It's been a minute

Ugh...i got behind..and now I'm forgeting what I did. So i'll try my best to remember.

Lauren and I went to Kings Park! It is huge and beautiful pieace of bushland in the middle of the city. It has a botanical garden that we decide to go to. From the park you get a wonderful view of the city and the Swan River. Also the plant are really pretty as well. But you have to look at for their beauty. Since its so dry here, the flowres don't really have huge flowery blooms like we are used to. But they are still pretty in their own way.

It was disgustingly hot that day. About 38C which is about 98F. And for some reason the humidity was up so we were sweating like no other. We didn't get a chance to look around the park all too much because the heat just dragged us down. I don't think we were drinking enough water.

After the park we were going to go to Cotts Beach but the train wasn't running all the way their for some reason so we had to take a bus. And we had NO idea where we were going and when to get off. Cuz Lauren and I are really good i miss the stop and having to get off at the next one and walk 5 mins back. So this time we got off too early. We were in North Cottesloe instead of Cottesloe so we had to walk like 15 mins to the beach. Haha! we are pathetic.

God transport takes soo long around here. I'll never get used to it. And Lauren and I ALWAYS miss the buss my Ike 30 secs. I'm not exaggerating. It's so frustrating.

Also, in this past week, Lauren and I went back to Little Creatures to try some 'Roo! Lauren told the waitress that "We'll have the kangaroo. And we thought she understood that meant two seperate plates. but instead only one came out. So we told her we wanted two and she apologized and gave me a drink on the house. The Roo was delicious. It was kinda of spicy due to what ever they marinated it in. But it was wonderful. It is one of the leanest/healthiest meats you can eat. But it's def a luxury cuz its a tad expensive. Kinda like going to get steak.

Thats all i can remember right now. Maybe i'll remember more later. Classes have been good, but its still hard to know how i feel about them, since its so early and we only meet once a week.

First week of school

Heres some pictures from the beach! I love this place.

The sun kinda setting over Cottseloe Beach

This is strange to me...pine trees RIGHT next to the beach. How awesome! good for shade!


Sorry it's been a minute.

First week was okay. not wonderful, not bad. It turns out i made a mistake with schedule. Oh well, its the first week so it was easily fixed. I went to my Asian Cultures Lecture on Weds and discoverd that everyone had their studyguides (syllabus). I asked the guy next to me how he already got his and he said from the lecture yesterday! (what?!) Well it turns out i read my schedule wrong and i really have TWO lectures and a tute. Well, it turns out that the first lecture conincided with one of my other tutes so i had to switch that tute to Thurdsay at 9am. Ughhh! now i don't have a 4 day weekend and i have to get up at the crack of dawn (poor me, i know...) Oh well, I guess i'll suck it up. At least now i'm in the same tute as Lauren and we are doing a presentation togeter in week 7. Speaking of presentations, I need to start on my presentation for Monday!

Books here cost me almost nothing! I had to get three readers (which are articles put together by the teacher into one book) and a small book. The book cost the most (AUS$50) altogether i only spent 150! Wow!

Did some more gorcery shoping! A little more culture shock! I wanted to make something easy, and American. So i was looking to make some S'mores. Well, I guess it's so American that they don't have Gharam Crakers! I asked customer service and they looked so confused. You try describing Gharam Crakers to people. Haha! Perhaps i will try and make it with one of their biscuts sometime. I think it would be real fun.

I also bought some minced meat (ground beef) to make some Chili. But I think i'll save that and use Halah meat so Abdulah and Diliya can eat it. I aslo go prawns (big shrimp) and made garlicy shrimp!mmm mmm mmm By the way, do you notice something wrong with the mac and cheese? why is the cheese in a can?! how annoying!

I went to the city today to get my Proof of Age card. I went with Diliya, Theodore and.....crap i can't remember his name! and he's my neighbor! We grabed lunch, walke around a bit. It was so nice out today. but then the heat started to get to me.so we walked half way around town and went to China town to get bubble tea. mmm mmm it was good. It had little jellys at the bottom and was fruitly flavored. It was good, but like i said the heat was too much.

