well i’m on my way…

Day 4: morning

I’d first like to say that there is a bit of an adjustment process to go through beginning a trip like this.  At least for me.  I spent months trying not to be excited for this trip, because I believe that with expectations comes disappointment.  And now I’m here, in beautiful sunny Sydney, and I’m dealing with a lot of emotions that I wasn’t allowing myself to feel before, and also with new emotions that I don’t want to deal with such as missing people-but don’t mistake this for homesickness, being so far away for really the first time in my life and for such an amount of time.  I’m looking forward to this journey, but slowly.  I’m easing in slowly.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a great time and am thrilled to do this.)  That being said…

 I woke up on my first full day around 5, since I’d gone to bed at 7 the night before.  I showered at left the hostel, headed down to the Harbour for some reading and sun, since nothing was open yet.  I found a market at The Rocks, the place where Captain Cook first landed and colonized.  I walked up and down the streets until I found the free museum and read everything while it rained.  The story isn’t very different from early American history: the English took over the indigenous’ land.  So after walking around for a while and finishing The History of Love I decided I needed a drink.  So I went down to the wake up! side bar and got my 2 for 1 deal on a plastic cup of Toohey’s.  

I ended up hanging out with the people from my room-all English!  I’ve met a few Irish, even less German, and English!  No North Americans in sight for miles, and the people I’ve met haven’t seen any either.  I do find this a bit wierd, since it seems to me that Australia is the American dream destination.

I proceeded to get drunk and we left for Bungalow 8-a hip bar on the harbour.  I proceeded to get drunk and once we decided to leave, I decided that I knew where we were going, and was very adamant that we were going the wrong way!  I told my new English friends that I was going to go the “right way” and I’d meet them at the hostel.  Good thing I decided to follow them-I guess my map reading abilities aren’t as good drunk!  I passed out upon arrival and woke up a quite hungover the next day.

I laid in bed until 11 to go for breakfast with the roomies.  They all ordered Chinese and Indian, while I stuck with a cheese and avacado sandwich.  Yum!  We walked around the city and took in the sights, most of what I’ve already seen, but it was good company.  I learned of Mrs Macquarie’s chair-the first mayors (??-our “tour guide” was an English guy who’d been in Sydney before, he also said that the opera house was built yesterday!) wife would sit on rocks at a high point of the coast and watch for ships coming in.  That must have been beautiful, but boring. 

We went back to the hostel.  I started reading Water for Elephants.  I’m liking taking it slow, even though it’s quite a difference from what I’m accustomed to-after running from work to school and a getting little bit of sleep so many months leading up to this, and the last time I traveled, we didn’t stay in one place longer than 2 or 3 days.  This is nice.  🙂

I’m going to head back out into the city, I’m getting back into my travelin’ groove.  And pictures, I promise, next post!  I forgot my USB cord!!  Cheers!      

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.