Brent and I quickly made arrangements to travel to Melbourne to be oriented to the area and find a house to rent. We went for eight days at the beginning of March, which was a really big deal to be away from the kids for that long.

Just in case you don’t know, Australia is really, really, really far away! 🙂 I don’t think I ever appreciated how far it was until we traveled there. It’s over 24 hours of travel time to get there. We left on Friday night at 6pm from Newark, NJ and landed in Melbourne at 9:30am on Sunday morning.  With the 16 hour time difference and crossing the international date line, that’s what happens. Doesn’t that make your head spin?! And if you are dorky like me, you think, where exactly is the international date line and time zones in that area… well, just in case you had those questions too.

It was a really exhausting week between the time change and non-stop agenda each day. We found ourselves up every morning from about 3am, so staying up to get dinner out in the evening was really tough. Of course until the last night that we were there, we were finally adjusted! We did manage to have a really nice dinner with friends on the last night there. And, later I found out that Brent rode in the back seat all the time during house hunting trips so he could put on his sunglasses and sneak in a little snooze!

We looked at several schools and probably 25 houses. We wanted to have the kids continue in the French school, so we looked at homes nearby it. We also looked at homes near the bay. Well, sorry for the kids’ learning, we decided to live near the bay and figure out another way for them to continue learning French. I do hate taking Isla out of the French system already because she may not be able to go back into the French school in Princeton when we return if she doesn’t continue with it (because we do not speak French at home). She was finally beginning to speak French, and her teacher said she never had to translate anything into English for her. (The school day was 90% French speaking). So, we will do our best to continue in one way or another. Greyson, on the other hand, has had very little exposure to French, except for our neighbor speaking French to her daughter that I took to school. And, when she arrived at our house every evening to pick up Lilli-Soleil and greeted her with saying “Bonjour!”, Greyson began to believe that was our neighbor’s name and calling her “Bonjour!”. It wasn’t until he started to say “Hi, Bonjour!” and “Bye Bye, Bonjour!” that I realized that he thought that was her name! How cute is that?!

Anyhow, we were able to secure a house in Hampton, a suburb about 25 minutes south of the center of Melbourne before we departed that week. I was really happy with it because it was walkable to a street of shopping/cafes, to the school, and to the beach. Here it is: 

Here is the beach near the house, looking north towards the city.

For perspective, Hampton is the red area on the map.

With the mission being accomplished, Brent and I traveled south to the peninsula, near Portsea, to see the beach and for Brent to go surfing. When I zoom out, you can see where it is in relation to the city:

It was well worth the 1.5 hour drive to get there…. and a nice way to end a very hectic week.