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Published: November 8th 2007
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Yay!! I have landed, and am getting settled in Sydney, Australia, after one of the most hellish flights I've had to deal with. I left Ann Arbor on the morning of Nov. 3rd, and landed in Sydney in the afternoon of Nov. 5th slightly more frazzled, and greasy than when I left. Here are the highlights of my two days of flying:
*After spending 2 hours in a check-in line at LAX, having a small girl projectile vomit less than 2 feet from me, and then continuing to watch as aiport employees failed to clean up the mess, and numerous unuspecting people walked through pile of said vomit.
*Passing through security and realizing that the wing my gate was in had no food other than a hotdog stand and a candy counter-looks like my eating is off to a healthy start!!
*Being squashed next to a large german man wearing lederhosen for my 10 hour cross-pacific flight who fell asleep with his right arm basically in my lap.
*Realizing that people in Fiji may single-handedly be furthering Celene Dion's career-during my 4 hour layover in the Fiji Airport, they played her greatest hits CD on repeat the ENTIRE TIME
Beach Overlook
So happy to be in Australia! But, after all of that, I landed in Sydney, and got my luggage and made it through customs in less than 20 minutes. My friend Dan (Danielle) who lives in Sydney, was there to pick me up, as well as my friend Sarah Mac from Scotland, who had flown in earlier that morning. After the obligatory girly screaming and jumping around, we went back to Dan's house, which is absolutly gorgeous, and looks out over a harbor (not the main Nemo harbor), and is about 30 minutes from the downtown.
This whole week has been rainy, which has been a major bummer. The first day, we just hung out around the house, getting over jet-lag, and went to the mall and saw a movie. Adjusting to a 16 hour time difference has been pretty rough, I have been here 3 days and have yet to stay awake past 9 pm, but I think I'm on the right track so far.
Yesterday Sarah and I went on a massive walking tour of the city. We took a bus from Dan's house to downtown, and just walked for hours. We walked all around the central business district, and
Sydney Harbor
The Opera House is in the background! as we were passing past a large food court, we decided to stop in for lunch. As we're walking in I hear Sarah shriek, and I look up and see VJ, one of our friends from a summer at camp!! It turns out that VJ works in the building above the food court we were eating at-soooo random! So i've been in Australia for less than 48 hours when I had my first random run in, so I can't wait to see whats to come. We had lunch w/ VJ, and then continued walking around. We went to the Rocks, which is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Sydney and has a ton of adorable little cafes and pubs, and then walked up a ridiculously steep hill to cross the harbor bridge! I attached some pics from the bridge, as you can tell it was crazy windy up at the top! There was a great view of the Sydney Opera house from up there-its crazy to think that just three years ago Nemo was navigating his way through these same waters!! 😊 After walking across the bridge, we went to explore the Sydney Aquarium, which is in Darling Harbor. Darling
Harbor is a super cute area of shops, restaurants, cafes, and museums all along a cobbled harbor area, I fell in love with the area.
As many of you from the states may know, last season's of Real World was filmed in Sydney, and I knew their house was somewhere in Darling Harbor and was determined to find it. After dragging Sarah around for about an hour, I finally caved and asked someone who looked at me like I was a fool, but pointed me in the right direction. We found it! The season was filmed a couple of months ago so it looks pretty abandoned right now, but the walkway and address are still up. The location was absolutly ridiculous,I can't believe a house that amazing was wasted on idiots like Trisha and Parisa. (BTW can someone email me updates about the new girl in the house?!)
After that, we were pretty pooped, and had a coffee while waiting to meet up w/ Sarah's two friends from Scotland. Her two friends had gone on a "6 month" backpacking trip to Sydney, and had liked it so much that they had decided to stay, had rented apartments,
and are now in the process of applying for thier 4 year work visas! (Don't worry mom, my flight out is already booked) We had a lovely dinner with them at a Spanish Tapas place, had a drink, and spent the night in their apt (or flat, as they all refer to it). Listening to 3 Scots talk fast was crazy, I had to nod and smile a lot, but it was still a ton of fun. I made it till 9:45 that night, so theres my life on the wild side for this week.
So theres the start of my trip so far! I'm going to attempt to update once a week if possible. I think there's a link on the bottom of the page where you can subscribe to this, so you will get an email alert when I update.
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Jill Siebers
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First snow Sarkozy getting cozy MIT suing Frank Gehry for leaks Hillary's husband at the Detroit Opera House Lars and the Real Girl So glad you arrived safely. xxxxxxxoo, j