Week 1 June 6-12

After a sleep-over at Bill and Pat's place the night before we finally dragged our nearly 100Kgs of  baggage to Brisbane Airport. Our flight to LA was uneventful and our passage through US customs and quarantine remarkably easy considering we had to declare  the chitons  Lesley had brought with her.
Lesley's colleague from Cal State Fullerton, Doug,was at LAX to meet us and took us on a whirlwind tour of the area in which we will be living and working for the next 4 months. Luckily for us Doug's car had broken down the day before (he collected us in a University vehicle) and on calling in to his mechanic we found he had a car for sale. So within 2 hours of being in the country we had purchased a car, sorted out insurance and registration, organised Sim cards for our phones and internet for our computers.

This is our car - a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan - not what we had anticipated buying for just the two of us but has proved ideal, all the seats fold flat into the floor giving us a huge space to carry our bikes etc

We checked into the Marriott at Fullerton, spent the next couple of days trying to remember which side of the road to drive and moved into our condo (like the lingo?) on the Sunday.

 We were amused by the fact that there are oil wells scattered all through this district, right in the heart of suburbia. This one is on our street corner

 Took a while to work out that this strange looking tree is actually a mobile phone tower!

 This is the view from our condo. The pool is part of the deal -so far we are the only ones to have used it.

This is the inside of the condo. If you look very hard at the view from the window you can see Disneyland. we get a ringside seat to the firework display every night at 9.30pm sharp.


The second evening here we sat down to watch TV and suddenly everything was moving - our first California earthquake.
There is certainly no shortage of shops and shopping centres and just about everything is CHEAP compared to Australia. We made the mistake of buying duty free booze on our way in only to find it is much cheaper here in the supermarkets. A 1.75litre bottle of Ballantines Scotch cost me $18. Corona beer (the real stuff bottled in Mexico) is $19 for a carton of 24.

Lesley started work and within a day or two had borrowed a bike from Doug and was cycling in every morning, followed by a session in the University gym.
Keith provided moral support and spent time recovering from arduous bag carrying/trophy husband duties