First Couple Days in Sydney

just a quick post to say hello (or g'day i suppose) from down under. Its thursday afternoon here, we're on our 4th day in Sydney and so far i have to say its great. We arrived early monday morning after a 14 hour flight from SF (of which i slept 10.5 hours) to a sunny but chilly day (evidently winter in sydney does actually exist in some form). after getting ourselves to our temporary apartment in darling harbour (i'm embarassed to admit this but we both got excited when we found that we're like 2 or 3 blocks from the real world house and we're literally across the street from that bar they went to every single night) we set out to explore a bit of the city. we wandered around, as we passed people on the sidewalk we constantly tried to walk to the right as they tried to walk to the left so we now are constantly trying to remind ourselves to stay to the left. crossing streets is challenging because my brain can't deal with the fact that cars drive on the left so rather than just know i have to look in the opposite direction from normal, my brain short circuits and i try to look in all directions simultaneously which, sadly, is not humanly possible. i think i'm improving a bit in this category.

we've managed to accomplish a few basic tasks while a few others still elude us. we've managed to open a bank account, get cell phones and go grocery shopping. but cracking the public transit nut is still slightly beyond us. (how am i supposed to know how many sections my bus trip is going to cover? and what's the difference between a section and a zone anyways? and does the monorail actually serve any purpose or is it just there to confuse and distract you from the real means of public transportation? makes me really appreciate nyc transit at this point i have to say!)

on the cell phone note, since i now have a number here, you can all call me which i know you all have been dying to do. and i can receive calls for free so you should all feel free to call me anytime day or night (but keep in mind i haven't fully adjusted to the time zone change yet so i haven't really managed to stay up past 8pm but i'm up at 6am like clockwork each morning). We are 14 hours ahead of the east coast and 17 hours ahead of the west coast (and in case the only two people i know who don't live on the coasts can't do the interpolation themselves, we're 16 hours ahead of colorado and 15 hours ahead of chicago...you both know who you are). to dial from the US i believe it would be 011 61 4 02525134. if that doesn't work, let me know.

i've put up a few pictures from our first few days here...nothing really spectacular, just random shots from our wanderings around the city so no worries at all if you don't see them, but in case anyone is curious...

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.aq30535x&x=0&y=-vuc934&localeid=en_US

thats all for now...i plan to update here regularly but we'll see how well i manage to keep up with that!