our house (in the middle of the street)

Well it's been a long time coming, but I thought it was about time we updated you with what's going on with the Moyles. The latest and greatest news is that we have bought a house! Yes a house. With a real address. This one doesn't even have a '/' in it!!! It's the first time since living together that we have a normal number.

Other than that excitement, Jane is busy both with work and uni. For those that don't know, she's doing a diploma in adolescent health and welfare which as the name suggests, is studying adolescent health and welfare. I'm sure you appreciate the insight...

Work for me is going well. I've landed an Associate Director role back at nab which means I have a set of my own clients who all up have a touch over $300m outstanding (in borrowings). That might sound like a lot but it's the smallest set by a way. I'm enjoying doing finance rather than loads of crappy admin which would've happened in a more junior role.

The other big news in our lives, is that there's been an addition to the family. Before your mind races, it's a nephew! Samuel Jack Waterworth was born last Thursday, weighing a healthy weight and looking pretty good, though small (obviously). Given the stresses of the pregnancy, he is indeed a miracle baby and we can't wait to see him come home (he's still with special care nurse at the moment) to his two brothers.

So that's our news in brief. I can't promise I'll be less slack in keeping this updated going forward. I will try and keep it up to date with news though. Do shoot us an email and let us know how you're going!

home but not hosed

Well it has been a while since we blogged. As you can see I've changed the address for the blog, given moylesinlondon didn't seem fitting anymore. You can tell I have a vivid imagination as when thinking that we are back in Melbourne, I decided to call it Chris and Jane back in Melbourne. Deep hey?

We've now been back for two weeks and we would normally have blogged by now except things have been really busy and it's been hard to think of what to write. We've been slowly trying to get our life up and running again and I'm pleased to report that that appears to be happening, one step at a time. Tonight I will be picking up our new car. It's a Toyota Camry so as you can tell, we've gracefully entered middle age and embraced the idea of driving whitegoods on wheels. I was meant to be off shortly to sign a rental agreement for a place in Brunswick but just had a call from the agent to let us know that it may be bought today and if so we can't move in. Fingers crossed. It's a two story apartment not that far from Simon and Julie's (my/Chris' brother and sister in law). But things are taking shape. I'm still unemployed but Jane is back working hard teaching at Donvale Christian College. I am a kept man so yes, Steve Hendo, I'm living the dream.

I'm actually pretty bored. This happens easily with me but I'm hanging to get back to work. I have had some chats to a few banks and these are continuing and looking promising but no bank has jumped out as really inspiring me to work there. I said to the Postbank gang several times and I'll say it again, I reckon that job was the best job I'll ever have in terms of work, load, challenge and of course people. Still, I'm looking for something as close as possible to that job.

We've been catching up with all our friends which has been great. To those we haven't seen yet, we're sorry, and we will be in touch shortly. Of course, the reason for coming home when we did was to see and be a part of our great friends Darren and Bec's wedding. Some photos of us and them are below. It was a great day and awesome for both of us to be a part of it.


We unfortunately missed the Dibden's wedding so sorry Marko and Megan. We have been passing Nando's daily and thinking of you but as yet we can't get anyone on board with a litre each of frozen yogurt. We are trying though!

The Moyle family are off this Friday to Rosebud for a week. Rosebud is a beachside town about an hour or so from our place and a great place to kick back and relax. It's Melbourne Cup weekend so Jane will have a few days off. Yes UK-ers, we may not have Bank Holidays left right and centre but when it comes to major sporting events, it's armchairs and eskies for the whole nation for a day! Speaking of armchairs and eskies, my following trip will be to Adelaide for the 1st few days of the Ashes test to see the Aussies in their 5-0 whitewash of the Poms. Just like they were meant to do last time...

So 2 weeks in we're happy to be home, back with family and great friends. Loads of people asked time and time again why we were going home when we loved London so much. A lot of the reason was to get back to our family and especially our little nephews and nieces. Below are some photos, and it won't be hard to see why it was worth coming home.






It has definitely been weird coming home and we're struggling a little to 1. make sense of what we saw and did in India in the context of life at home again and 2. keep remembering that yes the last 2 years did happen and keep the memory of great places and great friends alive with life in Melbourne in resuming. But we're getting there. You UK friends need to get here quickly though before we forget you! We definitely miss London a lot.

Well that pretty much updates you on the basics. I'll try to get Jane to sit down long enough to punch out some interesting stuff soon. Til then, do drop us an email or SMS. Our numbers are in the email we sent you.

One week...

Only one week left of our big trip and are we ever looking forward to getting home! India is a remarkably diverse place and we have loved all that we have seen but we are looking forward to some home comforts like home cooked meals, lemon lime and bitters fresh and clean fruit and vegetables and a comfortable bed. I am really looking forward to unpacking my shampoo, conditioner, soap etc and leaving it there for more than three days!

