Down Under with Jan Mikaela Nora and Ella

It was worth a try. But pretty much like the Australian prime minister, who tried to extent his term in today’s elections, we failed. But it was fun anyway! The opening event of the Adelaide International guitar festival was an attempt to get into the Guinness book of records. Plan was to form the biggest guitar band in the world. Everyone who can play guitar was invited to join in playing Deep Purple’s classic “Smoke on the water”, outdoor in the festival park. So cool, people of all ages and backgrounds gathered together to play the famous riff. No question of course that Jan had to be there as well. Too bad it was not enough. According to the official count we were with 1300 guitarists, while 1800 were required to break the record. But no worries mates, next year there will be a new attempt. Maybe then they should take the same approach as with the elections: make it mandatory to show up ;-)

There we go: the summer is on. The whole week it has been sunny with temperatures over 30˚C, and next week we're closing in on the 40's. Since it is dry heat, it’s really not that bad. Quite pleasant actually, if you ask Mikaela. She feels fantastic in this climate, and might even consider to stop using her electrical blanket ;-) So far Jan is coping with it pretty good, although the worst is yet to come. Thank god for the airco at work and in our bedroom. The lifestyle that goes with this climate is easy to get used to. At daytime you mostly stay inside, where it’s relatively cool. At night life is happening outdoor, on the street in the café’s and restaurants. And in the weekend: off to the beach !!! With 60 KM of white sandy beach in the metropolitan coast, there is plenty of nearby locations to choose from. So far we’ve been to Somerton beach and Henley beach. Funny coincidence: the first time we were beaching Mikaela’s father called up….. from Iceland! It was -5˚C there.

It’s summer time now, here in South Australia. While you guys in Europe switched the clocks back, we switched it forward one hour. So now the gap is even bigger, up to 9.5 hours. How much more distant can we be? One of the up sides is that the sun rises an hour later, so we wake up by ourselves again, instead of by all kinds of animal noises. For weeks we woke up by the sound of hyper active monkeys from the nearby Adelaide zoo, doing their morning ritual. Weirdest noise ever! Wonder what will happen when the Panda bears will arrive next year …. Talking about rituals; life is slowly getting back to normal, now that we’re settled in. We get our little routines, like the drive to work, the weekly shopping, yoga for Mikaela, and the hunt for all kinds creatures that crawl around our house (true, you all warned us for it, but we didn't listen, and now we even deal with a possum in our garden tree sometimes). This week we have been adding a new routine: going for a bike ride after wo