2019: Year in Review

In a lot of ways, 2019 was a dumpster fire of a year in the US and the world. But on a personal level, it was a pretty good year, full of growth. Jacob and I both leveled up at cooking baking. I read a decent amount and spent much more time exercising than last year. We made a bunch of new friends. We saw a lot of new places and generally expanded our horizons. We missed our families. The distance is hard, and the extremely different time zones don't make it easy to talk with people in real time. Nevertheless, our first full year in Australia was an amazing experience. Here's more about my year in review -- happy New Year to you.

January We rang in the New Year on a relatively chilly summer night, watching the fireworks display on City Beach, Western Australia. Living in Australia was still new and weird -- we spent a bunch of time at the beach and in natural areas and national parks in our area. There was a surprise album dropped by two of my favorite musicians, Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers, under the name Better Oblivion Community Center, which was probably the musical highlight of my year. We celebrated Australia Day with friends, watching fireworks over the river from the top of the hill at the State War Memorial. The worst part of January was a bike accident in which I fractured my coccyx.

Sunset from Cottlesloe Beach

Sunset from our apartment balcony

Red flowering gum

February
I took my first trip to Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) for my department's annual retreat. The island is famous for its abundance of marsupials called quokkas. There, I also saw my first huntsman spider (they get enormous, like a much spindlier tarantula), which was exciting. I went to see Eminem perform with Royce da 5'9" at Optus Stadium. It was pretty far outside the norm for the kinds of shows I usually go to, but it was very memorable. We attended Boorna Waanginy, which was an incredible art exhibition in Kings Park. It tells the story of our region from the perspective of the Noongar people, using stills and animation projected on the trees, as well as audio and some sculpture.

Quokka, an endangered marsupial

View of Wadjemup (Rottnest)

Boorna waanginy, an incredible indigenous art exhibition in Kings Park

March
I went to see Gregory Alan Isakov and his band play a show. It was the second of two shows I went to this year. I knew that the worst thing about Perth was going to be the lack of opportunities to see touring musicians, but the reality of it has been pretty disappointing. Perth makes up for its lack of concerts with cool outdoor opportunities, though. In March, my brother, sister-in-law, and one nephew came to visit. We spent time hiking, beaching, wine tasting, cooking and hanging out, and it was generally a lot of fun.

Jacob and Jonathan at the night noodle market

Gregory Alan Isakov

Motorbike frog

Subi farmer's market

April
In April I took up running. I know it's super cliché to turn 30 and start training for a 5k, but that's basically what I did (okay, it was a couple months before I turned 30). I wanted to spend more time in the beautiful park next to my house, and I wanted to get more exercise. I decided running in the park would fit the bill. I have never liked running, and have fallen off the running wagon a few times, but I kept coming back to it throughout the year. The rest of the month was largely about work, but we did some weekend roadtripping in our region, for instance to Nambung National Park.

Lab selfie

The beach near the Pinnacles

The river next to campus on a day with no waves

May
We went home to the US for the first time to attend the wedding of Jacob's brother, Ryan, to Jenna. It was good to spend some time with our family in Nebraska. I was especially psyched to see Ender, our cat, who has been staying with Jacob's parents. The cat can't talk to us on the phone so he's more difficult to keep in touch with than our favorite humans. I also got to catch up with some friends and take in a concert in Omaha, which remains one of my favorite places.

Post-run selfie in Kings Park

Jenna and Ryan's wedding

June
After the wedding, we traveled to Oklahoma to spend some time with my family, too. One highlight came at the cabin, when Jacob and Dad caught some catfish and we had a little fish fry. Back in Western Australia, June is the middle of winter and the rainy season. It was strange to celebrate my birthday in the winter, but it was definitely not "winter" as I have known it these past few years in Minnesota, so I didn't mind. Jacob and I went to the aquarium that day, and we had drinks with friends at the bar near the campus. To end June, we went on a little road trip up the coast on a rainy, blustery day. It was beautiful, but didn't look like the same WA coastline I have come to know in brighter weather.

