I come from a land down under

Hi friends and family! After the longest trip of my life I am in Canberra, Australia! It is 8:45pm on Sunday July the 12th and a complete miracle that I am still awake! This is probably going to be pretty long to get my trip up to speed!

It started out a little bumpy from Knoxville to Atlanta, but the 14 hours from LA to Sydney wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Yes it was pretty painfully long, but I took some Drammamine and slept for almost 9 hours off and on (including through takeoff)! Ps: thanks mom for the eye mask! It has probably been my favorite thing to have along! I sat beside nice people on all 3 flights, including a mom and dad who were sending their daughter off to Sydney for school!

Arriving in Sydney at 6:30 am was a bit overwhelming with customs lines, exchanging money and realizing that I was in a foreign city all by myself. After a call to let mom and dad know I had arrived I set off to find my hostel! I waited 30 minutes and decided the shuttle I was supposed to ride was not coming, and so I proceeded to get ripped off by a cab. Nice!

I wasn't supposed to be able to check in until noon, but I was able to go ahead and go to my room when I got there! I shared a dorm-style room with 5 other girls from around the world who each had a fun, unique story of how they came to be in Sydney. And somehow in the first maybe 20 minutes of me being there, I lost my swipe card to my room. I must have looked pretty sleepy and pathetic because the reception desk gave me a new one at no charge. A new kind of Southern hospitality!

A nap and a shower later I walked all the way down Pitt Street to the Sydney Harbour! Even though I have seen hundreds of photos, the Opera House really is fantastic. I am glad I had a day to see that all by myself in case I don't get to spend a lot of time on the waterfront later. I walked all around Cicular Quay (that's Key!), found a cupcake bakery, listened to some digeridoos, and talked with some people in the Sydney Centre Mall who asked me if I was from Canada. (eh?) That's a new one.

Funnies part of my day in Sydney: literally laughing out loud when I went into a Lolly (candy) Shop and saw the selection of "US Candy." There were things on display including Reese's peanut butter, Hershey's strawberry syrup , a 3-pound tub of Crisco for $23 and a box of PopTarts for (get ready, Bethany) 15 bucks!

I ended up going to bed at 7:30 because I could not make myself walk around any longer, and I had an 8:15am flight to Canberra. Because of this, I woke up this morning at 3 am, dang body clock! The flight to Canberra from Sydney this morning was horrific; LOTS of headwind and turbulence. I can't even think about it without getting nauseous. I felt terrible for the nice people who received me from UC at the airport because they waited an hour for me to feel better.

Arriving on campus was pretty anticlimactic, mainly because current students are still on break for another week and the place was deserted. I also felt pretty bad for the guy who checked me into my room. He was so helpful and accomodating to questions but I was so out of it and all I could think about was lying down. After he left was when I began to feel some of the expected shock. I tried and tried to get in touch with my parents, but my room phone is crazy and I didn't feel like going to find a pay phone. I was kind of a mess for a few hours before deciding to leave my grouchy mood behind and go check out the Belconnen Mall in the City Centre!

It's about a 10-ish minute walk from Old Ressie (my dorm!) so I took my backpack and a tote bag to bring back anything I bought. I really wish I could have been on the outside looking in on me try to navigate around this mall with a gimpy trolley (shopping cart) and staring up at all these stores I have never seen before. I had been forewarned about things being expensive, but I could not believe how outrageous essentials were. I really only needed sheets. a towel, a pillow and some food to get me through this week, but this task somehow took me about 2 hours to complete. Yeesh. Getting it all back to my room was pretty funny; I felt so homeless carrying all my bags down the sidewalk and out of the car park (parking garage).

After tossing my new sheets and towel in the laundry I started running into people outside! Human contact-hooray! I met Joel, who is a first year and lives on my floor who introduced me to Ayla, an exchange student from Toronto! My first friend! He then intoduced me to Bek, who also lives on G-Bot (that's the bottom floor of Block G). She has absolutley turned my day around. First, she lets me borrow a pot to make my soup in, and we sat and ate together and talked for almost 2 hours! She asked me so many questions about America, like why do we exactly celebrate Thanksgiving? And let me tell you, when you are explaining it to someone who doesn't celebrate the turkey holiday it sounds a bit weird. We talked about American tv and sang the songs from the Australian series Summer Heights High. Sometime this week after Orientation stuff she is going to take me on a drive around the city and into Civic! She also works at a cafe nearby and says I may be able to work there with her, win!

For today starting out so horribly it has turned itself around quite nicely and I'm not asking myself what the heck am I doing here (for now). And I made a friend or two!!!!! No worries mate!

I'm going to try and make it at least another hour so I can have sort of start to get on schedule, but we'll see...? Uni orientation begins in the morning! Very excited to meet all the other exchange students, so I don't feel like such a foreign kid:)