Goodbye Winter!

Trip Start Dec 31, 2008
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Trip End Mar 27, 2009


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Where I stayed
On an airplane
(Chicago hotels)

Flag of United States  , Illinois,
Monday, December 29, 2008

As I mentioned in my introduction, I am keeping this blog to keep everyone that may be interested in my trip up-to-date on exactly what I've been doing while on the other side of the world.  For those not aware, I am currently a second year business student at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, just north of Chicago.  Our program has an exchange program with a number of major business schools worldwide and I was fortunate enough to get into the Australian program, which is at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).  Thus, I am spending January through March in sunny Sydney.  So here is my poorly-written and fairly dull attempt at a blog, which has been partially inspired by previous friends/bloggers Paul "the great Pauldini" Guzzetta, Sean Gorman, and Andrew Murray (whose blog on Africa was far more interesting than this will be). 

I took off for my quarter abroad in Australia on December 29th, and due to the distance of the flight and the crossing of the international date line, I will never actually experience December 30th of 2008- it is forever gone for me.  After spending about two hours packing, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to fit everything into just a large suitcase, my large backpack, and a small backpack that I carried my computer in.  Brady, my brother, was nice enough to take me to the airport, which saved me about $40, and I was able to get on the plane only checking a single bag (I hate checking bags).  This spared me the risk of possibly losing my big backpack, which was packed for New Zealand, which is where I was going on New Year's Day.  As of takeoff, I still didn't have a place to sleep in Sydney- the place I was going to crash on New Year's Eve told me they had a minimum stay of 4 nights about an hour before takeoff, so I was scrambling.  Hotels were pretty much out of the question because, due to the New Year's celebration, they were going for about $500 per night, at a minimum, anywhere in the city.  Likewise, every hostel in town was full. Fortunately, during the layover in LA (where the drunkest guy I've ever seen in an airport bar sat next to me), I was able to locate a Brown University student on Craigs List who was studying at UNSW and had a spare bedroom, which I could use for New Year's.

After the layover in LA, I had a 15 hour flight from LAX to Sydney, which went by surprisingly quickly.  I was pretty excited to be arriving in Sydney on NYE, although I had some mixed feelings about missing out in Chicago since there was a party at my house ("the Green House") in Evanston, which is always fun.  Some unisom helped put me to sleep and I probably got about 6 hours of sleep on the flight, which is definitely a personal record for me, since I have a lot of trouble sleeping on flights.  Alright, my next update will be of my first day in Sydney and the world's first major city to celebrate the New Year. 
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