We Love Guests

On Sunday I cleaned our little house up and down in anticipation of 

a very special guest's arrival...

And I made these delicious Lemon Curd Muffins because I am the perfect hostess.

(They were pretty much excellence in muffin form -

slightly sweet, oozing lemony goodness, and just tart enough)

Anyways, as I was taking these little beauties out of the oven we received...

 a knock upon the door.  

And this razzle dazzle sparkly Australian girl showed up and graced me with her effervescent presence.

She brought her boy friend too.

And we went to a little British pub for dinner.

They were only meant to stay the night, and leave in the morning 

for a quick stop over in York before heading up to Edinburgh, Scotland.

But I hadn't seen her face in 3 years and one night was not enough for me.

So I invited myself to York with them for the day.

I hope they didn't mind.

I cherished every minute of my 3rd wheeling!!

In case you're counting, these were our fabulous 3rd and 4th Aussie guests since October.

And no, we're not running an Australian only hotel.

Yes, I would like some red, white, and blue (of the USA variety) in our house.  

But OH how much do I L.O.V.E. all of our guests?!?

Thanks for visiting Temae and Jack!  

The Endless Job Hunt

via weheartit

I totally fell for this bullshit.  My first year of college, we had this funny little man with bright yellow sneakers come in and talk to our class about just doing what you LOVE.  I was so into it.  At the end of that day I had scheduled an appointment to talk to the curator of large mammals at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.  She was awesome.  Then somehow my mom's catering company started catering a function called Angels in Flight, for cheetah conservation.  Here my mom was introduced to a cheetah conservationist.  Before I knew it, I had applied to do a student internship in Namibia, at the Cheetah Conservation Fund and I was spending my summer hanging out with cheetahs and tracking leopards.  It was fabulous of course.

Tracking radio-collared mom and cubs in Namibia

Meanwhile, my dad was encouraging me to get a business degree and I was insisting that I just wanted to work with animals.  I started off studying biology, but I got so sick of hearing about the premed kids and their stupid MCAT, that I transferred my major to Environmental Science.  After a stint working with elephants and rhinos at the Cincinnati Zoo I concluded that while these animals were amazingly cool being a professional pooper scooper just wasn't for me.  I honestly enjoyed the physical labor, but I wanted to use more of my sciencey brain than I needed for that job.  I later decided that I wanted to go to vet school, so I ended up taking all the bio classes on top of my envi sci degree.

Which leads me to my current state of getting busy - the job hunt.  I chose my degree based on what I wanted to do, what I thought I would LOVE doing. Now can someone please tell me how the hell I find a job doing it?  Because at this point my magna cum laude Environmental Science degree from a prestigious-ish university is getting me absolutely nowhere as far as gainful employment goes.  Everyone kept telling me, "Kelly with your grades you'll land a great job!"  I'm not one to brag, but my GPA is quite high thanks to a year of studying abroad in Australia (70% and up transferred home to a 4.0 - cha-ching!)

Swimming with wild seals in Australia

Now I've forgotten finding a job I love, I'm on the hunt for just finding a job - ANY job.  But I can't even get an interview.  Surprisingly, "daily maintenance of elephant enclosures" just isn't relevant work experience.  So maybe those do what you love feel gooders are right - I've chosen a career path I LOVE, and from the looks of it, I'll never have to WORK another day because no one will HIRE me.

That business degree is looking good right about now.

Anyone want to read my resume?

Where We Live

It rains every day here.  Cold, grey, nasty rain.  Not a big thunderstorm of rain coming down in massive droplets on a sweltering hot day in the middle of summer, like in a music video for some awesome Meatloaf power ballad.  Just gross rain.  Drizzling, chilly rain.  Whenever I don't like the weather, I try to think to myself, at least you don't live in Chicago anymore.  Because the weather really sucks in Chicago, as in it is so freaking cold it sucks the life out of you.  Then you go into hibernation and get SAD.  The weather in England doesn't suck that much.  It's just extremely mediocre.

Then I wonder to myself, why do you put up with mediocre?  We don't have to live here.  We could move to Australia... There are a lot of reasons why we don't live in Australia.  But none of them are very good... See?

Reasons Why We Don't Live in Australia

1.  Nick has a job in England

2.  Neither of us are from Australia

3. Our families wouldn't be happy with us

4.  We'd like our kids to know their extended family

(Note: We don't have kids, except our dog-ter, Heidi)

Reasons Why We Should Move to Australia

1. The sun shines more often there

2.  If you live in Australia you're probably happier

3.  Everyone is really nice in Australia

4.  Australia is a good compromise for a mixture of British and American culture

5.  We both really like Australia

6.  My freckles would reappear 

(I kinda miss them.  They go away when the sun doesn't shine)

7.  I would have more motivation to have a bikini body

8.  We'd live close to a beach

9.  It's probably easier for us to get a visa to move to Australia than it would be for us to get a visa for Nick to move to America 

10.  The best dance parties of my life occured in Australia

Exhibit A:

I think that's all my reasons for now.  Though I'm sure there are many more.  Until then, I guess I'm stuck in England.  And..  
"That's the way it's gonna be lil darlin'"





ps.  Sorry if my videos bore you.
pss. At least watch the 2nd video.  That song needs to be in your life I think.
psss.  Where do you live?  And why do you live there instead of somewhere else more awesome?  Or is it the most awesome place to be living?