Photo highlights, chronologically ordered

Ok! Some photos at last. Here I go.


When you first arrive in a new country and don't know anyone, the following are the kind of things you might take pictures of. These are all from my first day, walking around in a jet-lagged daze: "oooooh, fern gully tree"......"omg hey does that sign say FLESH PRODUCE?" ....and then my bad-ass keycard for the Nunnery and some australian coins. Yep.




Here is the entrance to the Nunnery, the coolest hostel evar...



... and that was my top bunk, and i kept all my stuff in that alcove near the window... it was very cozy up in that corner, i kind of miss the company





look, sarah, they have my antennae here!!




I love these trees... this one really reminds me of an elephant--look at the trunk!




...and it's really big.


(yes this is blatantly taken on timer don't make fun of me i didn't have any friends yet)


Example of a tram line; this is how we get around in Melbourne without cars. Don't worry, i was very safe taking this picture; the trams don't come very often and i looked both ways.



This is the quad and the Old Arts building at Melbourne... the Uni is way beautiful. and look, it's raining! that's right, drought, goway!



Here is Sam imitating this strange statue that lives on Swanston St...




...and, "The Greatest Picture That I Have Ever Taken":



Palm trees at St. Kilda




Here is what the Nunnery did for us every weekday... the detail on that parrot was amazing for chalk, and the advice was good; ice cream at trampoline is quite yummy.




And at last, my new pad... all it has is a mattress and those flowers. Luckily, i don't require much more than that.

VB and Puggs and beaches

Fun discovery of the week: when i drunk dial here, i am rambling incoherently to some unfortunate (amused?) soul back on the east coast as they are just getting up at 9 or 9:30AM. Nothing like a wasted rachael to start your day off on the right foot!

So I have a place to live now! It's pretty baller, and the girls who live there are great so far. i move in on sunday, and then, THEN i will have GLORIOUS broadband connection at my bedside always. Hooray, I will be connected to the world again! I promise lots of pictures as soon as I'm settled.

i had a really great night last night, just hanging out at this irish pub on elgin st and talking to friends and locals. it's weird, though, when all my outings end in me walking back alone across carlton gardens (save for the possums). It makes me really thankful for my ipod!

The days are kind of blurry here so far, and I guess I've spent the last few afternoons exploring the city or going to St. Kilda's beach, which gets a bad rap for the locals but which i think it very pretty. Today, though, Sam and Zach and I might try the pool, where there is much less chance of jellyfish sting. Also it's closer, and ginormous. If blogger didn't suck so much (maybe safari is the problem?) i would show you a picture of it.

108 again, dang

Happy Chinese New Year! For you people at home, light incense at midnight and pray to a budda--it's good luck! So today I'm going to take kind of a break from home-hunting and go to the beach. I look like a tourist with this skin of mine, anyway.

blogger won't let me post photos for some reason. i'll try again soon. there'll be a photo extravaganza. it will be epic.

a really funny/embarrassing thing happened to me today that is kind of too good of a story not to tell. i was talking to my mom on skype and i was like hey, let's see if i can send a text message to your phone. i put in her number and sent a message, but five minutes later she still hadn't gotten it. i picked up my phone, horror rising, to see if i had sent it to the right number. and... sure enough, i got one number wrong. which means someone in the greater rochester area got a message from a random australian number, and what the message said was,

"Poop!"




as i looked at my phone, i received a message back. It said "toilet!" thank got that person has a sense of humor. so if anyone knows who 585 356 0967 is, tell them i'm really sorry.

at least my mom and i got a really good laugh out of it!

oh! possums!

yep, that's spelled correctly. opossums are from somewhere else(south africa, i think). possums are australian. and CUTE. they live in Carlton Gardens across from the Nunnery, and they come out at night and hang out in the trees to eat. Here is what they look like:

...these little buggers are also my last-minute inspiration for my new url. they are called Trichosurus Vulpecula. doesn't that sound like a dinosaur name? when sam(antha) and zach and i were at the bar last night after dinner, the bartender told us that sometimes you see the possums, but that they are kind of mean and squeal at you. on the contrary, as we crossed the park, lo and behold--possums everywhere! adorable! unafraid! sam and i have decided to adopt them all and give them names, naturally. when i walked home through the park, the possums followed me and let me pet them even. it's pure superficial cupboard love, but quite delightful nonetheless.

last night i finally mangaged to sleep all the way through (thank you, beer). i still don't have a permanent place to stay, but i'm ok with that for now. all the australian students come back next week for orientation, so i bet i'll find a room with people then. either way, i'm sick of walking around searching in vain for rooms that have already been let out by the time i get there/call. i'll try harder on monday when the heat breaks. nobody likes to walk around forever in 108 degree weather (not kidding, kids. 108.)

i have to go and deal with my phone and find some water. cheers mates!

day 2

I gave up the fight and collapsed into bed around 9:30 last night. Unfortunately, going to bed that early in a dorm of 12 people means lights on and off a lot, banging, talking, general disturbances.

