Oregon, Summer Cold, and Moving Sale

After vacationing sometimes it's really nice to get back to regular life, unfortunately that was not the case for me.

Matt and I arrived at the Eugene airport to discover that my typical carry-on bag that I had checked was missing a wheel rendering it completely useless. Oh well, out of all my luggage pieces the carry-on is the one I wouldn't mind losing. Mostly I was super happy to see my grown-up cat Odin, although he spent most of his time hiding in the closet of our room. Not too long ago he had gotten in a fight with the pitbull of the apartment and had been paranoid since. Matt had really gotten the worst of that fight and even had to get antibiotics for all the cat bites he got separating the animals. I'm glad I wasn't there, but I was sad to see how nervous Odin was about everything.

Matt's car that his sister had picked up from the towing place was luckily mostly in tact with just some wires exposed. His Ipod was gone, but surprisingly they left the car kit, stereo, and even their own phone charger and flashlight! With some repairs needed, we were hopeful we would still be able to sell it.

It didn't take long for me to see how much work there was to do once I saw the large piles of unfinished boxes. The boxes with things to store at my Mom's was already taken care of, but we still had to box the stuff to ship by sea. We got working on organizing, sorting, and boxing quickly but the end never seemed in sight. It didn't help that we could barely sleep at night on our thin pads on the floor.

Luckily my mom and sister were already on their way from Utah to help out. I had not prepared for them for work so unfortunately their "vacation" was cut short. They were pretty mortified when we took them to what we call Matt's Mom's house where all our stuff was. The old abandoned house had been taken over by fleas and spiders. As we showed them around it was common to find a few fleas on your legs. Matt thinks a spider had babies and that's why there were small webs all over our stuff. Since that was the only space we could do it all there wasn't much to do about it.

We had some fun spider experiences though as we tried to spray a giant one (see picture to right) on the light just in front of the doorway with bleach water. It began to dangle on a string and us girls jumped big time when I sprayed it and the spider swung toward us. Later I found another big one that had developed a nest underneath the mud guard of my bike. I made Matt kill it and we found thousands of tiny eggs. Those spiders definitely work fast because it must have just built it that day.


The first night my family was there I stayed in the hotel with them in Eugene and we discovered the next day I had a pretty bad cold and was not really able to do much of anything. The good news was that we picked up Matt's car from the shop that morning and it was only a $100 to fix up the car.

Later we discovered some bad news as the boxes we had packed all of our shipping stuff were collapsed when stacked so we had to get all new double lined boxes. In the end, my mom sent Matt and I to her hotel in Florence while they finished working on stuff for us and got things set up for the moving sale the next day.

After the GPS on my phone led us a 30 minute drive away from the hotel we finally got to sleep on a nice bed and not have to get up early and start working on stuff. Although Matt was anxious to get back I was keen on just relaxing so we went to the coast, ate at Moe's, and walked around the shops before heading back.


Upon returning, the moving sale was all set up and there were lots of people already looking around even before the sale started. While the sale went on my mom and sister repacked the stuff while I managed the people looking at stuff and Matt cleaned his car to sell. Heavily drugged on Dayquil I was probably the worst person for the job as I was selling things a lot lower than Matt would want. I didn't really care and as long as it was gone and we got something for it that's all that matters.

My family left to spend their night at the hotel in Florence while Matt and I finished any final packing. There were some difficulties deciphering my Mom's handwriting of what was in the boxes, but we got it all sorted and we ready to send them to Portland.

Later that night we got another blessing because we found out Matt's grandma was going to buy the car for his sister Jaime! She was going to give us a check the next night when we would stay with them so we didn't have to worry about trying to sell the car anymore!

The following day Matt had to take a cargo van with our 13 re-packed boxes up to Portland to be dropped off at the port. While he did that I got to see my friends Laura and Valerie once again! We didn't do much but chat and have lunch, but spending time with good friends is priceless. I hope we will always stay in touch.

I was extremely fortunate that the first couple of hours of the sale not many showed up while I was all by myself. Miraculously I even took a little nap sitting in the chair. My mom and sister came back from their day in Florence at the perfect time. I was really glad that my mom and sister would get some time to have fun and apparently they had an awesome day at Hobbit beach. We had to rotate again because Matt and I were spending the night at his grandparents in Oakridge, which is about an hour away.

His grandma made breakfast for us in the morning and then we only had time for a short chat before we had to leave. We went straight to his other grandma's house down the street (his Japanese father's side). She is an adorable short Japanese woman and it was fun to see her before we left.

