The Sharehouse
Several posts incoming! Last weekend I edited all of my iPhone photos and uploaded everything I’ve taken on my camera so far. It’s been raining here since yesterday (and that will continue for several days), so I’ve decided to stay in for the weekend and work on homework and the blog.
A couple days after my arrival in Australia, I began looking for housing. I had already looked online, but I quickly came to found out that the online listings are not very up to date. There was also significantly less options than I thought there would be (which I later discovered was because there are more exchange students at the University of Newcastle this semester than ever before). I was looking to live in a sharehouse close to campus as I wanted to be able to either walk or ride a bike to and from my classes like I do back home. By the time I toured places, I was getting pretty tired of suitcases and being woken up at random times by the five other girls in my room at the hostel.
I saw two places. The first was okay, but I wasn’t super impressed, didn’t love the location, and I didn’t meet anyone that lived there. The next day, I went to see another place in Waratah West – a 30 minute bus ride from the hostel (and therefore, Newcastle Beach), and a 10 minute bike ride from campus. Ten minutes before I got there, I got a text from the property management saying that my appointment had been cancelled and that I should NOT attend. Impatient as I was to find a place, I went anyway.
I sat outside for a few minutes, wondering what I should do, when a car pulled into the driveway and a boy got out. I explained my situation and he offered to show me the house and the room. Within maybe 15 minutes I had decided to move in. The room is pretty big, with this gorgeous writing desk that I knew would be perfect to study at (it is). The rest of the house isn’t very impressive, but it was in a good location, had a decent sized kitchen with enough fridge and cabinet space for me to fit my groceries, as well as a renovated upstairs bathroom with a gorgeous walk-in shower and a west-facing window (I now love to shower at sunset because I can see it from the window). I headed back to the hostel, sent in my application, and was approved!
Below are some photos of my room, which I absolutely love (note: you can click on any image on the site to view it larger in a ‘lightbox’). No pictures of the rest of the house because as I said, it’s pretty unimpressive and, due to TEN other people living here, often a bit messy. If I could go back, I would have checked out a few more places before making my final decision and tried to find a house with less people. But, it’s not too bad here and I was just eager to have my own private space again.
Honestly, my first week here was a bit rough. First, I had to lug all my stuff across town. For some reason, I decided to buy bedding before I moved, so on top of my suitcases and backpack, I also had this huge bag of bedding. I have no idea why I did this. Kmart is only a ten minute bus ride from the house and is open until midnight. Miraculously, I got all my stuff out of the hostel, two blocks uphill to the bus stop, and onto the bus. Hopefully, someone will drive me to the train station when I leave so that I do not have to go through this process again. Rolling suitcases across smooth sidewalks and airport floors is one thing – rolling them up and down hills on not-so-smooth asphalt is another story entirely.
Once I got all my stuff into my room, I spent a little time unpacking, and then I got hungry. Byron (the boy that showed me the house) was very excited to introduce me to “proper Aussie snacks” and drove me to the grocery store to grab some dinner and said snacks. Unfortunately, I could not talk him out of making me try Vegemite straight out of the jar (which I had been specifically told not to do during the UON exchange student orientation the day before). Safe to say I will not be eating any more Vegemite after that.. it’s like eating soy sauce but instead of a sauce it’s a spread. So gross. The rest of the snacks were good though!
Anyway, as I was heating up a frozen dinner after the Aussie snack experience, I noticed that there were some bugs in the kitchen. That first night, there weren’t a lot, but as the week went on I started to notice that they came out every single night, all over the countertops and in some of the cabinets in the kitchen. I talked to Byron and our other housemate, Moon (and why I took the boys’ word on this, I don’t know) and they said that the property management company knew about it but had done nothing. So, for a few days, I didn’t say anything and tried to convince myself I could deal with it. But I also didn’t fully stock up on groceries because I was not comfortable cooking in a kitchen that constantly had bugs running around after dark. I ended up taking matters into my own hands and buying some cockroach traps (they are smaller than the roaches in the US, but just as gross) and spray. The spray ended up making things worse in that they flushed all the bugs out into the open. One night I went in there to cook, and one jumped on my leg. I totally freaked out, abandoned trying to cook, and immediately sent the receptionist at the property management company a very strongly worded email. Channeled my inner Karen, if you will.
Turns out, I really had no reason to send such a strongly worded email. Natalie (the front desk lady) was very acommodating and two days later, someone came to spray. The bugs were gone (well, mostly gone) within a couple days after that. I have a sneaking suspicion that the boys had never even reached out to them to try to get the problem fixed! I’ve seen a few here and there since all this happened, but the bug problem is definitely under control now and what a relief that is. Plus, I know that if they came back, Natalie would be happy to send someone over to spray again.
