from the farthest down under!

I will update with pictures next week!

Hey everyone!

Today I'm calling up from pretty much the farthest place down under I can get before Antarctica! I am writing this while my internet minutes are ticking away under the roof of the Pickled Frog Hostel, which is probably the brightest green building you could ever see!

We left our house in Mlebourne at 4:45am on Monday to get to the airport for our 7:00am flight to Hobart. After forcing down a small breakfast that early in the morning I decided it would be best to pack some apples to eat later...little did I know that when we stepped off the plane in Hobart, Tasmania there would be "Beware of the Sniffer Dog" signs everywhere. Man, I was worried! What could I expect from that? ...a vicious, foaming at the mouth canine that is ready to bite my head off! So, I threw out two of my three apple while scarfing down the last one when we came across the vicious? ...beagle-like mutt on a leash. HA, it was slightly pathetic looking AND I walked right past it with apple stuffed in my face and juice dripping down my hands and chin. Good security, nnnot so sure about that.

Once we were off the plane it was a mad dash to some side of the road airport roundabout where we had arranged a bus pick-up to take us to Cole's Bay. We arrived at the BIG4 Iluka Hostel or something in Cole's Bay and the people there were realllly out  of it and we ended up paying $6 each a night to stay in their accomodation... I'll take it!

Tuesday we there was a bus from the hostel to Freycinet National Park that would take us there, let us exoplorew for 6 hours then return. So we hopped on, only to find out that they weren't doing the return drive. So we would have to hitch-hike back..and we did just that, obviously. Before the hitch-hike home though, we spent the day climbing Mount Amos. When I say "climbing" and "Mount" in that sentence I ACTUALLY mean we climbed a mountain! Not exactly what we expected...we scaled a flat, steep, slippery rock face all the way to the tip-top where we were able to look out over Wineglass Bay, one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world! Boy-o-boy was it ever a sight to see! After taking that in, we climbed down aka shimmied down on our butts and ended with some delicious peanut butter sandwiches in the company of a much too friendly wallaby!

Wineglass Bay from the top of Mount Amos

Wednesday we woke up to the sun shining brightly through our window, for the first time! The weather here is very deceptive and is usually completely dreary and overcast in the morning but always ends up beautiful in the end!! So we lay on the beach after picking a bagful of fresh but not-quite-ripe nectarines off a tree behind our dorm, and lounged there until our bus came to pick us up to drive us back to Hobart where we would spend the next couple days!

We checked into this bright green building and headed out to explore to city. We stumbled upon "Uni Night" at a local bar and each guzzled a LITRE of beer for $5!

So that brings me to now, Thursday (today) and we are booked to go on a Mount Wellington tour... but no climbing involved this time, thankfully. After that we hope to get to the MONA which is an extremely well-known gallery/museum that everyone explains as "full of really weird shit". So I'm super excited for that!

That's all for now, we leave here tomorrow and I plan on sleeping in the airport so I can get there for my 3am check-in for my 6:45am flight to New Zealand... alone -__-

A little nervous, but mostly excited!

Sincerely,
AUS

the Complete Canadian Congregation

After our long flight and their long flight... the other group arrived to complete our Canadian quintet!

LET THE ADVENTURES BEGIN!

So our first outing as a group was quite the mission. We got a taste of all the main places we'll be spending time in, which involved going here and there and getting instructed to go elsewhere, waiting in lines and signing forms, all to be topped off with a little more tennis! By the end of the day we had seen our campus, the downtown campus, the bank, a few metro stations, an overpriced grocery store, Daniel Nestor's last match of the Aussie Open, and some beautiful wildlife!

