Life changes with a country move

It's been more than 7 months since we packed all our belongings and moved to Australia. The initial months went by really quickly and you would expect that it would all slow down afterwards but it seems the months are still rolling by really quickly. We did fall into a routine (a fast paced one) which is quite different in a way to our previous life in the Netherlands. Many things have changed for us with this move but we're still the same couple of a few months ago.

These are 5 major changes to our life.

1. My birthday falls in summer
I'm a February baby, which up until this year meant that my birthday fell on one of the coldest weeks of the year. This year however I celebrated my birthday on a warm summer day with dinner served in the garden from a barbie (BBQ).

Enjoying Friday afternoon drinks.

A photo posted by Colette van Uffelen (@splashofcola) on Oct 30, 2014 at 10:20pm PDT

2. Aussie lingo
I'm still often baffled what some Australians are talking about but slowly I'm understanding the Aussie lingo and am now following most of the accents. Luckily the Melbournian accent is not a tough one. I can now talk about thongs without colleagues without being inappropriate. I drink coffee in the avro and am slowly discovering the differences between football and footy.

3. Crossfit
Up until a year ago I trained around once a week and if I got the opportunity (read husband not around) I would always prefer watching TV than getting my butt off the sofa and go to the gym. Something changed before moving to Australia when I was introduced to Crossfit (thanks Randy!). I finally found a sort of training/sport that was interesting me. When we moved to Melbourne I decided that I didn't want a gym subscription which is basically a waste of money so I became a member at a Crossfit box. It's been six months since I joined and I now train around 4 times a week and I love it! My life seems to be revolving around my training and for some it might sound like I'm obsessed about it. I see regular performance improvement and I look forward to the daily workouts. I still love sitting on the sofa but now I make sure to train first thing in the morning so that I can still relax in the evening. This means I now sleep really early.

At the #oxbox #crossfit

A photo posted by Colette van Uffelen (@splashofcola) on Jan 22, 2015 at 12:53am PST

4. Shopping at markets
It seems that there are food markets every few suburbs so now instead of shopping at a supermarket we get all our greens and meat from markets. In most cases we try to go local and if possible (read affordable) we're trying to go grass fed instead of grain fed meat and whenever possible go for organic items. The good thing of shopping at markets is that there is so much choice that we're often trying never tasted before seafood and different cuts of meat.

Dinner tonight - Blue swimmer crabs

A photo posted by Colette van Uffelen (@splashofcola) on Mar 1, 2015 at 3:50am PST

5. Eating Whole Foods
Our life is more healthy and fit here and with the above 2 changes in our life it meant that we also changed what we're eating on a day to day basis. We are trying to eat whole foods as much as possible and avoid using (very) processed food and refined sugars. Somehow this seems to count only between Monday and Friday morning. The weekend is a complete different story. I eat whatever I feel like because that is one benefit of training 4 times a week! And if all of you are thinking that we might be living on kale and spinach you are wrong! We often have eggs and bacon for breakfast and so much other delicious food.