I have made it to Perth

2/7/09

(I have been without internet for the past couple days so I will try and catch up with the blogs over the next day or so)

 Traveled from Sydney to Perth.  It was a 5 or so hour flight on Virgin Blue Airlines.  Not very comfortable, a little warm, and you had to pay for all drinks including water.  Vikki our SSC who lives in Perth traveled along with us, which was nice as it provided us a guide through the Sydney and Perth airports.  When we landed in Perth and offloaded the plane onto the tarmac I was greeted with an immediate feeling that Perth was going to be a good fit.  The crisp, clean, warm and non humid air was really refreshing and quite different than Sydney…hard to explain but similar to the soft Tanzanian air that greets you as you step off the plane.

 Vikki showed us to chap who was going to shuttle us to Murdoch Uni and suddenly we were off on our own.  The “training wheels” had come off and we were finally just a bunch of clueless Americans in a foreign land…an overwhelming yet great adventurous feeling came over me.  We said goodbye (more like see you later) to our new friends who are going to UWA and we set off.  The fellow who was driving the bus was a typical helpful and really nice older gentleman who had one hell of a dry and sarcastic sense of humor…which I now realize is quite common.  He choose to take us on a longer route than usual so that we could see downtown Perth and the surrounding areas.  Perth is small compared to Sydney but It has a really cool skyline and it is really clean looking…hopefully we will be able to explore it later this week.

 When we got to Murdoch, our driver dropped us off at the student village and left.  It took us a while to figure out where were supposed to go but we figured it out eventually.  The 6 of us (3 dudes and 3 women) were more than a little surprised when we found out that we were all to be living in entirely different flats (apartments) and that all of our roommates would be complete strangers.  My flat is pretty dodgy…especially compared to the brand new flats that some people got.  It feels like a jail cell with bars on the windows and lack of the posters and tapestries that usually cover my walls.  I have no roommates yet but people are supposed to move in throughout the week.

 Once everyone got their room assignments we all pretty much just dropped off our bags and caught the bus down to Fremantle to explore a bit.  Freo is a really cool area right along the ocean.  It seems to have a great night scene with lots of good eats and drinks.  We grabbed some dinner and stopped at a local bar “Sails and Anchors” where there happened to be a great live bar band playing.  It was great night…a great dinner, a good IPA, and some excellent live music.