are we REALLY here!?

After the past 48 hours, I think it’s safe to say I now have sufficient experience in travelling. Before this trip however, the furthest I've been from home was cross border shopping in Buffalo. Yes, that is correct, I have never been on a plane; and yes, I chose a five, then thirteen hour flights as my first and second flight experiences ever. Our first flight to San Francisco was only five hours and I became restless at just around the two hour mark. All I could think about the entire time was: oh no, we have a THIRTEEN HOUR FLIGHT next. What am I going to do!?

Not only have I never flown before, I have never even stepped foot in an airport. My first travel experience was amazing, sad, awesome, confusing, exciting, nerve-racking and scary simultaneously. I never imagined how difficult saying goodbye to loved ones was before now. The flight itself was unlike anything I imagined it would be. I was amazed by the simple fact a giant machine (at this point I thought a small air bus was a giant machine, until I met "Betsy" the GIANT 727 that would fly us over the Pacific Ocean) could actually stay in the air.

The take off was awesome, especially hearing the turbine engines wind up for the first time! The flight to me felt unreal. I felt like I was simply driving in a car where any turbulence we hit felt like hitting a pot hole on the road. The only thing I didn't enjoy were the tiny seats, crappy pillows and massive headaches I got while flying. I learned that investing in a good neck pillow goes a LONG way and advil every four hours on the dot is a life saver! I was lucky to get a window seat on our flight to Sydney, Australia. Even though we flew through most of the night I had my head in the window trying to see the clouds and stars. Flying over the ocean was interesting at first, and when the sun came up it was a nice view for a while. However, for 5 more hours all I had to look at was clouds and blue sky and it drove me crazy! In the end, after about 16,000km travelled... we FINALLY landed in Sydney and that was the end of my first travel experience.

First Impressions.

Expecting the sun shining and the weather hot, we left the Sydney airport to a cloudy sky and chilly breeze. Don’t get me wrong, any weather here is better than -15 degrees Celsius and a weather warning for intense snow fall at home, but there we were with our shorts, tank tops, sun glasses and sandals with coats and sweaters wrapped around our legs to keep us warm!

But what about the Aussie “stuff”? First off, cars in Australia are a million times nicer than those at home. It seemed like every car that drove by was brand new! Also, not only do they drive on the left (and wrong) side of the road, all the vehicles are right hand drive! Being a car and bike person already I was missing my toys back home. Especially in this amazingly warm weather, seeing motorcycles cruising by hurt my heart a little bit. The vegetation here is also really different. Having never travelled before, seeing a palm tree was a pretty big deal! The road signs and traffic lights, even the drivers courtesy in Australia is a complete 180 compared to back home. Here, drivers actually stop for pedestrians! Although we found out it’s against the law to not give us the right of way, we were amazed that pedestrians would just speed walk onto the road without looking when there is a car zooming towards the crosswalk!  We also noticed that no one ever speeds which we all know is unlike any one who drives in North America. Another really awesome thing is the doors on almost all buildings in Australia; every door slides open! It’s going to be weird having to push or pull a door manually when we come back.

Canberra itself is a beautiful city. I mostly knew what to expect to see through my research at home before coming here but, it really is beautiful. As a Landscape Architecture student I can definitely appreciate all of the urban planning that went in to creating the national capital of Australia. Even though we haven’t been able to travel to civic to check out all the attractions of the city yet, I can’t wait to do so. As Laura mentioned before we did get a quick tour of Canberra so we know where to go which is “sweet as” (as the Australians would say).

Overall, Australians have been living up to their laid back, not afraid to have a good time lifestyle. Especially living in residence and having to keep our windows open because of the heat, the craziness continues well into the am. We’ve learned a few key sayings along the way too: being an extreme coca cola addict, I learned coke is not called pop but “fizzy drink”, ketchup is “tomato sauce”, fries are “chips” and chips are “crisps”! Not to mention how are you is “how you goin’ ” and the common name for man or bud is “bloak” (I’m probably spelling that wrong).

Anyways, before all of you readers start to fall asleep, that was a sum up of my first travel experience and first impressions of Australia. O-week starts today and we’ll see how many interesting stories I have to share after those experiences. So for now, cheers!

Mandy.