G’day! I have arrived and am in love with Australia! It is BEAUTIFUL here! We are already taking lots of pictures! Everyone is SO nice and I am happy to be here! We have already noticed many culture differences. I’ll start from the beginning to tell you our flight stories…
For those of you who don’t know, I am traveling with a friend of mine named MJ that I work with at the JW and is now attending school here at ICMS with me. We were supposed be fly out of Grand Rapids at 3:30 pm on Saturday, but our flight ended up being delayed about 45+ minutes because of the flight before us was delayed to Chicago and so we couldn’t get out of the gate until they did. We flew into Dallas and literally had 7 minutes to catch our flight. We almost went to the wrong gate from what they told us, but we ended up checking just in case… and good thing because it was actually a different one. We caught a Skytram to take us to the right gate and we ran up and they had given our seats away so we were bumped up to first class which was amazing! I wish I could do that all the time! The seats had footrests and could recline completely into a bed. We were also served a very nice dinner of a choice between some sort of meat that I don’t remember or what I had being a ravioli dish and a salad. I will say I missed that on the last flight! We then arrived in LA and waited about 3 hours to board our flight to Sydney. We were supposed to fly out at what would have been 1:30 am Michigan time but didn’t end up leaving the runway until about 2:30 am. The plane was huge! (a double decker!) Every seat had its own TV. The seats were a bit tight, but it is what I would expect. MJ and I sat next to each other with about 3 rows of students that were also traveling to ICMS. They fed us 2 meals… dinner and breakfast (breakyJ).
Our flight was about 14 hours long. We landed in Sydney at 8:20 am Sydney time on Monday, February 4th. It was quite a bumpy ride because we had a lot of turbulence… which apparently was cause by a cyclone that we were on the outskirts of! I slept on and off for the beginning of the flight… and we also watched two movies. We were very excited to land in Sydney… None of us had problems getting through customs… but we did have problems with our luggage! 9 of us (from our flight only) lost bags. 5 of us lost both bags (including both MJ and I) and 4 lost 1 of 2 bags. It was horrible! We waited hoping that it would come in on the next flight… but it didn’t. We had to claim our lost luggage… and we ended up being there for 3 hours after our flight landed. We went to find the bus that was to take us to the college and it was no where to be found. It left us for the school with the rest of the students who flew in with us on it. That left us to finding a ride which took a little bit, but someone let us use their phone and call the college and they told us to get an airport shuttle to take us… and we had to pay for it on our own! It wasn’t too bad since we split it between the 9 of us… but still a big inconvenience. So by the time we get to the shuttle it is raining in Sydney and quite foggy… which didn’t help anything for any of us. We arrived at ICMS after a 45 minute drive to Manly from the airport. Upon arrival everyone was very nice and helpful. We got our rooms and were taken to them luggage-less. By this time we were starving so we were able to grab some lunch and then we took probably one of the best showers of our lives! We had to borrow everything of course, but definitely needed the shower. Then they took us down into Manly to get a couple of things that we needed and we were able to explore a little bit.
Since the building that ICMS is in is an old monastery it is beautiful! The rooms are pretty small, but they are mostly single rooms. We are given a bed (with a single mattress covering sheet, a not real comfortable pillow, and a kind of comforter), a desk with a chair, lamp and phone, a wardrobe, and a shelf unit. It is very plain and we decided it probably looked pretty much the same when the people were here studying to become priests or nuns. Some of the views are Gorgeous… and some are ok. I’d like to pretend I have one of the pretty ones, but I don’t. They don’t have any screens in their windows either and of course no air conditioning. Monday night most of us went to bed around 8:00 pm because we were exhausted. It was an ok sleep, waking up a few times early because of not being used to the time difference yet. Tuesday I did not have much to do besides one study abroad meeting so I explored a little bit and took a college tour and we had a meeting for the study abroad students. In the evening we had a welcome cocktail party… which was hard for us because everyone looked so nice in their cocktail dresses and we had to borrow a shirt so we didn’t look so bad! But it was very fun and then we adventured downtown to a place called the Shark Bar and met a few locals. This morning I had a meeting (at which I won a hoodie!) and had my official enrollment. I will have one more session this afternoon and then we are having an Aussie Party where they will teach us some customs and different things so it should be fun.
We start classes on Monday and I get my timetables (schedule) tomorrow. On Saturday we get to go on a City of Sydney bus tour which will be fun and interesting as well. The weather is sunny and nice today and some of us were just told that our luggage has finally arrived in Sydney and we shall be getting it either tonight or tomorrow which is a huge relief because it has been horrible without it. I must go now, but will be checking in and have another update soon! As they say down under…
HAPPY DAYS
<3
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