Upon arrival at the airport in Brisbane, I was greeted by Crystal and her two cute twins, Cori and Lexi. They brought me to their beautiful house in Ferny Grove, which is a suburb about half an hour from downtown Brisbane. They wasted no time and had me busy with sight-seeing right away, which was a great way to get my mind off of missing home and leaving New Zealand behind. We did a tour of Ferny Grove and The Gap, which is another suburb not far from them where Dave’s side of the family lives, and where I will be moving to shortly. I got to meet the whole family in a day, including the pig I posted before – they are all wonderful and have made me feel so welcome already (Dave’s Dad, Pete, decided to show me some picture of the snakes that live outside their house in the summer – I could have done without those!)!
On Friday, we went into the city to eat at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant (yummy!) and then wandered around for a bit. After boarding one of the ferry’s that was going the wrong way, we had a nice little tour from the water and then eventually got to where we wanted to be after about 40 minutes of going the wrong way. It is a cool city with what seems like lots of stuff to do and see – I’m sure I will stay busy while I’m here.
I dedicated my past few days to figuring out public transport and learning the lay of the land. I was going to look in to buying a car, but the thought of searching and then having to deal with selling it when I want to leave caused a migraine or two that I didn’t need, so I decided to stick with public transport. On top of that, jumpin’ old Elaine pulled through and had a bike delivered to the doorstep, complete with helmet, lights, and a lock. Now I’m set to get around. The only thing is, it gets dark here at around 5:30 (they don’t do daylight savings time in Brisbane, so the sun is shining in your room around 4:45 and is gone by 5:30. It makes your mornings early and your evenings seem long!). That being said, I did the 20 minute walk home from the train last night in the dark and on HIGH ALERT. Usually I would have been afraid of being ‘kidnapped’ (yes, I still freak out about these things!) – this time, I was terrified of snakes, dingoes, bats (seriously – their bats here are on steroids!), and any other creepy thing that might decide it wanted to attack me! It’s amazing how when you know those things are around, you feel every tag on your clothes, hair on arm, and itch you have way more than you ever do any other day. I have never known all the marks on my body so well – any thing that looks different, I freak out that it may be a bite from some deadly snake or spider! I’m sure my paranoia about all these things will eventually subside, but for now, I will remain hyper-alert and make sure not to end up in a snake’s belly.
And to everyone sending me pictures like this...