Our long journey over the pond

Welcome to our blog about our adventures in the land of the stars and stripes!  Being the first post it seems only natural to go back to the start and post the quintessential moving shot of our home in Glebe being packed up...

"Hey bro, got room for one more or is it full as?" 

Our very nice movers were all Kiwis and sounded like an episode of Beached As ;)

Knowing that we had a container full of our stuff arriving in 7-8 short weeks, we decided to travel light!  

Really, the airlines are asking for it when they offer 46kg luggage allowance per person!

Our day of departure happened to be one of our friend's birthdays.  After a 12.5 hour flight to LA it was still his birthday.  After getting through immigration, collecting our baggage and a sighting of Will Anderson (hey, isn't that Adam Hills?) it was still his birthday.  Four hours later after spending our first "first class" flight asleep (in broad daylight, eyemasks on and mouths open - nice) we arrived in Houston at 2pm... and yes, it was still his birthday!  Happy birthday, Nath ;)


In the few moments we were awake we took a couple of shots out the window (Nat was a little too excited about being so far in front of the wing!)

Looking out over LA

Upon our arrival in Houston we checked in to Hotel ZaZa where they promise to treat you like a rockstar?!  All very odd but glam.  On our first night we ventured out to find Cabo, a Mexican restaurant we remembered from our visit last year.  So determined to assume our status as locals, we caught the Metro in to Downtown without consulting a map and after a few false starts (including almost boarding one going in the opposite direction) we made it there and enjoyed the largest portions of Mexican food you would ever want to see.

Just warm enough to sit outside

The jet lag threw us both around for the first week, so much so that we skipped the whole Halloween shenanigans.  And believe me, it was shenanigans.  Two days before Halloween we hired a car from a lady dressed as a Blues Brother assisted by a Pink Lady.  Saturday saw the entire staff of the Hotel dressed up; the reception staff as Playboy Bunnies and Hugh Heffner wannabies, and the concierge's as pimps.  At Macy's we were served by a very friendly, very Southern "Death".  That night the hotel hosted a party,"Zalloween", of which on Sunday morning there was ample evidence it was a trashy good time... broken pieces of costume all over the driveway, people still in costume stumbling around with hangovers, people still drunk stumbling around in their costumes and of course, lots of empty bottles strewn everywhere.  Almost made me sad to have missed it!


This is my favourite of all the costumes I've seen around this Halloween. 

OctoMum - a more attractive version of the original

After a total of ten nights in hotels we finally moved in to our furnished apartment in Neartown, a district of Houston.  They don't do serviced apartments the way we have in Australia.  The apartment block, or community as they're called here, is a regular apartment block leasing unfurnished apartments to long-term tenants.  Marriott Execu-stay rent one of these apartments, furnishes it, equips the kitchen and laundry, sets up the cable, phone and internet and even puts in some hotel touches like mini shampoo and soaps.  The place is really nice (apart from an abundance of tacky plastic plants which have been hidden in the closet), really clean and very comfortable.  We're pretty sure it was even freshly painted before we moved in which is one of the many conveniences made possible by the abundance of cheap labor in the area!

The view from our apartment

The modestly sized parking garage for our apartment block

The community's proximity to Downtown (CBD).
Vince's office is about a mile down this road.

We'll move again around Christmas when our container from Australia arrives and lease a two bedroom apartment, complete with a fully furnished guest room *hint* !  


Right now we're in the unenviable position of being completely alien and off the grid.  So far we've managed to open bank accounts but no one else wants to deal with us yet.  We looked at cars yesterday and weren't allowed to test drive them on our Aussie licences.  Hopefully this week we'll get our social security numbers which means we can then apply for Texan drivers licences, credit cards, rental apartments, utility accounts, corporate car leases, insurance... practically everything!  It's a slow step-by-step process, but we should manage to establish ourselves properly by early next year!