Nicks guest posts

Day 1:

Woke up at 6 AM and got on a 45 minute flight from Brainerd to Minneapolis. We then spent 20 minutes rushing through the Minneapolis airport. After that we flew a 3.5 hour flights to L.A.! So far, we’ve spent 8 hours bumming around the L.A. airport. 2.5 hours left ‘till we board our 14 hour flight to Australia. It’s been a long day, but it’s totally worth it. It’s odd though; we are actually skipping Tuesday and will be arriving in Australia on Wednesday. TWILIGHT ZONE Doo do doo do doo do doo do…. Can you tell I’m sleep deprived?

Day 2

So…I’m writing this Thursday… about Wednesday…which was your Tuesday. Anyway, when we got off our 14 hour plane flight we got on one final 3.5 hour flight from New Zealand to Australia. The time was approximately 10:00 am (7:00 pm there). We then hopped on a shuttle for a 40 minute drive to our final destination (a hostel in Wollongong). We met some very nice people on the shuttle who gave us a bunch of tips on places to go and things to do… Hopefully we didn’t give off to much of a bad representation from our sleep deprived expressions and amusement that the shuttle was driving on the left side of the rode. When we reached our destination it was the basic move in, settle down, wonder around town aimlessly and return to the hostel for an early bed time due to jet leg.

Day 3 (Thursday to us, Wednesday to you)

This was a sleep in day…at least for me and Sara. Jet leg caused us to get 15 hours of sleep, but now we are right on track. Unfortunately, my Dad’s digestive track was way of course. We think he may have gotten some bad airplane food. With him sick and Mom exploring at work, it was up to me and Sara to explore the down town. We searched the mall and picked up some groceries at the local grocery store. Other than that, this was mostly a relax and get used to things day and a recovery day for Dad.

Day 4!

Our first adventure day! Dad was feeling fine, which prompted an early wake up. We all ate breakfast together and shortly after it was work time for Mom (Don’t worry, she has all weekend off so she’s not working the whole time and she says it’s pretty laid back so we should get to see a lot of her). Dad, Sara and I went off to explore the Beach. It was a fabulous day of sea shell collecting, beach food eating, and Sea gull chasing (The sea gulls here are mean. Sara tried to feed one a French fry and they all decided to swarm and attack each other over it.) We also got a bunch of really cool pictures including ones of us standing next to a very regal looking pelican. Sara got and ice cream cone near the beach that we all shared. It was a really odd almost whip cream texture, very different from ours. We spent the rest of the day wondering around the city, eating delicious apples, and listening to a really great street performer. All in all, it was a very eventful day, and we are all very excited for tomorrow.

Day 5

Day 5 was another kind of relax day due to the excessively rainy weather. Mom worked on her paper. Sara, Dad and I went off in our separate directions to explore more of the town, dilly dally in stores and see what streets led where. Later that night we had a very nice spaghetti dinner together that Sara cooked in the hostel kitchen.

Day 6

Father’s Day! Unfortunately, Father’s day isn’t an Australian holiday, so there weren’t any Father’s day specials. However, we went to the Wesley Uniting Church (the church at the mall). It was a wonderful service that Sara and I thought reminded us a lot of Eddie Izzard’s description of the Church of England. We had lunch at a small Greek restaurant and then ventured to a small modern art museum…. That was really odd. After that, we spent the rest of the day wondering in an out of various stores picking up typical tourist souvenirs and searching the local grocery store for what we’d eat for dinner. We’ve gotten to see a lot of interesting birds here too. There was a really weird version of a crow outside the grocery store that looked like a crow but sounded like a dying sheep.