Australia: Days 1 and 2

My intention is to blog every day for this trip, but I may not post every day depending on time/tiredness/rogue kangaroos...joking ( I haven't seen one yet). My journey began flying out of Cleveland to San Francisco. Longest flight I've taken in my life which was 5 hours. It didn't feel as long as it should've because I was able to watch the Indians game and then I watched Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson version). I also managed to spill OJ on myself and my laptop...it still functions. After landing in Cali, I had an hour layover. So I met up with the rest of the group and we boarded the plane. This plane was massive. Nine seats across. On this flight they supplied small pillows, a blanket, and you could choose from a lot of digital entertainment for free. Remember how I said my previous flight was long? Well this one tripled it. Fourteen long hours. What made it worse was we were chasing darkness the whole time. I tried to sleep on the plane, but I don't sleep well (or at all) in moving vehicles. I faded in and out of consciousness for an hour only to be woken up by the staff serving dinner at 12:30am PST (3:30am EST). The lady next to me was going to ask for a meal for me, but it was past 3am my time and I wasn't hungry. I tried to fall back asleep, but I it was another battle. All told I maybe got two non-sequential hours of shut-eye. I watched two more movies on this flight.

We finally landed in Sydney a little after 6:30am August 2nd (4:30pm August 1 EST) which by this point I had been awake 26 out of 28 hours since my last full sleep and now I had a full day ahead of me in Sydney. After getting off the plane, our luggage was sent off to the meeting hall so we could explore Sydney. We stopped for breakfast near the Opera House and I had a fruit salad with actual honeycomb on it. We then made our way over to the Opera House which looked so awesome in person. The whole area looked massive because there was a giant cruise ship in the harbor and the Harbor Bridge in itself was an awesome sight. After doing a bunch of touristy things and getting our fill of the sights, we moved onward towards the gardens. We decided to take a break and a handful of us tossed a frisbee while walkers and joggers went by. One local stopped and watched us for a bit. i couldn't tell if he was wondering what we were doing or if he was intrigued by us throwing a frisbee.

We then wandered through the nearby gardens and saw a slew of trees and birds that we don't see often (or ever) in the US. One of them is a long-billed bird called the Ibis. It's a funny looking bird and apparently it's a nuisance here. I also saw seagulls with red beaks and feet and well as wild parrots. Our next stop was lunch at a Korean Karaoke place where you could rent a room with a karaoke machine so that you could sing while you ate. We just wanted food so we got a normal table though. The pork and kimchi was delicious.

The rest of the day was spent at the meeting hall for some rest, some delicious homemade ramen, and the prayer meeting with the saints. By the time I got to sleep, I had been awake for 26 hours straight and 38 out of the last 40. I slept 10 hours straight through the night that night and did I ever need it.

Day 2: This was our first full day in the gospel. We set out from the meeting hall and took public transportation to get there. Two things I noticed along our way. You almost never see an American brand of car here. I see a ton of Japanese, German, and Korean cars, as well as Australian and some French ones I never see in the US, but I maybe have seen only 5 Fords since being here and nothing else. No Chevy, no Chrysler, no Dodge, nada. Almost every pick-up truck here is a Toyota Hilux. This vehicle is not sold in the US due to America's extremely high tariff on imported light trucks. Don't get me wrong, I love Chevy trucks and their durability and would buy one before I bought a Hilux, but this truck is one of the best you can own. It'll probably out-live you. Don't believe me? Go watch the Top Gear episode where they did these things to a Hilux: Top Gear memorably took a modern Hilux to the North Pole, and later to the mouth of an active volcano. They also hit an older one with a wrecking ball, crashed it into the ocean, set it on fire, and blew it up in a building demolition. It survived." (Quote taken from https://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/america-classifies-the-toyota-hilux-as-an-enemy-combatant.html/?a=viewall). 

It was also very weird to sit on the left side of a car and not have a steering wheel in front of me while being on the left side of the road. They even walk on the left side of the sidewalk down here and that has caused me to almost run into a few people. After taking the bus and trains through Sydney, we eventually arrived at UNSW campus to spread the gospel. There was a Foundation Day fair going on in celebration of this being the day the university was founded. That gave us plenty of of people to talk to. We started after lunch and talked to people for four hours. Most of the people we attempted to talk to were willing to talk and listen, but at the same time, they were content with not thinking about God, life after death, and such. There were some people who were interested in what we had to say and three in particular were quite open. So that's a start. As a group we managed to get 16 contact cards which was one more than our goal.

For dinner, we went to a place on campus called The White House. No it doesn't look anything like where the president of the US lives, but they do have a pizza called The Wall and in the description it explains that it is based on the 45th president of the US. It wasn't the best tasting, but it was indeed creative. One person that was met on campus did join us which was encouraging. I also learned that you don't have to tip here, especially since the minimum wage is over $17 Australian. 

So that wraps up days 1 and 2 and they have been awesome. Oh and for you Pokemon Go players, I did catch a Kangaskhan...two as a matter of fact. Until next time.