This girl is exhausted since she had to wake up very early and drive to the city for her graduate school orientation (and she likes to talk in the third person), but she still wants to show you some photos that were taken in between the time that she went to California and got married. She hadn't seen her fiance since January, so it was pretty exciting to see him again in San Francisco!

Our first night (I'm so over third person), we met up with Al's best man Duncan and his girlfriend Claire for dinner. We then went to the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins after for a drink since they were staying there and we were staying next door to them. It was pretty neat seeing them in America, because the only other place I've seen them in is Australia! 

They went up to Sonoma Valley a day early, and we hung around in San Francisco. We met up with all of the other Aussies on Tuesday night (July 31) and had a blast at an Irish pub off of Union Square. 

I'm sure that we were all reluctant to get out of bed the next morning, but we still did and took a shuttle bus to Sonoma Valley. Al and I greeted our friends and family at the hotel, met briefly with our rabbi who officiated our ceremony, and then we went to Chateau St Jean for the rehearsal. 

It was quick and painless. We were done in less than an hour, and we had plenty of time to go back to the hotel and change for the rehearsal dinner. 

Our rehearsal dinner was at Johnny Garlic's in Santa Rosa. I got the volcano chicken, and I loved it. I think it was the most popular menu item for our group. 

The Aussies discovered that they could order drinks that were three times the size of a normal portion. If you look in the back, you can see Anna and Fel drinking a mojito from a giant fish bowl! Other tables soon caught on and ordered similar massive drinks. 

You can't really tell in the photo below, but I'm wearing 5-inch platforms. I wasn't able to wear them to the actual rehearsal since I would have been tripping all over the grass, but I figured it was safe to wear to dinner. I liked being a normal height for the night!

By the way, it's now Sunday and I started this post on Thursday. I start my grad school program tomorrow, and I can't WAIT! I'm looking forward to telling you all about it and being able to share useful info on nutrition. I can't promise that I'm going to be a consistent blogger, but I'm still here. Stay tuned for some post-wedding and honeymoon photos!

I spend a lot of time blogging on my day-to-day life, but I also realize that I haven't covered some of the important details in my life. For instance, how did I meet this Aussie bloke that recently put a ring on my finger? Where and when will this wedding take place? I'm actually surprised that I never wrote a post on how we met, because I love telling stories. I have no doubt that I will answer these questions in depth one day. For now, though, I want to cover how I have been able to stay in Australia for almost two years without getting deported!


Australia is a very desireable place to live, so it makes sense that the government needs to limit who can stay and who needs to go. There are certain visas, and if you meet the criteria, then you can stay for an allotted amount of time. If you're lucky, you can stay longer. Let me take you through my journey with my Australian visas. 

As an American between the ages of 18 and 30, I was able to travel to Australia and stay there for up to 12 months. While I was allowed to work, I was not allowed to have a job for more than 6 months at a time. This was how I started with temp work. I also couldn't study for more than 4 months, but it wasn't anything I wanted to do at the time anyway.

To be eligible for the Work and Holiday Visa, I needed to:

You also have to pay for it, but it's not very expensive compared to some of the other visas. I believe that I paid about $100 USD at the time.
 
I applied for the visa online, and the immigration department approved it a few days later. After that, I knew it was okay to buy my plane tickets and get ready to head over there. That visa was a piece of cake. Even better, my passport info was stored in their system. I never had to bring around documentation with me showing that I had the visa.

Around May 2010, I had a choice: leave the country or apply for a new visa. I didn't have high hopes for a work visa, so I decided to let my man sponsor me instead of a company. With the De Facto Visa, I could stay in the country for two years as a semi-permanent resident. After two more years, I could easily become a permanent resident. Good deal. This visa, however, was not nearly as easy as the first one. There were many more requirements. First, my sponsor  needed to be:

Alastair, my sponsor, was born and raised in Australia. Check. 

Here were my requirements (including requirements for our relationship):

The evidence we had to present for our relationship was overwhelming. To prove that we had been living together for over 12 months, we saved tons of envelopes and bills with our names and addresses on it. We even got our old gym in Vernon Hills, Illinois to print off bills from when Al belonged there in 2008-9. 