First Day of Class

Well, Today was my first day of class. I just had one class,Blak Indigenous Music. I had both the lecture and the tute (tutorial). The lecture went the whole hour, which makes sense since this is the only time we meet this week. Denise, my prof, said our tutes will likely not go the full hour and half either. Today we went about an hour. In the tute it is more time to discuss what we talked about in class. Also, there will be people doing small presentations on the previous weeks topic. Guess who is starting of presentations? ME! No one seemed to want to do it, but I decided I would be perfect for it. I just wish it wasn't the first week! Anyway basically my presentation is how Indigenous music/culture parallels with 1990s raves. So i can talk about piercings, tattoo, music, clothing, etc. It'll be fun

Even tho this class is a 300 level I don't think it will be too bad. We only have two essays and particiaption in tute towards out grade. We don't even have a final. The essays are long however, 1500-2000 words. But I don't think it will be too bad.

Well, I think i'm going to get my books today. The line was soo long! Maybe i'll start working out as well.

My Berfday!

This post is rated PG-13 for talk about adult beverages and dirty men. No children allowed unless under adult supervison! lolz

So as many of ya know, my 21st brithday was this past Friday the 13th. It was really sad not being with those that i love and cherish. and especially sucky since I missed one of the pivotal birthdays in America. Random side note: When people ask where I'm from I say "The States" which is really wierd to me, cuz to me I'm American and from America, ya know? But we tried saying America the first few times, and you'd be surprised how often people give us looks of confusion. But everyone know where The States are. I feel like such a tool saying that though. Perhaps I'll try saying "The U.S" Anyway, I wasn't planing on going out on Thurs, but Lauren suggested it to me and we decided to go out with her roomate Mini and Mini's friends Inga (she's German) and Veronica (she's Noreigian?). We went to this one place, I forget the name, and waited for 30 minutes in line. We just wanted to get in there before midnight to have a birthday drink. As soon as we got to the front the man wouldn't let me in cuz i had on thongs! (flip-flops) I couldn't believe it! They wouldn't care back home, not unless we were going to some highclass place. Ugh. I felt so bad for the girls, but they didn't seem to care. We ran around Claremount some more and got denided at anoter bar. Finally we were let into a bar that was closeing at midnightish. At exactly midnight we had some shots of this licorish flavored liquor (blech!!). And then we had a vodka and redbull before they closed the bar. Ugh...i hate redbul... And oh my goodness was it expensive! 2 redbull vodkas cost AUS$25! Oh well, i dind't pay for it ;-)

We had a good night, we went to another place called "The Deen" We had to wait in another long line, but it was worth it. The place had different "Zones" and each zone had differnt music. One was a live band, another was techno/dance music and another was hip-hop. We went to the hip hop section and danced. It was fun just the 5 of us girls. We kept dancing with each other to keep the guys away. It was really fun girls time. At one point there was the drunk, old Arab guy that kept trying to dance with every girl in the place. He came over to our group and we would pull each other away from him to protect each other. But he would still dance right next to us and thrust into us. Gross! Luckily a gorup of guys came to our rescue! But man the guy was creepy.

The bar closed and we went to another one with the guys we met. Lauren had fun dancing with this one guy, Matt. and I was busy talking to one of his buddies trying to squash all the negative sterotypes he thought of Americans. He was such and idiot, but i loved calling him out on stuff.

We didn't get back till late. And then we slept. I woke up early to phone calls from Garrison, my newphew, and to talk to my parents. It was nice. But man was i tired.

On my actually Birthday (Friday night) Lauren and I were suppose to go out with the girls again. But they were busy. So they directed us to a good club. Ugh...we missed the bus to the club by literally 3o secs. We were walking through the bush to the bus stop and we saw it. We thought there would be another one, but turns out that was the last one. So we called a taxi and were on our way. The club was amazing. Kinda wierd to get in. They took our passports (we really need to get a proof of Age card) and put them though a scanner and we also were finger printed. I guess this prevents the local kids form using fake IDs. Its really niffty.

This club had two levels as well. A hiphop and a techno/dance with live DJs. We stayed down and dance to the dance music. It was really wierd when we were trying to find guys to dance with. They all were dancing in a circle with each other, much like girls do. It was so strange. Not till the end of the night did we find two guys to dance with. I like dance to techno music, because the guys dont really try and dirty dance with you like with other music. This dance is more face to face and not connected to each other. It was nice. But i really wish I was there with Stephen. I love dancing and I would loved to have dance with him. But don't worry, Steve, I was think about you all night! Promise!

