A Long, Strange Trip

I made it!  I am finally in Australia!

I left Knoxville on Friday evening at about 7:30 pm, flew to Dallas then got on a large Qantas (pronounced Kwahn-tiss, Australia's national airline) plane to cross the Pacific.  I had plenty of room as no one else was in my row and I spent the 16 hour flight reading most of a Bill Bryson book about his travels in Australia, watching a few movies (Spotlight and Zootopia), and sleeping!  And despite most of the old hack jokes about airline food, it was surprisingly decent, which I guess is far from delicious but more than one might expect.

Flight status from somewhere in the Pacific over Fiji.

Because of the magic of the international date line, I arrived in Sydney Australia having traveled time, essentially missing the 4th of June entirely.  I got off the plane at 6 am on Sunday, June 5th, feeling very much the same as I had when I left, and immediately went to the ATM to get some new colorful bills!  You can use the ATMs here with American cards and all of the currency exchange is done for you, so the $200 I took out was actually maybe $148 or so I believe due to the exchange rate that is in my favor (although everything costs a bit more in Australia anyways).  After clearing customs and transferring to a domestic flight, I was quickly on my way to Canberra, Australia, their capitol city, where my orientation will occur.

Some Australian currency - COLORFUL!

When I arrived in Sydney I was greeted with a steady soaking rain, which is not normally an issue inside the plane or airport until you witness your baggage sitting in said steady soaking rain with no cover at all whatsoever and airline employees in no hurry to get it on the plane.  Not really a complaint, but I did find it odd that everything was just left uncovered, and my bags and some things are still a bit damp.  I got a cab to my hotel in Canberra as soon as I arrived and the cabbie, from the Congo, talked my ear off about Trump and we laughed a LOT at the hilarity of it all with these crazy people in countries worldwide so power and money hungry wherever you go.  The rain continued ALL DAY LONG in Canberra, but I rested from my travels in my hotel room and hope to make it out to see the city a bit today (Monday) before orientation begins.  It is cool to see where the stormwater runs here, but all of this rain has been accompanied by coastal flooding in Sydney which is dominating the news today, so I hope they get some respite though it looks wet all week.

I will try to update the blog regularly with fun, updates, and pictures.  Stay tuned!

Hotel room - Canberra - with CRAZY ceiling and the Australian Today Show - miss you, Hoda and KL