Back in Oz

Our first week back in Sydney has been great. We’ve had lots of time to swim, run, paddle and work out and also spent lots of time relaxing, studying and watching the Olympics. We had a great time back home, but it’s so nice to finally relax, unpack and be in one place for a while.

We thought we’d be disappointed having to watch the Gold medal GAME in Sydney (and not in Canada), but it ended up being a really neat experience. One of our favourite pubs in Sydney (James Squire, which has been featured in the blog several times already) decided that they would host/air all the Canadian hockey games during the Olympics. This meant that yesterday morning they opened the bar in Darling Harbour at 6:30 am for everyone to get settled before the 7:15 am start. Brent and I had to get up at 5:15am in the pitch black in order to get there in time!
The pub was serving breakfast, beer and had the game on about 10 different TVs (including 2 giant screens). The pub was packed- and we almost felt like we were in Canada until we walked out of the bar around 11am and the harbour was deserted.

You may have also noticed that I cut my hair off since I’ve been back here. I went to get a cheap haircut in Penrith when I first got back and it ended up looking like a mullet, so I decided to go back (to a different place) a few days later and chop it all off. I haven’t had short hair since I was 10 so it feels a bit weird, but it’s probably better than a mullet (and not bad in the hot weather, either).

We’ve also already had a few visitors out here this year. Brent’s lifesaving friends from home- Mark, Kathleen and their new baby, Fiona were in Sydney for the past month staying with Alphabet, so we managed to get in a visit with them before they headed back to Canada.
The only other excitement we’ve really had since we’ve been back was finding a Red-back spider on our patio right outside our back door while we were sweeping! This is one of the many scary and poisonous spiders living in Australia- but I really didn’t think they were living so close to us (about 5 feet from the end of our bed!)!