Our First Week in Wollongong, Australia!

                 

             Continued from our last post:

             After a 10.5 hour flight to Sydney, we were anxious to get off the plane and finally stretch our legs. However, to our surprise, we were told to stay seated while two flight attendants “debugged” our plane. The overhead baggage containers on the plane were sprayed with two small aerosol containers which were meant to kill any bugs that were coming from the US.  Despite the fact that this spray was used to KILL any bugs (we found this comical since Australia has THE deadliest bugs/animals/etc), the spray was not supposed to harm humans in anyway...hmmmm. After the “de-bugging” we were allowed off the plane and met with Jordan’s buddy Dave “Gravy” Johnson, who he met in Alberta 4 years ago while living on Sunshine Mountain. Gravy graciously offered to pick us up from the airport and let us crash at his apartment for the night. I had never met Gravy before, nor his girlfriend Chelsea or roommate Zander, but they were so nice and really made us feel welcome! They gave us pointers and helped us map out our route to Wollongong via train the next morning.  One thing that I have to make note of is how Australians drive on “the WRONG side of the road” J. Wow, even after almost week in Australia, I don’t think that I will get used to this any time soon! Simple things like crossing the street (while J-walking of course) are so much harder now since we always look the wrong way! It certainly is going to take us a while to get used to cars coming at us from the other side of the road.

                After spending the night in Sydney with Gravy, Chelsea and Zander, we paid $48 to cab it to Central Train station where we bought our 1.5 hour train tickets to Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. The train ride was beautiful since it essentially went through the Australian ‘jungle’ while every once and a while popping out at the coast and overlooking the cliffs and beaches. Instantly, Jordan and I were so excited and thoroughly reassured that we made the right decision in picking up our lives and moving to this beautiful country for a year! After getting off the train and making our way to Keiraview Accommodation (the University- run hostel) by foot, lugging hundreds of pounds of luggage up a steep hill, we finally checked in to our (hotel-like) room! Right away we walked 5 minutes down the road and checked out the town that we moved too! Although we were told that Wollongong has a population of 292,000 people and is a steel-town like Hamilton, Ontario (where we previously lived together for 8 months), we felt it was nothing like a large city. Wollongong, to us, feels more like a modern, hotter, more beautiful version of Orillia. It has a small-town feel where Australians are essentially nicer versions of Canadians (with an accent).We immediately felt at home! After making a trip up to the university to enroll in classes and discuss housing options with the accommodation department, I spent 3 hours starring apartments of interest and sending e-mails to make appointments to view the apartments.

 

Living in Australia is very, very expensive including everything from food to accommodation to internet. After checking out a cute, modern apartment one street from the beach, (and deliberating over the expensive price) we decided to sign the lease and go for it- our primary reason being that it is summer right now and besides being at school and work, our main priority is to spend some time at the beach! We signed a 6 month lease and moved in the next morning!

 

 Our Asian-themed apartment is very cozy and we absolutely love it (minus the loft-style bed with little head room…however, Jordan loves it since it is basically a bear’s den with little light which makes for deep, uninterrupted hibernation)!

                                                                               Our dryer!

I have to admit, the loft-style is pretty unique! As I am writing this blog at 10:30 at night, Jordan informs me that he is, in fact, going to hibernate into the bears den since this is the latest we have been up all week! Since we left Canada and have been in these beautiful places I have not wanted to waste a minute of our time and have been up between 5:30 and 7 am every morning. Jordan, to say the least, is not overly thrilled with this decision but goes along with it anyways like a good sport.

Since we have moved into our apartment on the 7^th of January, we have made endless trips into town to buy groceries, bedding (I’m allergic to the down comforter that was provided), cell phone purchases, internet, and our most exciting purchase…2 body boards! The beach, which is an approximate 3 minute walk from our apartment, is absolutely beautiful and we spend as much time as we can there! There are MASSIVE waves every day and after body surfing for the first couple of days, we decided on investing $80 (50% off the regular price) on two body boards which have gotten so much use already! We absolutely love using these boards trying to catch as many waves as we can -with more bails than successful runs! Our shower is filled with sand at the end of every day because we spend so much time in the ocean and on our boards! Both Jordan and I have made comments about how we feel like we are still in the ocean doing back and front flips (from getting hit by waves and tossing us every which way) when we hit the sack at the end of the night! I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster every night when I close my eyes! 

We both have experienced the Australian sunburn already (probably due to the fact that we were both pasty white ghosts when we first got here). I burnt my butt so bad the other day that I could barely sit all night!  Needless to say, the next day we stayed clear of the sun!

On a positive note, Jordan got a job today! Our landlords just opened up a new café (Bar Coco- a desert bar) just around the corner from our apartment and offered Jordan a job. While we were hoping for Jordan to become the newest ‘barista’ in town, since he has no experience in the restaurant business the owners offered him the esteemed position of a ‘dish bitch’ (as Jordan so eloquently describes it).  He is willing to do anything for the next 6 months and getting paid $15/hr cash does make it hard to turn down the job! 

                                 Jordan's off to his job interview!

Jordan’s Insert: Hmmm where to start, Wollongong so far has been a blast; from lying around on the beach to getting absolutely beat in the massive waves while learning to body board. The first large wave that I actually caught I was so stoked that I was screaming with excitement when the wave broke throwing my legs over my head (full blown scorpion) and ramming water down my throat. When I finally stood up I was choking on sea water and on the verge of throwing up. Needless to say I was loving it and began swimming out to Kirsten only to find her laughing hysterically at my bail. Not too long after the same thing happened to Kirsten and we enjoyed a good laugh. This has happened to us many times now but we are both starting to get the hang of it. When we are not acting like a bunch of beach bums we are out exploring the city. Wollongong has a beautiful harbour with two large lighthouses surrounded on either side by the two never ending public beaches. Oddly enough, as large as these beaches are, the public swimming zone (monitored by life guards) couldn’t be any smaller. Although the location of the safe zone changes daily due to the tides it ranges from 50-75m wide. It is rather funny to see these expansive beaches and then an extremely crowded section of the beach where people are allowed to swim. Outside of the flags is the designated surfing area which keeps the swimmers out of their way. When we arrived in Sydney Gravy mentioned that the summer here is their shark season and that due to the uncommon “cold” weather they were experiencing the sharks were moving in toward the beach to feed. Of course this freaked both Kirsten and I out. Reassuringly, Gravy who has lived in Australia his whole life has never seen a shark at the beach before. To monitor this unusual season they have hired two bi-planes to fly quite low over the beach daily monitoring the coast. Now that I have completely freaked out my mother about the ocean I will sign off and leave you to continue reading Kirsten’s portion of the blog.   

I start school on January 16^th (this coming Monday) and so I am looking forward to relaxing the next couple of days before my life gets super hectic.  We’d like to thank everyone for all the congratulations and well wishes about our engagement!  We couldn’t be happier about it and it means a lot to have so much love and support surrounding us! 

 That's all for now! Hope you enjoyed this blog!

  

Love,

K & J