Since our last blog we have been to Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bangalore and Mysore. What a week! Despite expecting Delhi to be crazy busy, it was substantially less manic than Mumbai and we enjoyed the coffee shops and quailty food. We were hassled a lot by people on the street just trying to be friendly and helping us find our way around but there only so many times you can answer the same questions (Where you from? Do you like my country? How long you in India for? Where are you going?) in a matter of five minutes before you get very frustrated. Anyway, we were fortunate enough to meet up with Bethany, the American volunteer at PB, who was in Delhi for the day. It was great to see her again and catch up on the children and with her.

We went down to Jaipur for the night on the 2nd. It was a great city. Lots of good food and a great palace and great shoes. We bought three pairs! Jaipur is called the pink city but it was a lot less pink than I expected. I think the paint has faded somewhat.

We also spent a day in Agra where we visited the Taj Mahal. Wow! We really were blown away by its beauty. It is enormous and surronded by gardens which is rare in India. This added to its beauty. I had "I still call Australia home" in my head when I was there as I remembered the Qantas ad with the kids singing in front of it. It made me all sentimental about home! We also visited the fort and had an interesting experience in a marble making factory.

We flew to Bangalore yesterday and had a painfully long journey to our hotel as the taxi driver had no idea where to go. He ended up giving up and we had to find it ourselves. After viewing the place we decided we would prefer to stay somewhere a little closer to the centre, a place that didn't stink of mould and with the hope of having hot water so we moved hotels. We enjoyed wondering the very western streets of Bangalore last night.
Today we are in Mysore for the day. The fruit, veg and flower market here is truely remarkable! Its so colourful and vibrant. Chris took loads of photos and I just wandered around a little awestruck. There were so many bananas and we thought about stashing them and bringing them back home to the under-bananad Australia. We also went to the beautiful Maharaja Palace and we are heading back to Bangalore for 4 more nights very shortly.
We will be visiting Oasis projects on Monday and Tuesday and possibly Wednesday before we fly out early Thursday morning to Singapore.

Can't wait to see all you Aussies soon!

sons of the soil, sons of the sea

Well the match of the aussie rules season was played just recently. No, not today at the MCG but last Sunday at Elsternwick Park. The result:
That's right: congrats to the mighty bloods. I'll have to be quick with this post as my other love, football (yeah soccer for the aussie rules fans), is about to start and it's the first live game I will have watched in months. Reds vs Bolton.

Ok, so some stuff that Jane may have some input into also. We are in Mumbai at the moment after finishing up our work at PB a few days ago. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone but at the same time nice to move to the next chapter in our journey, our final chapter before home. We have been taking it relatively easy just doing some shopping, seeing another Oasis project, visiting the house where Gandhi stayed in Bombay and seeing some of the touristy stuff. While at Gandhi's house we were interviewed for Indian television for a docco on Gandhi's life. We've also been asked on a number of occasions to be extras in Bollywood flick. In India, always expect the unexpected.

The weather here is a bit mingin/festy/sweaty. It's only 30 degrees but 90+% humidity so not that pleasant. We take refuge in our a/c room every few hours to take a break. Tomorrow (1 Oct) we're flying to Delhi for a few days. We will do a day trip to Agra to see the Taj and Agra Fort, as well as an overnighter in Jaipur. Then on the 6th Oct we fly down to Bangalore for a few days to see some projects and check out Mysore market on Dave and Carly's recommendation.

Today marks just 2 weeks to go til we get home for the first time in 20 months. We are quite excited but also looking forward to the next two weeks. One thing you learn quickly in India is that you can't look more than a day ahead at anytime. In fact, you're best off not looking more than a metre ahead most of the time lest you step on a goat, chicken, rat, person or a by-product of one of the aforementioned...

Hope all is well back home. We'll hopefully squeeze in one more blog before we get home. Feel free to email as we're back in relative civilisation.

getting some quality R&R

Hi all. Well as I mentioned we are getting some quality R&R at the project we are working on. Actually, most of the R&R relates to the food which many of you have asked about. R&R of course stands for rats and roaches which we have been seeing plenty of in the vicinity of the kitchen which is below our room and which is where all the meals are prepared. But surprisingly we've not really been sick yet which is great as most of our days start at 5.30am and finish around 9.30pm when we get back to our room.

We are having a great time. Jane is teaching a couple of kids who can't go to school because of HIV related problems and I am helping look after the kids and also building some spreadsheets to help the filing at the project.

We unfortunately can only check our emails once a week when we make a 1.5 hour taxi trip to Nasik which is where we are just now. This is our one day off a week with the other days being quite crazy. Of the 45 kids and 10 women, about half the kids are HIV positive and almost all the women. The kids are great though given they all have come from rough backgrounds (many abused and in many cases watched the parents die from the disease they have), some obviously have some behavioural issues. All in all given their backgrounds, they're great kids.

