Acclimation

I was sitting talking with some of the other Park Lodge residents, and realizing how weird a life I've lived.  I used to complain that I had missed out on "normal" life experiences, because as a teen I didn't experiment with drugs and alcohol like many of my peers, or because I didn't sneak out, or go to crazy parties, or get detentions.  I'd hear all these adults talking about the crazy shit they did in high school, reminiscing the good ol' days.  It took me a while, but I now understand that the reason those people tell stories about their crazy times in high school is because that was the highlight of their lives and they're trying to relive it through their memories.  I am soo incredibly happy that I didn't have a normal upbringing and that people think I'm an odd duck, because the last thing I'd want is to be "normal" and have to relive my past to be happy.  Sure, it's strange that I've moved 25 times in my life, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  I can relate to almost every single other American on my program because I've lived or visited near where they do or wherever they're telling a story about.  When I get home, I'm going to be the weirdo who spent my summer in Australia's winter, rather than going to Europe like everyone else.  And here, I'm the weirdo who feels significantly safer in Sydney than her home town, and has never taken a city bus, not because my city is too small to need to, but because they're too unsafe.  I was talking to one of my co-workers today when I went to go tour the office (still don't start til Thursday) about how I feel a bit more comfortable in Sydney than others in my program simply because New Orleans isn't terribly "American."  He, having just visited New Orleans a few weeks before, said he completely understood, and also told me he and a bunch of his buddies agreed that there were only three cities worth mentioning in America:  New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.


I haven't had any culture shock yet, although there are some slight differences I've been admiring.  The city is impeccably clean, except in the residential areas where the dogs seem to really enjoy taking a shit on the footpaths (aka sidewalks).  There's certainly the hustle and bustle of a city, but people have no problem stopping to give you directions and they return friendly smiles as you pass one another on the street.  The sirens are just slightly off key from ours, almost as if it were battery-operated and said battery was starting to die.  Everyone has these adorable little toddlers that they cart around in strollers identical to what American toddlers use solely for their babydolls.  In the morning, Sydney smells of freshly baked bread everywhere you go, and Asian cuisine dominates the restaurant scene.  There's a surprising number of people wandering around the city during the day hours, yet they in no way appear homeless.  In fact, there aren't many homeless or crazy street people at all.    


I'm staying at this adorable old Victorian house that's been split into 22 rooms and houses a maximum of 50 people.  Currently there's only about 30 of us, and it should stay around that number all winter.  We had a house meeting tonight, so we all got to meet each other.  It was nice, because up until tonight I had met less than a handful of people in the building NOT associated with AustraLearn.  Minutes before I had been talking to Morgan on Facebook about how I was never going to make any friends, because I was going to have to make them off the street and that's far too sketchy and I'd never be able to do it.  I was just being crazy though, because I've made a dozen friends through AustraLearn.  Yes, I came over here to hang out with Australians, but who ever said I can't also have American friends?  And tonight after the meeting I hung out with some Australians staying in the house (who I'd actually already met), another American guy from some other program, an Irish guy who crazy resembles my dad, and this French guy.  Poor Mathieu (the French one) doesn't know much English, and everyone was just rambling along not trying to include him in conversation at all.  Even when they would try to talk to him, they spoke super quickly and with words and phrases very English in nature.  I decided he will be my motivation to do my Rosetta Stone and learn French, and I even asked him if he'd help me practice.  I feel like the French are a very understood people, the vast majority of the French people I've met have been nothing short of wonderful.  Canadians too!  I guess I just like rooting for the underdog haha!


I will now bring you on a virtual tour of my building (albeit, my bedroom which I have yet to unpack and is an utter pigsty!)  It's a three-story house, and I'm on the top floor in #33.  There's a front staircase and a back staircase.  I pretty much just take the back stairs because they're closer to my room and all our common areas (Plus, I've always liked houses with two staircases, and the back stairs excite me because I feel they're more secretive.)  The back stairs are right by the back door, and once you exit the kitchen is an attached room directly to your right, followed by a patio with attached room containing the washer and dryer.  After the patio area there's an unattached room we use as a lounge, which has digital cable, a playstation, some travel books, and three bookshelves full of old VHS tapes.

