Settling In

Day 3 in Aussie Land, just moving into my homestay and getting to know my host family. The first day I pull up into the driveway and set foot in their yard, the weather is perfect. Michael is the first one I meet, he looks like a huskier Bruce Willis. “You must be Pat, you look buggered,” he says. I give him a weird look and he laughs and restates that I look tired. I’ve got a lot of slang to learn while I’m here. He shows me around the house and the backyard and to the two dogs. I meet Geri later, she is just a ball of energy. Josh is their son at 18 who just graduated high school and is now enrolling in the local uni. I’ve yet to meet their daughter Steph, she is touring South America and won’t be back until March.

On the Second day, Geri drove me into the city and we visited RMIT and a few places around there. Melbourne is a very clean city, lots of shops and restaurants. I won’t be out drinking here anytime soon though, pub prices are just outrageous.

Today I’ll be exploring the city on my own, trying to figure out the transit system. Now that I’ve got a phone I feel better about wandering in the city.


Meet Macy.                                                 Macy and Mark having a lazy stare down across the
                                                                     backyard.

View of the backyard from my window.

Inauspicious Beginnings

No travel story is complete without some sort of crisis, right? Glad to get that out of the way early. I’ll start with yesterday, getting an email near the end of the workday informing me that I had never actually registered studying abroad, so might not be able to register for classes in Melbourne. I’ll spare the details, but a few favors and pulled strings later, that got sorted out. Allthewhile, my homestay agency decides to wait until the day before I leave to inform me about my host family. Not homeless anymore. I’m secretly a little disappointed; being homeless in a foreign country sounds like a Bucket List-worthy experience.

One last evening at Chumley’s and a few snooze buttons later, Jenn and I head for O’Hare. First song on the radio this morning is, of course, Land Down Under. 5:30 seems to be an early enough time to leave. Nope. Miss my flight. Thankfully I have an 11 hour layover in LAX and there’s a 3:30 I can catch. Now I try to burn some time at the Grey Goose bar in the airport and the worst thing yet happens; the 312 tap in broken. Now here I am waiting for my plane to LAX.

TL;DR: Messy paperwork, I’m not homeless, missed flight, no beer.