So, remember that time before I left for Australia and I kept saying that I would write a ton for my blog? So far, I'd have to say that I've failed that miserably. So here we are (finally) with installment number two of Sydney's Aussie Adventures! I want to go ahead and apologise for taking so long to write a second entry. I had a lot going on during the first bit being here, and then once I settled down enough to write something, I didn't really know where to begin. But here I am, so we'll see how this goes.

Before I start into a sequence of events that have happened, I want to go ahead and post about how weird everything is here, mostly in regards to measurements. They use celsius instead of fahrenheit, kilometres instead of miles, kilojoules instead of calories for food. Their phone numbers are spaced differently, their classes are scheduled very, very differently, their money looks different ($1 and $2 coins are popular. Still getting used to that), their serving sizes are in grams instead of tablespoons, for example, and the list goes on and on and on. Some of it is fairly easy to get used to, but I still have no idea what 20 celsius would feel like. I'll get there eventually, though. Moving on!

I suppose the last time I wrote I was still staying at the hostel Somewhere to Stay (wow that seems so long ago). Nonetheless, my week at the hostel was very similar for each day. I would usually wake up around 8 or 9 in the morning, go into the heart of the city, walk around, eat lunch, walk around and window shop some more, head over to the state library for their free wifi, and then go back to Somewhere to Stay, where I would usually go to sleep by 10. I was very productive that first week; I set up my bank account, got a cell phone, got a bus card (and learned to use public transport. Wow Alabama did not prepare me for that), and found somewhere to live! I got to the hostel on a Saturday and moved into my new house the following Saturday. That within itself was quite an ordeal. I had to go pick up my key at the rental property office, so I packed up my suitcase and left it in the luggage room at Somewhere to Stay so I could come back and pick it up instead of lugging it to the office and THEN to my new house. So that works out fine. I ride the public busses for the first time, which worked alright, picked up my key and signed some paperwork, and then went back to Somewhere to Stay for my luggage. Now, I will generally simplify most of the things in this blog post since I have so much to write about, but this story is worth telling.

I had already worked out a plan of what I was going to do to get myself and all of my things to the house. I was going to take the free Somewhere to Stay shuttle to the cultural centre, walk the .8 mile to the QUT Garden's Point campus (because they have a free shuttle to the Kelvin Grove campus, which is next to my house), and then walk from the Kelvin Grove to the house. Sounds like a wonderful plan, right? Well it made it a little more difficult carrying a humongous suitcase for almost a mile through a very crowded city to get to the campus. But I sucked it up and walked there anyway. So I'm there waiting at that campus to campus bus stop for probably 15 minutes before I decide to look at the time table to see when it's coming and the first words at the top are "Bus 391 Gardens Point to Kelvin Grove. Monday through Friday." Today is Saturday. The bus doesn't run today. So I'm feeling rather stupid, but I walk over into the campus and pull out my laptop to find the nearest bus stop to take me to my house. This is already difficult since I've only used the busses once and I don't know which bus stop will take me to my house. I utilise multiple tools, such as the bus website, google maps, bus maps, etc, and finally find out which bus stop will get me there. I remember that the city has a free loop serves that goes around the heart of the city, and the stop I need is on that route, so I look up where the closest free loop stop is and carry my suitcase over to it. So I once again, stand there for 10 or 15 minutes; no bus. So I again check the time table and realise that this bus also only runs Monday to Friday. You would think I would have learned from my last experience to check the time table first, but apparently it takes awhile to train me. So instead of taking that bus, I just lug my heavy suitcase back the way I came for another .8 miles to the bus stop. Now mind you, wheeling a suitcase sounds like it would be fairly easy, but this thing was a monstrosity in both size and weight and proved rather difficult. But I finally get there and immediately check the time table, see that it runs on Saturday, and that the next bus comes at 3:40. It's now 2:50. I missed the last bus by about 10 minutes, and I now have to wait for 50 minutes for the next bus. This would be fine if I didn't have a huge suitcase and backpack, because I could have just walked around in some nearby shops, but it would prove difficult with all of my things, and I was so afraid I was going to miss the bus. So I wait. For 50 minutes. And finally catch the bus to my stop, where I then have to awkwardly roll my suitcase down an unnaturally steep hill to the house. After literally about 2 or 3 hours, I'm finally home.

The house is quite nice. The rooms are all fully furnished and very cute. My room has a yellow bedspread (my favourite color!) and the kitchen has a red painted fridge, which is great. There are pictures up on my facebook of the house, so feel free to take a look! The house is wood though, which is I suppose bad in some ways. The house doesn't have heating and air conditioning, but thankfully the temperature here in Brisbane is really good for it being winter (generally around 55 to 60 at night and 75 during the day). But with the house being wood, if it does get cold at night, you really feel it. That's only happened one or two nights so far, so I'm grateful for that. Wood is also bad because you can hear almost everything going on in the house. I'm on the bottom floor of a two story house, so I can hear whenever someone is walking around upstairs, if they're talking, etc. I also have someone's room right next to mine, so I can hear whenever they play music or talk. It honestly doesn't really bother me as much about other people making noise, but I have been much more conscious about what noise I'm producing, such as how loud I can play music before it bothers other people in the house, etc. But I really do like it here. There are four other people living in the house, and they're all lovely and the house is only a 10 or 15 minute walk from the campus. I really am very lucky to be staying here.

Well, I think that's all I'll write about for now. I've already had my orientation week and first week of classes, but I feel like I've written so much in this post already and I know that I have a ton to write about my orientation, classes, and housemates, among other things, so I think I'll save that for now and post again in the next couple of days.

I hope everyone at home is doing well! I miss all of you and love you dearly.
:) Until next time.


Love, Sydney

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