Blogs from Manly, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 10

The flies have come out of hibernation to enjoy the nice weather :( We've never seen anything like it before (it's even worse than on a cattle ranch in Nebraska on the hottest day of summer- trust me, that's a lot!). The flies are really stupid- they just land on you, and they're kind of slow too. But for every 1 that you kill, about another 20 come around. The locals don't seem to mind too much, or they have just gotten tired of swatting the flies away. We need some frogs down here to clean up the sidewalks! One thing we've noticed is that they aren't out at night. We don't know where they go but they really don't bother you as much. The only entertaining factor to all this is watching other people react ... read more

Well, I thought that I would give everyone a little glance of our home for the next few months. Also a picture of some of our neighbors.... read more

We've been preoccupied with settling into the Australian culture that we haven't given much of an update lately . As most of you know, I never tell as story in chronological order. But here's the scoop: We found a really great flat just a few minutes from the beach (and a really great flatmate). We're going to compile video footage of the place for our version of Cribs - release date pending. It is sooo nice to have our own space to call home for the next 3 months- luckily we packed light b/c we've been relocating about every 3 days since we landed. We're staying in Manly- a beach town that's a 30 minute ferry ride from Sydney. Their motto is "7 km from Sydney, a world away from care" and it is SOOOOO true. ... read more

We took a tour of Sydney with 20,000 other runners during the Sydney Running Festival. It was pretty cool to run over the massive Harbor bridge without a car in sight. We saw some pretty parks and interesting buildings along the way while the rest of the city slept. We were so consumed with the views that we didn't notice how tired we got over the 9 km (ok, that's not true - we were very happy to see the finish line- the real finish line, not the first pretend one that we raced towards). Josh was feeling pretty invincible when we breezed past the wheezing man at 7km, but was sadly put in to place when the guy pushing his son in a stroller passed us. They only gave T-shirts to the marathon runners (yeah, ... read more

Manly Beach, New South Wales, Australia. On our surf today, the weather took a turn for the better. When I say better, I mean dark rain clouds rolled in from the east while the sun continued to shine brightly from the West at around 4:00 in the afternoon. Not quite late enough for dusk, but late enough for a low sun. As the rain started to sprinkle down, the sun from behind the trees on the shore created the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and then what seemed like 4 more colors that I've never heard named before by humans. It began its arc way out in the ocean, disappeared up into the clouds, then reappeared finishing its shape in the surf right next to us about a half ... read more