All that was left to do was finish our sale, finish packing our bags for the plane and clean up! Saturday was packed with people at the sale. My sister, Carina, and I loaded up her car with all of our storage boxes including a volleyball net and golf clubs. Once that was taken care of we got back to helping with the sale and as the day went on we were just letting stuff go quick and cheap! By 3pm everything was $1 or less and just an hour later we starting loading up whatever was left into the truck to take to Goodwill. We sort of cleaned up stuff in the old house, but in the end there just wasn't time and after all there was still loads of other junk left there that didn't come from us.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to my family and my fat cat as they headed out back to Utah. Odin was scared by all the movement going on that he hid in his litter box. I was just happy I knew my sister's place had plenty of space for him and no other animals to scare him (other than people that is). It was sad to see them go because truthfully we couldn't have done all the packing and the sale by ourselves. They were our lifesavers. On top of all that, they even got us new bags since Matt didn't have a second bag to check and my carry-on had broken. My family is amazing!

Next up...Australia!

Florida Trip with Matt

Wow it has been forever!! So my last few weeks will be in multiple posts. I keep track of key things to mention in my blog, but sometimes I forget to sit and write. I'll get into another weekly groove soon.

After over five months of being apart from my husband I finally went back to the US! After leaving on the 4th of July I was able to arrive the evening of the 4th of July and I'll tell you that Portland fireworks are crazy!! As the plane was landing you could see literally thousands of fireworks going off in all directions! It was a neat experience, but not as great as giving a big hug to Matt!

As we drove back to Eugene he told me that he discovered his car had been stolen just that morning! We hoped it might be a blessing if the police didn't find it and instead of trying to sell the car we could just get an insurance check.

We got a whole four hours of "sleep" on a couple of small pads Matt had as a bed at his sister's place before we had to leave to the airport the next morning. Our three planes to Fort Lauderdale, Florida took all day so we were more than happy to finally arrive. Unfortunately after getting our rental we discovered there were multiple Doubletree by Hilton Hotels and could not find the one with our actual reservation. After over thirty minutes of calling a whole bunch of hotels we finally found our reservation and were able to get to the right place.

The next day we were able to just sleep in and relax. Matt slept in for a LONG time, while I got to finally get some summer sun outside by the pool. It was super nice to have no plans and just sit around and do nothing for an entire day.

Sunday we went shopping around until it was time to get onto our short Bahamas cruise. The boat was a lot smaller than I was used to, but it was still nice. The food was good and later while wandering around we stopped in on the karaoke competition. It went on forever so we left early but we both really liked this guy from Venezuela who was amazing!

The Bahamas was awesome. When we first arrived our room at the resort wasn't ready but we still got to use all the resort amenities. So we swam in the ocean, the pool, jumped on the ocean trampoline and got yelled at (didn't know we had to pay), and took a great banana boat tour to see the dolphins and a rusty old ship that had actually been used in the Pirates of the Carribean. It was all fun until by the time we got into our room we could see how badly burned my shoulders and legs were.

As we got settled in our room and checked our email I found I had a skype message. It was the police - they had found Matt's car! Matt had given them his number as well as his sister's and my skype number, but apparently they didn't call his sister. Because we didn't get the message until later, the car was towed and stored until we could pick it up. We had to send his sister to the towing agency with a letter signed by Matt giving her authorization to pick up the vehicle and $275 for the towing charges! At least the car could be driven.

Right before the storm hit

Our second Bahamas day turned out to be quite a disappointment as our kayak/snorkeling tour got cancelled due to weather. It didn't seem that bad at first, but it started pouring later and was rainy most of the day. The real bummer was that I was so badly burned that getting wet made me FREEZING! I was shivering really bad everywhere. Still we did some shopping and were able to watch Jack Reacher on a big screen they had at the resort that night.

We spent our last hours in the Bahamas eating Domino's and feeding a huge group of birds. It was amazing how bold some would be and actually eat right out of Matt's hands. Finally it was time to get on the cruise ship.

These two got in a fight

Last day in the Bahamas

The cruise back to Florida we went for a fancier dinner place and ended up on a table where all eight of us didn't drink alcohol! How crazy is that! The couple across from us we also discovered are LDS members from Arizona (although they've been inactive for a few years)! Hopefully we inspired them to go back, they are an awesome couple.

We also decided to get involved in the Bingo night, which we never won even after playing three games with multiple bingo cards in play at once. It was a lot of fun though and there was hilarious girl in front that even the announcer made fun of. Apparently she asked "What time is the 8 o'clock show?" earlier that day.