Kitchen

Patio area & laundry room

Another area of the Patio, and our House Managers Virg (short for Virginia) & her partner Dusan

{Here marriage isn't as big as in America, and often times people will stay in long-term, committed, co-habitating relationships without getting married, so hearing someone speak of their partner doesn't necessarily mean they're gay.  Speaking of which homosexuality is much more widely accepted here too, which is extremely cool.}

 

The lounge

All of this is directly across the hall from my bedroom

I will tack a picture of my room on here as soon as I sort everything out.  I started out in #26 off on an alcove by myself in a teeny room with two twin beds.  There's an AustraLearn girl with allergies to EVERYTHING who brought her twin-sized allergen mattress cover with her from home, but her room (#33) had a double bed.  I told her I'd be willing to switch if she really felt like she'd get sick in her room.  Idiot that I am, I forgot to test out the bed before agreeing to the switch.  So, I went from a super comfortable twin, to a double that I stick to one side of because rolling is impossible due to it's 20-year-old pull-out couch mattress quality :-/  I did buy an egg carton mattress pad (because that's the best quality they had to offer here.  I guess no one has heard of memory foam yet over here), but I'm thinking of folding it in half to add more cushion as it's still not cutting it.

My mattress pad purchase adventure was a rather interesting one.  I had planned on going to Wildlife World to see all the little koalas and kangaroos.  But considering stores close around 5 here (except on Thursdays which is late night shopping day), I wanted to go to get a mattress pad first knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep through another night without one.  I heard they have Target here, so I figured that would be the best, cheap way to get one.  So I looked up the address, found the bus I needed to take, and walked over there.  Then I got really confused about which side of the road I needed to be on, and walked back and forth like three times.  One way listed the correct bus number and time (hint, hint!), but the side I was positive I should have been on didn't.  So, rather than putting two and two together and realizing I'd misread the map and was supposed to be going the opposite way, I decided to walk.  Morgan can tell you better than anyone, that when I'm supposed to be taking a bus but decide to walk instead because I get a "brilliant idea" that it will turn into a day of rushed, confused walking about a city for hours on end without actually getting anywhere.  At least I'm consistent, because that's EXACTLY what happened...again.  I walked for like 2 1/2 hours in the wrong direction, and somehow, by the grace of god, wound up on the major street right off where my house is (but in a completely different area than where I started my unexpected trek).  Needless to say, didn't make it to Wildlife World; hell, didn't even make it to freaking Target!  I got home, had a glass of wine and a slice of cheesecake, and passed out for a few hours before trying for the mattress pad again.  I finally, after getting lost again (it's almost unbelievable, i know!), made it down to the shopping center that had KMart, not even Target, HA!  I did get a winter coat for $30 at another store in the mall, and a scarf that was half off.  Oh, and I bought a purse! ME, a purse!  The girl who has carried the smallest possible wallet and nothing else for two years bought a bag, but only so I'd have something to cart my work stuff with me to and from the office.

My house has a really good location though, and now that I'm starting to finally figure out the bus system it's even more convenient.  It's only like a 10 minute bus ride to anywhere.  There's a lot within walking distance too, including a pastry shop, a pub, a Blockbuster (strangely enough, they're not out of business yet! They have really cool deals several days a week too!), and Surry Hills Village Shopping Center.  Inside the shopping center there's a Cole's grocery store (where I bought my Frooty Rings I've been eating every morning for breakfast, and freaking gourmet tasting Easy Mac!) and a LiquorLand!  Oh, and like a pharmacy, Budget Buster (dollar general) and Post Shop (post office) too.  Maybe today I'll actually make it to Wildlife World!  One day...

Orientation in Cairns

June 1st I got up at 6:30 AM Eastern Time to make my flight from Tampa to Miami, which only took an hour.  I HATE the Miami airport though, and as always my flight from there was delayed (TWICE)!  I finally made it to LAX though, with plenty of time to spare til my 11:30 PM flight to Brisbane, Australia.  There, I met up with some of the other girls doing AustraLearn internships.  Everyone in the program is from America, but all from different states and different universities than me.


Honestly, my five hour flight from Miami to LA seemed shorter than the fourteen hours it took to reach Brisbane!  I watched The Book of Eli, Shutter Island, and Avatar; ate dinner and breakfast; peed about a jillion times; got up and did ridiculous stretches in the aisle even though I didn't see anyone else stretching at all; and slept a good deal.  After the flight, a bunch of the other AustraLearn interns said they only got up twice the whole flight because they felt bad making the other people in their row get up.  I am SOO glad that I had an aisle seat and was able to move around as much as I wanted.


