We Made It!

After 20 or so hours of flying, we arrived in Sydney Monday morning around 8:00 which would have been 4:00 pm in Indiana.  I slept as much as I could on the plane, but still managed to watch 3 movies on the flight from Los Angeles!  It is warm, about 75-78 degrees and humid.  You have probably heard on the news about the massive flooding in the state of Queensland here in Australia.  We are in New South Wales which is quite a distance south of the flooding, but the forecast here calls for rain all week.  So far we have experienced only short showers. 

Our group, which consists of 6 boys, 6 girls, my husband and me, traveled by train into the city from the airport on our first morning.  We had a short walk from the train station to our hotel.  After we cleaned up a bit, we headed out to our first scheduled activity which was a two hour walking tour of Sydney.  We had a wonderful tour guide named Collin.  The tour was just what we needed after sitting in planes for so long!  We walked through an area of town known as The Rocks.  This is an area where the early settlers lived.  Most of these people were convicted criminals that had been sent here from England to serve out their sentence by working to colonize the area.  So, just as you are learning about the colonization of America, I am learning about the colonization of Australia! 

We ended our tour at the Sydney Opera House.  I am guessing most of you have seen pictures of it before.  We didn’t spend much time there because we are going to tour it later in the week.  We did check on seeing a show, but the students don’t seem too interested in it.  From there we took a bus to Darling Harbor where we visited the Sydney Aquarium.  We were able to walk through glass tunnels and see stingrays, sharks, turtles, and lots of different fish swim right over us!  It was really cool!

After supper at an open air restaurant (remember the photos of Copenhagen with the outdoor eating areas?), we headed back to our hotel for an early night.  I know I was exhausted, but we had a terrific first day down under!