Conor and Jaclyn

Okay, sorry this is so long...we're at the school now, so able to update everything that I've been typing on my laptop


Thursday July 27, 5:00 am

Hello everyone!

We’ve made it to the land down under at last. We flew from Seattle to LA, LA to Auckland, and Auckland to Brisbane. We had no problems with our flights, so that was good. I must say, the layovers are a lot better when you are flying with someone J . In Brisbane my Aunt Mary and Cousin Patrick (who are from Abbotsford, visiting my cousin Jeanette) picked us up from the airport and helped us find a hostel to stay in for three nights.

When we got to the hostel at about 130ish, we brought our stuff up and went to find some food with Patrick. He showed us downtown a bit, and the main shopping place called Queen Street Mall. It’s really close to our hostel…Queen street is an open street just for pedestrians and tons of shops that open on the side, directly into the street. There are also food kiosks in the center as well as performers (music, art). There’s also an underground mall there, just small sections. You walk through and then it brings you back up to Queen St. There’s a few of those, and that’s where the food courts are. We saw a guy doing spray paint art there, it was pretty cool. Conor is very excited because we found at store that sells dried fruits, nuts and smoothies.

After that, Patrick brought us back to our hostel and he went home. Here’s the part where we were going to have a short nap (it was 3 in the afternoon), and then take the camera out and explore on our own, but we didn’t set the alarm properly, and now it’s 5 am. Oh well, at least we caught up on or sleep!

The hostel is nice…we have a private room with a double bed and an on suite bathroom with a shower. BUT we didn’t bring any towels. So either we’ll go buy cheap ones, or we’ll see if Patrick can let us borrow one from Jeanette’s. We’re going to meet Aunt Mary, Patrick, and Jeanette at the mall today.

We fly out of here on Saterday 815 am, which will be Friday 3pm Abbotsford time to go to Melbourne. We are 17 hours ahead of you guys. (so we lost over half a day by the time change, and another 19 hours in flight time, hehe)

Thursday July 27, 4:45 PM

So we’ve been wandering around all day! This morning after we left, we found the casino by the river, and had breakfast there (no gambling for us). We spent the morning looking at bookstores and went and used a backpackers internet place and sent home an email to say that we’d arrived…unable to put this on the blog at the time, since I’m typing it on the laptop. We wandered around downtown, looking at a Catholic church/school, and headed back to the Queen St Mall. Along the way we saw a sign for a museum of some kind, so we decided to check it out. Turned out that it was the headquarters of General McArthur and his staff during the latter stages of WWII. I wasn’t especially interested, but Conor was, so we stayed. I became more interested as a volunteer there started telling us more details.

At about 1pm we met Aunt Mary and Patrick…went out for lunch and then met Jeanette as she was just finishing Uni. Brisbane’s downtown is situated surrounded by a river on three sides…so it’s pretty beautiful. We walked across one bridge, got some smoothies, and walked around for awhile. The showed us some museums and such that we might visit tomorrow…and then walked along a passenger bridge (such a great idea!) back to the side of the river that downtown is on. Coming back into downtown there’s a huge Botanic Gardens, so we walked through that and then they went on home. We’re just at the hostel now, and we’ll rest a bit before we head on out again.

Friday July 28, 11:12 am

It’s raining outside! It’s been raining all morning. We walked to a place for breakfast this morning, during which the rain picked up even more, so we walked back to the hostel. Conor went to a bookstore and bought some encyclicals, while I stayed at the hostel, he got back and we’ve just been reading since. Going to go connect to the internet now to talk to people, and then head to the museum (which is free), so I’ll have more to type about that later.

