February 17 2008, First Post (Vulcan Hotel)

So this is my first post and i realize i have been here in Sydney for a week already so i do apologize for my tardiness but let me start from the beginning. Okay so I arrived in Sydney at 8 am on Sunday morning on Feb 10th 2008. Megan and I got there and frankly we were terrified!!! It was just a string of bad occurrences. First our room in our hotel wasn't going to be ready for another 3 hours, we couldnt contact home because our cell phones didn't work, and we were in the bad part of Chinatown in a city 10,000 miles away from home. Now i know i sound like a complainer but i promise the rest gets better. We were able to find an internet cafe so we could contact our families and our boys to let them know we were safe. Jet lag set in pretty heavily, after talking with family and Danny for a while i quickly fell fast asleep. I ended up sleeping from about 6pm to 9am the next morning. The night before had looked pretty dismal but i woke up with a better mood. We had our orientation that morning, im not going to go into too much detail with the orientation cause quite frankly (and yes robin im being frank just for you) it wasn't all that impressive. The only unique part of the ceremony was that an aboriginal dance that was performed for us but the best part (this being said in a very sarcastic tone) was that the dancers reeked of B.O. Megan and i got a whiff of it every time the main guy dancer lifted up his arms to dance like and Emu. I tried to take the dance seriously but its really hard not to laugh when you see a grown man batting away imaginary flies from his face like a Kangaroo. Now that i think about it he kind of looked like he was trying to imitate Zoe. After orientation Megan and i checked out the local mall called Broadway Center. It was strangely very much like an American Mall. So far i really haven't experienced a huge culture shock. But i will say that the population is very diverse. After the mall we stopped by the UTS campus one last time and then headed back to the hotel to contact home and sleep some more. I was still pretty down about being in Australia for 4 months so megan and i decided to do something fun the next day. We went to the Taronga Zoo. We continued to figure out the bus and train route (subways are called trains in Sydney) A day at the zoo was just what I needed. To get to the Zoo we went to a beautiful part of Sydney called Circular Quay (pronounced Key). We got on a cute little ferry that took us into the harbor and we were extremely but pleasantly surprised to see that we were going to pass right by the Sydney Opera House. It was spectacular just as beautiful as any picture you could ever see. I will say this though, it does seem bigger in photos. So Meg and I arrived at the zoo and we were so excited. It was so beautiful and so biggggggg. (We actually find out later that its one of the smaller zoos in Australia). We had hoped that we would be able to hold a Koala but they only let you stand next to one. We were very excited to see kangaroos for the first time (well as long as you dont count the man dancing like one from orientation). And Dad they not only resemble but i really think they look and act exactly like Zoe. We were able to walk through this fenced area and they were just walking all around us. We also walked right next to a 5 foot tall Emu. Kinda scary. That day we also got a real taste of the Australian sun. Megan and i were burned with in 2 hours. Needless to say we got sunscreen the very next day. Here they dont sell anything under 30 spf. (i know that makes you happy mom). We headed back to our hotel room after the zoo very tired but also with much higher spirits. That was the last night we spent in the Vulcan Hotel, thank goodness.