All in all, I had an alright birthday! It would have been nice to spend it with friends back home, but maybe I can convince them to have a party with me in the Summer.

First day of the semester starts tomorrow. My first class is at 930. Hopefully I can find the lecture hall with no problem. Wish me Luck!

Travel and Food

To my lovely sister who can't believe i'm doing laundry: Um...hello i did my luandry EVERY week while at school. And since the dryers don't work well here (so I've heard) I hang them up. What do you expect me to do? :-P Besides they are like dry in 30min with this heat, so it's just like a dryer. hehe

I joined the gym today. I plan on doing some spinnng classes and muscule builing or ab building classes. Hopefully I go often to make it worth it. Lauren said she would help motivate me.

We also got our smart rider cards today. They allow us to use public transport w/o having to have cash all the time. And they give us half off for being students. Lauren and I are going to make use of this today by going into the city and looking at the shops. Since today is Thurs the shops are open till 9p (ooooooo!) LoL. Yeah, it's crazy the shops here, like KMart and Coles (the grocery store) close at 6 everyday except thursday is the day ALL shops are open late. And most shops including KMart and Coles are closed on Sunday. How strange.

We were suppose to to to Newport last night with some people we met, but it's didn't fall through. They left us to do something else. I'm not quite sure wut Newport is. But from my understanding it's where students get in free and have discounts on drinks and what not on WEDS. We'll see, maybe next week.

So, this is random. But I'm eating ramen and I wanted to tell you about it. The ramen I have doesn't come with flavors like orientel, beef, chicken ect. Instead they have the following: fried onions, seasoning, chili sauce, soy sauce and oil. The package says add to your desire. Well I don't know what my desire is, so i just put them ALL in! LoL. MMM MMM MMM! Let me say the chili sauce is expecially spicy. I love it. Why don't they have this back home?

I feel like a house wife.

I finished enrolling in my classes today! I'm taking Introduction to Australian Indigenous Studies, Blak Indigenous Music, and Intro to Aisian Cultures. It's quite strange how thier system of school works around here. For each of these classes I have a lecture and a tutorial that meet once a week each. Therefore, I only have 6 class meetings a week. Does that make sense? I have Music on Mondays, Indigenous Studies on Tuesday and Asian Cultures on Wednesdays. So that means I have a 4 day weekend! How sweet! Well not really, I have to do some reading and studying during that time.

I also signed up for the guild today. From my understanding it is a student organization that is there for the student by the student. It helps give the students voices if they ever need one. I basicly joined for the discounts. They get $2 teas/coffees from the cafe and a discount to the gym among other things. I also need to sign up for the gym. Its not state of the art but they have classes and I think Lauren and I might join together. If not, she will help motivate me to go to the gym with her.

I decided to do my laundry today. We don't use dryers around here so I hung everything up. Hopefully stuff don't get stolen and hopefully they don't take long to dry and get stiff. Ick. I feel like a lil house wife walking around the village in a sundress carrying laundry. Plus I'm making sun-brewed tea. Haha...I probably look adorable. ;-)

Below are some pictues of my flat. I don't know why my Laundry pic dediced it wants to be sideways...but it does.

Video Action

I have some videos of the Blue mountains. I might add some videos from the zoo later... it takes an awfully long time to load sill 1 min videos.

http://www.youtube.com/sumchic213

Picture Action

Still haven't edited with pictures...but here is my flickr acount:
http://flickr.com/photos/kaw003/

It starts from the most recent and moves backwards I think.

My Weekend

For those of you who don't know by now, I'm a bit of a story teller. That is why my entries are long. I DO NOT know how to make them concise and interesting (not to say that they are interesting LoL)

This weekend the MI (Murdoch International) sponsered an Amazing Race for the Intn'l students. We were put in groups for 6 or so and raced around ALL of Perth. Each leg we had to answer questions about the local area and figure out the clue and where to go. At each stop we had to do a task. Such as eat vegimite (GROSS) or chug a ginger beer (it's like root beer). It forced us to use public transportation the whole way. Which helped greatly since I had no understanding of public transportation. But now I understand it, and it's not that bad. It's quite fun actually. I met alot of people from different areas. Two german girls, a boy from Wisconsin, a boy from Singapore and 2 other indian looking boys were in my groupd. They were all really cool.

