The neon shoes trekked across Sydney!

This morning started out early in Adelaide. I waled the half block from the nest to the Railroad station to pick up a taxi. I got to the airport at about 8 for my 9:30 flight, turns out that was quite a bit earlier than I needed to be there. Checking in was super easy, and security was a breeze. I didn't have to pull out my ID once which felt a little strange but no worries mate. I slept on the plane until we started descending into Sydney and hit some crazy turbulence. We didn't really see any of the sights as the plane came in but we could see some of the beaches which were quite pretty. I picked up my bag and jumped into a cab to my hostel. I'm staying in a ten person room. People's stuff is all over the place but it'll be a fine place to call home for 4 nights. I dropped my luggage off and put some things in a locker and headed out the door to go exploring.

I had decided to go to the aquarium to get a preview for my dive trip. The aquarium is in Darling Harbor which is on the western side of Sydney. When I got to the harbor, I was greeted by a giant rubber duck! It's an art piece ready to celebrate Australia Day which is on the 26th of January. I walked down the harbor to get to the aquarium and it reminded me a lot of the wharf area in Capetown. Lots of restaurants and small shops that are tourist traps. The aquarium was at the far end of the harbor.

It's an okay aquarium, not worth how much the tickets cost though. I heard a presentation about platypus' which were funny looking and much smaller than I thought. They're endangered and need protecting. There were lots of exhibits of turtles and fish. Lots of Dorrie's but not so many Nemo's. There were a couple of cool walk through tunnel things with fish, sharks, and rays swimming over you. There were also Dugongs which are these giant mammals (I think) that eat lettuce and are huge. They're closely related to elephants. Apparently there are only 6 on display in captivity in the world and the Sydney Aquarium has two of them so that was pretty cool. I made it through the entire aquarium in about 2 hours.

I decided to keep walking towards King's Wharf because my map said there's a Sydney Observatory that's free. King's Wharf was more restaurants and then I happened upon a GIANT cruise ship, the Sea Princess or something which was just getting ready to set off. I watched the tugboat get set up and start to pull the ship off the side. Then I headed down the Barangaroo Path towards Circular Quay. The path was 3.2km along the water. The Sea Princess got to the Harbor bridge just as I did and it was cool to see. Then, I turned around and literally gasped as I caught my first sight of the opera house through some trees. I continued my walk along the water passing The Rocks, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and several street performers including an Aboriginal playing a didgereedoo! I also passed no fewer than 5 wedding parties having their pictures taken. I continued my walk around Circular Quay and made it to the famous Opera House. It's absolutely gorgeous! There are all sorts of bars and restaurants at the base of the opera house which looked like a lot of fun because they were outside on the water and were full of energy, but I was definitely underdressed. It is Saturday evening after all. I continued my walk into the Royal Botanic Gardens. I walked the whole way around the edge along the water, it was very pretty, I'll have to go back and actually go inside the gardens. I probably took 50 pictures of the same view- the opera house and the bridge together, it's just so pretty. I continued my walk back to the hostel and had dinner at a little dive place in Potts Point, the neighborhood the hostel is in. Now I'm back at the Blue Parrot Backpackers and I'm completely beat so I'm going to take a shower and hop into bed.

The docket for tomorrow is Harbor Cruise, Opera House Tour, and climbing the Harbor Bridge!

Another couple of days in Adelaide

I left off telling you that I was going to go to the Central Market yesterday.  I enjoyed it very much.   It reminded me of Pike's Place in Seattle.  I bought some fruit and had it for lunch in Victoria Square.  I didn't quite make it to Chinatown, I think it's on the far side of the market.  After my lunch I needed some apartment supplies.  At the supermarket I was able to get a cheap saucepan and fry pan as well as some $1 utensils and cheap plates.  They're definitely a sad lot of cooking supplies but at least I have something.

In the afternoon I had a meeting with Colin who is the Director of Heinz in Australia.  He's a nice guy and was telling me all about Adelaide and about the school down there.  It seems much more relaxed than Pittsburgh so I'm excited for school to start and to meet everyone.

After my meeting with Colin, I decided to go back to the market to buy dinner.  Since it was the end of the day, a lot of the vegetables were on sale.  I spent $1.50 on a couple of handfuls of green beans and a red pepper which they call capsicums or something like that here.  I also got some fresh pasta, sauce, and sausage.  I came home and cooked them all up, it made for a nice dinner.

At 7:30 there was an urbanest outing to the Rhino Room which is a comedy club here in Adelaide.  Normally Thursday nights are new material nights and there's an urbanest discount, but last night was the first heat of an Australia-wide comedy competition called Raw.  There were 9 hopeful comedians who each did 5 minute stand-up routines.  I went with Jon (whose role at urbanest is like an RA), Jess who is from Darwin, and Becky from New Zealand.  I had a Breezer at the bar which is the rum equivalent to a Smirnoff Ice and is called an alcopop here in Australia.  Some of the comedians were good, some of the jokes were too Australian for me, I didn't really understand the context.  A Bogan is like a redneck though.  The girl who won did a pretty good job and the MC was great so we had a good time.  It's really nice that urbanest has nightly events because it gives us a chance to get to know some of the people in the building.