We have spent quite a bit of time with another girl, Bethany, who is from Boston and is here for 3 years. She's only 6 months in and has done so much work already. One thing she struggles with that we've also found tough is the language thing. Most of the kids speak at least a little English but they only listen when they're told off in Hindi or Marati (tribal language). This obviously has its challenges when you're trying to discipline kids.

I think the toughest thing we're finding is being disconnected from the world (we get it now Dave and Carly!). We have no access to internet and find out world news (i.e. bombs near here, deaths of brocky and steve irwin) from friends via text message. So please do give us a call or shoot us a message anytime. It doesn't cost much for us to message and we love to hear from the outside world.

The project is in a smallish town about 2.5 hours by train from Mumbai. We are in the middle of rice paddies and as one nice staff member told me the other day, it used to be a snake breeding ground. He then told us hyenas, leopards, scorpions and crabs (yes crabs) also live in the area. Good to know...

All up we're having a great time. Sorry if we're not emailing much but we promise when we get home we'll catch up with you all. Hope all is well in the alternate universes of Aus and UK (and France Pete). Hope to hear from you soon.

....but before I go: GO YOU MIGHTY MELBOURNE DEMONS AND BLOODS!!!! It's a grand old flag indeed...

Walk Like an Egyptian

Egypt has been a busy busy ride! We have seen the sun rise the last 5 mornings and been to bed about midnight most nights. We have slept on trains, buses and boats and will be sleeping in the desert under the stars next week. What an experience.

After arriving at our hotel at 5am last Saturday morning in Cairo we were woken again at 9am to visit the Egyptian Museum, Muhammed Ali's Mosque and Coptic Christian Cairo. We missed the sound and light show at the pyramids as we thought it could be all cheese but we did see the famous pyramids and the sphinx the following day. We opted out of the camel ride although did decide to go into one of the pyramids. Not a great decision if you dont like enclosed spaces!

We enjoyed the markets in Aswan the following day and weren't hassled too much. After an early night we received our 3am wake up call for the tour to Abu Simbel, King Ramses II temple which is the south of Egypt. We had to catch a plane to get there and arrived before sunrise to an incredibly enormous and beautiful temple! It was definitely a highlight: 4 huge statues out the front and incredible hieroglyphics inside. The temple had been moved up on to a hill in the 1960s after the risk on flooding from The Nile. It was cut into thousands of pieces and lifted to a hill about 60 metres higher. This in itself seemed like just a huge a mission as actually constructing the monument. You have to see it for yourself!

From there we spent two nights on a Felucca (an open aired sailing boat with no motor that just drifts along the Nile with the current given the lack of wind). I thought it would be a little boring and rough but what an experience! We spent two days swimming in the Nile (yes I cant believe we did that!), reading, chatting and sleeping. We stopped for loo stops and food (not together) on the banks of the Nile all prepared by our Felucca captain and his friend. We had a camp fire and Egyptian belling dancing lessons taken by our rather eccentric tour leader. It was brilliant though Chris will fill you in on one exception to the fun...

On one loo stop on the felucca, I (Chris) was in calf-deep water about a metre from the 5 metre wide felucca. The floor of the boat is covered in mattresses. A wave of stupidity came across me and I decided to throw the camera about a metre onto the felucca. As I did, it bounced 3 times like a cricket ball off a crack on the WACA pitch and teetered on the edge of the felucca where it stayed for about a second. From there, it fell Nile-ward... So we now have a dead camera. It appeared as though I had killed the memory card also, however now in Dahab I have left it with a guy who should be able to extract our files of Cairo, the pyramids of Giza, and sunrise at Abu Simbel which is the highlight so far by a mile (and cost another GBP230 or Aussie $575 to do). Fingers are crossed.

Anyway...Luxor was extremely hot but the Valley of The King and Queens was incredible. Saw King Tutankhamen's temple and all sorts of other well kept temples. The colours were still on most of the walls, as if it had been painted yesterday. The weather was in the mid 40's yesterday and the tour group felt it as did I! We have been quite well but just slighlty upset tummys.

We arrived into Dahab this morning after an 18 hour bus ride! This morning, we stood at one point in Egypt and looked out to Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Great spot. We will be here for a few more days before we head to Jordan on Wednesday. We will probably do some more snorkelling in the Red Sea and Chris will probably go diving. We will also climb Mt Sinai on Monday evening to catch sunset on Tuesday morning. Really looking forward to that.

We hope you are all well and sorry for the lack of emails but we have been so busy on this tour! Miss you all and looking forward to getting home in less than two months!

france last week, austria this week, egypt next week

Once again we"re under the pump when it comes to internet. Finally we"re staying somewhere with free internet and I have a kid standing about 1 metre from me just staring at me waiting. Yes you kid, if you can read this....

