Happy New Year!

We're here! After years of talking, months of planning, and a long journey around the world, we finally arrived and have begun our adventure. And actually, the trip over here was quite the adventure in and of itself. Snow storms in Chicago some how ended up causing delays in Philly, which was the last thing we needed since our connection in LA was already tight (45 mins). After it became apparent that we weren't going to have any chance of making our connection at LAX, United bumped us off their flight to Sydney and put us on the later Qantas flight (Australia's airline). The only problem was that due to the delay, the Qantas flight now had a shorter layover then the original United flight (only 30 mins!). However, after some serious sprinting through LAX, outside and then back through security we ended up just making the connection (if you were wondering, Carey beat Greg to the gate by about ten minutes). Only problem was that our bags didn't make it with us. No worries though, Qantas delivered the bags directly to our hotel room the next day – and they gave us $200 in case we needed to buy any clothes to hold us over until our bags arrived. I guess it’s like the Australian guy sitting next to us on our plane to Sydney said, “When you’re in Australia, everything just seems to work out.”

We spent our first two days in our new hometown walking around the neighborhoods, getting a feel for the layout of the city and enjoying some of the amazing sites. And there definitely are many amazing sites. Darling Harbour, the Sydney Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge are all spectacular and were actually in and of themselves well worth the day’s journey to see. We haven’t wasted any time here, honestly we must have walked about 20 miles over the course of the past few days because we don’t have a car and are avoiding really devoting anytime to learning the public transportation system (that will soon change now that we both have seriously sore legs and feet).

Luckily for us, our second night in town just happened to be New Year’s Eve, which in Sydney is a major event with all day festivities capped off with an amazingly orchestrated fireworks display, which we were lucky enough to experience from a penthouse apartment with all windows that has to have one of the best views in the entire city. We also hit up another party, which was also really fun and was on a rooftop terrace with great music and great people. After a night of partying and ringing in the New Year with some of our new friends we decided that rather then dealing with the massive crowds on the trains and buses we would walk back to our hotel (our new favorite thing to do – walk). Well about a thousand or so other people must have had the same idea so we ended up trekking over the Harbour Bridge and through the central business district while maneuvering our way around some of the largest crowds we’ve ever seen. This city sure does know how to throw a party and the laws for drinking and pubic drunkenness are much more lax here, so you can imagine...

After sleeping in a little bit (definitely not enough!) on New Year’s Day, we decided to check out Paddington as a potential neighborhood for living – again ended up walking b/c we couldn’t figure out the bus situation! Then off to Bondi Beach for the day. Our first Australian beach experience was everything we expected and more. Beautiful views, enormous waves, tons of surfers, and unbelievable weather. And of course Greg got sunburned.

Now we’re off to find a place to live and get ourselves all situated down under. Hopefully we’ll be able to fit in some more site seeing and beach time before we have to start work. We’ll be sure to post again soon. Hope all is well back in the States. Happy New Year!