Lessons for newcomers.

I've learned a couple of things in the 2 months I've been in Perth. Here is a short list I've put together:

1. We must learn to fix up anything we buy, ourselves. It was a great shock to our system. I believe Shai has built a total of 2 single beds, 1 queen bed, 1 3-seater sofa, 1 outdoor chaise lounge, 3 tables, 2 chests of drawers, 2 tv consoles, 1 bookshelf, 1 study desk, 1 bench, and 1 step ladder in the past 2 months. He was mostly armed with vague instructions, a toolbox we bought at Kmart, and a cordless drill driver he borrowed from a friend. I did my part too. I built 1 shoe rack and 1 dish rack.

2. We must organise our trash and strategise how to get rid of it. Because we built everything ourselves, we were left with a massive amount of cardboard boxes, bubble wraps and plastic coverings that those items came with. We actually had to use one bedroom to store all of that trash for about a month. Back home, If we wanted to be environmentally responsible, the recycling bins were big enough and cleared often enough to make the job easy. Here, we had to strategise. We had to tear the huge pieces of cardboards into much smaller ones. Then we had to place them bit by bit into our recycling bin that is cleared only every other Monday.

3. We must learn to live with Australia's wifi. It is slowwwww and gets cut off often. First of all, even though we had ordered the wifi to be set up immediately when we arrived, it was up only 5 days later. We survived 5 days without wifi. And now, the wifi gets cut off at least once a day. When that first happened, we freaked out a little. But now, when our movie stops streaming, we just go, "Wifi's down!" Then we wait for the modem to start blinking again and then Shai would go, "It's up!" and we continue our movie. At least for us it's just wifi. In some other suburbs, it's total blackouts.

4. We must learn how to do many new chores and build new habits. As newcomers, many normal, everyday things were new to us. For example, we had no idea how to turn off the sprinkler on the front lawn (which was watering the concrete driveway and NOT the grass). What about remembering to bring my grocery bags with me each time we went to the supermarket? Or turning off the alarm when I stepped into the house so it didn't go off every time? Another example is when we realised we had landed here during BUG SEASON. Cockroaches. Spiders. Caterpillars. Grasshoppers. We had to figure out how to get rid of the 1,597 caterpillars crawling all over the courtyard last month!

This was one of our earliest summer walks here. At Point Fraser in the city. Sun's out, so shades and sunblock are mandatory.