From Brisbane, we went through customs, which was no biggie.  Thankfully, they didn't confiscate the Girl Scout cookies my mom gave me for the trip!  I would have cried!  They had these adorable little beagle looking hound dogs as their drug dogs, and it was soo cute because they'd hop up on people to sniff their back packs and stuff!  I know they have incredible noses, but it was just funny to see such a tiny, adorable dog trying to look intimidating.  :) Anyway, then I hopped on a plane to Cairns, which is where our orientation was before all the interns flew off to their separate internship locations.


So, I landed in Australia at 6:20 AM on Thursday, June 3rd!  I was in the air for all of June 2nd..I have yet to calculate how long I was actually awake before getting to sleep (in an actual bed for more than a few hours at a time), but I believe it was some horrendous amount of time.  Cairns is very far north on the continent, so it is warm year round and has a very tropical climate.  Honestly, it felt just like New Orleans, maybe a bit more humid if that's possible.  The majority of the other interns are from up north, so they were all melting.  But now that I'm in Sydney and it's like 13 degrees Celsius (approx. 56 F) I'm freezin' my little tail off, and they all think that it's perfect weather.

We stayed at this cute little hostel called the Bohemia Resort.  It had a little bar area with a bunch of tables right by a really nice pool and hot tub, that I regrettably didn't use.  The rooms had bunk beds, and I roomed with four of the nine other girls who have Sydney internships.  So, from the airport our internship leader, Russell, picked us up and brought us to the Bohemia.  I swear, I have never seen so many people so happy to shower.  We all felt disgusting from our two days of traveling, and therefore thoroughly enjoyed our icy showers in nasty communal showers.  We did a couple hours of orientation, where Russell covered different cultural issues and whatnot.  Afterwards, we walked down to Blue Sky Brewery where AustraLearn bought us dinner.  After that, we all went back to the Bohemia, and the vast majority of us were asleep by 8 PM! haha  I honestly don't think I had jetlag at all, I was just sleepy from having not slept more than a few hours while sitting up in days!!

It worked out alright though, because we had to be up at six for the next days activities.  I had never been so ready to get up at 6 AM in my life.  It was actually pretty funny, because around three in the morning I woke up and just fidgeted around in bed for a while trying to get tired.  I heard all the other girls doing the same, as we had already gotten a full night's rest.  We had continental breakfast at the resort before getting on a bus headed towards the marina.  Funny thing, they served some version of Australian spaghettios for breakfast...I didn't try them but thought it was pretty hilarious that that's a breakfast food over here.


We boarded the Passion of Paradise II bright and early and headed out to Michaelmas Cay to do some snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.  Michaelmas Cay is protected land for these godawful nasty birds that like to live there, so the part of the beach humans are allowed on is very minimal.  They have most of it roped off, and the consequence for crossing said rope is a $7,500 fine.  There were so many thousands of birds that someone couldn't have paid me $7,500 to stand in the midst of them all.  Yuck!

I bought an underwater disposable camera, so as soon as I find a place to develop the film I'll post pictures from snorkeling.  I really enjoyed the snorkeling, but it certainly took a while for me to comprehend breathing underwater worked and was okay!  The first time I stuck my head in and started to take a breath I freaked out too much and pulled my head right back up. lol After a few minutes though I was fluttering all over near the beach.  There were so many types of coral.  And these MASSIVE clams that I believe the crew members said were like 100 years old!  I even saw an adorable little stingray about the size of a dinner plate.  He was sand-colored and had little blue dots all over him.  My friend Marcy (who goes to Marshall University in Huntington, WV where I went to middle school---small world!) and I tried to follow him, but he wasn't too keen on that idea and quickly lost us.

