?

The thought of going home is very strange. It’s a similar feeling to when we were preparing to come over here – excitement mixed with apprehension (both to be expected), but also a strange sense of really not knowing what to expect upon arrival. We haven’t been here long enough to expect reverse culture shock to be a problem, but we’re sure that some things will seem unfamiliar. It would be nice if that unfamiliarity became a kind of inspiration to get the most out of being back in Australia, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Running Out.

A funny observation I made yesterday is everything is running out just in time for us to go home:

- the coffee I bought in London;

- the Vegemite my Mum sent with Humf back in October;

- the T2 teas that Fred bought for us (also delivered by Humf);

- the usability of our camera (need one of those tiny screwdrivers…);

- our patience with our semi-functional laptop (claiming on Harvey Norman warranty as soon as we get back!);

- even our money is running out precisely on time!

Aah, but talking about going home won’t make it come any faster! So I’ll sign off now.

Cheers

Stu.

Hi all,

I kinda feel bad for talking yet again about going home (6 weeks! Oh, did I say that?), but as you can imagine, it’s been on our minds quite a bit lately.

I distinctly remember sitting in Steve and Marie Pearce’s loungeroom about 12 months ago discussing our expectations for the trip to Bulgaria. (Steve and Marie work with WEC and they generously offered to take us through some of WEC’s “preparing for living OS” material.) Well, recently, we’ve been discussing the opposite – what we’re expecting when we return.

This post isn’t about those gruesome details, but it was interesting to realise that we feel slightly apprehensive that “home” may not feel as wonderful as we’ve imagined it in every homesick moment for the last 9 months! This is irrational, of course. A result of having far too much time to think about it! But it lead to me thinking up a short list of highly important, but little things that we’re looking forward to being reacquainted with.

1. Coffee! It’s not surprising that this is the first thing on my list, right? I wrote about the coffee situation here, suffice to say that the things I love about coffee – fresh roasts, diverse origins, a well-made flat white – simply aren’t found here. I complain about it, but we nevertheless do enjoy Bulgarian coffee, amongst other cafe offerings.

2. Shopping that makes sense! Elly said she can’t wait to be able to go into a clothing store and see things that look nice, and feel comfortable enough to ask to try them on, and to be able to explain what she might be looking for… and so on. It’s a combination of cultural differences, the language barrier and fashion from the ’80s (and not the cool part of the ’80s which is “retro” now).

3. Growing something! Some people think dirt is disgusting. I can’t wait to get it under my nails as I get back into gardening. Okay, so I had a measly pot of coriander and dill during summer, but I’m talking about dirt I can dig in! Eating some home-grown vegies is something I’m certainly looking forward to. Sam and Dani: want me to build you a vegie patch?

4. Texting! After we’d been here long enough to forget some of the details of what life in Ausland was like, we realised that almost all of our social engagements were initiated by SMS. I must have sent less than 5 since we got here. It just seems like a fiddly, unreliable means of communicating, when phone calls are cheap or free! But it’ll be good to get back into.

5. Driving! I haven’t driven a car this hemisphere. I was all for giving it a go – in fact, at one stage we were considering getting a Lada – but then we saw a nasty head-on collision on the highway one night… and that turned us off the idea. Implicit in this list item is that I’m soooo looking forward to drivers who occasionally consider that wanton recklessness could lead to a painful death. Do Australian drivers still know that?

6. High fidelity! We’ve been enjoying a lot of new music this year. It only struck me this week that we really haven’t heard any of it through decent speakers. It’s either been headphones (eugh!), laptop speakers (double eugh!), or the external computer speakers we bought (not bad). I have a feeling that hearing music on some big fat speakers again is going to blow our minds (and eardrums).

7. Rain! It’s mid-Feb, so we’re almost finished our winter, yet we haven’t had a proper soaking for months! We had quite a dry autumn (not sure if that’s usual here; I prefer Tassie’s windy and wet autumns) and then it got cold. Which meant it snowed. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, but when we got caught in a nice early-spring storm last weekend, I realised how much I like (and miss) rain.