Hello again! Erik here. When we last left you, we were still in Melbourne, enjoying time with family and exploring the food scene. Since then, we’ve picked up and moved three times! Our first week in Sydney, we enjoyed the comforts of the Sheraton in the heart of the business district with David (Em’s dad). Despite being our first chance to really explore Sydney, our time was entirely spent on apartment hunting– a very different prospect here than in the states. Australian apartment inspections last all of 15 minutes, followed by a strict application process and background examination. Every day, we got up and walked/Ubered to a different part of the city to meet potential roommates or visit an open house.
We did sneak in a little sightseeing. We took an awesome walk around the opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and got to visit the iconic Bondi Beach!
We eventually applied for a cute unit in a suburb called Chippendale, which was luckily accepted. The only drawback was a move in date on August 23rd, which gave us 11 days to kill after leaving the hotel. Em found a delightful AirBnB in a suburb close to the train line, so she could get to work (more on that later). Our host, Robert, was very friendly and accommodating. He gave us all the inside scoop on fun things to do in the area, and helped us figure out all the little quirky differences between the US and Australia. It was very comfortable, but we were very excited to move in!
Our next challenges were domestic. We rented a truck and drove on the LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD to pick up secondhand furniture. The WiFi didn’t work at first (of course) but a gruff-but-kind technician came and sorted it out (“You’re a lucky bastard, you know that Erik?”). All in all, we are very excited with our new place. Though it is a unit, it feels like a little house, and we have tons of space.
Em here! Yes, we love our little apartment that feels like a house. Plus, we (well, I) have had an absolute blast finding bargains on all the furnishings and being able to nest. We are finally beginning to settle in to our place, and just love the suburb of Chippendale. It houses a couple of big universities so there’s definitely a college town/young vibe, but it’s also very close to the Sydney CBD so it’s got an inner city feel to it as well. It’s perfect for us!!
I’ve just completed my third week at work and am finally starting to learn the ropes. For reference, I’m located at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University. Within MARCS I am working at the Baby Lab, which is a research laboratory devoted to infant studies/developmental psychology research. See here: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/babylab
HOW CUTE?!
And what exactly am I doing there? Well, though I’m somewhat still figuring that out myself, my Fulbright award provides me with funding to conduct my own independent research project. So in essence I am designing a study, collecting data, analyzing the results, and (fingers crossed) submitting a paper for publication. I’ve been thinking about it like a big mega Bates thesis on steroids, but with less help! I’m currently about 2/3 of the way through the design stage.
My study is shaping up to be asking a rather simple question – can infants acquire new words from musical contexts? One of the reasons I love developmental psychology research is because the researchers have to be so creative– you can’t ask babies these questions, so you have to use measures that will help you infer the answers. I am going to be using a behavioral task with the infants in my sample, presenting infants with a lullaby and spoken passage and measuring if they can identify certain words from either. My two mentors for my project–– one an expert in infant speech perception & linguistics, the other in psychomusical acoustics–– have been extremely kind and supportive.
All in all everything has been going well so far. It’s been a bit rainy & cold so we haven’t done much exploring, but plan to check out the aquarium today! We miss everyone back home so much. Sending love!!
Emily and Erik.au 