Arrival in Australia!

So Tuesday night (the 5th) I hopped on a plane headed 14 hours over the pacific. Best decision I ever made!

The plane ride over was pretty great. I was in the middle seat. To my left was an Airforce guy, with huge shoulders.. enough said as to the proximity of airline seating. To my right was this skinny canadian going to discipleship school. Pretty much the three of us just laughed for the first three hours of the flight. I'm almost positive that the guy in front of mr. airforce was trying to shut us up by out of the blue leaning his seat back as far as possible (right as Chris was leaning forward) and smacking him right in the head! Have you ever been on one of those 2 leveled airbuses? The seats in economy lean almost all the way back! It's great. Even though we were flying during the am hours and I should have been sleeping, I didn't. The whole flight. Lots of movies...

When I got into Brisbane it was overcast and humid and warm. Never been happier. I'm pretty sure all the Aussie's thought I was an idiot cause I was smiling like a fool. I just couldn't stop. As I was walking to the bus I was laughing. They were all laughing at me though cause I had a backpack on, and was somehow trying to wheel three suitcases along. Yeah, really don't recommend that.

Brisbane is a wonderful city. It's a beautiful mix of old world Australian Colonial and Ultra-Modern. It's fantastic. All the new buildings have all this wonderful metal artwork outside them, and all these beautiful glass walls. The same however can not be said about the transit center. It is this total ghetto building, that looks abandoned. It's full of back-packers there. Everyone backpacks through Australia! It looks like a blast.

The bus ride to Lismore was 5 hours. It was really fun though, cause all we were driving through were these awesome little coastal towns with rows and rows of surf shops, bead shops, hippie shops etc etc. Hippies are big here in Australia. I feel like I fit right in! There's this one town we drove through called surfers paradise that was literally just one road. On the left was the ocean, and on the right were surf shops for just miles and miles. I just wanted to get off and walk around.

Lismore Is 30 minutes inland, and just this country po-dunk kind of town. I love it! Lismore is built all over these hills and valleys, so my apartment is on a hill, overlooking the Uni which is in a valley. Oh here in Aussieland they don't really say University. They say Uni. So I do too. When I first pulled up to my apartment all I could think was "This looks absolutely nothing like the pictures online." The grounds hadn't even been looked at I think all summer, and the buildings just looked old. When I walked in, all I could think was that exact same thought, just worse. There were piles of dead cockroaches everywhere! There's a little pile in the hall, there's one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the corner of my room. It's awesome! Then, I found a living one, running around inside my fridge! My FRIDGE!!!! talk about gross. Then I found one in my freezer, but I think he was just chilling on the door and fell in when i opened it. It was great.... All the bugs are just bigger here. Bigger spiders, bigger dragonflies, bigger beetles, every bug just looks like it could eat you! And probably can.

Having only been here 3 days, I already love my little apartment. I really do. I have a twin bed that I am too tall for, a shower that I have to totally bend over in to get my hair wet, and cockroaches for flat mates but I wouldn't change it! I love it here!

I would encourage everyone who has aver wanted to come here, do it! It's wonderful.