Finally made it!

Above: (from top to bottom) Home

Jeremy and Jared (so nice to come up Alb to send me off, thanks again guys!)

The parents (were kind enough to drive me to Alb)

My home now (what a difference!)

After some wonderful airplane delays, I finally made it to my host families' house sometime around 3 yesterday, making the grand total travel time somwhere around 30 hours. Fun! Along the way, I met a girl from NMSU that is studying at Macquerie (sp) University which is just north of Sydney. She and I are hoping to find some time to go to New Zealand. I also met a girl from Korea on the bus. She is also staying with a host family that lives just a few blocks from me. We are hoping to find some time later this week to go to Newcastle and the beaches.

My host family is quite nice, they also have a young man from Saudi staying here, he is getting his MBA, and a young girl from Japan, but she is only here for 2 weeks. The house was built sometime in the 1940s, but they have remodeled it and it looks very nice. They are very into 50s culture, especially dancing. Apparently they used to compete and were quite good at it. Their backyard is a full acre and is amazing, all kinds of plants, complete with a vegtable garden. My host mom loves to make dresses, and they also love to throw big parties (they even have bands play on their patio!) I will try to post more pictures, but the one included above is the view from my window.

Today my host mom walked me to the local shopping center (about a 20 min walk) It was very similar to our malls, except it also included a grocery store and the restaurants were nice bistro places and were scattered throughout in the middle of the walkway. She let me pick up a package of tortillas, but I was sorely disappointed. They were "plastic" feeling and had no taste to them. She did have some salsa which I tried but it tasted more like tomato sauce. They have "taco kits" but I wouldn't consider them tacos, not sure what to call them. However, they had a huge selection of fresh fish and asian food, so I'm looking forward to trying some of that.

Australia, thus far, seems very much like America, except that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and I believe my english teachers would have a cow listening to them speak. They do not like to be addressed with "yes sir" and "no ma'am", I'm going to have to break that habbit.

Being a person from New Mexico, I feel like I woke up in a dream. It is green, hilly, and there are huge trees and vegatation everywhere. Parrots are naive birds here, which is quite strange. I'm used to seeing them in cages at pet stores, here there was a flock of them eating a tree.

I guess that's all for now, I have so much running through my mind, kind of hard to collect my thoughts, so I apologize for the scatteredness.