Sunday July 30, 7:25 pm

Well it’s been an interesting couple of days. Friday we spent the day wandering around the city (after it stopped raining). We went to the museum, which was free, and really cool. We came across a Gothic Anglican Cathedral, in the last phase of building (it started in 1906, I think). In the evening we met up with Jeanette, Patrick, and one of Jeanette’s co-workers, headed to Jo-Jo’s Restaurant. Weird set-up. You get in, take a number, and sit at the bar to wait for a table (being as it was Friday night, it was VERY busy!). Once you get your table, you go up to one of four ordering stations (kind of like a food court). Each station is Jo-Jo’s, but a different style - so you have your Mediterranean, Thai, and a couple others. You order, and give them your number, and which part of the restaurant you are sitting, and once your food is ready, they bring it to you. Everyone I was with ordered from the Thai part, and got their food really quickly - I ordered from the Mediterranean (Pizzas and such, working from one fireplace type thing) and got my food 20 minutes later…well after everyone else had finished. Anyways, my pizza bread still tasted good! Jeanette’s friend was very shocked that I didn’t drink very much, and was convinced she could find something I like. Which she definitely succeeded at! She got me a drink called a Toblerone (like the chocolate bar), made with an assortment of chocolate things, and kahlua. We went to a pool hall from there (to which we were the only white people - surrounded by Asians). But a nice place, on the second floor looking out onto the road. They went on from there, but it was after 11 pm, we were tired, and would be leaving the hostel at 6:45 am for the flight to Melbourne.

Aunt Mary picked us up, and we made our way to the airport. Now, as many of you know, I had been stressing our about our baggage and about us taking too much and either not being able to get it on the flight at all, or having to pay a lot. The flights to Brisbane we were each allowed two checked bags, not exceeding 50 pounds. But the domestic flight from Brisbane to Melbourne was up to 9 bags each, not totally more than 20 kgs, which is about 44 pounds I think. So we had three bags altogether each 50 pounds (or close to it). We were expecting to pay for the third bag, plus the extra pounds for the other two. We were blessed somehow - only having to pay $20, which as the price list showed, would have been for baggage exceeding by 15 kgs. Yay for us!

We got to Melbourne, and there to meet us was this great lady named Christine. I don’t think a better person could have picked us up! I was fully expecting to get picked up, dropped of at the place we are staying, and left on our own. Christine is a student at the same school as Conor (part-time) and also a Member of Parliament. So she knows Melbourne very well…grew up near the same neighbourhood that she lives in now. Anyways, as she was driving us from the airport, she was going to take the quickest way, but as we were talking she missed the turn off. Without skipping a beat, she decided that she would just drive us right by the school, so we could see where it was in relation to where we would be staying. Then she stopped and took us inside the school and showed us around a bit, then she decided that she would drive along the tram line that Conor would take to get to school, so that we could again, see how to get to the school from where we are staying. So the place where we are staying is a hospitality unit, next to a family center. So meant for families or people who need a place to stay to just get away for a bit. Brand new units - they’ve only had three sets of people here before us. Sorry, “they” would be nuns. I’ve gathered that there are three living in this place. So we are in unit 3, and two older ones are in unit 1, and then the sister that we’ve met and set us up here is in unit 2. There’s another student coming on Wednesday that will be staying in our unit (there are three bedrooms, and then a common kitchen). Back to Catherine - she brought us here, and she had gone shopping, so she bought extra fruit, veggies, and breads for us. She stayed for lunch, and then she had some time, so she drove us around the neighbourhood a bit, showed us where the nearest church was, and then left us on our own…but left her number and such for us, in case we need to contact her.

Saterday night then, we walked down the street to this place suburb called Camberwell. Lots of shops, and behind there’s a target, and a Safeway, so we went and got some chicken and stuff for supper. There’s a train station right there, so we asked a few questions and got a guide book. When we got back Conor did some writing on the laptop, and I watched Santa Claus 2 on the TV…we’ve got three channels here. It’s so bizarre how different some things seem, but then how similar others are. Like they have McDonalds and then they have Hungry Jacks - which is our burger king. They have shell stations, and Safeway, Target and IGA…I saw some other stores as well, like footlocker…enough about that.

Sunday morning we went to 10:30 mass up the road about 15 minutes, came back here for something to eat, and then ventured to the train station. The transit system here is really good…but very confusing to a foreigner! We’ve figured out the train and tram stuff now, but haven’t gotten on a bus yet, or found a bus schedule (if there is one). It is more expensive then I thought though. There are three zones, and three types of transit (bus, tram and train). Zone one is all we will need, the other zones are fairly small, and a bit out of the way. So you pay for one zone and you get all three modes (you can’t by just a bus ticket, or just a tram ticket). Anyways, a one month pass is just under $100 each. An all day pass Monday-Saterday is $6.10 each, but on Sunday (today!) it’s $2.50 for all three zones, all day. So after we ate, we went to the train station, got two all day passes and jumped on the next train into the city. From there we walked around a bit, got on a free tram that circles around the city center, and found our way to the Queen Street Market…which Tianna (my maid of honour) raves about! This place is just huge…and sells everything imaginable - meat, fish, produce, shoes, clothes, souvenirs , hats…lots of watches.

