Time's up.

I was thinking about the things I would miss about Perth and the things I won't. Figured I should jot them down as I think of them.

I won't miss the way they do their expiration dates and birthdays. In the States it's month/day/year. Here it's day/month/year. Can't tell you how confusing that was at the grocery store - at first I thought they had expired milk and cheese on the shelf.

I will miss not having to be a defensive driver. Driving here is extremely.......slow. And most people are not aggressive. The other day I saw a car weaving in and out of cars on the freeway and thought, 'that dude is driving like he's from Houston.' I will not miss merging onto the freeway. It seems as though Australians don't necessarily get the concept of other cars merging into a lane. Instead of speeding up or slowing down, they simply maintain their speed, regardless of the fact that they are sharing a lane with another car. I also won't miss the complete disregard for pedestrians. Cars definitely have the right of way. It takes Andrew 10 minutes some evenings to cross the street from the bus stop to our apartment building.

I'll miss hearing names like Hamish, Lachlan, Baz and Fergus. Don't really come across those too much in the States. :)

I look forward to daylight savings time. They don't do it in Perth (they do in Sydney but Perth is about 50 years behind). Micah is a light sensitive baby and w/o daylight savings the sun rises at about 4:30 a.m. = he was up at 5 a.m. for the day for about a week. Thankfully, I have the skills to make a room feel like a cave so the situation was remedied. It would be nice, however, not to have thick bath towels hanging from windows.

I'll miss our little Korean restaurant in downtown Perth. It's one of the few restaurants we've found that is affordable and good. Of course, we're the only white people that go there (everyone else is Korean) so they know us by now and absolutely love Micah. I won't miss how expensive food is here and am looking forward to gaining about 20 pounds on Mission Burrito, Chipotle, Dry Creek, Smoothie King, Yia Yia Mary's, the list goes on and on. Oh and I'm dying for NY/NJ eggplant parm.....seriously. I hope though, to retain the ability and desire to cook since eating at home saves a good amount of money (and calories). :) But, it will be nice to at least have the option to eat out, need be!