I arrived in Sydney after the uneventful overnight train from Melbourne and checked back into the RG Hotel, where I stayed after my arrival from Africa two months ago. My only plans for the rest of my time here were to meet up with Line again and also catch up with Mark, who I worked with in the orthopedics lab at the Prince of Wales Hospital when I was here in 1998. It was good to see them again, but of course always sad to say goodbye, you just never know when you'll see each other again.

Other than that, I mostly ran errands trying to prepare for South America. It's amazing how the little things can turn really complicated when you are overseas. I have booked into a few tours in South America/Antarctica that I need to bring U.S. dollars for, and just getting that cash has been a marathon effort. When I brought U.S. cash from home to Africa, many Africans would only accept the "new" notes, the ones that have presidents with the big faces on them. They kept telling me that the ones with the small faces were now worthless. So this time around, I've been trying to make sure all the notes I bring have the "big faces" on them. Also, even though I called my credit card company and warned them that I'd be traveling overseas, and asked them to note it in my account, I've still had my credit card frozen twice since I've been gone.

So tomorrow I'm leaving for Santiago, Chile, and its going to be the longest day of my life, so far. The flight is 17 hours long, with a half hour layover in Auckland, New Zealand. But since I'm flying across the international date line, I'll actually be arriving in Chile only 3 hours later than I left Australia. That means that my wednesday is going to be 38 hours long! Thats ok though, because wednesday is Manali's birthday! Who else gets to have a 38 hour long birthday!? HEY, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, POST A MESSAGE TO MANALI SAYING HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!