Australia

It's been a very productive and busy day. And a very beautiful day. It was about 25 degrees (upper 70s for you Americans) and perfectly clear all day. It was a bit breezy, but I think that's what made it warm, the wind was from the north, meaning it came from inland as opposed to the sea. Well, that's my theory anyway based on what I know after living here for 4 days...

Anyway, this morning I went over to the visa agency office and printed off my CV and made a list of places I wanted to hit up for a job. I spent the early afternoon walking up and down two main streets in suburbs just north of the center of Melbourne. I handed out about 6 copies of my CV, not too bad. Some are more promising than others, like one place, a bakery, is actually looking for a sales assistant, but the woman I gave my CV to didn't think they'd hire someone for only 3 months. Another place might not have an opening for a couple of weeks. One place that was pretty promising, but only offering parttime work, was a place I just popped into for a bit of an energy boost. It was a "chocolateria", a place serving churros with chocolate, along with bonbons and ice cream. As I was paying, I thought to ask if they might be looking for help and she said "actually, yeah." It seemed like a nice place to work, but yeah, only parttime probably. She said she'd give me a call later and she didn't, so we'll see if she even gets back to me. But I applied at places ranging from Borders to a gelato shop in the Italian part of town (do I get bonus points for being a quarter Italian?) to a bagel place called, funnily enough, Beans and Bagels (for the non-NL residents, in Holland there's a chain of bagel/coffee places called Bagels and Beans). Tomorrow I plan to head to suburbs south of center and hit more places.

One suburb I went to today is called Fitzroy and the main street, Brunswick, reminded me a bit of Hawthorne in Portland (and confusingly there's a Hawthorn here, but it's spelt like that, without the e) but it's much longer, which was fun because I walked up one side of the street and back down the other. My legs are very tired (especially because they have hills here! I've missed hills, but my legs aren't used to walking up them). Anyway, Brunswick has so many cool shops and cafes, I definitely have to go back when I'm not in job hunting mode.

Things have gone quite well on the housing side of things. I didn't go to the house I had mentioned before, the girl had to move the viewing to Sunday, but I saw a different house in the meantime. This morning I had placed an ad on a site I'd been checking for housing saying I was looking for a room and I got a call in the afternoon from a guy who was leaving a room free for a couple of months. I just checked it out this evening, it's in the aforementioned cool Fitzroy area and it's shared with two other guys, though one apparently is never there. The bedroom is huge and you can crawl out the window to a balcony. There's also a roof terrace. It's a bit rough around the edges, all roughed up, badly painted hardwood floors, but the space and location are good.

I'd probably have said yes to that room if I hadn't had gotten another call before I went there for an offer of a room in a 5 bedroom "mansion" with views of the river. It sounds amazing: huge garden, close to center, big furnished room AND within my price range... The girl I talked to sounded really nice as well and the way she described the house sounds like how I like to live, not a party house, everyone's responsible and respectful, people are around my age, so not too studenty or anything. She was particularly keen on my ad because she's living there with two guys now and she wanted another girl in there to balance things out, heh. Anyway, I go to see it tomorrow afternoon and it almost sounds too good to be true, but if it is as amazing as it sounds, I think I know where I'll be living! Stay tuned for more on that...

I took trams for the first time today, it's pretty easy to figure out. Most of the trams are much shorter than Amsterdam trams though. Short little things. I found out today though that it's not bush fires that are a danger in Australia, but bin fires. Coming back from job hunting, I got off at my stop downtown and there was a garbage bin across the street full-on engulfed in flames. Most people just seemed to carry on with their business until the fire department came to put it out, then a little crowd watched as they blasted it with a hose. A weird bit of the day, apparently something to write home about...

I can't believe I've only been here 2 full days. It's been a very long couple of days, filled with so many new things.

Overall I feel much better than I did when I got here. I mostly bummed around yesterday, checking out the downtown area. I was kept from doing some of the things I needed to (contacting the bank, contacting the agency helping me out to schedule my orientation) because the Australian mobile sim card I bought took a day and a half to activate. It was only supposed to take an hour or two, but it only finally worked today at about 2 or so. But I had made an appt anyway with the agency and I saw them this afternoon. Got all sorts of info and goodies. My appt was rather late though, so I only had a bit of time at the computer there before it was closing time. So I'll go in tomorrow and print off copies of my CV and make a list of places to hit asking for a job. I'll also see if there are job postings to apply for, but going door to door might be more successful.

