{"id":458,"date":"2006-03-14T16:32:40","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=458"},"modified":"2006-03-14T16:34:13","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:34:13","slug":"theres-no-place-like-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=458","title":{"rendered":"There’s No Place Like Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flowers<\/p>\n

I clicked my heels three times on the 12th of March, just half an hour after noon at a major city in Australia, and about 13 or 14 hours later I arrived back in California, on the 12th of March at 7:00 in the morning, over five hours before I left. Dorothy never had it so bad; I’m still recovering from the jet lag, and I can’t imagine what Jean-Claude Van Damme had to endure every time he time travelled.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’m back. I flew to Melbourne in Victoria, where they are holding this year’s Commonwealth Games<\/a>, then immediately to Perth in Western Australia, where my godmother lives and where I spent my first week. The climate was a physical shock for me. It was cold and raining in L.A. when I left, and I had on three layers of long-sleeved stuff—a hoodie, my denim jacket, and a fleece-lined windbreaker (because I’m a pussy, yes I know; I survived an early winter in Maryland, though, so there!)—but when I changed planes in Melbourne, it was clear that even the hoodie by itself was far too much. I was glowing like a pig<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And bloody hell—the left-handed driving was a shock for me, too. I had planned for slight changes and gotten myself voltage converters for my cell phone and camera batteries, but I totally didn’t even think of the driving. Heck, I had nearly planned on renting a car, and I’m so glad I didn’t. I’d have killed myself in a car accident that first day by going the wrong way in a roundabout.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the cell phone … I’m on T-Mobile because Catherine Zeta-Jones is gorgeous and because H.E. is on T-Mobile, too, and he swears they’re the best if you’re going to do any world travelling. So, yeah. My cell phone works in Oz, so long as they have the holy switch turned on. They use Yes, Optus; Telstra; and Vodafone there as their network systems, and T-Mobile has an affiliate deal with them, so I was in constant touch with H.E.<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

I spent my first full day in overcast Perth hanging out with my godmother. We went to Kings Park<\/a> and to the downtown area, where we booked ourselves to more than a couple of tours. The photo above is of the flowers at Kings Park. I completely missed the wildflower season, which is sometime between August and November, but next time … next time. I promise myself the next time I visit, it’ll be during the wildflower season.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’ll post more later when I’ve caught up on a few things and completely gotten over the jet lag. For now, you know I’ve been to at least two states in Australia—Victoria and Western Australia. Australia has six states, two territories, and some external territories, so by your count, I’ve seen two of the six states, or one-third of Australia. That’s more than I’ve ever seen of the United States; I haven’t been to 16 of our states. Not nearly.<\/p>\n

That’s kind of sad, really. I’ll have to fix that one day.<\/p>\nShare this post:

\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I clicked my heels three times on the 12th of March, just half an hour after noon at a major city in Australia, and about 13 or 14 hours later I arrived back in California, on the 12th of March at 7:00 in the morning, over five hours before I left. Dorothy never had it so bad; I’m still recovering from the jet lag, and I can’t imagine what Jean-Claude Van Damme had to endure every time he time travelled….<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}