australian saga: time goes by so slowly (part 2)

continuation of part 1, story of my arrival.

arrival to sydney

i was woken up by oleg saying that we’re arriving. i was totally out of it (think 6 hours of uncomfortable sleep in an airplane chair after of like 20 hours of awakeness), so i was like “already?” turns out that it was breakfast time – 6:20 am. after a fairly small sandwich, 2 cups of green tea, a cup of coffee and some yogurt, we still had to circle over sydney for 40 minutes due to bad weather. apparently for them bad weather means warm and humid with some light drizzle.

customs was easy – got my australia stamp, w00t!

australians are extremely scared about people importing anything “natural” – food, or any food derivatives. we had propaganda with crocodile hunter playing on tvs for about 30 minutes, and all the way to the customs there are bins where you should throw out stuff that you don’t want checked (i threw out my small bag of nuts that i snacked on. thankfully i finished almost all of it by that point). after picking up your luggage, you go through 2 more people that check your forms (i.e. that they say that you’re not importing anything) and then you and all your luggage go through an xray machine. oleg’s stuff went through juts fine, but i got stopped.

of course i mildly freaked out, even though the lady was nice and polite, they put the pressure on you (did you pack this? did you fill out this form? is your name so and so? “no, its olya”). after opening the huge-ass-70lbs-suitcase turns out they wanted to check the big climbing rope that oleg brought with him but was put in my bag cause didn’t have enough space. turns out they just couldn’t figure out what it was on the xray and wanted to check, and thankfully oleg jumped right there when she pulled it out and said that its brand new and wasn’t ever used, so i kinda relaxed that i’m not at fault. they didn’t fine me or anything – its not one of their restricted products – they just weren’t sure. still a bit unnerving.

outside the airport

upon exiting the gates easily at that point oleg tried to find the people that were supposed to meet us, as they are his family’s friends, while i hung out outside at the SUPER WARM AND HUMID AMAZING WEATHER WITH PALMS AROUND ME. JOY. after so much time in air i was like “i dont care if we have to cab it to a hotel, i’m here, its warm, life’s great”. i had enough time to change into flip flops that i pulled out of my bag, so life was peachy.

after about 30 minutes of waiting, oleg found them (or rather they saw him on the way to the phones to call them). we stuffed the insane amount of stuff we had into their tiny hatchback corolla, and we headed to their apartment. this was around 12:30pm, sydney time, or 9pm toronto time. definitely felt weird.

upon arriving to their place, these nice people provided us with a phone to call our families, food to feast on (breakfast), and a place to house all our stuff. the long wait to evening began.

the day was spent peacefully – after getting internet we set it up so that i can connect to it through an ethernet cable to the couple’s dsl modem, and oleg connected to it through the wireless service on my laptop. i did some browsing of your people’s blogs, wrote emails. we ate again around 5pm, after i finished talking to tim, and i noticed a SCARF (that was your another mention) in my bag. after the dinner they provided us with instructions on how to get to the beach, and off we left to explore sydney.

sydney – clovelly beach

this was definitely the highlight of the day (haha, says me after freaking FLYING TO SYDNEY AUSTRALIA WHICH IS ANOTHER CONTINENT DID YOU KNOW?). the walk was nice and easy:

me: so how far is it to the ocean?
owner of house: hmmmm… slow walking its like… hmm…
*me thinking: shit, its like 2 hours away*
him: 20 minutes?
me: *bursts out in laughter*
him: what?
me: that’s so close
him: (i think thinking that i am sarcastic) its not that far really
me: in toronto you have to walk a few months to the nearest ocean

in case you didn’t know, in australia and new zealand all the roads are backwards. i.e. driver’s seat is on the right hand side, and the traffic moves forward on the left side of the road, not right. it feels pretty surreal on turns especially – they are completely opposite in terms of sticking to the curb or pulling away from it. walking to the beach thus was an excersize in futility – each road we crossed i was spinning my head around like the exorsist, trying to ensure that we won’t die (this fast). it worked, no one hit us.

the beach was awesome. sunset, waves, huge ocean waves. they built a small bay like enclosure that lets people swim in the ocean water without being afraid of getting carried away by the waves. all along the beach there are huge huge rocks. we hung a bit at the ocean side, and watched the waves, listened to the birds, and just marvelled at being near the ocean. aftewards we went back up to the beach walk and walked further down the beach, where the rocks weren’t as huge, but more flat, and allowed us to actually walk around the small pools of water that gathered from the ocean’s movements. this turned out to be very cool – in the last picture i linked the black dots are lots and lots of shells, which all have snails (i suppose) inside of them. after some wandering around that area (its fun walking among the rocks, and the salty smell of the water, the warmness and humidness – its relaxing), i noticed amazing sunset started. unfortunately my camera’s batterys died, but i managed to snap 2 photographs before it died.

as it got darker around 8pm we headed off back home, walking under the super pink skies as it quickly got dark.

upon arriving home, i blogged about the day before that, and then i got tired and so i went to sleep.
fortunately for you its only 8:20pm here, so i’ll blog about today too.

january 18th

upon waking up i noticed that my hair has formed a most magnificent mohawk, just through its shortness and awesomeness. i seriously wish i could keep it this short and not grow it out that much more over the next few months. of course i took a photograph :P

next was a snapshot of the outside. the reason why oleg and i ended up waking up at 10am is because there are PARROTS here. i don’t have any photos, but i promise one as soon as we returned from auckland. today just wasn’t a photogenic day – it was raining and grey the ENTIRE day. the parrots are bright green, blue heads, red and orange chests – i mean, people, they are REAL PARROTS. just like flying around. not like those budgees that flew into maha’s balcony either! no, these are freaking parrots. and there are also blackbirds, pigeons and some other small bright yellow black and white medium sized birds. and they all squawk. a lot.

other than parrots, and more eating, we planned out the new zealand trip (the extra 5 days will be used throughout the time beforehand as needed), which took a decent 4-5 hours. i spoke to tim on the phone for about an hour, which was heaven embodied. also i spoke to my parents, which was nice but i’m kinda used to living away from them at this point :P sorry mom and dad! i still love you, though! i think the distance makes my love for you grow even stronger. right. yes.

moving on.

we also watched australian tv:

a guy making some bbq lamb while surfing

during show he spontaneously fed some of his food to a bird that landed next to him

victoria secret model showcase is on in an hour

2 chicks TEARING APART memories of a giesha in a way that NO north american show would. they seriously spent like 10 minutes dissing it. brutally. on tv. insane!

2 channels playing same australian open match

and this brings me to this moment, so i’ll stop typing and:

upload pictures and post this

pack for new zealand

watch victoria secret’s show if we can OR

watch robin william’s stand up comedy OR

watch firefly, episode 01

and then go sleep. flight to auckland is at 4pm tomorrow. our place to stay in auckland is reserved (a twin room, meaning 2 single beds in one room, sharing with no one. w00t.), we got all the addresses for car rental figured out (500 meters from the sleeping place), and as you can see we got our plans laid out.

i definitely won’t write as detailed from NZ, since as far as i know i won’t have internet from laptop for the entire 3 weeks. i will write on my laptop however, so you’ll get a report eventually. and, duh, pictures.

and i can’t promise 1.8k word essays each day :P its just the initial excitement. my goal is for about this much per week once i get settled in.

i want time to move by far faster than it is right now.

p.s. note the statistics section that has appeared on the right hand side