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| The only workspace in the kitchen is near the sink. But, as long as I have room for the cutting board as shown, I can cook any meals. |
Settling into a new home isn’t always as easy as it may appear. Both of us are a little out of sorts as we struggle to sleep through the night awakening several times during the night. Even our mealtimes are off. Tom seems to be hungry for a meal midday and then only picking at a little food at dinner, while I find myself needing to eat dinner two hours earlier than our usual 6:30 to 7 pm.
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| The kitchen, although spacious, has little storage space and a small refrigerator. |
I suppose we can attribute this to a massive time zone difference. Let’s face it, we’re off by 20 hours (later) after spending eight months in Hawaii and sailing across the Pacific. Certainly, a part of this sluggish transition is a result of gradual time changes while on the cruise including the 24-hour jump over the International Dateline and then falling back four hours as we continued on.
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| This dining table and chairs is where we dine. |
The human body doesn’t automatically adjust according to the ship’s schedule posted in the program for the next day. It adjusts in its own time. To tell the truth, we don’t feel like doing much of anything.
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| Below this carved mirror, we keep all of our miscellaneous stuff on the sideboard. |
A few days ago, we drove to the shopping center, only completing about 20% of our grocery list, getting enough to last for several days instead of the usual huge haul we do within a day or two of arrival in a new location.
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| As much as we’d love to leave these doors open now, we’ll have to wait until it’s clear and sunny. At present, the mosquitos are in full force after the rains. |
After aimlessly wandering around the store for 15 minutes trying to find the items on my list, I turned to Tom and said, “Let’s go. I can’t do this right now. My brain isn’t working well enough to search for the items on the list.”
He smiled from ear to ear, thrilled that I’d had enough. He, too, was feeling the same way. After 32 months of travel, I believe we’re suffering from an extreme case of jetlag. How peculiar. We thought we were exempt from this malady, that a positive attitude along with a passion to quickly fall into a routine, would avoid this fate.
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| This cozy seating area works well for us with two side tables and a coffee table. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough electrical outlets to enable us to use the table lamp when our adapter takes up all of the outlet space. |
In the realm of things, it’s a mere inconvenience. We have all the time in the world. I suppose in reality we feel a certain commitment to getting out to take photos of our amazing surroundings. After all, we have readers worldwide looking forward to photos of our adventures in Australia.
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| This morning we experienced a short period of the bright sun making it necessary to close the curtains for a few hours. |
As we adjust, we’ll certainly be getting out frequently to scour the area and beyond for its wealth of treasures. Our brains are anxious to get out. Our bodies are lagging behind.
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| The master bedroom has ample room to store our luggage and clothing. |
Our first order of business is to get back to the grocery store and shop. s of tomorrow, we’ll run out of food. As for bottled water, we’ve decided to use what we have on hand purchased several days ago and to switch to tap water.
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| The small wardrobe for storing our clothing. To the right is one of two screen windows in the house. The other is in the end of the dining room. |
Nothing we’ve read online from reviews and qualified sites states that the water in Trinity Beach is toxic in any matter to visitors. Australia is very civilized except of course in the center, the Outback, where bottled water is a must.
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| I took over the top two shelves and Tom has the bottom three. |
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| There are no closets available. As a result, we use this “wardrobe” for storing all of our clothing. It works. |
I only experienced this once in my life after returning to the US from a three-week stay in Thailand about 30 years ago. Arriving there was fine requiring only one good night’s sleep to resolve. Returning back to the US took another three weeks to fully adjust to the 13 hour time difference.
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| The black lacquered bathroom sink requires frequent wiping to keep it clean. The two drawers are the only bathroom storage spots. We’ve made it work for us. |
For today, we’ll stay put, finish our remaining food leaving us no alternative but to head back to the shopping mall tomorrow for groceries and a shortlist of household supplies.
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| The toilet is located in a separate space. |
This task, once completed, will surely be instrumental in getting us back into our routine of cooking and eating our meals on a regular basis and working our way back into the busy life filled with the joys of world travel.
Have a fabulous weekend, whether it’s Saturday or Sunday, wherever you may be.
Photo from one year ago, today, June 14, 2014:
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| The views from the house in Campanario, Madeira were always exquisite. For details from that date, please click here. |