The next day (Sunday), Lauren, Dilya and I decided to go to the beach. Cottsloe Beach is suppose to be one of the best beached in the world. It was so different from what Im used to when I go to the beach. As we walked from the train to the beach we were walking into pine trees! and the street only had houses, no businesses like most beach areas. When we finally got to the beach (yay Indian Ocean!!!!) there was a strip of shops, resturants, and pubs. It was soooo hot, no clouds in the sky. Diyla said it was too hot for her, so she just stayed up under the shade. Lauren and I ventured down to the beach. OMG was the sand hot. It felt like we were walking on a stove top. We decided we were going to play in the water for a bit. It was so blue and inviting. But it tricked us. It was quite cold. We managed to play in it for a while, but soon it became to cold for us and we decided to sun bath. Don't worry, I but on sunscreen multiple times. But i still managed to get a little burn. The water was so refreshing after laying out in the sun all day.

After laying around for an hour or so we gathered Dilya. She was very intrigued about "sun bathing". We explained why we did it and how our burns actually turn into tans if we don't get too burnt. She's quite funny. We went to this fish and chips place called Amber Jacks that my tour book said was good. And yes it was quite good. Too much food tho, I had to bring a serving back for later and yes I ate left overs! :-O It was a fun relaxing day of lazing around.

Today (Mon) we went back to Kardinya (the shopping center) and this time we den't get lost. And we learned that Murdoch and Kardinya have a contract in which we are allowed to bring the trolleys back with us! Nice to know now huh? It was still a bit of a hike expecially in the heat. I made stuff to make sun-brewed tea. My flatmates looked at my funny when I said I was going to sun-brew tea. Haha! I didn't think it was that wierd. I can't wait to have some!

Oh yeah! I have a roommate now. Her name is Kara, she is from around this area. It is her first year moving into the Village but her 5th year at Uni. That doens't mean she is a super senior, but she is double majoring (or getting a double degree, as they say here) in Psych and Law. She said before she would have to travel 1.5 hours via public transport to get to Uni! I told her most people in the states just move onto the campus if thats the case. Apparently they tend to stay at home in Oz. She seems real nice. She said she's a bit messy so I hope we'll get along in that asspect. But right now she is scrubing our entire flat! LoL More power to her!

My other flatmate, Dilya, live across the hall from us. She lives in a single. She is from Singapore and like Lauren and I only staying for a semester. She also is a Psych student. She is real sweet and i love hanging out with her. I think I'll learn alot from her. She is Muslim and it's definetly interesting to learn about her religion since I know nothing about it.

Well I think that's all for today! I don't think this is too long considering It is a whole weekends worth of activites. :-)

Update on my frist night

Here is a letter I wrote to my mum about my awful first day:

It started off when we went to the zoo thus. We went it was great and then we went STRAIGHT to the airport. Waited 2 hours then got on the plane fore 5 hours. We were delivered to our flats with nothing, Mom! It was I think 8p when we got here. No food, no place to get food since we r new and don’t know any close local places. We had no linens or the ability, b/c it was late, and no pillow. Thank god I brought that blanket and I used Steves hoodie as a pillow. To make it worse we didn’t have internet. We have to pay for it via a plan. Well since we thought we didn’t have to pay any bills or what not, Lauren and I thought we would wait and talk to someone from CSI asap and see if they had arangments that the Village hadn’t told us about.

The Village people told us nothing. We had no clue what to do, when we were expected to do anything. Luckily all my email are on my p/c even w/o internet acess and I was able to bring up the itinerary and discover orientation started Fri at 9a. At this point we went to bed and hoped that at orientation we would get food at tea time since we were still starving. The orientation was from 9a to 2p(we did get lunch) and we were planning on catching the bus given by the Intn’l program to go to the shopping center and buy the stuff we need. We some how missed the bus. Don’t ask. So Me, Lauren and Delia (one of my flat mates) tried to walk to the closet strip mall we were told about. Well we got lost, asked an Aussie, and we had to catch a city bus. We finally got there and bought home supplies and a few groceries.

