It’s been a long day. I made the silly mistake of staying up for as long as possible on the plane and watched a ton of movies. Just straight up back to back; finish one movie, before credits are over, switch on another movie. I watched Contagion, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Change Up, and Red Riding Hood. Nothing was too spectacular except Kung Fu Panda 2. Do not watch Red Riding Hood.
So we, being me and Gaffey, arrived at the airport at around 9 AM Melbourne time. Waited in line to pass through customs and randomly saw Josie. After going through customs we figured out how to get to the apartment that WPI will be providing but we can’t live in yet. So that brings the time to about 11 AM. We walk around the city from the apartment and make our way over to the hostel where we will be staying to drop off our stuff so we can wander the city a little more freely. The time is now roughly 1:30. Okay, maybe my times are a little off… but then again we were walking pretty slowly taking in the many sights that a new country has to offer. Oh wait, along the way we also stopped to get cell phones. So I’m not losing random hours.
We try and find a place to eat lunch, lamenting the fact that most of the restaurants seem to be running an average entrée price of $18 AUD, which is basically the same in US give or take a few pennies. We settle on this cozy little café shop that is selling sandwiches for an average of $9-10, considerably less than $18, but still on the high end of things. But on average everything here seems to be costing about 150-200% more than in the states. A 450 mL bottle of coke with a discount of BOGO for $1 costs $2.35, but on the plus side, all the soda here is made with real sugar and not the stupid high fructose corn syrup garbage so it tastes considerably better.
And then we basically spent the rest of the day walking around exploring the city and just chillaxing. And our only source of free internet, the library, is closed from Christmas to the 2nd of January, so it’s been a bit difficult to really plan anything to do. We have to rely on the old school method of brochures and word of mouth, completely prehistoric. . It’s really just kind of an inconvenience, but the next couple days until the library re-opens shouldn’t be too bad. We’re planning on going to St. Kilda Beach tomorrow, spend the day down there, scouting everything out. Then it’s New Year’s Eve so there’ll likely be some sort of club to go to, meet some people ;). But of course that’s in the evening so during the day we’ll go to some of the gardens around the city, maybe take a trip to some of the museums and see if there are some free or cheap/interesting ones. Really wished we had been able to get to go to Sydney, but I’m sure we’ll find things to do. Maybe meet some cool people. Hopefully.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m currently writing this post at around 20:30 on 29/12/2011, and it’s ridiculously bright outside. The brightness is as if it were 2 or 3 in the afternoon on the east coast. It’s completely messing with my head and probably psychologically extending the length of this day. I don’t even. I’m really pooped. I’ve been awake for way too long, probably close to twenty four hours and it’s really bright outside, and I don’t have internet. It’s expensive to have fun too. It also hasn’t really set in that I’m in freaking Australia. Man. The heck. Around 70 days in Australia. LET’S DO IT UP!
1 comment:
I am Nicholas Orochena... and the Orochena rises here. Hah, see what I did? I am a little bit late on this to be relevant or you can say I way too early but my dad, who has extensively traveled the world, told me one of the best ways he adjusted to the new times was getting a massage.
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