Tag: foreigner
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Feeling foreign
Yesterday, the gas bottle underneath our stove ran out, and I’ve spent the last half-day trying to get it replaced. It’s proving a little tricker than I first thought. I couldn’t separate the bottle from the hose that connects it to the stove, so I asked my housemate to try when he got home from work.…
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FOMO for Fitzroy
Scrolling through old phone photos in a never-ending quest to free up my iPhone storage space, I ran into a trove of pictures I’d taken in my last few weeks living in Melbourne. Buried behind rows of Dili sunsets and sweat-streaked selfies sit neat shots of my Victorian terrace house; croissants captured halfway through a…
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Top and bottom 10, month #1
My ten favourite things about living in Dili, at the end of my first month here: Friendly strangers calling hello as you walk down the street Twelve hours of hot bright sunlight every day Cooking dhal on the camptop stove at home Learning to luku (dive) Seeing skinny cats and fat cacti everywhere Stovetop coffee The funny…
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What surprised me about Dili
In a few months’ time, as I head into the introspective slump apparently inevitable for volunteers here, I could forget everything I found quirky, exciting and energising about my first few weeks in Dili. So, to safeguard – and to gently remind myself, in one or two or three years’ time, when I’m reflecting on…
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“Where do you find your friends?”
Before I moved to Timor, I obsessively read the blogs of every Dili expat I could find, searching for answers to the mountain of tiny stupid questions that my fears about leaving were throwing up in my mind. Here are five of the dumbest questions I had before I moved, and my best attempts at…
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New grooves
If not quite a routine, I feel this week like I’m starting to fall into a rhythm here in Dili. Every morning, I wake up underneath my mosquito net to the roosters outside my window. My alarm joins the noise – I snooze it, of course – and I drag myself into the shower just…
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A busy Dili day
A quick update from what’s suddenly becoming a very busy week. We started Tetun classes at the Dili Institute of Technology yesterday, and will continue with four hours of morning class every weekday for the next month. This week and next we also have induction activities at the AVI office in the afternoons – more…
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A weekend in between
Between our arrival in Dili on Thursday, and beginning our language classes on Monday, we have nearly four days of time that, with the exception of a few short orientation activities, is completely our own. It’s unnerving for me having free time in a new place, particularly when I don’t really know what’s available to…
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24 hours in Timor
I touched down in Dili just before 7am yesterday – my early morning Air North flight the third and final in the journey that has taken me from inner-city Melbourne life to my new gig living and working as an Australian volunteer in Timor-Leste’s capital. While certain things about those two situations are similar –…
Sophie Rai Liur 