The Trip

I'm back! Internet is up on the Mac!
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We took the red-eye (11:00 pm) out on Tuesday night after having a final farewell dinner with our family at Goat Hill Pizza.
We had 10 pieces of luggage and boxes that we checked, plus a few carry-on’s. We looked like the Griswalds. We were those crazy people you see at the airport. We gave ourselves plenty of time to check in and get through security. We did encounter a long wait as we were checking in due some stupid issue with Jamie’s visa and people were giving Jamie the evil eye. Fortunately our family was with us helping out with Annmarie as she ran laps around the airport. But everything worked out just fine and after a tearful goodbye we breezed through security.
Annmarie was pretty wired to go on the “Big Plane” to Australia so she didn’t fall asleep until about 1:30 am. She slept about 8 hours. Jamie and I probably slept on and off for 4 hours. She had one minor meltdown on the flight. I tried laying her down on her seat and she started crying and screaming – Sleep with DADDY! SLEEP WITH DADDY. Fine sleep with Dad. Problem solved. After sleeping we cruised the plane (which was about half full...score!), watched some DVD’s and colored in the Dutty Free catalog. And 14 hours later we landed at 6:00 am Thursday morning, Wednesday ceased to exist. The flight went surprisingly smooth. I have definitely had worse flights.
We got two big breaks at the Sydney Airport. First, because we had a kid we got to go in some family friendly immigration line. Huge score because the regular line looked deathly. And second, after picking up our ten pieces of luggage/boxes on 3 carts a very friendly customs women stopped us, asked us a few questions, welcomed us to Australia and sent us to the front of the line. I think we looked a little lost and she felt sorry for us. Thank you Sydney Airport. Note: it would probably be easier to get a porter to help you out, but somehow we did it.

All 27 pounds of Annmarie still fits in the ergo carrier (we needed our hands free) and she passed out while we waited to get our rental car. She needed the extra sleepWe picked up our minivan which barely fit all of our stuff and headed out driving on the the right side of the car and by right I really mean wrong. Jamie was here last month so he knew his whereabouts and sort of got use to the driving.

We are staying in North Ryde, which is about 15 km (or minutes) to Downtown Sydney (or the CBD as the locals call it).
Our corporate accommodations leave something to be desired. We are right across the street from a University (Macquarie University), so our apartment reminds us more of a college dorm/apartment. For the most part it is clean, quiet and has all the essential utilities, so we are making due. Of course the exception to this was the lack of a high speed internet connection, which thankfully now seems to be resolved. North Ryde is surrounded by business parks, mostly high tech businesses. It’s basically the Silicon Valley of NSW’s (New South Wales). We don’t plan on living here while we are here, but thought it would be easiest to stay here in the beginning to be close to Jamie’s office. We are surrounded by green trees and beautiful birds. Really, I’m not much of a bird person, but the birds are very impressive. Annmarie and I have been out on some walks and I have seen some awesome bids that are just out in the wild. Annmarie gets a big kick out of them. We are still getting use to them singing at 4:30 am in morning, but apparently this is all over Australia and just something we are going to have to get use too. Reminds me of Hawaii.

So here we are. We made it. Quote of the week. “It’s a little different," as coined by Annmarie. Things are essentially the same, but just a tad bit different. She said this when we went to a park; the swing is different than what she is use too. I say this every time I get in the car to drive and when I go shopping. We’re getting there. It’s all part of being somewhere new.