Down Under with Jan Mikaela Nora and Ella

Becoming a parent changes everything. You want to be well prepared, and get as many things done before the baby is born. One of the things Jan had been postponing for a long time was to get his left shoulder fixed. It had been painful for almost a year, especially after lifting things and driving the old Toyota (which was a manual). Neither physiotherapy nor chiropractor helped much. An ultrasound showed that there was really just one option left: a shoulder arthroscopy operation. Definitely not his favorite thing, but you want to be able to lift the baby, right? The ‘op’ took place last Tuesday in the North Eastern community hospital. According to the surgeon it all went fine. Recovery will take a while though. Need to train up the arm again from zero: every movement feels like new. Meanwhile Jan will be walking around with a sling, like a one armed bandit. The pain may be bugging him at times, but according to him the upside is that he is free from cooking and any household task for...

Today's the big day: Mikaela is turning thirty !!! A milestone to celebrate, don't you think? Thirty years young and literally full of life. What more could we wish for?!? So why don't you all join us and sing along: Ja, må hon leva, Ja, må hon leva, Ja, må hon leva uti hundrade år. Ja, visst ska hon leva, Ja, visst ska hon leva, Ja, visst ska hon leva uti hundrade år. "Ett fyraldigt leve... leve hon. HURRAH, HURRAH, HURRAH, HURRAH ." And for those of you who are burning of enthusiasm, don't hold back ... Presents are always welcome ;-)

The big question of course is ‘what’s it going to be?’ Mum thinks it’s a girl, dad says it’s a boy. How classic… time will tell who’s right. Meanwhile it’s getting more visible by the day. Something’s cooking and Mikaela can’t hide it. Isn’t it beautiful? With the big news comes of course the big preparation. We started making shopping lists, reading books and internet sites, and visited some baby shops. What a world?!? You almost need a degree to understand everything. Luckily we have friends with kids here, who are helping us to get started. Thanks a lot guys! Most tangible thing we bought so far is our new/used car. It took a couple of weekends (and a lot of patience) to find one that suited both the requirements of a young family, as well as the need for a 40 year old to get over his midlife crisis. Result: a Hyundai Tucson 4-wheel drive. Take a look here . Nice ah? According to Mikaela the best thing about it is that we won't have to go to another car yard in the next 5 years...

Yep, it’s for real. We are officially expecting! An Aussie-Swedish-Dutch-Frisian baby is in the making. In week sixteen now and it’s all looking very good. Due date is somewhere half March, at the end of the summer. For us it is of course the greatest news ever. Mikaela has followed a typical textbook pregnancy so far: some nausea, tiredness, mood swings and a totally messed up taste for food and snacks! She even dislikes chocolate now!!! How crazy can it get?!? But it’s all looking good. We already had an early ultrasound and we saw the little one actively twisting, turning and even waving at us. It was even making loops! Clearly it is having a good time in mummy’s womb. So once again we are ‘on the move’: another big and exciting change ahead of us. We can still hardly believe it ourselves. It’s such a new world to us that we often feel a bit lost. How do start a journey like this?!?

See here the winners of the ‘Who will be the first to visit us in Australia’ award: Denyse and Jeroen from IJsselstein. They were on their pre-honeymoon trip to visit friends and family Down Under. Congratulations guys! We’ve had an absolute great and action packed time together. Went to see Adelaide, cycled the linear park, did the wine trip to Barossa Valley, explored the wildlife in the hills, sent them off to Kangaroo Island, drove the Great Ocean road and went dining and shopping in Melbourne. And all of that in just 10 days! There were many highlights in this week, but one event really stood out: we finally saw a Whale! Yep, it was lying and waiting for us at Warrnambool beach last Friday morning. Apparently our visitors brought us luck. And good weather. Cause believe it or not, spring is coming! Thanks Denyse and Jeroen for this wonderful visit. May it be the first of many more to come. And for all others: click here to see the photo’s . Or even better: come and visit us yourse...

It's one year ago now that we arrived in Australia. Can you believe how fast time has been flying? It honestly still feels as if we just started our life here Down Under. Although well underway with our jobs, many other aspects of our integration are still in an early stage. We still live in the same rental place that we found last year, and we will do so for at least another year. Not until we are permanent residents can we possibly afford to buy our own house (March 2010 earliest). As for the social integration: that’s also just started. We have a lot of contact with other Dutch immigrants. They seem to find each other easily. But building more frequent and deeper contact with the locals is a slow process. This seems to be something that even Aussies from interstate confirm: it just takes time to become part of the South Australian communities. Also, there is so much for us to explore in Australia. We’ve hardly seen anything of this continent yet. Although very soon we are going...

One of the most frequently used words in the vocabulary of Australians is ‘Whingeing’. According to the dictionary it means complaining, moaning, grumbling. A whinger is someone you don’t want to be, but somehow is easily said about everybody else. In fact, most people here would tell you that South Aussies generally are just a bunch of whingers. Bosses tell their employees that they should stop whingeing, and all injured sports people are by default whingers. There’s even a radio show you can call that will broadcast your message live, as long as it starts with “I am not a whinger, but …..” All in all it is safe to say Australians love to whinge a little bit. So from that perspective our integration is really going well. Since a couple of weeks we are whinging our hearts out about the weather. It is mid-winter now, and believe it or not: it can be freezing cold here. An average day temperature of 15°C may be decent, but at night it can get as low as 3°C. Mind you: in a house with just...