OMG Mom, I can’t believe how different the food is here. They had SOOOO many kinds of jelly, so many, ones you’ve never heard of, like cinnamon and plum, but they didn’t have grape. They didn’t have plain cherios, so I had to get unhealthy fruitloops. It was just hard to find things. I almost started crying in the store. I was having such a culture shock. I think it was the stress of the day that actually made me freak. I know I’m stronger than that.

By the time we got all our stuff, we couldn’t carry it back to the bus stop. Plus since we had walked some distance and then to the bus, we had no clue what bus would take up back to near the campus. So we called a taxi. We call, and they said 10-15 minutes. We waited about 30m and called them back and they said they had no available cabs at the moment and hung up. We then called another taxi. He said I’ll be there asap and didn’t give us a time range. By this time it was almost 6p and the whole shopping center was closeing (I know early!). We just waited and waited with our three shopping carts FULL and then sum. Finally he came and got us. And we were on our way. But he dropped us as close as he could, but we still had to walk into the middle of the village to get to our flats…this time with no carts….so we managed and a skillful use of a cart that shouldn’t have been there and a big box from the trash.

Call and Write

Hey, if any of ya ever want to contact me here ya go!
my Address:
Flat 58 Room 4
Murdoch University Village
Canningvale PO Box 1055
WA 6970 Australia
my #:
420 292 374
To call me you dial 011.61.420.292.374
It costs me nothing to receive phone calls, so if ya ever want to cal I would be so happy! There are worldwide phone cards at Walmart for like 10$. If you call from a land line using this i know it only cost like 7.1cents a min which is really good! I'm not sure if it can be used with cellphones. Just remember if you call I am 14 hours ahead!

I will update later with my last day in Sydney and my first day in Perth. I can't seem to catch up with these entries... It was a quite terrible day...

blue sharks dancing

Its now Thurs at 830a. We wil be leaving for the zoo soon so I don't have enough time to write about our adventures last night, but I will asap. We leave for Perth later this afternoon. I'm so excited! I have LOTS of pictures! beautiful pictures!

Edit (this is long! I guess i don't know how to be concise):

Well Yesterday, Wednesday, was a great awesome day. We had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to get to our destination, the Blue Mountains. We hoped on a train and rode 2 hours NW of Sydney to an area near Katoomba. There we met up with our tour guide, Adam, and went on a wonderful four hour bushwalk.

It started off as a plain walk. Nothing too much different than a hike in some of the park back home. The further we went in the more beautiful it got. We looked at the plants and watched/listened to the birds. All lot of the plants were tea plants that we could rub our hands on and get a wonderful scent in return. The birds were sweet! They had black cockatoos! They are apparently rare to see, but we saw quite a few as they flew right over our heads. Beautiful beards, I wish I was able to get a picture. The white cockatoos were a bit more common,but I couldn’t get a picture of them either.

Throughout the bushwalk, Adam would tell us interesting fact or stories. He was quite funny. Every now and then, we would sit down by a water pool and he would tell us some more stories. Eventually we made it onto the edge of the valley. There was a beautiful waterfall that I kept taking pictures from many different angles around the mountain. It helps show just how far we actually traveled.

When we came to our first lookout, it was uh-mazing! It was the most majestic thing ever! For as far as you can see were just mountains covered in eucalyptus trees. The Blue Mountains get there name, from the bluish vapor that come from the eucalyptus trees and water vapor. They really do look blue!

I really can’t explain how wonderful of an experience it was. It was a beautiful day. It was hot yet there was a nice breeze that kept us fairly cool. I just hope the pictures do some justice.

After the bushwalk we went to a pub in Katoomba while we waited for our train. This pub is where my trip was almost ruined. I grabbed my credit card to pay and I noticed it wasn’t signed like mine was. I turn it around and it was a Black Diamond AmEx card! I then realized that I had got mine swaped at the pub we went to the night before! It was so worried and hopped that he had notice he had the wrong card, unlike me. Brynn was really nice and called up the pub and found that he did indeed catch the mistake and they had my card waiting for me. Thank GOD! So later, when we got back o Sydney, Lauren and I walked back to pub and got my card. Luckily for me, the manager refunded our drinks. Sweet!

