Week 1 Update

It's hard to believe we've been in Sydney one week as of today! It still doesn't feel quite real that we're living here, it still feels like vacation (or holiday, as they say here).

It's technically still winter here, but you can tell it will be spring soon. The mornings and evenings have been chilly, but in the afternoon when the sun is out, it's almost short sleeves weather. There have been a few cloudy days, but mostly it's been pretty blue skies and sun, which is lovely.

There are lots of varieties of food available here - Turkish, Thai, Indonesian, Maylay, Indian, etc etc. We still need to go out for dim sum, which here is called yum cha.

On Saturday, we met up with the real estate agent, who drove us around to look at available housing. Real estate in Sydney is very expensive, and it was a little disappointing to see what our budget gets you here. Pretty quickly we changed our minds from needing a full 2-bedroom to a 1-bedroom with a study, just so we can get something a little nicer in our price range.

Saturday was also Election Day here. Voting is compulsory in Australia - you vote or you get a heavy fine. On Saturday night, friends of our friends had an election party, so we went along and everyone was keen to try to explain Aussie politics to us ("Liberal" is conservative here, and the liberal Labor party is red, while the conservative Liberal party is blue). When we left, the election for Prime Minister was too close to call and it's still undecided. This is the first hung Parliament since 1940 - ABC News explains in this article.

On Sunday, we went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which is free and has a nice collection of art, and then we took the train to our friends' house, where we borrowed bicycles and rode around their neighborhood and the nearby areas a bit. It was weird to be cycling on the left side of the road!

Yesterday was Matthew's first day at work. I'll let him tell about it, I'll just add that new Google employees really are called Nooglers!