I’ve been here for just over a month now. When I moved in, there were a couple vacant rooms, but all ten are now filled. There’s a couple living in one of them, so in total there are eleven of us living here – four girls and seven boys. It’s definitely a challenge living with so many people. Food gets stolen, dishes get left out, the trash and recycling pile up very quickly (and no one wants to take them out), and I seem to be the only one putting toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom. I didn’t anticipate how much I would miss my apartment in Fayetteville! Actually, there’s a handful of things that I didn’t anticipate missing…
DRYERS. Yes, these are in order. Yes, I am talking about the dryer for your clothes and it is the #1 thing that I miss. Dryers are rare in Australia. For the most part, it’s warm and sunny here year round, so in lieu of dryers, every house has clotheslines in the back. Anna warned me about this beforehand, but I still didn’t know how much I was going to loathe having to hang my clothes out to dry. If you know me well (especially if you have lived with me in the last five years or so) you know that I am very particular about my things. I take good care of my stuff. I am especially particular about my clothes – washing them on cold & drying them on low so they don’t shrink, folding and hanging them in a particular way, etc. I’m also pretty busy and at home would often do laundry throughout the day – throw a load in the wash, go run some errands. Come home for lunch, transfer to the dryer, do some more tasks/errands, and then remove my shirts from the dryer and lay them out immediately to avoid wrinkles. I’ve taken the convenience of this whole process for granted – it’s completely different here. First of all, the washer takes over an hour as opposed to the thirty minutes that I’m used to. Then, when it’s done, I have to hang my clothes. I’m getting better at this, but it’s still about a 20 minute process, sometimes more if I have a lot of dark colors because I have to turn those items inside out to prevent them from fading in the sun. Once they are hung, there is no definite amount of time until when they are dry. It depends on how hot, windy, and sunny it is. And it’s better to leave them out for a while to make sure they are extra dry – once, I took them off too early and brought them inside only to realize most of the clothes were still damp! So I had to hang them out again! Agh! And another thing – my clothes aren’t soft anymore! I’ve truly underestimated the power of the dryer sheet. All my cotton shirts are slightly stiff-feeling now. Anyway, moving on.
Drip Coffee Makers. For some reason, these are not common in Australia. My coffee maker at home was $30 at Walmart. I looked for one here and the cheapest I could find was about $60USD. Crazy! I settled for a Moka Pot, which makes a great single cup of coffee, but as a three-cup-a-day coffee drinker, I miss the convenience (are you sensing the theme here?) of being able to brew a whole pot in just a few minutes and drinking it over several hours.
Walmart (and Amazon). Really never thought I would say that I missed Walmart of all things, but it’s true! Northwest Arkansas is the birthplace of Walmart – the University of Arkansas’ business school is even named after Walmart’s founder, Sam M. Walton. Over the last couple years of living there, I’ve gotten used to getting everything I need – from groceries, to toiletries, to random things around the apartment – from Walmart. Every week, I place a pickup order, and the next day I drive five minutes and it gets loaded directly into my car. And whatever Walmart doesn’t have, Amazon can have it delivered in two days! Here, I’ve been shopping at three different places. Two grocery stores – Woolworths and Coles, because one carries things that the other doesn’t, and vice versa – and Kmart, which is where I’ve gotten all the “random things around the apartment” for cheap (socks, athletic clothes, throw pillows, shelves for organization, all that type of stuff).
Air-con(ditioning). This one is at the bottom because it hasn’t been so bad without it (and I suppose I expected to miss this to some extent). I do think that the US massively overuses air conditioning. It so does not need to be freezing cold inside every building in the middle of summer. But, there have been a few days here where it has gotten to around or over 100 degrees and the temperature in the house has become absolutely unbearable, so it is on those days that I have missed having AC.
Anyway, enough complaining (haha). I really do love it here, but I am definitely missing some of the comforts and conveniences of home. I want to live outside of the US again someday (as soon as I can, really), so I think it’s good to have this list in my head of what I have missed while I have been here to try and better determine my needs and wants for next time. Another thing I am really missing is my piano! Although I don’t play it as often as I would like, there have been some times here where I would have loved to just sit down and play for a while. & of course I am missing all my friends & family, but that’s a given <3
That’s all for this post! Check out the next one to hear about my slightly disastrous Port Stephens trip.