This morning I woke up a little bit late, I guess that means my jetlag is completely gone.  I spent a good chunk of the day at the South Australian Museum.  It's nice, but small.  It reminded my of the Field Museum, which is my least favorite museum in Chicago.  Too many artifacts and not enough interaction.  I spent a really long time in the Aboriginals exhibit though, it was really neat to learn about the native Australian cultures.  After the museum, I stopped at home to get my passport so I could withdraw money from the bank and it turned out my new (pink) debit card had arrived!  So I went to the bank and got my PIN set up and took out some cash for my trip tomorrow.  I also stopped at Cheap as Chips (a dollar store kind of place but nothing is $1) and got a pillow, a bath mat, a laundry basket, and rubbish bin bags for the apartment.  I came home and did a load of laundry.  Cricket was on TV while my laundry was in so I watched the Australia vs Sri Lanka game although I had no clue what was going on.

This evening's activity was a free barbie (barbeque) hosted by the urbanest staff.  There were sausages and they used sliced white bread instead of buns.  I got to meet Rick, Wei, and Gunawan.  Rick is from Adelaide and getting his PhD in Aerospace engineering.  Wei is from Malaysia and Gunawan is from Indonesia.  They're a couple and are both at Le Cordon Bleu, he's studying patisserie and she is studying restaurant management.  We had a great time hanging out on the balcony.

Now I'm all packed for my two week adventure and ready to head out in the morning!
Good Night Mates!

The roommates live!

For the past two days I had no idea who I was going to be living with.  The exciting news is that there are roommates!  Annika is from England and just returned from Holiday at home for Christmas.  Carrie is quiet and I don't know where she's from...  It's a 6 bedroom apartment, but at least there are 2 other people here now.

After a day and a half in Adelaide

Things are good.

Tuesday, I took a cab from the Adelaide airport to my dorm which is called urbanest.  I accidentally offended the cab driver by offering him a tip, oops.  Jon at reception checked me in and showed me to my room.  I'm in apartment 20, room b.  I have a lovely view of a parking garage outside my window and it gets a lot of sun in the afternoon.  The dorm room is nice, a twin bed, a desk, drawers and shelves, a wardrobe and a bathroom.  My room looks just like this:

I don't have the binders, map, or cute decorations though.

I got unpacked and then decided to set out to see Adelaide.  Our building is about 2 blocks off of King William Street which is the main street in Adelaide.  I walked down King William and found my bank and got my account set up.  I'm hoping my debit card makes it here before I leave on Saturday... I got to choose a pink one though!  Then I continued down King William Street to Victoria Square which is right in the middle of the city, or the CBD (Central Business District) as they call it.  I walked around the square looking for CMU and found it on the other side of the square after walking the whole perimeter.  I got there at about 5:15 though so it was all packed up and nobody was there.  It was clearly rush hour and everyone in town was heading home it looked like.  I turned back up North towards home and decided to walk through the Rundle Mall to see if I could find a cell phone shop.  Rundle Mall is like a big Old Orchard Mall, straight down one street with small mini malls coming off at ends where streets would normally intersect Rundle Street.  I found a Vodaphone shop and have a dinky little Android phone.  I walked around the mall a bit, but everything was closing so I headed home.  There's a Thai restaurant across the street from the dorm, so I had Thai for dinner.  At this point it was about 7pm and I was shaking I was so tired.  So I went up to my room and went to sleep.

Only to wake up at 5:15 the next day!  Since it was super early, I tried to go back to sleep for about 2 hours with no luck.  Finally I got up and showered and went walking around the city.  I just meandered the streets with no real goal or direction in mind.  Adelaide is only a square mile so it's small and seems like it's pretty hard to get lost.  The Aussies are so relaxed in the morning!  There are little cafes everywhere and people met up with friends for a cup of coffee and a pastry before heading out to work.  It was so much nicer than the frenzied morning rush of people at home who rush to get to Starbucks, don't speak to anyone but the Barista and then rush to work.  I stopped and had a quick brekky at one of the cafes and it was finally 9am, a reasonable time to stop by CMU to see if anyone was there.