I saw bunches of little Nemo's but no Dory's.  There were these cool green and purple metallic rainbowy fish.  And I swam with a school of silver fish just like the ones in Finding Nemo that formed funny shapes to cheer up Dory when Marlin tried to ditch her.  And yes, I realize I'm a huge dork for referencing Finding Nemo so much but I can't help it, so brace yourself for more over the next few weeks! lol

You didn't have to be certified to go scuba diving, and they said they'd let you try it out near the surface for ten minutes for free.  I figured I'm in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef so why not!  I didn't want to later regret having not done it.  So, I strapped on all the gear and plopped down in the water.  They had two ropes tied to the boat, one at the surface and another about one meter deep.  They had us stick our faces in and get used to breathing for a while at the surface, before pulling us down to the lower rope.  After a couple minutes they signaled to ask us if we were ready to go down for the dive.  I signaled back a "hell no!"...Well they didn't exactly teach us that sign, but I think what I made up got the point across pretty well, because the instructor came up to the surface with me.  She asked me why I didn't want to go, and I explained that I was panicking just there on the ropes and that the breathing underwater thing just wasn't flying with me.  She asked if I'd be willing to swim out near the surface to have more time to get comfortable, so I complied.  I completed the whole dive with the instructor and two other unexperienced divers.  Those two both swam off on their own (still following the instructor, but no longer arm-in-arm) after a few minutes.  The dive leader kept signaling at me to ask if I wanted to swim independently too, and I just kept staring at her with my wide, terrified eyes vigorously shaking my head "no."  I clung to that woman about the same as I did to my mom when she first brought me in the deep end of the pool to try to make me swim for the first time.  I was petrified the ENTIRE dive, but I did see some cool things.  My favorite part was playing with the spaghetti-looking coral that when touched pulls away from you.  So that was my first and last dive experience; definitely not my thing, but I'm glad I stuck with it through the whole dive.

We went to a second snorkel location, but it was right after my dive and it was in the middle of the ocean rather than off of a beach..PLUS the waves were getting much more choppy, so I decided to sit the second round out.  A few other girls did too, and we were just sitting at a table inside the boat's "saloon" talking.  As we were at a stand still, the skipper---who, I kid you not, was named Popeye---came to hang out with us and chat for a bit. After a while he even offered us drinks on the house.  So I got a Chardonnay, and people weren't kidding..Australian wine is really good!  (FYI, the drinking age in Australia is 18, not 21, so this was completely legal.)  Also, it was a good thing we stayed inside because we all got to see a view that none of the snorkelers were able to enjoy:

 

(ewww)

We were on the boat from 8 AM til 5 PM and despite being in Australia's ozoneless sun all day long, I managed to escape with absolutely no sunburn!!  Operation "tan before leaving the US for a bit more protection" with the help of my 100+ SPF is definitely working!  We got to shower before going to our second half of orientation, and thank goodness because my hair was matted to my head.  A bunch of people went out after dinner but about 8 of us just went back to the Bohemia.  I wanted to be well rested before my flight the next day and didn't feel comfortable having more than one drink until I figured out how to stay hydrated (I swear I've been dehydrated ever since I left the States; it's hard to drink as much water as is necessary!!), so I went home.  I did stay up til about 10 or 10:30 though which was much less pathetic than the night before.

Check-out was at 10 AM, and right after us Sydney-going folk hopped on a Maxi-Taxi (that's what they call the van cab's over here) to the airport to catch our flight.  We got to watch Alice and Wonderland on the plane and they served us lunch even though it was only a 2 1/2 hour flight!  Stupid American Airlines doesn't even give you a free peanut or pretzel anymore!  Ironically enough, the penne pasta and roasted veggies with an orange/pineapple/passionfruit popsicle for dessert was the best meal I've had since being in Australia.  The food isn't bad; it's actually really similar to American food.  It's a lot of the same dishes, they just taste different.  I think my tummy is going to take a while to adjust to it, because I've had a bunch of tummy-aches since I've been here.  Oh, and there "tomato sauce" (aka ketchup) is not so great :( Oh well, I'm sure I'll find yummy stuff soon; I've just been spoiled by New Orleans' out-of-this-world cuisine.  Guess you can't have cool stuff like the Great Barrier Reef AND the world's best food all in the same country.


So now I'm in chilly Sydney.  I guess it's been raining almost every day lately, but the locals are saying it should clear up for a while soon.  I'm still not sure if they're just saying that so we don't get scared off lol.  The house we're staying in is pretty cool, but I'll save all that info for the next post, as this one's getting awfully long and it's almost 1 AM here and I'm zonked!


Goodnight all!  Oh, and Saturday, June 5th was a good day, so enjoy it.  And let me know if you need anymore advice from the future ;)