Spring might be right around the corner back home but here the end of summer is approaching and Fall is in the air. The leaves are turning color, which is an odd thing to see when you also see palm trees and other tropical plants.

Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, has the perfect year-round climate, sub-tropical/temperate. Not too cold, not too hot, what ever time of year it is. Sydney ranks in the top five best cities in the world to live in and visit, which comes as no surprise to me. Safe, clean, beautiful, but also very expensive. Asians and Pacific south-islanders in particular immigrate here for a better quality of life and wealthy Chinese immigrants are buying very pricey properties in record numbers. Anyway, just a bit of interesting background info on Sydney I wanted to share.

It is only a few days until we move into our own place, for now, we are stuck in this bug-ridden apartment. REALLY motivated to get out of there. It’s so difficult to live w/ a stranger and a foreigner makes it even more challenging. Forget cooking anything in the filthy kitchen too. Jim is back to work and I walked with him yesterday into the CBD (Central Business District) to the bank so I can have my own debit card.

Today I went into the CBD alone for the first time to exchange a few shirts at Lowe’s and picked up a clothes steamer. I finally used the Qantas gift card at Myer’s department store or it would have expired today. I bought myself a stylin’ trolley (shopping cart) and ice cream scoop… priorities…. Have been here about a week and already feeling oriented to the area.

My new trolley:

And speaking of banking. That, too, is very confusing.

New word/phrases of the day:

Your Checking account = transaction acct

Your Savings acct = where your checks are extracted from

When you use your debit card here, you must tell the clerk to charge your savings acct. At this point, I am really not sure what an actual savings acct is called.