Morning Run (July 17)

I slept! Finally - from 6pm last night until around 2:30 this morning - not ideal hours, but still, I woke and felt refreshed and relaxed and ready to go.  Went for a run just around 6:15 am, and it was beautiful - ran back on the riverwalk and through the botanical gardens - below are a few of the pics from the run.  What a great way to start the day; I would love it if this were my regular run.  I am beginning to wonder if I should bring my resume to the teacher meetings?

Supermarkets, The River and Mangroves (July 16)

Although the bed was comfortable, and I was exhausted, I was unable to sleep past 1am.  I gave up the battle around 2.  Apparently, my body was still firmly planted in another time zone where the world is wide awake.   I had a terrible time figuring out how to use the French press coffee maker (Lord, I do love my Keurig), and as a result made some pretty terrible coffee.  But the truth is, at 2am, even terrible coffee is good coffee.  I then turned on the news and I have to say – it’s really, really neat to watch the news in a foreign country.

 

There’s a strangeness to hearing news stories that completely have nothing to do with me or anyone in my world.  It almost felt like stepping into an alternate universe and turning on the TV, being fascinated but utterly unaffected by what's being reported.  Whether or not Qantas sells its shares to foreign entities is of no concern to me; the decisions made by the courts, consumers rights, tax issues, the virtues of old vs. new football rules, none of it affects me in the slightest, turning the news into, quite frankly, pure entertainment.   My favorite story is this: apparently there is a debate going on here about the use of corporal punishment in schools, with some in power arguing that as long as the parents agree to it, it can be very effective. Wow.  One other thing I found really interesting; directly before a report on someone who'd died, the news reporter warned any viewers of Aboriginal descent that there would be pictures of someone who'd passed away on the report.  I was riveted, and watched for hours, until finally it was time to work out and really start the day. 

First things first, I needed to go food shopping.  I went to the Woolworth, one of the larger supermarket chains, just a few short blocks from the hotel.  On the way I discovered something fun.  To cross the street here, at every intersection, you need to push a button.  When it is not safe to cross, there is a slow, rhythmic beep, but when it’s safe to walk, there’s a loud sort of special-effect costmic sounding multiple beep indicating that it’s safe to cross.  I waited patiently at every intersection for the beeps…because honestly I can’t tell which way to look down here, and it was really just fun to listen to them. 

Supermarket shopping is another alternate-universe experience.  The market looked just like any supermarket at home, until I looked closely and see shelf after shelf of somewhat familiar items packaged by brands I’ve never heard of.  There's no Skippy peanut butter, no Tide detergent, no Pepperidge Farm, no Ruffles or Cheetos - though Coke, Diet Coke and Kellogg's have made it here.  Eggs are not refrigerated, and all are brown.  Milk was very confusing – the choices seem to be trim, smarter white, full-cream milk or custard (I chose full-cream, hopefully that works).  Whole wheat bread is called whole grain bread, and chicken is a popular flavor for potato chips.  I was able to find laundry detergent, but no dryer sheets – they’re not really used in Australia (I asked).  It was really fun looking at products, differences in frozen-food choices - this whole trip was really sightseeing and shopping in one!  I could have spent all day in that Woolworth's, and I look forward to my next trip.

After running up to quickly unpack my groceries, I headed down to the walkway that goes along the Brisbane River, just a block from the apartment. The weather was nice, a bit cloudy, a coolish and comfortable 20 degrees C.  The pictures below show my first view as I stepped down to the riverwalk. The bridge you see is called Story Bridge, which crosses to the south bank of the river.

 

I decided to walk a bit further along the banks, In the back of my mind thinking about mapping tomorrow morning's run.  As the walk advanced, I started seeing these trees lining the banks, just incredible trees…
 

As I continued walking, the vegetation got more dense.  These amazing, incredible tress grew thicker, and I came upon a sign finally which told me that these wild trees I was seeing were called mangroves, the most common tree in Australia, found mainly on the edges of rivers:

 

 

 About a mile and a half from my hotel I came to the Goodwill bridge, a footpath across the river. It was here that I saw a sign which told me I had just walked through a path which was part of the Botanical gardens.  I made a note to myself to be sure to come back here to do some more exploring, and walked across the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, below, is the Maritime Museum, another place I will come back to visit.