To show that our relationship was genuine, we turned in old correspondence between the two of us when we first met and every time that we were apart. We printed many, many pictures of the two of us, including photos with each other's families (all of the photos on this post are ones we used for our application, plus many more). All needed to be dated and captioned. We also needed friends and family to fill out forms saying that we were in a loving relationship. In otherwords, I wasn't using Al to stay in Australia. In addition, ALL official documents needed to be notarized. They had to be signed by an "important" and honest person, such a doctor, teacher, lawyer, and they had to give all of their details in case the goverment wanted to check on our source. Yikes! I'm sure I'm missing a lot things that we had to do, but I hope you get the idea that it was a lot of work.

Regardless, we got everything done ourselves. We could have hired an immigration lawyer to look over all of our paperwork, but we instead chose to save the money and do everything right. We had been researching for months before we turned in my application, so we felt confident that we knew what we were doing. 

Also, applying for this was not cheap. I won't say exactly how much it was (you can find out on the website), but Al and I split the cost down the middle. He paid for the whole thing, and then I sent weeks paying him back. I could have flown home and back with that money. 

I applied for my De Facto visa in April of 2010. My Work and Holiday Visa expired the following month, so I got Bridging Visa A. This meant that the conditions of my first visa (W&H) still applied to me. I could still work, and I didn't have to leave the country. As a matter of fact, I could NOT leave the country while they were still making a decision on the De Facto Visa (if I applied for the visa outside of Australia, I would not be able to enter the country until it was approved). If I left, I would not be able to get back in the country.
 
I did not know this at the time, and I had reservations to come home for a month in June. I probably would have cancelled my reservations or begged the government to free me for just a little while, but then my grandma got really sick. She had to have surgery during the time that I was supposed to be home. After a signed note from my grandma's doctor along with details of her sickness and leaving endless contact information so that the immigration office could get answers to urgent questions regarding my application, Australia gave me ANOTHER bridging visa that allowed me to leave and come back. I got Bridging Visa B. Whew.
 
I had a great time at home, and they let me back in. In October, my De Facto Visa was approved.

For more information on visas in Australia, visit the website immi.gov.au. 

Also, please feel free to ask me questions about Aussie visas if you have any. I'll answer them the best that I can (and then will probably direct you to the website). 

Dear readers: Please contact the Australian government with questions regarding the application process. As much as I want to answer all of your questions, it has been years since I applied for the visa. The application process may have changed since 2011. 
Thank you very much.

This post is a big deal, because I know that people have been asking for pictures for quite a while. Well...now you can see them and hear all about the night I got engaged.

First, I'll give you some background. As you may or may not know, Adelaide has vineyards sprawling out from every direction. The only exception is the west, because you can't grow grapes in the ocean. 

South Australia makes arguably some of the best wine in the world. I've been to the Barossa Valley before, which is a very well-known wine region north of us. There's another wine region north of there called the Clare Valley. I've wanted to go there for a while, because there's a long walking/biking trail called the Riesling Trail. Basically, you can rent bikes and stop off at wineries as you cycle up and down the trail. Plus, I love romantic and cozy getaway weekends.

Now, the story. Alastair's parents gave us a gift voucher to use towards accommodation for lodging of our choice in South Australia. We had to use it up. I begged Al to take me to the Clare. He took me. He asked me to marry him. I said yes. THE END!!!!

Was that satisfactory? Well, why would you want to hear me babble on when I can show you the pictures?? Let me say first that I was not a blogger at the time, and I wasn't so great about taking lots of photos!

Below, Al is standing in front of our cottage. It's a four-person house, but we were the only people in it. It was amazing!

The front of the cottage with a nice patio in front

This is what we saw when we looked across the street. We were literally surrounded by wineries.

The side of our garage and our water tank

This was one of my favorite parts of the house. This was the bathroom with a spa that looked over this Japanese garden.

Even our backyard was a winery

I loved the rustic look on the outside of the house

Here are some more details to our story. We got there on a Friday night, went to dinner and came back here. After relaxing for a bit, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. On this couch. I couldn't think of a better way for it to happen. It was perfect for us.

We got engaged in this room

Annnnd here is the picture of my left hand. All of the pictures I have of my ring look very over-exposed, so I promise I'll post another one soon!

As for the rest of the weekend, we never experienced the Riesling Trail. It poured down with rain the rest of the time that we were there, so we curled up inside with a roaring fireplace and massive selection of DVDs. We talked on the phone with our families and friends. We intended to stop at tons of wineries, but we only made it to one on the way home. Regardless, it didn't matter that our weekend didn't go as planned. As you can imagine, nothing could have made it better. It was the perfect weekend.