We made it Australia.

Take a deep breath now.

Most things are the same as anywhere else. Many of these things don’t feel foreign. I might as well be living in Any City, USA. For example:

• People walk to work quickly.
• Trams, buses, and trains all follow a schedule.
• The hotel restaurant has icky food.
• People all speak with some kind of accent, just like anywhere else in the world. (Many are from Asian countries, but even the Australian accents aren’t too strong as to be “foreign.” It’s like having people from the South, Brooklyn, a farm in the West, and Asia all in one room. Lots of accents, but it’s all English.)
• Grocery stores and retail stores have food, clothes, and goods of all kinds.
• Big W has the lowest prices. All the time. Guaranteed. (It looks remarkably like Walmart…)
• Plastic grocery bags break when you walk two blocks with them.
• There are lots of museums and things to do.
• My husband goes to work every morning.

There are a few things that feel foreign. Here are my foreign moments in the past few days.

• My recipe called for bacon so I grabbed the cheapest I could find on the shelf. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that bacon here is “Canadian Bacon” or ham. Ooops.
• The deli counter had meat for $24+! I was quite shocked at the sticker price until I realized it was $24 per kg, not per lb. A kg is 2.2 lbs, so it really wasn’t that awful.
• Milk seems to come predominately in a “whole” or “full” variety. “Skim” milk as I know it was hard to find. And the stuff I did get tastes funny. I wonder if it the carton I got is bad or if all “skim” milk here is just nasty. I certainly don’t think it would be wise to eat whole milk for the next two years.
• I had just purchased something at Big W, so I knew I had three dollars in coins. But when the cashier stood waiting for the two dollars I owed, I just couldn’t figure out which coins made up two dollars. Who would have thought that the littlest coin was worth the most, even two dollars? How silly! (Then I realized that the US does the same thing with dimes. Why? It’s just confusing.)
• Drivers are on the right side of the car. The cars drive on the left side of the street. Usually I don’t notice because I’m not driving yet. But it does throw me off when I go to cross a street.
• Some intersections require all right turns to be made from the LEFT lane. Even if there are two lanes of left-flowing traffic. That really doesn’t make sense to me.
• The State Library of Victoria had a historical exhibit. I guess I was supposed to know who the infamous Ned Kelly was because there wasn’t a lot of explanation.

Other than those things, it doesn’t feel very foreign. Now we are going to get a bank account set up here so we won’t have to keep paying foreign exchange fees. This afternoon I’m taking the tram up to the hospital for my first doctor’s appointment in this country. My husband will take a cab from work and meet me there. How are we supposed to meet up without cell phones? (Mine has no signal…) That is kind of foreign, to be without instant communication means. Tomorrow we are going to look at homes. We are excited to find out where we will be.

I feel like we’re in our new home town. It feels right.