Pre-Trip and Arrival

Alright! Here I am in Adelaide, using Eli's computer, as Tim's is broken and I've never had a laptop. Tim and I have been here since the 24th and it is now the 27th. Luckily, we went the nice way for jet lag, and I have avoided feeling like tired crap, hooray! Before we got here, we went on a side trip to Vancouver, Seattle, and San Fransisco. That lasted from the 15th-22nd (Yes we lost a day in transit.) In Vancouver, we stayed at Tim's friend Chris' house, and left our massive overseas bags there, thank goodness. We had a goodbye drink at the nearby pub, and a few of both Tim and my friends came, and it was nice to have everyone together. The next day we set off for Seattle on the bus, and Tim's first experience with an American was unfortunately one working for US customs, so it was not very nice (my customers person was fine, actually.) In Seattle, our hostel was like 2 doors down from Pike Place Market, so needless to say I went to Starbucks (it wasn't any better than other Starbucks, but it was good still.) We went on several walks around the waterfront and Pioneer/Union Square, but unfortunately, Seattle is VERY lame and absolutely everything was closed before or at 5pm. There was absolutely nothing to do. We did get free dinner from the hostel though, and it was surprisingly delicious. The next day we went to the Experience Music Project as well as the Science Fiction Museum. I almost died over Kurt Cobain's Guitar, and Tim stole disallowed photos of the hoverboard from Back to the Future. We were bother very excited. It also happened to be this Bite of Seattle event while we were there, so it was extremely busy and was a neat little festival with live music and tasty food vendors, it was very cool timing. Tim has a thing for trains, for those who don't know, so we took the monorail back to the hostel, and it was all very exciting :) I started feeling like I had a cold though, so we took a couple more walks but I was absolutely exhausted so Tim went out on his own and I happily sat around the hostel writing and napping.

The next day we head out to the airport and met a horrible planning disaster. Everyone at the hostel had said to be there 1 hour to 45 minutes before a domestic flight, however, United, our airline, had about 8 flights in 4 hours, so the lineup was CHAOS, and the only reason we made our flight, is because it was delayed an HOUR. Even then we only had time to get our food at the cafe to go, and ate part of it on the plane. We arrived to San Fran, and took the BART to our couch surfing hosts' beautiful home. It had high ceilings, huge windows, and a taco truck right outside. Chris, our host, was super nice, and knew basically everything we could ever even imagine needing to know in SF. We left for an explore and some tacos from the truck (which were AMAZING) and when we came back, the German girls (Jana and Kai [sp]) were just on their way. They had booked the couch first, but Chris figured we looked the type who would be okay with a floor sleep, and we definitely were. That night we all got together and played drinking games and got to know each other, it was really fun, but Tim was definitely the loser, so the next morning (I was getting to the worst part of my cold right about this time) we took quite a while to get lucid enough to do anything. We ended up walking to Haight-Ashbury, bussing to the Golden Gate, then walking up the back side of Lombard Street (I have to tell you, I'm quite certain the back side is much steeper and angrier than the famous curvy front, and I thought I might die.) After this, we went back to the house, and I cooked up some dinner, we watched a movie with Chris and the girls, and then went to bed. The next day, we wandered around more, and had some burritos before heading back to the airport. We arrived painfully earlier out of fear from the Seattle fiasco, and got through security in record time. We did a lot of sitting. After the flight, it was quite late, so we went straight to the hostel, grabbed some dinner from Subway across the street, since it's the ONLY business open for miles, and go to bed. We wake up painfully early, walk to the bus pickup, bus back to Van, pick up our bags, an head to the airport. We've arrived before even the staff do so we can't check in, but we have some amazing pizza, and by the time that's done we check in and do some duty free shopping. Then its on to our 13 hour flight.... unfortunately, the but runway was closed for maintenance, and since its the only one for the weight class of our plane, we had to wait 2 hours while they unloaded 4 tons of cargo from our plane so we would be light enough to take off from another runway. Once we got to Auckland, we had missed our flight by 20 minutes, but we were on the same airline and several other connection had been missed as well, so they delayed all the flights, and we RAN across the airport to catch our flight, while everyone on that plane who'd been waiting glared at us. Oops!

We got to Adelaide no problems, and customs was a breeze, and Tim's mum Lesley picked us up at the airport, complete with Tim's favorite iced coffee (coffee flavored milk, gross) and a stuffed koala for me. We went to her and George's home for lunch and showers (thank goodness, because after running and being in the heat of Seattle and Van I was probably more disgusting than I should have been for meeting the mum) and I had a nap before dinner. After our delicious dinner, we got taken to the house I'm now living in, which is just behind a Bridal shop, so thats what we refer to it as. I met about 20 people, and it was all very hectic, but I am very sure I remember all their names, which is good for me. The next day we went to the National park and I got to hold a koala named Belle and pet another named Priscilla. I got to feed kangaroos and wallabies, and pat them too, theyre SO FLUFFY! Everything that is wildlife here hops, its amazing! We went for dinner at Bob, Naomi and Georgia's house, which was delicious as well, (everything Ive eaten here has been amazing) to say goodbye to Bob and Naomi, who stayed a few days to say hi to us before moving to Tasmania. They left us their car to use, which is awesome. Today I woke up at 9:30 am, and it is pouring rain more than I can imagine, it is actually LOUD it is pouring so hard. Its beautiful! It's colder than I imagined it would be here, since I am so geared for this time of year to be summer. Ive been in my touque (which I am so thankful I brought at the last minute) and mittens the entire time. I am slowly getting used to it though.

Now for the good stuff.... Whats different?

Well, for one, everyone talks ridiculously fast. Sometimes I don't know what to say because everythign is going so quickly by the time I think of something the topic has changed hahaha. My inner dialogue is distinctly Aussie, I can't hear my own Canadian voice when I think inside my head anymore. I went to the grocery store with Tim, and everything was just.... different. Its like the same stuff, but its all weird so I don't know what what, and shopping takes forever! I went by myself a bit later to get shampoo and the line was so long, they opened a new till for me. The girl said "Yes, thanks" and I had NO idea this meant I could go to her till, so i just stood there, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and the people in line behind me looked at me. She repeated herself, and I realized what was wrong, so i ran up and accidentally dropped my shampoo SIGH. I got out of there asap. Otherwise, we have a palm tree in our back yard, and rose bushes (its record rainfall this year, and the boys says they havent seen that plant have roses before I think) they also have different light switches, and toilets. Aklso, the outlets are weird, not in a different plug sort of way, that I was prepared for, but there's on an off switches, and there's an on and off for the stove top as well. It is very weird.

One last thing, they have normal fences like we do, but also they have these cute little 'brush fences' which are basically thousands of long sticks bundled together. Its awesome, and I love them.

We haven't got any of our pictures done yet, as Tim's computer is broken, but once we've had a chance to fix it or upload the photos elsewhere, I will be putting up a mostly photo post.

Cheers!

-Ashh