After all the bustle of our first day together we thought we'd take the next day to relax a little and hit the Williamstown beach! Not quite your picture perfect white sand and turquoise waters type beach, but being only about a 3km walk or short train ride away... I think it'll do for now. A Tuesday afternoon is a great time to enjoy the quiet, calm beach. There were only a few families here and there, a couple overly tanned men with skinny legs, big bellies and speedos doing running exercises in the calm waters of Port Philip Bay, and then.... there was Hamlet. Poor Hamlet was this guy's (whose name we didn't even catch) pick-up tool... We were obviously weak at the knees from this sensitive dalmation owner with extreme bicycle talent which involved continuous falling in his attempt to ride along on the edge of the sand with seaweed caught in his spokes and his ridiculous flirtacious compliments on Liza's tropical nail colour. Although he really expected us to invite him to spend the day with us, the girls just couldn't decide fairly who would get to be this guy's sheila... Nice try, dude. After the run-in with Mr. No-Charm over there we wandered into the cute, trendy Williamstown where we grabbed some ice cream and checked out the view of Melbourne from across the bay.

We ventured out of the burbs and into the city. Melbourne is a great city! Its full of neat architecture and cute little laneways packed with restaurant patios and cafes. During our wandering we came across a magician who wouldn't leave me alone, some colourful graffiti covered laneways, some really cute and overpriced clothing stores, a nice green park and the Queen Victoria Market which has definitely become a favourite place.

overwhelming dinner options at the market...

mmm, yeah burrito, yeaaaah

 

Thursday, I woke up and really felt like something was hanging over my head... and to my not-so-pleasant surprise, I found this "little" guy -___-

aaaaaand the temperature was probably about about 37°C making my life close to 75°C warmer than those of you in Montreal... so this called for another beach day! This time we headed across the city to St. Kilda Beach. We lay around, swam, and saw some jellyfish, the usual.

 Today, we went back to the market in the city in hopes of discovering some cheaper food... and man, oh man was that ever a success! $1 boxes of strawberries, $2/kg big, crisp apples, $2 dozens of fresh eggs with the chickens in sight, and 20 fresh chicken burgers for $12!!! I think you can guess where the majority of my groceries will be coming from...

The city is great, the beach is great, the weather is great, the girls are great, tomorrow is Aussie day and Monday we're heading down to Tasmania!

Stay warm up there!

Sincerely,
AUS

Australia Opens its arms to us

We both had an early start to our day, but I guess that's to be expected with the whole jet-lag thing... Up and refreshed and ready to greet the day with much anticipation, only to step outside to find that it was totally cloudy and rather chilly. Bummer. Looked like our plans of going to the beach would have to be postponed.  Instead we enjoyed a nice breakfast followed by dessert! We took a couple attempts at the Tim Tam Slam (more on this to come)!

Newport train station

We were content and generally relaxed aside from a slight sugar rush from the Tim Tams when we decided we would head into town to the Australian Open to try to spread our Canadian cheer to Milos Raonic.

We left the house at noon to begin our first excursion with a walk to the Newport train station. We paid $3.50 for a day pass on the train, what a bargain we thought that was!

Steph on the Tram (streetcar)

We arrived at Flinders Street train station where the sun was shining beautifully! We hopped on a free shuttle tram (Melbourne's equivalent to a streetacar) to the gates of the Aussie Open.  We stepped inside the gates and we were immediately excited to find out that it was only $35 to buy a Grounds Pass for the day! ...excitement, excitement, excitement... "sorry we're all sold out for today"... darn.

Temporarily closed out of the Open

Our spirits may have been a little shaken but do you think that stopped us? Nope. We desperately hung around the gates long enough to realize that if we found people who were leaving we'd be able to buy their Grounds Pass off of them. So we loitered around, asking people who were heading away from the gates until... success! A couple of aussie boys passed their passes off to us for free. We were in. Awesome.

So we started wandering the grounds and stumbled upon the merchandise tent thinking we'd take a look at what souvenirs we might be able to pick up since we didn't have to spend any money on admission. We started considering the splurge on overpriced cotton t-shirts when a young man who was representing ANZ (some bank company) told us he wanted to buy our merchandise for us in order to promote some offer or something... what was the catch? Well we each walked away with a free over priced t-shirt and hat! All because we agreed to enter a contest online for a chance to win a cell phone from his company... works for me.

