2/16: G'day Mates!

On Saturday, February 16, we departed from Queenstown for a long day of flights ahead of us. While leaving the airport we walked out to our plane and saw the end of a rainbow in front of the mountain range. We saw it touching the ground! A great last sight to see before leaving this beautiful city!

I made it safely to Australia after almost 12 hours of flying and three different planes. Chuck, our director greeted us in a coach bus to take our group back to the P & O (Pacific and Orient) Hotel/ dormitory- my home for the next 4 months.

Sara & I are rooming together and the rooms at the P&O are of all different shapes and sizes. We were very fortunate to be placed in a HUGE room! We also have doors leading out to the balcony which overlooks High Street. Down the street from the P&O you can see the old prison built by the convicts who came from Europe roughly 200 years ago. It is right on the beach and only a 5 minute walk from the hotel.

Getting settled was a bit rocky, considering a big black spider greeted me in the shower and who knows if it was poisonous or not- but all I know is that it did not look like a friendly daddy-long-leg like back in Minnesota! The town of Freo (Fremantle) is a very social town. People go out frequently, dressed in cocktail dressses and stilhettos! Back to talking about the P&O, we share it with students from Indiana, France, and Portland. With that, we also share one large kitchen. Keeping that clean will be tricky, but we have to be diligent about that, otherwise we will be accompanied by cockroaches and ants.

As for sleeping, it will be a light one this first night, or even first few weeks. There are many bugs, big and small and I'm far away from home. At dinner the tears kept on comin' and I just couldn't control myself. I think not having internet for a few days and no contact made it hard, but this is unusual for me, but now you can all see that I do miss home and all of my family and friends! I can't wait for this semester to get kicked off. This is a phenomenal experience and I'm so fortunate to have this opportunity!