Fish fry

Fish fry

We left Oklahoma in the middle of a really intense thunderstorm

Rainy June day on the WA coast

July
In July, thanks to all the rain, things began to bloom. Jacob and I began hiking every weekend in the area around Perth, where we saw some fabulous wildflowers and an incredible diversity of carnivorous plants, for which southwest WA is a hotspot. There are an incredible number of national parks in our area, and we have many left to explore. Around Bastille Day, reminiscing about my time in France, I finally decided to attempt to make canelés. The attempt was a wild success, if I do say so myself. In July, we also went to watch our local professional footy team, the Eagles, play against the North Melbourne Kangaroos.

A sundew, a carnivorous plant

Splendid fairy wren

Crystal cave at Yanchep National Park

Homemade canelés

Eagles game!

August
August was chilly and damp, for the most part. The wildflowers were still ramping up. Jacob and I rented a tiny cabin at Dryandra National Forest, about a two hour drive southeast, and spent a weekend looking for echidnas (we saw many!) and numbats (we saw one, fleetingly). We cat-sitted for some friends in Cottlesloe for a couple of weeks and enjoyed being closer to the beach. We visited the Shipwreck Museum -- shipwrecks have been weirdly relevant in WA's history.

Cottlesloe sunset

View of Perth from the campus

Short-beaked echidna, one of the few remaining egg-laying mammals

September
In September, I missed biscuits. Australia has no equivalent -- "biscuit" means "cookie" (depending on who you ask. Some speakers have a particular kind of biscuit in mind when they hear "cookie") and the concept of an American biscuit is best approximated by a scone. Needless to say, it's not a very good approximation. Anyway, I learned to make biscuits. We bought a miniature charcoal grill that we can keep on the balcony. We did a lot of weekend hiking. The highlight for me was definitely the day we spent at Mount Cooke, where we saw a southern heath goanna and some incredible views. We also visited Korung National Park.

Biscuits

View from Mount Cooke

Southern heath goanna

WA has some incredible orchids

October
In October, we visited Walyunga National Park and had a nice hike by the river. We saw some incredibly large, fierce-looking bull ants that I wanted to stand and watch forever, but also didn't want to attack me. It was a dilemma. We visited Yalgorup National Park and camped for a weekend in a jarrah (a kind of eucalyptus) forest at Lane Poole Reserve. The forest was a big change from the landscape in and around Perth, which doesn't have very many tall trees. Jacob caught his first native catfish, called a cobbler, and we learned to make s'mores using "digestive biscuits" instead of graham crackers (which seem not to be a thing here).

Ring-neck parrot

Bull ants. You can't really tell, but they're huge.

Campsite at Lane Poole reserve

November
It was starting to warm up and dry out by November, so there were fewer flowers. We started opting for the beach on hot days instead of hiking. I did several animal behavior outreach activities with indigenous eighth and tenth graders, which was a great experience for me, and I got some really positive feedback, so hopefully it was a great experience for some of the kids too. I did some more running in the park. I visited Sydney for a conference and did a little sightseeing while I was there. My favorite thing about Sydney was definitely the flying foxes. We had some friends over for Thanksgiving Dinner, and made the whole spread.

Shingleback lizards seen on my run

Sydney Harbor on a cloudy day

December
December has been a bit of a whirlwind. We've spent some weekend time at the beach. I tried to catch up on my reading and completed my goal of reading 40 books this calendar year. A highlight was Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. I also enjoyed Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, a followup to the book The Handmaid's Tale. On Christmas Day, we went to the beach (a good Aussie tradition, IMO) and then a friend came over for dinner. We roasted a duck, I made my first attempt at my grandmother's chocolate meringue pie, and we played dominoes and drank champagne. Tonight, we'll wrap up the year where we began it: watching fireworks at City Beach.

Nanna's chocolate meringue pie

Playing dominoes with our friend Robin on xmas