Here is what my room looks like:



My brain, being how it is, remained in limbo between wake and sleep for a good two hours. Still, I couldn't go back to sleep after 6:30am, so i got up and found some breakfast downstairs (which is included in my $22USD nightly boarding fare), read for a little while, and headed out find coffee.

Lappy dying, off I go. I have my first meeting in about an hour at the Uni, where I will hopefully see Jess!

over the sea, tossing and turning, cast upon new shores

(i wrote this yesterday, couldn't post til now)

Ok! First legit blogging session commence. First off, I'm safe and sound in Melbourne, and it is 5:45PM on Wednesday the 14th. Which means I am 16 hours ahead of all you sluggish souls back in the chilly northeast. It also means that my body thinks it is nearly 2AM. Forgive me in advance for spelling and grammar, and Happy Valentine's Day!

I am writing from a little cafe on Elizabeth St that I was directed toward for free wireless. They sort of have it; they want to charge/rob me for access. But, I'm sick of walking for now so I'm going to sit here and write until I get hungry.

Ok. I'll begin at what I think is the beginning. This is going to be a long one. I will add pictures later, which may elicit a closer read to what is probably going to be a lengthy entry. So the day before I left was Sunday. Sunday was weird... I got up early to pack and go get a bunch of last-minute stuffs, largely from the travel bins and snack aisles at kmart/tops. I LOVE THOSE TRAVEL BINS ETERNALLY. I love that traveling allows me to guiltlessly give in into my strong urge to buy all those killer tiny versions of shit I don't really need. Highlight purchases from my excursion include:

mini bodywash: caress "glowing touch"
a plastic watch with smiling, waving penguins on it (cost: $6)
mini intensive therapy lotion
those crunch asian wasabi-flavored bulk snacks

After I was mostly done packing (waiting on laundry), I did my taxes online. I include this because TurboTax is often unintentionally hilarious. See, they have you go from page to page answering Yes/No or checking boxes. Usually these pages have a theme--sometimes they don't. My favorite example is the page that asks you to check which things apply to you, and the things are(paraphrased):
- can you be claimed as a dependant last year?
- did you serve in the military last year?
-did you go blind last year?
-did you die last year?

hahaha.

I stayed up last organizing and downloading podcasts, watched an ep of x-files with Jessa, then went to sleep around 1AM.

Next morning, up early to shower and put my stuff in the car. The transition from home to rochester to JFK was pretty uneventful. I was pretty sad to leave my mom, but happy to be embarking at last. At JFK, I ate clam chowder and chatted with a kid named Alex who had just gotten off work at the McDonalds. Listened to a podcast about quantum mechanics. Grabbed a water. Boarded my plane at 4:20.

Journal entry interlude:
"It took us over an hour to leave JFK due to some repair thingy, but now we're taxiing. The air smells like burnt rubber and there was smoke around the plane a minute ago, which is disconcerting from a plane that is flying us across the country. My new friend and seatmate Chanah is reading her prayers quietly in Hebrew to calm down, so I thought I would write as some calming therapy, me style. --I just saw the most amazing airplane out my window. Bright red, covered in graffiti-style art... Quantas rocks. Chanah is also bound for Australia, cause she studies at a Jewish seminary in Sydney. Neat fact: her family practices homeopathy; we have a lot to talk about (if only I spoke Yiddish! Hah.)
It's misty out, and the sun has set now, and the shores of the City and Island look like some kind of colossal glittery sensorimotor homunculus stretching out away from my window. Parking lots, empty, lamp-lit, are eerie from high above with their spotted patterns of pooled light. I love taking off. It kind of feels like going home. You know, until I remember that Twilight Zone with John Lithgow and the creature that walks on the plane's wing and rips off the engines. eek.

Anyway, we're totally chasing the sunset, which is cool. I just took half a sleeping pill, hoping that it will keep my dreamy and so the flight will be quick."

I watched the pretty colors of the in-flight movie, marie antoinette and read a magazine, then presto, the lights of shangri-L.A. beneath me. Yay for drugs.