On our way back to the YHA, we decided to finally cash a little bit of our travelers checks so we wouldn’t have to keep making tabs. We had a little trouble finding a place, because the banks were closed and one place asked for our passports, which we did not have on us. Eventually we found a place. $40USD yielded about $50AUS. That was sweet.

After we freshened up, we went to get dinner. We went to this place that Brynn and the Hostel manager suggested called the Shark Bar. The shark bar is in a hotel, it was very hip and they had a wonderful deal on a meal. On Wednesdays, they have a special: $2 steak when you get a $4 drink! I spent only $6 for a steak and a drink! And the steak was delicious! It was perfect, little fat, nice and juicy. I don’t know they can keep the prices so low.

After dinner we decided to stick around a bit. I wish we had our cameras, but they both had died on the Blue Mountain trip and were charging. Also on Wednesday s they have $1 pool. All the tables were packed, but I think it was obvious that we wanted to play because a Taiwanese man and his friend asked us if we wanted to join them in some a game. Of course we accepted. There game of pool is a tad different. Instead of different colors with stripes and solids, they have just red and yellow. Same game just only two colors.

Adam, spoke English very well but he had a thick accent. And ya’ll know how hard of hearing I am. With the noise of the bar and his accent I had a terrible time understanding him, but we made it through. I can’t remember his friends name, he couldn’t speak English well, so he often just sat and watched us play.

We had to have played close to 10 games with these blokes, and they paid for each one. At one point, Adam spilled a near empty glass of beer on my lap. He was so upset, he kept bowing and apologizing. It was no big deal, he barely got me. But after that he bought a pitcher to make up for it. By the end of the night HE was drunk. LoL. It was quite funny.

While we were playing the bar had game night in which people could compete to be put into a raffle for a surf board, a trip to the blue mountains ($200AUS) and loads of beer. The first one was sort of like a scavenger hunt. They asked for people to come on stage and they had to retrieve and item that the hostess told them to. The last one back was eliminated. It was quite a show. The things ranged from grab a person and bring them on stage, I got dragged on, to get a $10 note, 10cents and a sock. The money and sock were for the final stage. The last two people had to take the dirty sock and put it over a glass of water and drink it through the sock. Gross but hi-larious! I wish I had participated.

The next game Lauren entered in. They asked for four girls who like chocolate and four blokes who like to be pleasured. Well it’s pretty obvious was being done. Chocolate bar in between legs while girls had to suck as much chocolate of the Crunchie as possible. The guys one by giving the best facial expression. It was the greatest thing to watch, I loved it, it was hilarious. In the end Lauren tied with another girl. She won a pitcher of beer for it.

The last game we saw was partner limbo. The partners had to limbo with arms in hand. If they fell they had the chance to redeem themselves by taking of an article of clothing. A girl in a dress ended up taking off her bra and her knickers. I’m glad I was to the side of her while she limboed. A few guys also ended up taking off their shirts. It was all rather PG-13. Nothing was ever revealed. But it was great fun.

At this point a group of blokes came up to us and asked us to go to another pub with them. Of course we went. I wanted to talk to people who actually spoke English. The guys were all nice, I’m going to say they ranged from mid twenties to about 30. I can’t recall their names, because there were too many of them. They were awesome. We asked them a lot of questions, they asked us a lot of questions. It was nice to hang out with a few Aussies.

We tried to go to an Irish bar called Scruffies but it was full. So we went to the Side Bar which was just up the block from our hostel. It was sweet they had a live band there that was playing covers of American songs. We all went onto the dance floor and had a good ole time. A lot of the songs were American. Quite surprising. I love dancing so much. Well Lauren and I went to the toilet later in the night, and when we came back all the guys had left! How rude. It hurt our feelings a bit. I’m going to assume that they didn’t realized we went to the toilet and just left. Well, after that we went back to our hostel to get a good night sleep before the zoo in the morning.

Pictures will be added when I can.

I Made It!

