Almost Summer in the Almost City

It's the second rainy day in a row in Sydney, and there's nothing on our agenda today. We've spent nearly two weeks in the Brooklynesque suburb of Glebe, and we're starting to feel like we live here. I have my new passport--in the record time of 4 days--and my New Zealand working holiday visa. Pete got his mandatory chest x-ray for his visa (since he'd "spent more than 3 months in the last 5 years in a country not considered low risk for TB"--that's actually how they worded it), and this weekend we're heading to the Blue Mountains as a reward for all of the hoop-jumping we've done. Good thing we Americans have been trained to deal with bureaucracy; it seems to be a global epidemic.

We've managed to do as many of the low-budget tourist attractions as we can handle: walking across the Harbour Bridge, enjoying the NSW art museum (free!), checking out the fruit bats while strolling through the botanic gardens (also free!), taking a ferry to the beach suburb of Manly, poking through the junk at the Chinatown markets, admiring the sharks in the Sydney Aquarium, and of course, walking all over the city.

We leave for New Zealand on November 2nd, and are staying in Christchurch, on the South Island, until we figure out what we want to do from there. The holidays will be upon us soon, but we're in a seemingly endless summer. Do I dare to dream of a white Christmas?