Here, safe. Happy, at home, and cramming a few days into one entry...
The flight couldn't have been better.
First of all, I was under the impression that we would be flying for over 24 hours. Maybe that's because the whole trip (including time spent at the airports) lasted close to a day. The actual flights only added up to about 17 hours, though. (For those who'd care, we flew with the cast of Reno 911. Hm.)
On the flight, I watched a documentary about the Australian accent. The narrator of the film explained that when dialects change, it's almost always the result of the children- partly as a form of rebellion against their parents and partly to prove that the land belongs to them... So, researchers predict that the children of the First Fleet were the first people to come up with an accent similar to what you'd hear today. The film also explained that there isn't one set Australian accent... You can group them into three main categories, which range from a refined accent to a rawer accent. More and more people are starting to fall into the middle category and, because of a rise in globalization, they believe that all the accents may merge into one main accent by the middle of the century. It also showed how to form your mouth to make an Australian accent. Most of it involves relaxing the back of the tongue, which is used really frequently in the English language.
2 Days in Paris easily jumped up into my top ten favorite films of all time.
Anyway, like I said, the flight was really great. And jet lag was nothing. The first night here, we fell asleep at 5:30 PM (as a result of my mom just 'resting her eyes for a second') and woke up today, twelve hours later, feeling perfectly awake and adjusted.
Today, we checked out downtown Sydney and Manley Beach. We took a bus to the Rocks to see the Sydney Opera House and some of the more historical buildings and architecture. Then we hopped on a ferry and got off at a random stop, which just so happened to be Sydney's Rowing Club, a well-known seaside restaurant filled with pieces of Sydney's rowing history.
Good Business Idea #1 for my Dad:
The attendant at the club explained that in Australia, expensive restaurants are often divided in half: one side, a sit-down five-star dining, and the other side, quality food but much more understaffed. So, on the cheaper side, the way it works is you order your food at the grill, take a number or buzzer, and then wait to be called to pick up the food yourself. That cuts down a lot on the price of the meals for the group of people who wouldn't have otherwise been able to dine there. Pretty nice!
Overall, eating out is a lot different here. For instance, there's no tax on the food and you don't tip the waiters. (They get paid almost $20/hr, so tipping is seen as devaluing their work.) Sounds great, but the food is way more expensive here than it is at home. (Not to mention bouncy-ball machines take two dollar coins!) However, we've had some of the best food since we've gotten here, and it's much easier to find vegan out than it was in St. Louis or Urbana. Juice bars and Mediterranean food are popular, so I've been able to fill
up on carrots, beets, ginger, dolmades, cabbage rolls, lentils, etc. Hopefully, the dorm food won't let me down since the school provides all of my meals for me.
We hopped back on the ferry to Manly Beach... When we got across town to the beach itself, we noticed that no one was swimming. As soon as I wandered down to the water, it all made sense: a string of washed up jelly fish made a line all the way down the length of the beach. It was amazing! Left Manley by ferry and got back to the Rocks. We needed to get back to Darling Harbor, but our bus stopped running, so we walked back for dinner. Now, we're lying in the hotel, watching TV, resting our legs...
The TV news cracks me up! They have such a sick sense of humor.
Oh, and as you probably know, the cars are on the 'wrong' side of the road... That wasn't very hard to get used to, but it seems like the same rule applies when you're walking up stairs or down the road... For the most part, you need to always stick left wherever you're going. It's amazing to realize how many things we do without thought are really learned, cultural behaviors.
***For those of you who requested that I videotape the toilet flushing, I'm just not doing it. I swear it looks the same, except that the toilets are much deeper and echo. You'll have to come here yourself if it's that important to you.
Most people here seem to be really friendly and outgoing... They're happy to help with directions and show us around. The tourists, however, really take it up a notch... (Anais, you were right that all it takes to be popular is to listen to people talk about themselves.) I've come to the conclusion that my mom has some sort of magnetic power attracting every racist, conceited, and socially awkward person in Sydney. But Lord knows what they're saying about us...
Today (really today), we took a bus tour of Sydney and Bondi Beach. For lunch, we had a cruise of Sydney harbor, but the sun+constant rocking for two days+an overload of fruit and bad tea+an overload of really obnoxious tourists led us to cut the day tour short and check out the Sydney Wildlife World instead. And, might I say, good choice! I didn't think I was going to be that excited about seeing koala bears, but they're just the cutest little things in the world...
Best said by a bratty little Australian kid: "Aye neeeeeed a kohahlah, muthah! Aye just neeeed one!"
I got a glimpse of the Royal Botanical Gardens, and I'm dying to run through it. There are so many good places to run and cycle that I'm afraid I might become really anti-social. It seems like every direction you turn, you get a completely different view, from the beach to the city to the gardens to the rocks.
The crime rate is low because it's too beautiful here to feel mad.
Love from down under,
J-Bones
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