When I "woke up" part way through my flight from LA to Sydney, grumpy and delerious, this is what I wrote:


"Airplane Food

Ok. Let me put a disclaimer on this and say that I love airplane food, I really do. Ask Julia... that awesome dinner we had on the way to rome?...happiness! And furthermore, it's great as a little project to pass the time on a long flight. So when I was handed one of those neatly squared little boxes at 3:30AM eastern time, I thought, ok, sure, i'll wake up for this. Alas, United Airlines has a strange conception of what a vegetarian might want as a "snack" in the middle of the night: cold, unseasoned brown rice mixed with cilantro, golden raisins, green peas, and tangerine slices, all on a bed of iceberg lettuce. So now here I am sitting stuck in the middle of the middle aisle between two older women who find it hard to get up so i can go pee, miserable and sore from (barely) sleeping upright for six hours, a really annoying chant about ethiopia stuck in my head that i must have dreamed up--and I am ready to throw this tin of animal-friendly "snack" of "pilaf salad" (?!?!?!) at the nearest flight attendant's head. Whatever. Fuck. iPod in, eye mask down, I will attempt to sleep until breakfast.

Then later: After dozing for about an hour, I am shocked awake by what is unmistakenly the feel of fingers around my ankle. I'm not kidding. I wanted to believe it was just someone stretching out their feet behind me, but no, those are hands. Sweet. I squealed into my pillow and jerked my feet up. A few seconds later, a tap on my shoulder behooves me to "look under my feet, please, for a lost pair of eyeglasses." Way to go, lady, that probably should have been your first move in the search. My adrenalin is unwelcome here. I hate you right now.

The monitor on the ceiling says that it's -47 degrees celcius outside. That makes me a little happier. I love that this Boeing is a tiny little encasing of heat and oxygen and safety in a sea of icy, lifeless atmosphere. Four hundred hearts pumping away in a cocoon 35000 miles up. I wonder if I'm closer to or farther from the moon right now than I ever could be on earth? According to my baller new penguin watch, we have exactly three hours to go... I started out for australia 28 hours ago, and i've got 8 left."

Ok. I'm just going to keep transcribing from my journal. It is keeping me awake rather nicely without demanding that I actively remember.

"Hey, journal, it's Wednesday the 14th. Guess what? It was never the 13th for me! I never could have written in you on the 13th! Aiieee!! Happy Valentine's!

I'm at the departure gate in Sydney right now, about to embark on the last leg of my journey. The 14hr flight wasn't that bad, overall. Sleeping wasn't awesome, but nobody bothered me (save for ankle-lady) and the one woman I talked to was really nice. When we were getting off the plane, I talked to her sister, and she told me that her late husband was a Cornell alum! And was in DU! Crazy! Then, when I was in line for the next flight, the couple behind me asked if I was going back to the US at some point and would like their five bucks USD, as they wouldn't need it again. Why yes, thank you, delighted to take it off your hands (they refused to let me give them Australian money for it). So I talked with them for a little while, and it turns out their home is a block from the hostel I am staying at... hey, would I like a ride from them back to Melbourne? Why yes, I would love one! Hopefully you nice people are not a predacious pair of sex offenders or something!

Me right now:
window seat
legs curled up
socks, white
sweatpants, black
tshirt, grey
ipod,in
watch, on
sunglasses perched on head
hair piled on head
sun shining on me
cabin air across my skin
dirty dirty dirty
happyhappyhappy"


So that flight was quick, and I got my ride to the Nunnery, my hostel. My new friends still refused to take money from me. They gave me their address in case I needed anything. I love them! It's 30 degrees C here, so that's about 85-90F. And sunny. Yeeha!!

The Nunnery is awesome. It really used to be a nunnery, and it is beautiful, and very clean. I am staying in a dorm-style key-lock room with 11 other travelers. It's cool and dim and breezy in there. Everyone seemed really friendly in the brief minutes I talked to them before fleeing for the shower. Scrubbing off that flight felt like heaven, but I had to make it short. There is a draught in Victoria, we must conserve water! I then walked to Joe's Garage because they have wireless, and got a salad and a beer and called my mom and sent messages to people. And wrote:

"Oh my God. It smells so good here. It smells like Italy did in Tivoli or Ostia, only maybe even better! The waiter I befriended seems to have gifted me an extra Peroni, so i'm hanging out a while longer here even though my lappy died (haven't bought a plug converter thingy yet).
My life feel perfect right now. I wish i could put this day in the freezer and come back to it always. It's almost 90 here today, a warm-cozy-shiny February 14th. Lupe is on in the cafe, and they are playing the whole album. I need to buy more tank tops, a bathing suit, a dress, and sandals.

Fuck i love this album.

I want some cigarettes.

I'm totally tipsy right now. Haha. That damn salad was not enough to waylay the effects of two beers + jet lag. I am totally brave to finish this one. Go me. Hey you know what? You can't say cell phone here. It gets disdain/confusion. It's mobile. so you know.

Life is hazy right now. I feel like i'm on some kind of waystation plane of reality. Which I guess I am. It's floaty here. It aaaaall floats."

I've spent the rest of today walking around dazedly. Heading off to find some food now. Cheers!