My First Week in Australia

G'Day Mates...

Well, it really happened. I'm really in Oz. It's true. It took a good amount of time for me to get interweb acces, but here I am, bein' all bloggy. This is just an opportunity for me to make a feeble attempt to verbalize the stuff I see. My vocabulary can barely do any of it any justice, but some of you might want to read something instead of doing your jobs.

I flew out of Hartford last I have no idea what day, landed in Dallas and met two people right away. I then took off from Dallas to LA with a lady pilot... first time for everything. We ate dinner in LAX and played Catchphrase in the gate's waiting area as we met each other. We then took off from LA to Brisbane. I took my first Tylenol PM too, slept for 11 and a half hours of my 13 hour flight, woke up, caught the tail end of The Hangover and before I knew it I was down under, but certainly not done flying. At baggage claim, my suitcase was one of the first ones to come up, but naturally I didn't notice it until everyone else was already gone. Why? because in my travels, the handle thingy with the wheels had come off, so I now had to carry my 50 pound suitcase, rather than pulling it, my forearms are still sore and as many of you know, I have very active sweat glands. Coupled with Australia's heat, my shirt was soaking in about 45 seconds. I somehow made it through and got onto my final flight of the day to Cairns (still have no clue how to pronounce it).

We met our introduction guides as soon as we landed and they brought us to the hostel we were going to be staying in for the next three days. It was a lot nicer than we expected, which was pretty sweet. We all got into the pool and enjoyed our first authentic Aussie BBQ. We had some time to settle in and then we were off to a hotel for our first information session followed by a dinner that had already been paid for. We started to try some beers too, they're pretty good. It was still a pretty early night as we were terribly jet-lagged.

The next day we went to The RainForeStation which was awesome. We spooned kangaroos, learned how to throw a boomerang, watched the natives play the dijereedoo (that weird pipe that you hear in the Outback commercials), learned some spear-throwing techniques, and got pictures holding koala bears, which may or may not be the worst smelling animals on earth. Those little guys get to sleep 20 hours a day too, sweet life. I saw some Dingoes too, I think that might be the missing gene in Duchess' ancestral confusion. We also got to go on an army duck tour through the woods and saw some weirdo trees and birds. I felt like we were in a Jurassic Park. We got back and were done with everything we had to do by 4, so we took the opportunity to go out in Cairns. Very club scene... lot of lights, felt like I was in a screen saver. Different, but fun for sure. Cairns is much like Cancun, and since I've never been to Cancun, I have the credentials to say so. We started calling it Cairnscun.

Saturday was our big day, we got to go to the Great Barrier Reef. No pictures I could have taken would ever be able to explain what I saw. Truly unreal. We got to snorkel all day, and we could go scuba diving for a little extra charge. Since it is the Great Barrier Reef and not the Adequate Barrier Reef... carpe diem. Myself, my friend Iain, and two Belgian girls went down with our instructor. We didn't see much wildlife, but Iain and I couldn't pass on the opportunity to perform the robot on the floor of the Great Barrier Reef. We did however see a Nemo, which was pretty awesome. After that the boat took us to another location where we could snorkel or scuba again, we just snorkeled which was equally as awesome. We returned around five, and headed out again since all was had to do the next day was head to school.

Sunday (yesterday) we drove back to the Cairns airport so we could fly back to Brisbane. Once we landed, we drove a little over an hour until we finally arrived to Bond University campus. Probably one of the most awesome looking places of all time ever. My room looks exactly like a Holiday Inn Express room. Two beds, bathroom, and a balcony. The gym is two floors below me, the pool is a 20 second walk from my dorm room, and the beach is a ten minute drive. Today we took care of some logistical campus itinerary items that we needed to do. I am still roommateless at the moment, so we will see how that pans out.

Here is some weird odds and ends information about Australia that I never knew unti I got here, so maybe you might find them interesting as well...
-Guys aren't supposed to go out with open-toed shoes on. Who knew? I thought Australia would have been a pioneer in that department.
-Australian language is really hard to understand, not as hard as Spanish, but definitely not what any of us are used to.
-The Great Barrier Reef smans what is equivalent to the distance between Seattle and Los Angeles.
-There I am, there is no o-zone layer, so the sun is about 4 times as intense as anywhere else, perfect for me, huh?
-They drive on the other side of the car, other side of the road.
-The money is colored and looks like its from Monopoly.
-Everything is in kilo-whatevers, naturally.

Thanks for reading, I will have more updates periodically. I am having a great time so far, but I do miss home. Feel free to comment and let me know what's going on. I am also on skype, I don't have a webcam yet, but I can still talk like we're on the phone if anyone is into that. I love you all, don't miss me too much! More to come... Pictures as well...

-Brendan/Sully/Dangy/Buddha

Here's a video we saw for my closing remarks, something to make you feel a little more comfortable, Ma...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0G1EvR9g2w