First Experiences

We made it! We are now officially Australian residents who live in a dorm room, which consists of a bed the size of our last shower, a desk with an old school phone on it, and a dresser. We are currently organizing our small room at 9:03 pm our time. This translates to 2:03 am for our bodies.

We arrived with 240 lbs of luggage, sweaty bodies (it’s muggy here), swelled feet, literally my feet still feel and sort of look like stubs attached to calves, and a friendly face who snagged up a 50 pound bag and guided us to his sweet right hand drive Subaru. Rowan picked us up from the airport and drove us to this small, quaint sub-sect university of Sydney aka U – Syd. The abbreviations are wild for instance a truck is called a ulli (you-lee), for utility vehicle. The accents aren’t bad though and the people have proved to be very kind and somewhat helpful. We did a lot on our first day here. We made it to Woolworths which is the closest ok grocery store. It took about 44 minutes. First we had to catch a bus then a train then we got off that one and got on another and a short walk got us to a store. The way home was similar.

The first lizard I saw scared me so much I keep looking for it whenever I enter a room or hear a noise, which is very often. I was walking down a dark hall relaxed and relishing a calm moment when surprise! A lizard half crawling half slithering races away from my feet to the dark corner of the hall. My heart was pounding when I jumped and held in a scream. Evelyn saw her first spider when picking up her coat, it was on it. I think I jumped as high as her because I thought it was the lizard.

So far we’re enjoying our stay, it’s been pleasant and exciting. The housing market is supposedly very competitive- we talked to a guy who gave us some good information on getting a place. Apparently you need references from people who live here so we’ll be working on that today.

C