Well hello everyone!

Here it is: My first blog post from Australia. It's currently 4:02 PM (1:02AM in the US) and I'm siting at the State Library of Queensland using their free wifi. I'm temporarily living at Somewhere To Stay, the hostel I have booked until I can find a more permanent living arrangement. It's been an interesting time traveling here thus far, so I suppose that'll be the bulk of this post. I first want to go ahead and preface that this blog is not only for my friends and family back home to know what's going on, but it's also for me. As many of you know, I have a pretty terrible memory, so I'm planning on posting here with more detail than you guys probably want. I also assume I will write a bunch in the beginning while everything is feeling so new, but that it will probably start to get shorter along the way. Feel free to skip over the long parts, and be patient as I chronicle this adventure!

if you want to skip this part entirely, feel free.
it's about my time in the airport/airplanes.
actual Australia times begin below.



Leaving was definitely hard. Becca, Tony, Mrs. B, Lexie, and my parents said goodbye to me at the airport. I, being the cryer that I am, almost cried as I hugged my parents goodbye and walked away, but I was still excited to be traveling. While waiting for my flight from Huntsville to Chicago (which would then become Chicago to LA, LA to Sydney, and Sydney to Brisbane), I learned that my flight was going to be delayed for about 45 minutes to an hour because "the plane might have hit a bird. We just need to check and run some routine maintenance". This would have been fine if I didn't have a layover time for my connecting flight of only one hour. So I'm of course silently freaking out a bit as the minutes tick by. Finally someone tells me that they're going to switch my flight from United Airlines to American Airlines, which will instead take me from Huntsville to Dallas, then Dallas to LA, where I can make my original LA to Sydney flight. This was good because a) I didn't have to freak out anymore and b) the flight time was actually cut by a few hours. So that flight goes fine. Dallas airport is pretty straightforward, I get to my connecting gate pretty easily (though P.S. if you think having an hour and a half layover means you have time to get to your flight and then find somewhere to eat dinner, think again). So I get on that flight, and a conversation starts between the myself and the man next to me, where I learn that he lived in Brisbane for most of his life. What the heck. First of all, we're flying from Dallas to LA. It's not like I'm already in Australia and this happens. But nonetheless, I probably talk to him for a good hour and a half about Brisbane and other similarly related stuff. Another successful flight.
So then I get to LA. The LAX airport is already huge, but because my flight was switched to American Airlines and my next flight is through United, I have to switch buildings. So I have to go out of security for American Airlines, go outside and walk to another build, then go back through security with United Airlines. I already spent way too much time trying to find out where to go (I was nervous to go out of security in case that was wrong) and then had to go through security again, so I was afraid I was going to be late. I thankfully got there right on time (around 9:45 there, 11:45 in Huntsville), though I still didn't have time for dinner. So I go up for them to scan my ticket and it beeps because something is wrong. I'm not really sure what ends up being wrong, but they give me another ticket so thank goodness all problems were avoided there. I was originally supposed to have an aisle seat so I could get up and walk around and go to the bathroom without disturbing anyone, but my new ticket gave me a window seat. I was at first kind of disappointed about that because the big perk is seeing out the window. But it was night. And we were flying over an ocean. Aka only darkness. I sat next to an Asian woman from Australia and her toddler aged son, which was alright. She was really sweet and her child was pretty well behaved. But anyway, the 14 hour flight went well. The window seat ended up working out great because I could lean on it. I was originally surprised because I was under the impression that for my international flight, each seat would have its own little screen to play games on and watch TV and movies. Apparently, that's only in Business and First Class, whereas I was in Economy. That was a bit of a letdown, but oh well. Here's how my flight went:
Sat around until they served dinner (thank God) after an hour into the flight.
Ate the dinner.
Slept for about 6 hours.
Woke up and stared at the TV with no sound for about 45 minutes.
Slept for another 3 or 4 hours.
Chatted with Asian looking woman until landing.
Overall, much much better than I was expecting. When you initially think of a14 hour flight, you pretty much picture death, but it was okay.
Landing in Sydney was pretty exciting because.. well, it was Australia. I couldn't see much because it was 6 in the morning there and still dark, but exciting nonetheless. It was easy to get to my flight to Brisbane, and that flight was only an hour and fairly uneventful.



Here begins where I actually land in Brisbane
Start reading here if you skipped over the travel section

I was picked up at the airport by an older Australian man with a great accent. The drive to the hostel was extremely weird because they drive on the opposite side of the street and the steering wheel is on the other side of the car. Overall, I felt like we were about to turn into oncoming traffic for most of the ride. But I was very wide-eyed while looking around at the city during the drive. Brisbane is much, much bigger than Huntsville or Tuscaloosa, so it was already different because of that. But I got to the hostel at like 10 in the morning or so. I'm sharing a room with three other people. One of them is Jona(s? I honestly don't know which one it is), a boy from Denmark. I only met him once and all I know is that he slams the door when he leaves ha. Then there's Helen from France. She's nice and really expressive. Then there's Marcel, a boy from Germany. He's pretty awesome. He's been really great at talking to me and asking me questions, and when other people are around, he'll introduce me to everyone which is great. To get an idea of how well we get along, the first music question he asked was "Do you like the Mumford & Sons?" We've already talked about sharing music in the next couple of days.
But anyways, when I got there I talked to Marcel for a bit, then met Helen. Helen asked me if I wanted to go to the weekly Farmer's Market with her, and I said yes because it was a good way to walk in the city a bit and get more comfortable with one of my roommates. It was in a park nearby with stalls of food and clothes and lots of fruit and veggies and jewelry and lots of things. Then I came home and sat around with Helen and Marcel and some other people they knew at the tables outside at the Hostel and just generally hung out for awhile. I started to feel a little homesick, so I went back to my room for awhile and had some sad times which was to be expected. But then I went to go get some blankets from the main office, which is next to the entertainment room that has a TV and video games and other similar things and some guy asked if I wanted to play Mario Kart with him, so I did. I felt a lot better after that, especially because everyone there is very nice. I spent the remainder of my first night reading a little, watching an episode of Bones, and generally struggling to stay awake. I was determined to stay up until at least 9:30 or 10 PM so that I could get on a relatively normal sleep schedule. I thankfully slept until the morning and refused to get out of bed until about 10:30. Thankfully the jetlag hasn't affected me much in that sense, though my eating pattern is severely messed up right now. I'm sure things will all balance out pretty soon and I'll explore and have just a grand old time!

That's all I have for now, but it's still early on and I'm sure I'll have lots more to tell pretty soon!

Love, Sydney