winter blues.

winter time.

It just occurred to me that we haven't blogged in over two months. Mostly because our ex-pat life has become very routine and kind of boring. In a good way, I suppose. Not much to write home about: work, school, spending weekends holed up in the apartment out of the winter cold.

Speaking of which, I feel very silly complaining about Melbourne's mild winters when I spent nine years in the chilly tundra of Michigan (snow and ice from October to April, pretty much). So here's an article that sort of explains why winter in Victoria is kind of awful.

I'm just getting over my very first Australian head cold, which was a bummer. Last year around this time we weren't even in Melbourne - we were still traveling around Portland and beyond, blasting the heat in our tiny hotel rooms. But this year I was kind of stubborn about turning on the apartment heater, and I guess that was a bad idea.

thank goodness they have Pho soup in Melbourne.

Also, I still can't get over the reverse seasons here. It's June, but it feels like the end of autumn and the beginning of the holiday season. On more than one occasion this month I've made myself a steaming cup of mint hot chocolate and turned on the Christmas music station on iTunes. And we may have watched "The Holiday" for fun. I mean, what's the point of winter if you can't celebrate the winter holidays?

Speaking of holidays, this past weekend we attended an American Thanksgiving party, complete with a giant turkey and homemade pies. It was pretty amazing.

so. wonderful.

What else is new... we're both gearing up for some trips "home" in the next two months. I'll be heading to Grand Rapids at the end of the month (my first time in the U.S. since the big move!) and Ben will visit Seattle at the end of July. It would be nice to do a multi-state trip together, eventually. But for now we've agreed that visiting our respective families separately just simplifies things a bit, and makes everything more fair for our families.

Anyway, we're both very excited to see everyone.

And we're looking forward to escaping the Melbournian winter for some (hopefully) nice American summer weather.

CK

p.s. Speaking of Grand Rapids, I spotted this shirt at Target in downtown Melbourne. Every clothing store usually has a bunch of apparel from American cities (always New York and LA, sometimes Miami, maaaybe Detroit) but this was pretty crazy...