B-Team News: 3 April – 9 April, 2023

We spent three days in Oxford with friends this week, staying in the suburb of Summertown. We took the train from Paddington (a 47 minute ride) that turned into a bit of chaos. I felt like I was in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Some bridge was out on the way to Oxford, so the train…

B-Team News 13 – 19, 2023

Bake Sale success at school! We are raising funds for transportation costs for a weeklong school camp in May. I love getting to know the other parents and I absolutely adore seeing the girls at school. We attended the Key Stage 4 Options Evening at my son’s school. What is that? It’s when 14 year…

Happy New Year 2023!

We spent the New Year in Edinburgh with friends. Edinburgh is so pretty to look at and so different to England. The climate cooler, the winter light shorter. the building’s stone is darker and the architecture unique. On New Year’s Eve day, we climbed Arthur’s Seat, the weather was mild and the path was muddy.…

Domestic Travel – Australia

Traveling within the Australian borders is consistently the most pleasant air travel I have ever experienced. It looks like this: Check in online at home 24 hours before flight. Roll up to the airport approximately 1 hour before scheduled flight departure. If you are checking a bag, do it yourself through self bag check kiosks.…

Greendale Sunflower Farm

Some friends reached out and let me know about their wonderful visit to Greendale to see the sunflowers. Oh, I had never been to a sunflower farm before and was intrigued. Lavender, tulips, vineyards, orchards, pumpkins, but never sunflowers. Loving a new experience, we decided it would be a great weekend family outing. The farm…

Dumb American

My daughter has just recently started high school here in Melbourne, she is just 11 (high school starts in year 7 in Australia.) Since day one, she has been bullied and laughed at because of her place of birth, even though she has never lived there. Whether out at recess or in the classroom, there…

Fiji 2022

Traveling to Fiji, a first time for us and our first holiday abroad since Covid began. We booked our trip as soon as the Australian border was announced opened and once we had a travel bubble with Fiji. We kept our planning simple and secured an all-inclusive deal with flights, never feeling confident that we…

Driving In Melbourne

Melbourne has some unique roads and driving rules that we haven’t experienced in the rest of Australia. Here are a few things that come up in conversation in our house. Trams Driving on tram tracks is not a relaxing experience. We have them all over town and sometimes they are designed just to be used…

Random News

Bench – it’s in your kitchen and your bathroom – it’s the counter! Why do they call the kitchen counter a bench? It comes from both “benchtop”or “workbench”. G’day – The very Aussie way to say hello is way more common here in Melbourne as compared to Sydney. If I heard it twice in Sydney…