I arrived at the Torrens building and met Sharon, the receptionist.  She helped me get set up with Deb who is the HR and Facilities Director for Heinz in Australia.  Deb was very nice and took me around to meet everyone and gave me a tour of the building.  The staff were all very nice.  She didn't quite have all of the paperwork ready for me so she asked me to come back after lunch.  I went and did some more exploring of the mall, looking for kitchen stuff and just checking out what there is.  I found Target!  Target here is more like Macy's than the Targets at home, their clothing selection is much bigger and seems like it's nicer quality too.  I also found the grocery store Woolworth's.  Everything just seems to be more expensive here.  A 24-pack of diet coke cost $19 at 30% off, it's normally $27!  I stopped for a quick lunch at a cafe and then went back to urbanest for my community induction.  I learned where the "bins" (garbage) are, the laundry room, the deck with the "barbies", and the rest of the building.  By then it was about 1:15 so I headed back to the Torrens Building to see if Deb had my paperwork ready.  I got my computer "Australianized" so I now have access to the Australia shared drives and printer and possibly have a .andrew.cmu.au email address.  Deb walked me through all the forms and then handed me the keys to my office to go fill them out upstairs.  I filled everything out and cleaned up my office a bit and then brought the forms back down.  I wandered around town a bit more and then came home for a quick nap.

At 8, the dorm had an activity to go to the Moonlight Cinema which is like movies in the park.  I met up with Jon, one of the urbanest RA-type guys and Vincent from South Africa and Becky from New Zealand.  We had fun during the 25 minute walk to the park and then rented these bean bag loungers for the movie which was way more comfortable than sitting on the grass.  I didn't realize it had cooled off (to like, the mid 50s) so it mad for a very cold movie.  We saw The Avengers which I hadn't seen before and it was pretty good.  We got back home around Midnight and I went straight to bed.  But, this morning I woke up at 8:30 so I think I may be doing ok on jet lag now!

Red Flag: CMU, Yellow $: Bank, Yellow House: Urbanest,
Yellow Shopping Bag: Rundle Mall, Pink Pin: Moonlight Cinema

On to more exploring today.  I'm going to check out the Central Market and Chinatown.  It's supposed to be 90 today so it'll be pretty hot.

Landed in Sydney!

Just a quick update. Our flight from LAX to Sydney was uneventful but it did leave an hour late and therefore landed a half hour late. In LA I met a nice couple from Nashville who were headed for a cruise in Sydney. We were sharing stories about different trips we've taken, they've been all over the place. Then, since our flight was delayed, the husband decided to start asking presidential trivia...APUSH was a looong time ago so I didn't do very well, but it passed the time while we were waiting. Did you know Lincoln was the only president to hold a patent? I didn't either.

Finally, we got to board the 747. I was seated in seat 73D, there were only 75 rows on the plane, so I was at the way back. I was in the aisle seat of the middle section of seats. I sat next to Sister Bernadette who had just spent two years in Washington DC getting her Master's in Psychology and was finally going home, she was sad to leave America. I told her a little bit about my trip and learned a few Australian pronunciations. Cairns is pronounced Cannes with a soft 'a'. Melbourne is Mel-bin. I'm sure I will butcher a ton of their pronunciations but it was nice to learn a couple. Thanks to Ambien, I slept for most of the flight, minus the last 4-5 hours. I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower on the in-flight entertainment and Moneyball on my iPad. Moneyball was way better as a book. The view coming into Sydney was beautiful though, we could see all the beaches. I didn't see the harbor though.

Customs was no problem, I accidentally went through the line that said I came in from a domestic flight so I got to skip the actual customs line after going through immigration. That was nice. I was still too late to make my Adelaide connection and discovered that my carry-on suitcase was both too big and too heavy to be carried on to a domestic flight. So I got rebooked on a flight an hour later and paid to check my bag. I'm posting this from the gate and boarding has just started so I'll post this and check in again later!

Packing Dilemmas...

I really hate packing, a lot. Both of my bags are too heavy, back to the drawing board...
This post is also me testing posting from the blogger app on my iPad and importing pictures with my new card reader. Here is a picture of one of my very full bags. Can't wait to leave tomorrow!

Testing 1-2-3

Here goes, my first post.  I figured I would create a blog for my trip and update it.  Both so that I can remember everything and so that my mom knows I'm still alive from the other side of the world.

Here are the important details:

I'm in Australia January 6 to May 13.  I get back in time for graduation in Pittsburgh.

My first two weeks will be a whirlwind!

January 8-12: Adelaide, getting settled, getting a phone, getting a debit card, setting up my apartment etc.

January 12-16: Sydney

January 16-18: Brisbane

January 19-20: Cairns

January 21-24: Diving in the Great Barrier Reef

January 25: Rafting the Tully River in Cairns

January 26: Back to Adelaide

January 28: (I think) School starts!

Things that are accomplished so far:

Flights: to and from Australia, and my whirlwind two weeks

Apartment - so I won't be homeless when I get there

Hostels: for each of the cities above

Bank Account: So I have money when I get there

Dive trip is booked

Rafting is booked

Skyrail rainforest tour is booked

Guidebooks have been purchased

Things that are not done:

Packing

Trip to the drugstore for things like sunscreen

Planning the rest of my itinerary

Now that it's 3am, it's time for bed.  Happy New Year!