First Week

February 20th-27th

I lifted off from Boston at around 2 or so in the afternoon leaving the cold weather
and all that goes with it behind on the 20th of February. This of course included skiing,
which I still miss a lot and regret missing the end of the season. If I wasn't in
Australia I'd probably miss it a little more though. The flights were fairly uneventful
except for the token infant screaming now and again. I found myself getting pretty angry about
it but when we landed the parents picked it up to look back at us over the seat and I immediately regretted thinking anything negative about the baby. The traveling was done with my friend Will who at the time was recovering from mono and whether rationally or not I was nervous about catching it from him. We also had a minor delay in San Francisco due to an issue with the navigation equipment and gyroscope. The pilot came on after it had been fixed and reassuringly proclaimed "Well folks, now that we fixed the problem we have to fill out 30 minutes worth of paperwork to satisfy the federal government. " No matter how safe flying is its never reassuring to hear a pilot grumble about safety procedures. Anyways, the flights weren't bad, just a little long. The fact that my head was filled with ideas what Australia has to offer made the flight worth it anyways.

Once we got on the ground in Australia (around 11 am on the 22nd) we got picked
up by a driver hired by the University. He played tour guide from the airport to
our on campus housing telling us some things that we shouldn't miss. Will and I met another
Northeastern Student as well as a student from Philadelphia. We were all staying in the
same building at Swinburne. Its a pretty nice building, fairly modern and my room has a balcony which one can see the city from and pretty solid sunset views.

The first week was comprised of several orientation sessions, going out and experiencing
some Melbourne night life and meeting a lot of new people. I definitely enjoyed myself
in a place that is somewhat similar to Boston but with different weather, people and a
lot of things to explore. I met some new people and by chance got invited to tour the
Great Ocean road the following weekend. I'll talk about that in my next entry as I think
this has been enough for now.


-Greg