We grabbed some lunch (but it was almost 4pm, I think), and then headed into town. Found an internet café, went on for a bit…found a starbucks, and then got on a tram to St Patrick’s Cathedral…huge! Walked through Fitzroy Gardens (right behind Conor’s school) and got on a tram. We decided to get off that tram (which would have brought us home) to go through some other suburbs. It took a LONG time…cuz we ended up on the ancient tram, anyways, we went all the way down on one tram, and back up to where we had gotten on, and got back onto the original tram. We then proceeded to get very lost. See the map we bought ends right before the suburb we are staying in…so we had to streets as reference, except one street name. So we got off the tram at that street, and started walked towards where we thought Camberwell was…we stopped someone to ask directions only to find out we had been going the wrong way, so we turned around and eventually got home just after 7 pm. Long day, but fun, and I’m starting to get my bearings.

Tomorrow we’ll go to the school and talk with them, and then start looking for a place to rent. This place here is really nice, but $25 a night…so it will add up if we have to stay too long. Hopefully we get use their internet for free…and put this extremely long journal up on the site (I apologize for the length, but some people will want to know everything…once Conor starts school, and I start work, we’ll have less to write about!) We’ll also try to contact Erin - who went to St James and is going to school here…and ask her everything we need to know; busses, rental places, phones, etc.

For now, it’s 8:15pm and I am tired (went to bed at 9 yesterday), guess it will take us some time to get our sleep schedule back to normal. We did stay up until 11:30pm that night we hung out with Jeanette…but every other night its been between now and 9:15ish.

In Melbourne

Hey all...we've made it to Melbourne, along with all of our baggage (for an extra cost of only $20)

We're staying at a family care center type place hosted by some nuns, in a really nice area of town. Walked to Church today, just 15 minutes up the road.

Agian, on a public computer here, so can't type everything we'll be doing. But we have ventured into the city by train, got on a free loop in the city to the Queen St Market. Huge market!...which we'll bring you to if you visit ;)

Anyways, just a quick update...talk to you soon!

G'day from Brisbane

Hey, we've made it to Brisbane. Right now I'm typing at a computer in an internet cafe. I'm writing a "journal" on my laptop, so once I can get email from there, I will really do an update.

Anyways, we made it!

Take off!

Hey all...it's 10:50 am. Conor's parents will be here at noon and we'll leave from there.

We'll talk to you all again from the land down under!

Jobs

So our two main concerns (which I'm not really concerned about) are: housing, and work for myself.

I started looking online on a job search website for melbourne and applied to a few places. I got two back already saying "they are regrettful to say..." so anyways, I decided I didn't really like the whole applying online thing. Especially when some of the jobs don't specify where they are, and I don't know Melbourne at all yet, or where we'll be living.

But then I got an email today from one of the jobs I applied to asking when I will be in arriving in Melbourne, as they would like to discuss the job further with me. This job would be right up my ally too. It's an office co-ordinator. So not so much a receptionist, although there would be times where I would be directing calls. But more a coordinator of meetings and such, arranging catering for big meetings, setting up offices for new staff. Oh, and it's about 4 minutes from where Conor will be going to school. It would be really cool. But I won't get my hopes up.

Wedding Bliss!

It's been over a month now!

Just thought I would put up a wedding pic

Goodbyes

I hate Goodbyes :(

Yesterday was my last day at CIBC. It was very surreal. Nothing's really seeming real these days...In 9 sleeps Conor and I will be getting on a plane and EVERYTHING will change forever. It's just so scary and exciting, and I'm happy, but then I'm sad because we're leaving everyone and everything that we know. But I know that it's going to be so much fun and that everything is going to be fine.

It's just hard to say goodbye. So anyways, don't cry in front of me, because guaranteed I will start crying to!

Email

So we leave in 16 more sleeps!

As we update you can post comments or email:
Conor - conor_sweeney@hotmail.com
Jaclyn - jaclynrosesweeney@hotmail.com