Matt and I were pleased to discover we could get off the ship really early the next day so we would be able to get to Orlando quick. It was even better to discover our room was available at 11am when we arrived so we could drop our stuff off. The rest of the day we spent at Typhoon Lagoon and we spent our last couple hours at DisneyQuest. The water park was a blast, but we were so tired at DisneyQuest that it was difficult to enjoy all the video games and the build-your-own roller coast made us motion sick.

The next two days we spent at Walt Disney World focusing on all the rides that Matt hadn't ever experienced at Disneyland. I was determined to help him see that WDW is WAY better than Disneyland. Although I don't think I convinced him entirely we still had fun.

The first day we went to the Animal Kingdom (my fav since I worked there and I love animals) for the day and Hollywood Studios at night. The second day we did Magic Kingdom in the morning and hit Epcot early afternoon. I could talk about both days a lot, but instead I'll just show pics.

 

It rained both days from 1-4 hours, but luckily it didn't affect our ability to still do all the things we wanted to in the end. I'm very grateful to finding the Unofficial Guide To Walt Disney World and their touringplans.com website and Lines app that saved us so much time!! Seriously, if you are going to Disneyland or Disney World I really recommend their book and sites because it saves hours and it's amazing how much we were able to fit in without having to run all over and still have unscheduled snack, bathroom, and rain breaks.

It was sad to leave the vacation to go back to Eugene, but on the up side our 20 min break at Salt Lake City on the way allowed my dad to see me! He was able to meet us at the gate we got off and walk us to the next gate...and no his is not normally allowed so don't ask how he was able to do it. Since I won't be able to see him for a long time I was glad we had the opportunity at all. I'm also really glad we had some great luck on the planes and had an extra seat so we could actually sleep somewhat. Nothing like going back to Eugene and sleeping on the hard pads equivalent to the floor....

.......to be continued

Furnishing the New Place

Sometimes when too much time passes it’s difficult to motivate myself to write a blog when I feel like so much has happened!

I finished my last Stats exam last week and I know I did terrible, but at least it’s over! Hopefully I did well overall, and I’ve already gotten some marks back that were pretty good. I nearly got an HD on that literature review I spent hours and hours working on and revising that I thought was terrible. According to my classmates the work load for this last semester has been overwhelming, but as I had nothing better to do I didn’t think it was so bad. Since Matt will be here next semester, I’m hoping the work load will be easier.

I got keys to my new place last week!! Since then things have been pretty crazy. As I walked into the new place I noticed a lot more flaws than I remembered. Nevertheless it’s still heaps better than my previous place! Check out the pics...

 

 


Since I’ve had the new place I have been working to get all the things I needed. Luckily my friend Kaytlin didn’t have work for a couple of days last week so we spend Monday buying some things I needed like a microwave, a mattress and whatnot. I had to move out by Friday so it was a blessing Kaytlin could help me move and get the things I still needed. In one trip we were able to move all of my stuff, however I didn’t have a fridge so she had to store all my refrigerator food.

My favorite part of that day was when Kaytlin and I went to Costco and at the entrance was a giant stuffed panda!! Kaytlin thought I was crazy as I searched for the perfect one and stuck it in the cart. We got some seriously great looks and some people asked me where I got it. I also have some sentimental reasons since my favorite stuffed animal was a large panda that got wet when I was at a sleepover on a friend’s trampoline. We stuck it in the dryer only to discover it completely fried the fur. So, in my opinion, this even bigger panda was $30 well spent!

Also early last week I got a washer, but when the guy showed me how it worked the door wasn’t locking so he had to come back later with his boss. Unfortunately this was quite a hassle because I had to go back and forth from Marsfield and Dundas (about 50 min by bus) since I didn’t have the things I needed to live at the new place. Also I had arranged to look at a refrigerator on gumtree (Australia’s Craigslist equivalent) which resulted in me having to ask Kaytlin for a ride to meet the washer guy in time.

The refrigerator proved to be a huge frustration. The Indian family I got it from couldn’t get rid of it until their new fridge came on Saturday and I had to arrange a way to get it picked up. I arranged with my ward to find someone with a ute (truck) to pick it up Saturday at 5pm with hopes I would be able to make my 7pm meeting for Vemma in the city. I grossly underestimated the time and it took us 3.5 hours to get the fridge down the family’s stairs and safely stored on the ute, then pick up a TV unit nearby, and be able to unload it all.