I also went to the bank today to get my bank card. I had already set up the account from abroad, I had even transferred money from my Dutch account, but I needed to go in and identify myself and get my card and info on how the account works, etc. The guy who helped me was soooo nice, he didn't just give me bank info, he gave me some leads on job openings and also tips on where to look for a shared house. It was awesome, plus I'm so glad to have my bank account sorted out, unlike when I went to the UK and didn't have an account for weeks and couldn't be paid and it rather sucked. I even paid for my groceries this evening with my new Australian bankcard. Oooh, exciting stuff. =)

On the housing front, I replied to an online ad and will go view this room tomorrow evening (how the week flies, she asked me to come by Thursday and I thought that was ages from now, but it's tomorrow!) It sounds promising, but the suburb the house is in is a little farther out of the city than I would like. Not "I need a car" far, and it's across the street from a tram stop linking you to the center, but I'll see how long it takes me to get there.

So, things are moving. Hope to post more soon...

After many, many hours, I made it to Melbourne last night (Monday). It was a very long trip, and I'm very glad that when I go back to Amsterdam I break up the journey by staying in Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days.

The flights went fine though. From Amsterdam to KL was my first time in a 747. It didn't feel that huge inside, but you can't really see down the whole plane at once. I had a friendly middle-aged couple sitting next to me, I had assumed they were Malaysian, but I think they were Indonesian. The woman was sitting next to me and though they didn't speak much English, we communicated sometimes with looks and such, like when she'd lean across me to peek out the window and we'd both shrug that there was still nothing to see, it was all dark out there. She was kind and a bit motherly, patting me on the arm sometimes, it was nice. The sleeping pills my doctor gave me were near useless. I was expecting to be knocked out for most of the flight, instead it was like my body clock won, telling me it was midday, not time to sleep, so I only slept a couple of hours. I snoozed a lot more during the second flight, but that was not going to help me get on schedule here. Oh well, I slept remarkably well last night. Feeling a bit sleepy and not with it now, but hopefully I get over it in a couple of days.

I was quite a wreck by the time we got to KL and I managed to doze a bit on some seats in the terminal (I had about 3 hours to wait til the next flight). The international terminal is pretty cool, a circle with four wings extending out with the gates, and in the middle of the circle are all these tropical plants that you can view through windows. The circle thing was a bit confusing though, I wandered around too much and in my sleepy state would lose track of what part I was at. I also swear I saw Floortje Dessing at one point, but I'm not 100% sure it was her, heh...

Our flight to Melbourne was delayed by half an hour because they decided to wait for some family who was late, not sure why we all had to wait. Also I would have had a window seat if they hadn't have showed up. I had moved from my middle seat to the empty window seat, so had another girl, but then the family ran on and we got booted back to our assigned seats. Boo. I evil-eyed them since they also made us late.

I slept on and off all the way to Melbourne. At one point though I went to stand at the back of the plane a bit since my back was stiff from sitting so long and I ended up chatting with one of the airline stewards (the purser maybe? he was dressed slightly differently than the other flight attendants). We talked for awhile, a good 30-45 mins about everything from my job and his job to why I was going to Australia to living in Amsterdam and why I don't want to live in the US to why Oregon is awesome. It was great and he was so friendly. Definitely a good way to kill some time, plus it helped wake me up a bit.

I also had gone to the back of the plane so I could peer out the little window on the emergency exit door. The map showed we were finally over Australia and I wanted to have a look. Our route took us over Australia from the NW corner diagonally across Western Australia, past Adelaide and across Victoria to Melbourne. So a lot of the flight was over the huge deserts of Western Australia. And it looked pretty much as I imagined: dry and empty and red. It did feel like we might have been flying over Mars. And the few times I peeked out, I never saw any sign of civilization; no roads or clumps of buildings. It's all just a lot of barren nothingness, and over such an unbelievably vast area.

Once in Melbourne, I took a bus to the city and then, because it was late in the evening and the hotel shuttle was no longer going, I had to take a taxi to the hostel. By chance there was a girl on the bus who was also going to the same hostel, so we shared a cab. We got some newbie cab driver, he had never heard of the hostel and was asking us to direct him there. We told him the address and I had a map so I said what the nearest street was, but he still was looking it up on a map when we were stopped at red lights. Anyway, the girl was really nice, an Irish girl with an Irish name I can't pronounce, and we ended up being placed in the same room. We didn't really hang out much, but it was nice to meet someone straight off.

I felt very weird once I was here, like I still couldn't comprehend that I'd be living here for months. It was like I'd been just going through all the stages of packing and going to the airport and getting through the flights, but not really realizing what the purpose was at the end of it all. If that makes sense. I mean, of course I know what I'm here for and what the plan is, it's just hard to realize it all right now. I was a bit overwhelmed when I got to the hostel, just so much newness and trying to fit into a small space with 4 other people and all of that, and I was having "why am I doing this?!!" thoughts, but I'm sure in a week or two I'll look back and laugh at that. I hope anyway, heh.

Anyway, off to look at the city a bit and probably nap later and get more settled. It's wonderful and sunny out, I sat on a bench munching what I bought for breakfast and it was nearly as warm as it has been in general lately in Amsterdam. But it's late winter. The only way I was reminded of that is that the trees are all bare. Hopefully we have a lovely spring.