Sydney

It's my third day here in Sydney, Australia and I thought I might start writing a blog to post for everyone to keep up with what I'm doing. I've tried to do this before when I moved to Holland, and it didn't work out so well, but I'm optimistic I might be doing things that are exciting enough to keep this one going. Also, I realize this will be posted late, but I don’t have access to internet at the moment, so I'll be copy and pasting it in the future, or what is now the past from your point of view… >.>

Anywho. I'll start from the beginning (this is bound to be super long). My flight wasn’t as bad as it could have been by far, but it still wasn’t any fun. Left my house around 1pm Thursday, took a 4-hour flight to LA which left at 4pm and landed at 7pm west coast time. I had thought I was so lucky that my flight was one of the very few that wasn't cancelled or delayed due to bad weather, except that we ended up waiting an hour after we boarded for a pilot who was coming in on a delayed flight. But never fear, because I had a 6-hour layover to burn into. Discovered LA is my new least favorite airport - its only redeeming factor, of which it had no say in, was the fact that I met 2 other girls on the shuttle that were also doing Study Australia, so at least I had someone to be lost with. Waited forever, got some overpriced food, went through security, waited some more, and finally got on one of those huge double-decker planes. At this point it was 2:30am for me, and it's all blurred into a weird pseudo-day. Other than that the flight went fine - it was even 2 hours shorter than the 17 hours I thought it was.

Going through customs there was an issue with my visa (I hadn't put my middle name, which apparently Americans do all the time…) but it was quickly sorted and my first glimpse at Sydney was a rainy, cloudy, really really muggy one. We were loaded onto busses and had some lunch while Russ, the guy in charge of the orientation, talked to us about everything for a few hours. We had some glorious time to take one of the best showers I've ever taken and see our hotel rooms which are actually apartments with literal million dollar views over all of Sydney. We met back up and walked to a restaurant where I ate Kangaroo for the first time, which was actually really delicious and apparently super healthy for you and good for the overpopulation problems. By the end of the dinner it was pouring so we pretty much just headed home when it let up a bit.

The next day we went to this Australian animal park outside of the city where I got to see all the typical Australian wildlife. I got to pet Kangaroos and Koalas, and see some crocodiles, emus, echidnas, dingos, flying foxes and wombats! The only thing they didn’t have was a platypus, but it was great anyways. So after that we came back in town and were dropped off in front of the Opera House, ate lunch, and went on a walking tour to get back home. I really enjoyed it despite it being miserable and rainy, which by the way, is very atypical weather. Scrounged around for some food and went to bed pretty early.

This morning I got an extra hour over my roommates because I opted to just go hiking, I mean bushwalking, through the Blue Mountains and watch this goofey IMAX about them rather than going abseiling. Because I'm a pansy. Amazingly we saw blue sky most of today, which made it hotter, but gorgeous. We took a 3 km bushwalk along a ridge and saw 3 waterfalls along the way and lots of awesome views. So now I'm back at my apartment moving pictures off of my camera, waiting around for someone to come back.

I can't believe this is only the third day, it feels so much longer and far removed from being at home just a few days ago. I'm very happy to report that I'm loving it here though!!