I’ve learned my lesson…in Australia it is easier to just buy stuff new that is deliverable, or pay for a courier to pick up and deliver things. There’s a reason why most Australians hire removalists to take care of all their stuff when they move. Nevertheless, I was able to get a nice couch set, table, TV, bed frame, and dryer to be delivered.

Over the last couple weeks it hasn’t been all moving and furnishing. I hung out with a new couple in my ward and we went to Pancakes onthe Rocks.

Last Wednesday I also went to a friend’s house to watch the 2^nd State of Origins game. We had a terrible loss and there wasn’t even a great fight. It was great to see old friends there though that I haven’t seen since I studied abroad here!

On Sunday I had to get to my ward in Greenwich from Dundas. It took me three trains to get there and it was difficult trying to hold my umbrella in the rain and stare at my phone to figure where I was supposed to go. Church was fun as our last lesson was all about modesty. I got a ride to a train station to save me time getting home and on the bus ride home I missed my stop and got stuck in a different city. Although I got home 2 hours later than planned I was mostly glad I had a granola bar in my bag to eat. It's a good thing my new ward is just down the street.

Yesterday was fun as well as I went to see Man of Steel with Brock and Kaytlin for FHE. It was AWESOME! I didn’t realize it would go so much into the background of Superman so I thought that was pretty cool.

Now I have just a couple of days before I go back to the US! I’m excited to see Matt after all this time, and really glad we’ll be able to have a little vacation in Florida and the Bahamas! Life is pretty good!

Good News and Bad News

It has been a long time! I'll admit I've just been lazy. Some days it's hard to motivate yourself to do much of anything!

On June 3rd Matt and I had finished all our paperwork to apply for that townhouse with the pink carpet. I e-mailed my gigantic PDF's but kept getting them sent back so then I had to send the documents via Google Drive. Later they called me to say they couldn't open them, but were willing to give me till the next morning. As I painstakingly was rescanning the documents and trying to convert them into smaller files they gave me another call the next day saying they were able to get the documents in the end. After all that I wasn't at all motivated to try and look at any other places or fill out other applications for a while.

In the meantime the first week of June I had my last classes. I had a presentation to do on Monday and two other huge assignments. My working group proposal assignment I had worked on till really late just so I could have my teacher look it over, and luckily when I got it back there wasn't any huge editing left to do. However my 60% of my grade literature review in another class was creeping up quick and I hadn't even started writing! After staying up past midnight on Tuesday reviewing articles and then again writing all day on Thursday I was able to send a terrible 11 page draft to my supervisor. He was able to get it back to me quickly, but I had some major problems to fix (no surprise there). Again I worked on it all day Saturday fixing it and resubmitted the draft to him. Luckily I have an awesome and committed supervisor for this project that I don't deserve and was willing to edit my paper on Sunday and get it back to me once more for edits. While making my final edits I lost track of time and nearly missed turning it in on time although I hadn't really finished everything. Many things I had to leave even if they didn't make sense because there was not time to figure out how to reword or restructure some things.  In the end, I'm glad it's over, but I'm ashamed to say it's not my best work: partially because I didn't start writing earlier, and partially because the topic was very difficult to write about in the end.

Some good things happened amidst all the late nights of paper writing. On Wednesday night I went to the State of Origins rugby game with my friend Kaytlin. Perhaps not the wisest use of my time, but it all worked out. For the first time ever I got to go to the Olympic Stadium! We ate at a ritzy place nearby - McDonald's, who didn't understand me when I asked for ketchup (tomato sauce here) and then still didn't give me any in the end. The McFlurry was awesome though! This rugby game was the first of three between New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (QLD) and is sort of like a super bowl for rugby fans. I won't go into all the details of rugby, but in general its a pretty awesome game with something always happening. Sorry American Football fans but rugby and Australian football is so much more entertaining. I was watching one of the QLD team players get up after being held down and as he was getting up the guy from our team (NSW) pushed him back down. I kept watching these guys instead of the ball and suddenly a huge fight broke out and half the team members on both sides starting rushing at these two guys. Not everybody saw what happened so they showed it on the big screen where the NSW team member totally decked the QLD guy twice in the face...nothing quite like watching that in slow motion! Apparently fights are quite common for these two teams. In the end NSW had a total victory of 14-6 and it was an awesome game to watch!

