Ready to take Australia by storm!! ..shopping cart and all

 

   That was probably the easiest traveling experience I’ve ever had….and I’m half way across the country! There was a little bit of an issue at LAX (of course) with my passport not being “recognized” for about 5 minutes…but I’ve learned that It’s best to not panic when you’re in LAX..it’s usually unnecessary stress. Sure enough..within 5 minutes of the lady swiping my passport over and over again, I was finally clear to go..and honestly, the rest of the 16 hour flight was a breeze. I swear the huge plane was Air Force 1 with Air New Zealand written on the side. Case and point: Travel if you can…preparation for a trip like this is actually easier than preparing Thanksgiving Dinner…I don’t know, that’s the first thing I thought of. As you can see jet lag is making a strong appearance in my life!

So i'm going to make sure to have an Australian word of the day in every blog. Word of the day #1: "MATE"

Ok..I know…this one is pretty generic. But seriously though..EVERYONE calls you “mate” here. Whether it be the random customer at the grocery store that you opened the door for… or even the old lady that opened the door FOR YOU at the coffee shop. Could you imagine everyone calling you “friend” in the US???

So as of now…we’re currently staying at a Travel Lodge in Garden City in Brisbane in Queensland in Australia. Picture Queensland as the state, Brisbane as the county, and Garden City as the City. When we first arrived..all we wanted to do was take a shower, take a nap (a 9 hour kind of nap), and get that second wind. Unfortunately..this wasn’t going to happen for another 4 hours because check-in wasn’t until 2 pm. Our bodie’s felt like it was 2 pm..however it was only 8:50 in the morning when we arrived at the front desk. This is the EXACT moment when I thanked myself for packing only one big suitcase and one duffle bag. We proceeded to exit the hotel and go hang out in the next door mall for 4 hours..and we luckily had a very convenient way of transporting our luggage around the teenage-filled mall.

If there’s anything that brought everything into perspective…it was that shopping cart. Essentially, that’s when you know you’re starting over…

We eventually found ourselves laying on the hotel beds at 3pm and trying to tell ourselves to stay awake for at least 6 more hours to get our bodies adjusted to the, potentially awful, jet lag. We’re here in Brisbane for only two nights and then we’re off to try to find a place to live and any sort of odd-job that will fund our upcoming 6 months here!  

As for today we’re planning to explore around the heart of Brisbane, hold some koalas, pet some kangaroos (“Roos”), see some duck billed platypus’s, etc etc. just to get us in the Australian spirit. Because as of now..all we see is a K-mart, traffic lights, and mostly American looking cars driving around. It’ll be our goal to really break that comfort zone in the next few days. Ultimately, we’re all extremely happy to be here..we’re all anticipating some rough patches when we run into that inevitable culture shock..and we’re all pretty thankful to be here with each other. It would just be too lonely if it was just one person pushing that shopping cart around ;)…