It’s Sunday, Mother’s Day, and we are up at the practically work-week hour of 6 am to prepare for today’s 8K fun run. By prepare, I mean throw on some shorts, down a cup of instant coffee, and think about what we want to eat afterwards.

Neighbor Cynthia shuttles us all downtown to the start of the race near The Domain. Our course will take us through the park, views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and then back around again. It is certain there will be the temptation to only run the first lap, but the timing chips strapped around our ankles won’t lie. The race course is packed for a good cause – Breast Cancer research – with a sea of pink and its second cousin, magenta, flooding the streets. This will likely be the clearest we will ever see the downtown streets of Sydney – nearly unrecognizable without the typical blanket of red taillights.

It’s a beautiful sunny day and we enjoy the mostly flat but with a good little kick at the end course. Since it is two laps, we are treated to the rather unusual sight of actually seeing the would-be winners running, as they are sprinting past us on their second lap before we’re barely underway on our first. It’s a bit of an odd setup, given that these sprinters must use precious lung power to yell at us slowpokes to move right (i.e., get the hell out of their way) as they approach. For us, this is no problem, but it most definitely causes some confusion amongst the local Aussies, for, everything being backwards down here, they would normally move left. Finally, something that doesn’t feel so foreign to us foreigners.

Neighbor Cynthia finishes in under her goal time (Gina and I, being as ambitious as we are, had no loftier goal than to just finish) and we celebrate our accomplishment with brunch in Erskineville. This is followed by another Neighbor Cynthia shuttle back to Bondi Beach with a few more necessary and borrowed items. Tilly stayed home this round due to the possibility of another unexpected bout with carsickness, which last night resulted in my backpack needing a good washing.

Starting to settle in to our new home (pictures to come soon in another blog), we contemplated our long weekend of running around in every sense of the word. One thing that the weekend emphasized for us was this – thank goodness for Neighbor Cynthia. We’d probably have been on a plane back to the States weeks ago if it weren’t for her. She has been our friend, our running mate, our transportation, our yellow pages, and a grounding force when we’ve needed one. We may not live next door anymore, but we’ll continue to call her Neighbor just the same.