 

 

 

 

When I reached the other side, I found myself on what was called the cliffs boardwalk.  I determined from here that I'd walk back up the river to Story Bridge and cross back that way. The truth is, at this point I was beginning to feel very tired, as my jet lag was catching up with me.   I took the picture below of the Brisbane skyline, beautiful from the south bank (my hotel is the tall building all the way to the far right of the picture).

 

 

 

 

By the time I got to Story Bridge I was near collapse; and I realized I'd slept maybe 6 hours in the last three days and that was really taking its toll.  I put the camera away, crossed the bridge, and headed back to the hotel as it began to rain, desperate for sleep and done for the day, knowing that the weather tomorrow promised to be beautiful, and looking forward to getting to know the city a little more then.

The Long Journey (or, "How I lost Bastille Day, and other boring tales") July 13-15

So after spending all day Sunday nervously packing, I made it to the airport around 4:30 for a 6:50 flight. Nothing too eventful here; I met the girls, we said our goodbyes, got through security and waited to board.  And waited. And waited some more, as unfortunately, our flight was delayed.  We weren’t too worried, since we had three full hours for our connection in Sydney.  We finally left New York somewhere around 8:30, and enjoyed a comfortable flight until our stop in LA. Again, uneventful and boring – we stepped off the plane, waited two hours for refueling and crew change, and reboarded the plane for the final 14 hours into Sydney.

Fourteen hours is a long time to be in the air, especially after a five hour flight.  I’m not a sleeper when I’m on land, I hadn’t been able to nod off at all on the first leg of the flight, and unfortunately sleep remained elusive for the journey to Sydney. I did try drinking wine – after my first glass the flight attendant asked if I wanted another, and I suppose my reply was very eager because she winked and handed me two more bottles.  The wine didn’t help me sleep, but it certainly made the journey more pleasant.  I read that the key to surviving long flights is in varying entertainment – and it absolutely worked for me.  I killed the hours by watching two excellent movies (The Book Thief and The Godfather), eight episodes of Modern Family (thank you Calvin McEvoy for turning me on to that show), several episodes of Scandal and The Blacklist, and then finally, we landed in Sydney.

Though we had gotten on the plane on Sunday, when we got off the plane it was Tuesday.  Sadly, this meant we had missed Bastille Day, which is a very important holiday for my people.  Sigh.  Moving on; because we were making the connection on foreign soil, our luggage had to be rechecked.  The time it took us to pick up our bags at baggage claim and then get to the terminal cost us our connection, and so unfortunately our long journey got a bit longer. 

On a fun note, as we were taking our carry ons through security, one of their security agents working the checkpoint overheard me talking, and asked where in the States I was from.  I told him, and he replied by asking if I’d heard of Bayside, Queens?  I couldn't believe it - so of course I laughed and told him that’s where I’m from – and he went on to say he’d visited NY a few years back and that he’d stayed with a friend of his there.  He asked if I knew any of the bars across from the train station, and we chatted a bit about Monahan’s and Sullivan’s and he remarked about how friendly everyone was to him.  I couldn’t believe it when he next asked me if I knew Freeport, where they went fishing off his friends boat and enjoyed the bars on the Nautical Mile - at this point you could have knocked me over with a feather.  Unreal! We chatted some more, and laughed about what a small world it was, and despite not having slept in days, I was suddenly in a great mood.  What an awesome welcome to Australia, and I hope, a good omen for things to come. 

Not much more to tell about the journey; we finally landed in Brisbane, and the host families were waiting for us with signs as we stepped off the plane.  Such lovely people, very friendly, and I knew the girls would be just fine. 

By the time I got to the hotel, it was 4:30pm Australia time on Tuesday – a full 36 hours had passed since I’d walked out of the house with my suitcases.  Exhausted doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.  The hotel itself is lovely – I have a small one bedroom apartment on the 32^nd floor with views from all the rooms of the river, but I didn’t spend much time admiring the view.  I’ve got 17 more nights to do that J  Instead, I pulled the blinds and settled into bed, feeling exhausted, but exhilarated.  Holy shneikes.  I’m in Australia.