You Can Never Go Home Again

Hey guess what? I'm in Australia! I'm not sure if I ever mentioned on the blog that I was getting the chance to come back, but I am down here as part of the IMET program, doing Fire Weather Forecasting for 6 weeks. It's basically the same job I was doing before -- only now I'm employed by the NWS and just here for a short stint.

I only arrived this morning, so I haven't been here super long yet, but just like when I returned to Alaska after 2 years, I'm surprised by how much the same everything feels. I know things will be different when I get to the office tomorrow -- some people have moved on, some people are in different jobs, and there's some new software that was just getting installed when I left -- but so far, Sydney city feels the same. And that's nice.

Coming back, there's little things you notice that you forgot about while you were away -- both good and bad. There's a bird that has a strange call that's singing outside my hotel room; I missed that guy. And I noticed at the grocery store today that there was no stick deodorant. I forgot that Aussies like the spray stuff (one thing I made Mom and Dad ship me from America was stick deodorant)! It feels a little like coming home again. But Alaska is my real home now. How many homes can one girl have?

Before I left, I made a list of 42 things I wanted to do; one for each day I would be here. Except later I figured out that I'm only going to be here 40 days, due to losing some in transit, and then I decided to just go ahead and add a few things to the list. I think I'm up to 45 now. Some things are too boring to blog about, like the different kinds of food I want to eat, but others I think will be interesting and I hope I have enough time to write some cool posts.