G'Day mates! So I made it to Australia! Sorry this is the first time i have been able to write. It has been a busy day and it is currently 7 45p here. I think I'll start this tale from the begining. And BTW, the space bar is really funky here, so please don't make fun on the possible space bar misshaps. LoL
My family and Steve brought me to the airport around 4ish. I got through checking my bags with no problem and basically no wait. I was defenetly not ready to leave when I finally was able to leave, so we stood around for a minute or so to say our good byes. I did cry, but not as bad as I thought. I'm really going to miss everyone and I will most def. miss my Stephen.
cleveland-chicago
Take off was AMAZING! Seeing the ground covered in snow speckeled with dark patches of treens and houses was breath taking. The view then got foggy from cloud coverage, but as soon as we got above the clouds it was like being in a completely different place. On ground in Ohio there is no such thing as blue skies and sun, especially this time of the year. above the clouds was like a summer evening. Skies as blue as you can see untill they met with the sun and melted in to briliant shades of red and orange.This was the shortest of my flights. About 45min. When we were coming into Chicago the lights were just coming on. It was the most beautiful sight. Literally in like 10 min the city went from dusk to fully lit up by street lights. I wish I had a picture; uh-mazing.
chicago-san fransico
This was my second longest; sumwere btwn 4-5hrs. I thought I wouldn't be to bad, but we had at least 5 kids on board to which half were screaming/crying. One of them sitting across the asile from me. Lucky I was able to drown them out, but this flight seemed way longer than 4 hours. It worried me. If i can't handle 4hr how am I suppose to do 14hr? To make it more stessful, someone decided to get ill on the plane and delay us from getting off. I had to powerwalk my butt across the airport for atleast 10 minutes to ensure I got to the international gates in time. Luckily i made it with time to spare.
This is also where I met the girl I was traveling with, Lauren. We weren't ver talkative with each other. :-/
san fran-sydney
I was in an asile seat which I was not happy with, but at least it was better than being in the middle. I was dead tired at this point, but I decided to watch a movie to make myself more tired. Lets just say sleeping was not easy. My knees kept hitting the seat infront of me and it was just incredibly uncomfortable. I finally dozed off, but not for more than an hour at a time. At one point I woke up to the plane shaking from terbulance; not that big of deal, i was used to it at that point, but this was more than normal. when I looked outside there were these flashes. I couldn't tell if it was strobe light on the place (but I hadn't seen them b4) or if it ws lightning (but where was the thunder?). all of the sudden we dropped. People screamed/yelped. but I didn't. It wasn't that far. It was just sudden. It was like catching a few Gs on a kiddy ride at a carnival. I wasn't scared, but after that I had problem sleeping b/c the turbulence made me nervous.
Let me tell you, this was the LONGEST flight ever! I could have swrond 5 hours had paced when really it was only 3 hours. I kept waking up thinking we had to be hours closer only to find we were 30 mins closer. It was terrible. I am difinetly not looking forward to the flight home. LoL
sydney
We made it and it took a long time to get off the place. My bags were one of the first ones on the carosel. However, Lauren had to wait and wait and wait. I was getting nervous, but luckily she found them. the line for customs was redic! Luckily we got lucky and fastfoword our way through and bet our guide, Brinn ( I think thats her name). Brinn was originally from Seattle but has lived in Australia with her husband for the past 5 years. She is great. She let us tour aournd Sydney for a few hours by ourselves while we waited to get checked in. It was at this time that Lauren and I realized why this hotel seemed so wierd. I mean who has to pay from linen and towels? And why are the rooms with bunkbeds? Well, duh, the 'hotel' which is called YHA, is really a hostel (perhaps Youth Hostel association?) Now it makes sense! For being a hostel it is wonderful! We really thought it was a hotel at first. I'm actually writing on one of theim many computers which is fully equibed with a webcam and all. Incredible. After we got checked in we were finally allowed to take showers. It was glourius. LoL.
Lauren, Brinn and I then went to the Sydney tower to get a full view of the city and take pictures. Beautiful. After that we went to a bar/resuturat and had Thai food. It was allright, but I think my tiredness made me less hungary than I thought I would be.
Well, I'm back at the YHA, I'm so tired. Brinn said to try and stay up untill at least 830 to ensure we sleep through the night, but I am so tired and we have wake up to go on a hike int he mountains at 715. Tomrorrow will be great!


BTW I will post some pictures later. Probably when I finally get setteled in Perth. Just look for these pictureless posts to suddenly have pictures in about a week.