On Saturday night, Chelsea, Laura, and I went to an AFL Sydney Swans game. It's a sport that I have NEVER heard of before, but it's football, but with Australian rules. It was INTENSE. 8-10 miles of running per game. The field is round and it took us forever to understand even how the game was scored. We had such a great time and after the game was over, we actually SAW the guy from the jersey shop that told us about it. What a small world. I got a beautiful red and white sweatshirt, so now it can be multipurpose.
Sunday, nothing too eventful happened... just the fact that we couldn't get internet anywhere. Grrr. We went to a huge park in Sydney where I got to use one of those bathrooms that you pay for that has the sliding door... whoa. It was pretty sweet. And I found 20 cents in there, so that was pretty nice. We saw a flock of pigeons attack an unsuspecting family, listened to an old man play scales on his trombone for money, and I failed miserably at solving a few Sudoku puzzles. Then we had the famous Australian pie (pretty much beef stew in a pot pie) so we could be more Australian. It left us feeling pretty blah.
Then we caught the bus back to the airport... kept all of our luggage for the shortest amount of time possible, then just chilled in the airport. Included in "chilling": buying a book, a smoothie, and a camera. Yeah... that's pretty much how I roll. It's a cool camera, even if I didn't really need it. I can drop it without it breaking.. AND take pictures underwater.
We finally landed in Wellington around 11 PM, but had to go through customs and all that jazz. Carolyn, the coordinator from the university was waiting for us there and we all hugged her, haha. We were SO happy to finally be here. I got to my homestay close to 1 in the morning. I was the last to get dropped off. The host families met us in their robes, which was interesting and fun and I knew I'd love it here!
As far as host families go, mine is pretty top notch. I have a couple that are not married, but are both in their second relationship, and are in their upper 60s. They're incredibly wonderful and sweet to one another and me and the Chinese student that is here studying English. They have a 22 year old cat (TWENTY TWO).
I got up around 9 and got ready for the day, as a taxi was coming to pick us up to take us to the university for our little intro meeting thing. We got a tour of the school and learned what teachers we will be with and got to ask some questions. Then we went downtown by bus (that's run on cables) to get phones. We walked back and forth between stores a zillion times and finally invested in some prepaid phones. We then took the train home. By now, I had a migraine and was struggling to keep my head up. When I got back, I chatted with my host mom for a bit, but then went to bed and ended up sleeping for 2 1/2 hours. It got rid of my headache, so that's good! We had a delicious dinner and then I watched Pacific with them, we chatted, I gave my host mom the Wisconsin Snuggie I got for them (it looks FABULOUS on her) as well as the Rippin Good Cookies!!
Today we're planning on another relaxed day. I couldn't sleep early this morning, so I mapped out a few runs since I'm going to start training for a half marathon soon!
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