Friday afternoon I got some great news that I didn't expect! The real estate called me to say that I got the townhouse I applied for and they are going to let me have my cat!! On top of that they are going to let me move in on the 24th which means I'll have only one week where I am paying for two places at once. This was a huge blessing. The location is only 10 minutes away from Brock and Kaytlin and the nearest shopping center and its right off of a main road so its easy to get to things. Uni is a one hour bus ride away which isn't too bad since that gives me time to read for class or pleasure. The only downside is that its pretty far from my current LDS ward so I'm not sure what we'll do there. I've been told I can stay, but I'm not sure if we should make the commute. Unfortunately we are about 10 blocks away from being in Brock and Kaytlin's ward so I'm not sure what the Lord wants us to do. No matter what, I'm just happy we have a place.

My excitement for our new place kind of died by Saturday when I got really sick. Kaytlin had been sick when we went to the game and apparently all the stress and late nights I had been going through made me a prime target. It started with my throat being really sore and after a couple days of rest I thought it was getting better. Tuesday June 11th my roommate Sameera (right) and I got Pizzahut pizza and watched a cheesy movie and other than my throat I seemed fine (sidenote: Pizzahut is way better than Dominos here). It turns out the sore throat was just the first stage which then progressed to dry coughing, lack of energy, sometimes a fever, and then finally coughing up phlegm. The whole rest of the week I studied for my stats exam while doing everything possible to get over the sickness. The only thing I didn't try was VapoRub on my feet because I was too sick to go to the store. Finally, today I feel a lot better! I seem to get really crappy at night and sleep sucks, but during the day I am doing well again. This is good timing too because my Stats exam is on Tuesday.

I won't bore anyone with more school info, but needless to say I'm likely not going to do well on my Stats exam. So wish me luck that I won't bomb it! That's it for the last two weeks!

No Pets Allowed

As school is rapidly nearing the end of classes, so has my stress level. Naturally, I have not taken time out to write a proper blog amidst all the assignments. 

Over the last couple of weeks I've mainly been working on some big assignments so I've had to stay up really late trying to get as much done as I can. At the same time I have also had other tasks to attend to. Last Monday I got my birth control implant taken out. It was a quick 15 minute procedure where they put in some anasthetic and then pulled it out. I now have a nice little scab to remember it by. Unfortunately I have not had any immediate effects on my skin, but I feel I'm not really getting anything new. I've just got to learn to leave my skin alone! The fun part of all this is that the oral contraceptives need to be started on my next menstrual cycle in a month, but it takes two weeks for them to be fully effective. I'll be with Matt during that time so he'll just have to deal with the inconvenience. I really should have done this earlier. Also, I should add that the medicare issue has still not been fixed. 

This last week I have also put a lot of effort into finding an apartment for Matt and I (and our cat when he comes in September). There are lots of properties available in our budget range right now and I realized that if I found something I really liked I should move on it now. I made a spreadsheet of all the properties I was interested in and highlighted the best ones. Then I called all the real estate companies for the appropriate properties asking if pets were allowed. The majority said no, some didn't answer, and only four said it depends on the owner and I'd have to show up at the inspection on Saturday. I never knew this would be so difficult! It turns out that the government has very strict processes for allowing pets on any property and some areas they simply don't allow pets at all. Individually owned properties depend on the owner, but even if they say yes it's a complicated process to do all the paperwork for the government organization (Strata). Luckily, I am looking early, have already gathered the majority of the application materials, and can deal with the Strata paperwork for pets after I move in somewhere since I won't actually be able to have my cat until October. 

On Saturday I went to look at a few properties. The first one I absolutely hated with its brown carpet and small closets, and dirty looking shower. Surprisingly the apartment just below it was also open to see and it was nice with hardwood floors and a big kitchen, but it doesn't allow pets of course. Next was a townhouse that I liked from the moment I walked in. The layout was nice, it has a small yard in back, a nice kitchen with a good stove (some stoves I hate here), a big laundry area so we could easily have a dryer, two toilets instead of one, and the rooms had nice large mirrored closets (click here to see the listing)! The only major down fall was the horrible, overly worn pink carpet (so worn it's matted), but it's a small price to pay for other good things. On top of it all the woman showing the property was very nice and told me that if I was likely going to find a place that might allow pets it would be this one. I got an application and have been working with Matt online to get it all sorted. The applications are a pain requiring all kinds of stuff like rental receipts, your phone and electric accounts, pay slips showing proof of income and more. I think we've got it all sorted the best we can and we'll see what happens. There's another property that definitely allows pets in a better location that I won't be able to see until later this week so at least I have a couple of options. It will all work out somehow, but I now know that if you want to have a pet in Australia you should plan on having a house and not an apartment.