A thousand spiders in our living room… and thoughts on moving to another country with only a few suitcases and one job.

Yep, you read the headline correctly. Australia has not disappointed in any way, and that includes a fair share of bugs and insects.
Probably one of the first things people think about in relation to Australia is all the creepy insects. That was also on my mind the first time I got here. However, I quickly realised, like so many other things in this world, that it’s never as bad as the rumours once you’re there. On our first trip to Australia we stayed in several quite remote places, even in a trailer, but all we ever saw was a little green frog, – oh yeah and we drove over a snake.
Then when we moved into this house I thought I would never use the guest toilet downstairs – I was sure it was a safe haven for huge spiders (as well as the built in closet in our bedroom). But of course, after a few days, I realised that this was not the case either. So I’m actually super comfortable and never really think about spiders or other insects. EXCEPT for the times when they show up in always completely unexpected situations.
When we moved in, there were quite a few cockroaches roaming the house, and if we ever came down to the kitchen during the night, they would for sure be there. They are luckily gone now, but one of them did manage to crawl up my leg when I was sleeping one night…yuck!
Another thing that is for sure, is how ants will show up in a split second if anything, as in anything, is not cleaned up immediately in the kitchen. And these guys don’t show up alone… We even had a big family of mega ants trying to move in to our bathroom:

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BUT the worst thing so far was when we woke up one morning to a few baby spiders in our first floor bathroom. I was pretty calm in the beginning and didn’t think much of it. Actually, I think I joked about it to Soren and said ‘what if a spider has hatched her eggs here’… Not more than a couple of minutes later, Soren went downstairs and had a pretty big shock. There were spiders EVERYWHERE! The living room ceiling was completely full of baby huntsmen spiders that had just hatched from their egg.
There are some pretty cruel YouTube videos on how the Mommy spider helps all the baby spiders come out of their eggs – I have not yet watched those…
We bug-sprayed the ceiling and afterwards it was quite literally raining spiders. I have never seen anything like it (and hopefully never will again). At the time the only thing I could think of was how fast they would grow up to be big nasty spiders, minutes? hours? weeks? A few scenes from the old Arachnophobia movie kept playing in my head – it was pretty bad. But to my pleasant surprise they are actually growing quite slowly and we still find mini spiders every now and then. But they are not creepy, and I’m barely thinking about them anymore. That is only until they grow up, of course!
Unfortunately in the moments of distress when we saw the spiders, we didn’t get any good pictures, so you have to settle for this one, which is from the living room ceiling (we debated shortly about taking pictures, but were too freaked out to properly do anything about it):

After the spider incident Soren called a couple of pest control companies. These are people who handle venomous snakes and spiders on a daily basis, so they didn’t see the seriousness in our experience, and basically said they wouldn’t do anything different than what we had already done. “Call back if it happens again” – so much for reassurance that there are not a whole crew of spider moms waiting to lay eggs in our house…

Enough about bugs…

Along with our many house mates we are enjoying life here, and are soon approaching our first year of life as Danish/Aussie-newbies. It’s the middle of winter and almost 12 months since we arrived in Sydney on a Friday night with our suitcases and just one job. We had left everything else in Denmark, our belongings packed away in boxes. (BTW winter in Sydney is mainly blue skies and 20 degrees C during the day. Not complaining!)

It was an exciting feeling coming to work on the first Monday morning of August, and I would never not do it, but man, I have learned so much in this last year. It hasn’t always been easy, and it can still be confusing navigating a culture we didn’t grow up in. There are so many things you can never know or learn about another culture until you emerge yourself deep into it for a long time.
I must admit bringing two kids under four years to a new country is not uncomplicated, and I’m happy we didn’t give it too much thought before making the decision. I’d rather do something than regret doing nothing at all.
Moving country was actually a pretty easy decision (once the grandparents were told), and it was quite straightforward moving here in the beginning. We had spent 3 months travelling together, so we were all filled up on quality time and loaded with adventures.
But despite our self acclaimed very high adaptability (:-)) we are still being tested, and it’s in the practicalities, not the social life, that we meet the most challenges. It’s learning about a home rental market that is far from ideal, it’s finding a good daycare centre and figuring out which public schools are good and which to avoid (and what questions to ask to find out), it’s printing off the childrens’ vaccinations documents from an official website we as ‘temporary residents’ cannot access, it’s having to buy every single thing we need from cutlery to linen to beds etc., it’s accepting the gigantic price tag on child care, and navigating a health care system where everything has a price you rarely know beforehand and which can vary a lot from place to place (and coming from Denmark that’s a real challenge!), it’s understanding the nuances of a different work culture, and it’s figuring out how to ride a bicycle in a city where car drivers have a hate/dead scared relationship with cyclists.
But while these are all challenges, they are also what makes our current life nothing like anything that we have tried before. And for someone who does everything to avoid sleeping in the same side of the bed and having the same place at the dinner table, it’s actually pretty fulfilling.

It is so interesting just how much there is to learn about moving countries, and although Australia and Denmark are far apart in distance, culturally we are very alike, and yet very different. It is the fourth country I live in outside of Denmark, so I will say I’m fairly experienced in adapting to different cultures. But here we are doing it all at once, working and bringing up children, – we are approaching life from many different angles and are able to emerge in, and not just observe, the culture – and suddenly all the nuances appear.
No matter what, we are so lucky that we can come here and basically create a life much like what we had at home. One day when I was walking home with the kids an aboriginal man yelled at me and said that I was not born here. He obviously didn’t know that, but he was so right in so many aspects. And being new to a country like we are here has definitely given me a different perspective on people who are forced to move away from their home to start to a new life in a new culture. A toxic topic, but it has become so clear for me just how difficult it must be, without me ever being able to fully understand it. We are so lucky to have been born in a free country and given a passport that provides so many opportunities.

Although we miss our family and friends at home, it is super easy to make new friends when you have kids. They are like a magnet for new relationships with an abundance of birthday parties, social gatherings and play dates for the kids (and their parents). We are meeting so many great people and I’m so proud of the kids who have settled so well, and who are making heaps of new friendships at daycare. They are definitely getting experiences that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, and not least learning English as native speakers.

Carla is such an amazing girl, and all her peers love her. She was even named the kindest child in her preschool room by her friends. Gustav has just recently moved from the babies room to the toddler room and is now sharing the same playground as Carla and her friends. And because of Carla’s strong position in her preschool, Gustav was immediately welcomed by all the big kids who absolutely adore him. We sometimes feel it is too easy to be Gustav, but then again, we couldn’t have asked for a better start for him as a big toddler room boy…and he loves it! He is being overloaded with hugs and kisses from the bigger kids, and it gives him so much confidence. Sometimes a bit too much, as he is definitely not scared to state his opinion in front of kids that are twice his age. I think half the reason he gets away with it is because of Carla, and the other half is his big blue eyes that he winks when he wants something 🙂

I guess you can never really prepare for what awaits with a life in a new country, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. Any practicalities aside, adventures are what gets me out of bed in the morning. And while it has not always been a walk in the park, in most ways it really has.
My final words today are Carpe Diem! It’s outside of the comfort zone the real magic happens!