Sydney!

We made it to Sydney today with no problem. I had to jump online for something else, so I thought I'd post a quick entry, although I don't have much to say. We had to get up VERY early (3:45) to catch our flight (I know.... again, I can feel the sympathy pouring in). When Keith was complaining yesterday about how early we would have to get up I reminded him that most folks back home have to get up around 6:00 or so every day to go to work....I don't think we have much room to complain. Nevertheless, he is upstairs napping right now and as I can't ever seem to nap for very long, thought I'd take care of some stuff online.

We're staying a ways out of downtown Sydney at another YHA hostel, but being the large city that it is, Sydney is set up with a pretty sweet subway/bus/train/ferry system, and the first thing we purchased was a weeklong pass to ride any of them at any time. So while we're not staying right downtown, it's not too much trouble to get there and actually kind of nice to be able to escape from it. I do have to admit that we would have stayed downtown, but apparently December is the busiest travel month for Sydney and waiting until the day before to book a double room in a hostel doesn't cut it - all the places that we knew would be good places to stay were full and we didn't want to risk getting stuck in a dive for the five days we're here. So we ended up in a suburb called Dulwich Hill - maybe a 20 minute drive from downtown - 30 min by subway. It's an interesting community - I'm trying to figure out the predominant nationality and have narrowed it down to Greek or Italian. We went to the bank first thing to get some money and were greeting with a HUGE line of people - all very short and speaking a different language. I heard lots of Italian, but lots also looked Greek to me (ha, no pun intended). We quickly learned, by chatting with the very cute and chatty old lady next to us, that today is "pension day". Apparently not a lot of people utilizing direct deposits for their pension check - they were all at the bank to get their cash. I even saw one lady immediately stuff it all into her bra!

It's not a touristy part of the greater Sydney area at all, and we found that our hostel caters to the travelers on working holiday. It's kind of nice in a way to just be in a regular neighborhood without the bombardment of tourist activities, which you really can't get away from in NZ. And with such a diverse population in this particular neighborhood - it really does feel like a foreign country - although not at all what I expected Australia to be like. We stuck out like sore thumbs at the bank today....it made us realize how much more we're going to stick out 5 days from now when we land in Bali! We may venture into the city tonight, we'll see if Keith ever wakes up....don't worry Melody, I'll let him sleep! :)

I just looked at the beginning of this blog....looks like I had more to say than I thought!