After today I can tell you pretty confidently that I am done with flying for the next 6 months. It was a total of 26 hrs of traveling for the day as well as an 18 hour time change (I basically just skipped valentines day...) and the longest flight of over 15 hours. Whew! It was fun while it lasted but I can honestly tell you now that I am glad it's over. It has finally start to hit me that I a IN AUSTRALIA being surrounded by Aussie accents and fantastic scenery! ...As well as the rather sticky heat...
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| Waiting in line on the Jetway in Sydney |
I was met at the Townsville airport by a rather friendly representative of JCU who gave me the virtual tour of Townsville as we were driving through dropping other people off on the way to where I will be staying. I will tell you now that Townsville is GORGEOUS! A lot of the town by "the Strand" (more or less the water front) are old colonial buildings that have been mostly revamped and restored. As you get further inland stuff becomes newer since that's the way the town is growing but a lot the philosophy here is to build around the natural environment. Meaning, there are lots of trees around!
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| See ya' Sydney! |
It was a bit of a run around trying to find the student lodge I will be staying at but we finally did and I got to start getting myself all settled into my new room. There are 11 students here this year, 3 boys and 8 girls. Everyone is super friendly, especially my roommate Blessing. I think we are going to be really good friends :). We all have our own rooms but share a door with one other person (which we all just leave open during the day anyways) so I can basically have a conversation with Blessing through the wall or walk three steps to her curtained doorway and sit and have a chat. I love it already!
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| Almost to Townsville! The whole city is surrounded on three side by mountains and hills like these. |
One of the boys, Aiden, took me into town to the shopping center (about 3 minutes down the road) to gather some staple groceries and then took me to a mobile phone booth to get a Sim card for my phone so I can call in country. I had a really hard time figuring out how to activate the thing when I got home and by the end had 4 or 5 of my housemates in there trying to figure it out! I sure hope I figured it out and did it right!
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| Welcome to your new home for the next 6 months :) |
I finished unpacking pretty early and sat in Blessings doorway and got to know here a little more while she unpacked her own room. She is originally from Africa but has lived in Australia for about 5 years and so has the Aussie accent. I started getting really tired around 6:00 and the world started spinning to I decided to take a short "nap." Didn't even wake up till 3:00 am. Whoops! It may take a while to get over this jet lag... But, I did notice when getting up in the middle of the night that there are TONS of birds and other creatures around at night! I could hear so many different calls coming in through my open screen window! Dad, you would go crazy here :).
Aussie term of the day: "You alright?" is a sort of greeting and can mean "How can I help you?"
Note, the correct response is not "I'm fine thank you. ...Do... do I look distraught?"
This will be fun to follow, Julia. Man, Australia is so big! I checked, my friend in Brisbane would be a 14 hour drive! Although there's only six states but is slightly larger than the '49 states' (minus Alaska) with just 10% of the population-lots of open area as you're discovering.
ReplyDeleteHave fun 'relearning' English as well! I'd hate to try and drive down there also.