Anyway, just thought I"d give you a quick update on what we"ve been up to over the last week or so since I blogged from Beaune in the Burgundy wine region of France. We headed off the next day to Lausanne which is just into Switzerland. We only spent one night there before meeting up with our friends Andrew and Jenni in Interlaken which is at the foot of the Jungfrau mountains in the Swiss alps. We went hiking in the alps for a couple of days which was just incredible. The scale of the mountains is something else altogether.

We then moved onto Lucerne for a couple of nights. The full day we had there we hired bikes and rode around the lake which is gorgeous. The old town itself was quite cool too. Yesterday we headed to Innsbruck in Austria where we are right now while Andrew and Jenni went to Zurich to visit a friend. Today we"ll meet up with them again in Salzburg for a couple of nights before heading to Vienna for a few nights. From Vienna it"s a long flight to Cairo to start our Egypt trip. But that"s too far to think about right now. For now it"s a few more days of mountains and beautiful European cities.

Hope all is well with you all back at home.

tough tough life

Hi all and so sorry it"s been so long since we blogged. Time and expense have conspired against us. As I type I am sipping 2005 Bourgogne Chardonnay and it is frankly the best wine I have ever drunk. We are in Beaune in the east of France. It"s been ages and loads has happened since we last blogged but given we are yet again slaves to time, I will summarize. We travelled north through Italy into the south of France to Nice, Monaco and Cannes then went to Paris. Spent a couple of nights in Tours, the chateau region, before coming across to Beaune and on Sunday we head to Switzerland to meet our friends, Andrew and Jenni on Mon.

Quick summary of highlights:

1. Cruising on Lake Como near Milan
2. Seeing the F1 track in Monaco...awesome
3. Watching the 8 laps of the Champs d"Elsees the riders do in the final stage of le tour de france.
4. Today we rode around the Burgundy wine region along through vineyards and tasting wines through the different villages. This was possibly the highlight of the trip thus far.

Again I apologise for the shortness of the update. We will one day find a couple of hours to reply to everyone and blog properly but until then this will have to do. Miss you guys in both London and Melbourne and can"t wait to see you again.

roma e firenze

Bongiorno friends. We're in Florence (Firenze) at the moment. We are off to the Uffizi Gallery this afternoon. It's renowned for both its famous paintings and its queues of up to 4 hours. Luckily we got ourselves a reservation. We saw Michaelangelo's David yesterday which at 9.50 euro is pricey, but the statue itself is just incredible.

We went out for dinner last night with Jess who is our last friend left from a few groups we met at the port in Dubrovnik 8 days ago. One couple left us in Bari, another couple who we spent a few days with left us in Rome, but Jess has had almost the exact plans as us so we've been hanging out on and off for more than a week which has been great. As Jane said, it's meant she's not sick of me yet. Nice.

Rome was incredible. We saw the Colesseum, Roman Forum, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and most other big stuff to see in Rome but possibly the highlight was watching the world cup final in Circus Maximus with around 250,000 screaming Italians. The Romans not at the game then streamed out of their houses and into their cars to honk their horns and wave their flags til about 4 in the morning. Absolutely crazy.

We got to Florence yesterday and we leave on Friday for La Spezia which we will be using as a base for La Cinque Terra. From all reports these 5 towns are mind blowing so we're very much looking forward to it. We then head to Milan for a couple of nights before using Nice as a base for some towns in the south of France for a while.

So that's a summary of what we've been up to. Please do click and leave a comment below as we love to hear from you and check our emails at every opportunity. Otherwise drop us a line to our email addresses! Look forward to hearing from you!

you"ll never walk alone...(in the key of Brett)

Today we arrived in the Italy which is a mind blowingly busy and hectic place. So difficult to even cross the road in Naples because of all the Mopeds and crazy drivers.

We caught the ferry across from Dubrovnik in Croatia over night last night and had a lot of fun watching the Italy and Germany game. The boat was full of elderly Italians who went crazy when Italy scored. They seem even more passionate than the English (sorry guys!). We will be in Rome for the World Cup final against France which should be amazing.

Meet some lovely people from Australia and from Liverpool last night on the ferry and we are going to Pompeii with them all tomorrow for one of the girls birthday. Can't wait to experience Pompeii.
Croatia was relaxing and beautiful. Lovely locals and amazing Bosnian food. I wouldn't recomend the boat rides to the Dubrovnik islands if you are prone to being a little motion sick. I am still feeling ill after being stuck in a small boat with 16 others in the middle of the sea while towing another small boat full of people and going at a snails pace!

Well, Naples for three nights, Rome for another three, Florence for three nights, Milan and then Nice. We will keep you updated and hope you are all well.