Things were good. Until we stumbled across the court where Daniel Nestor was just breifly preoccupied with winning his doubles match in a tie breaker when really he was just waiting for us to show up so he could MEET US! Things were great. We exchanged a few words on our commonalities of living in Toronto and knowing Mike Richards (our kin tennis class teacher/UWO tennis team coach) before he begged us to get a picture with him.

Oh heyyy Daniel!

After that we made our way over to the court where Milos' game was set to take place. We watched a brutally long women's doubles game while waiting for our Canadian champ to hit the court. Definitely worth the wait! As soon as Milos walked onto the court we got a nice taste of home as Canada flags began popping up all around the stands while probably every Canadian who was in Melbourne cheered as if we were in a hockey arena. We cheered him to a strong victory! He was actually so appreciative of our cheering that he begged to autograph Steph's flag.

dork (haha)

A taste of maple

\

Spot the Canadians!

About 9 hours and $3.50 later we were finally headed home. What a day!

Hope your day was as eventful and as cheap as ours was!

Sincerely,
AUS

not in Kansas anymore

Good'ay Mates!

 

I have arrived safe and sound!
I'm sitting in my new living room: 1:34pm Friday January 18th my time, 9:34pm Thursday January 17th your time.

It's been a looooong journey for my friend Steph and I. Let me explain my itinerary in my time with your time in brackets:

Departure from Toronto: 6:40pm on Wednesday January 16th
Arrival in LA: 9:00pm Wednesday January 16th (12:00am Thurs. Jan 17) 
Departure from LA: 11:30pm Wednesday January 16th (2:30pm Thurs. Jan 17)
Arrival in Melbourne: 10:30am Friday January 18th (6:30pm Thurs. Jan 17)

Toronto to L.A

We decided it was probably best if we stayed awake through our flight to Los Angeles so we would be able to sleep on the plane to Melbourne.  As tired as we were we used the time to brush up on some Australian culture by watching some episodes of the ever so educational "Summer Heights High".  We arrived in LA just ahead of schedule and waited in the airport for our next flight.  In this time we purchased some duty free alcohol which was probably illegal since we were in the states and are not 21 years old, bbuuuutttt we got away with it!

We boarded the most ridiculous, incredible, unbelievable vehicle you could imagine: Qantas Airbus A380 and flew 15 hours to Melbourne at 40,000 feet up from the ground!

 So we were supposed to completely not exist on January 17th but due to some shenanigans involving a man getting kicked off the plane and them having to find his baggage while we were already on board our LA to Melbourne flight, we departed late and were did not disappear into the depths of time travel completely. After that they served us dinner which would have been at 5:00 am your time, then we threw back some gravol and konked out around 6:30 am (so we had pulled an all-nighter). It was smooth sailing for the next 15 hours and we ended up still arriving on time!

 

Our landing via onboard SkyCam

A driver from Victoria University picked us up upon our arrival and drove us to our new humble abode.

We've just been hanging around, munching on the extra airplane snacks we chinced and trying to stay awake so we can adjust to the new time here. Our landlord is coming meet us and take us for a drive around the area and to the grocery store later this afternoon so that should be exciting!

Salisbury Street

56 Salisbury Street

How's the weather, you ask?  A little disappointing thus far. Relatively warm but overcast with a bit of rain, kind of dreary while we were getting driven home. Not exactly the sunny summer welcome we were hoping for but it looks like the sun might be poking through now!

We're just waiting for the three other girls to arrive now before we start our adventures. Its going to be a really great time here and I can't wait to get started!

So being in transit for 24 hours we've been basically been flipped upside down and backwards and our walking ability, hygiene, and sanity have been temporarily compromised. We just need some real food, some sleep and some solid ground before we can get the real fun rolling.

There's no place like home,

Sincerely,
AUS