It's been a week since we arrived safely in Australia.
The overwhelming thought that has occupied my mind since our arrival is . . . I miss New Zealand. It's a natural sentiment, I suppose. But in a way it's putting a hinderance on my ability to enjoy Australia because at the moment our wonderful experience in NZ will be hard to match.
Ultimately, I think it will always feel kind of like the difference between undergrad and grad school. Your first experience of university is always special and when push comes to shove, your dedication will always be to that first wonderful experience. Grad school is good too, you grown and learn even more and you cheer for the team, but if ever the two schools meet you cheer for your first.
That's how I feel about it right now. Watching the All Black/Wallabie game for the semi-finals of the Rugby World cup I could only cheer for the All Blacks and was very satisfied when they won. I think Australia will be a nice, but different experience for us I'm just waiting for the good part to start.
After all, Australia has it's own beauty and uniqueness to explore.
In fact, it was a very smooth trip and we've had a good first few days here. Our flight went smoothly--got all our bags on, got them back in Australia, got through customs and quarantine just fine. The only snafu was that one of my cheapo canvas flat sneakers was lost somewhere in the transport and only one showed up on the baggage carousel.
But yeah, we found an airport shuttle that took us right to our hostel the first night. The next day we got everything re-set up once again--tax file numbers, a bank account, cell phones, etc.
John and I were hoping to find some sort of work for accommodation while we were in Sydney in order to save money. Turns out the hostel we chose needed two people to start right away so we obliged, though they mentioned that they liked staff to stay for at least a month. We said we could do that, but then we had to move into the staff room accommodation on the main floor right next to reception and to the subway entrance on the street above. We haven't had a decent night's sleep since, as the area we chose to stay in, called King's Cross, is the red light district and notorious party/strip club area of Sydney. So I've been cranky from lack of sleep for almost 5 days now.
So now we've changed our tune and are desperate to get out. Working 3 hours a day, 5 days a week doesn't seem like much, but working from 11 to 2 means the bulk of the day is spent cleaning rooms and bathrooms, rather than enjoying a day out in Sydney. Also, for our days off we only got one day that was the same--further discouraging us to stay here.
Our Aussie friend from Roundhill, Joel, has arrived back in Sydney where he is from and has graciously offered to let us stay with him at his place for a few days while we get the rest of our sightseeing done before heading off to Melbourne to start looking for work!
Hopefully, seeing a bit more of Sydney and not staying at a backpackers will warm us up to Australia a little more.
Though we did take our own little walking tour around the harbor the other day. It was a nice, warm evening and I will leave you with our first pictures from Oz!
No comments:
Post a Comment