Late Start

So I've been in Australia for just over a week now, and finally decided that it might be a good idea to start a blog or else there's no way on earth I'm going to remember everything that happened.  I'll do a recap of last week just to keep up to date...

We left DTW on January 1st, flying into Dallas/Fort Worth and then San Francisco.  We embarked on our 14 hour journey to Sydney at about 2 in the morning Michigan time... making me just tired enough to sleep for about 10 or so hours.  The Boeing 747 was practically empty so I decided to take it upon myself to spread myself out over an entire row, not a bad choice.  We got little sleeping masks in our travel kit, which was kinda cool... I woke up to a streaming beam of light when I took it off though and realized I fell asleep leaned up against the reading light button on the arm rest, and was the only ahole with their ridiculously bright light on for about 6 hours straight, oops.  I was woken up for dinner and we were served actually decent food; chicken with mashed potatoes and tiramisu for dinner and then quiche, bacon, fruit, yogurt and a bran muffin for breakfast.  I woke up with about 2 hours left of the flight, started watching Social Network, and attempted to finish Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country.  We arrived in Sydney at about 8:30 am on January 3rd, skipping January 2nd all together... what a neat trick.

Started classes monday, which go from 9am to 1pm "technically" and realized how close the beach was so proceeded to head down there after class just about every day last week.  I managed to fry my feet the first day there because I cannot get over my hatred of sand being stuck all over my body and my tendency to avoid applying sunscreen anywhere that's covered in sand.  I'd have to say I've got a pretty good base color already for being the only person on the beach the first day who was translucent and paler than Casper.

We went on a Hunter Valley wine tour on Saturday, visited four different wineries, and discovered I'm a Moscato fan... yum.  I'd have the say going on a wine tour with your professors beats the heck out of syllabus week of spring semester at MSU, sorry to rub it in all you Spartans back home in 10 degree weather.

Sunday we went to a Twenty20 cricket match at ANZ Stadium in Olympic Park, home of the 2000 Sydney Olympics!! It was so cool being able to sit in the stadium knowing that there were olympic athletes and games held there at one point.  I've actually learned the rules of cricket, and can pretty much understand the concept of the game.  Usually it takes almost 5 days to play, but the Twenty20 games are different and only take about three hours.  There was a rain delay, and we ended up leaving just as it started pouring which made for an eventful train ride back -- which needless to say we got on the wrong one and ended up taking an extra hour to get home.

Found mushrooms growing in the shower yesterday... what a treat.  This place isn't exactly a 5 star resort.... maybe not even a 2 star resort but I guess it gets the job done.  The food is kinda lacking too, but I know the kitchen staff tries, we're just not used to everything yet.  As Reggie says "its not wrong, it's just different".

About to go to dinner tonight and have all you can eat mussels... but after last nights escapades down at Coogee beach beer garden I'm not exactly sure if I can stomach mussels, hopefully they'll have other less risky food options.

Well, I'll try to keep this thing updated and I'll add in stuff that I've forgotten about as I go along.
As they say here as a closing,
Cheers!