Home for the Next Five Months
One thing you should know about travel is that it doesn’t matter where you have to be or how important it is that you get there. Literally everyone is trying to get somewhere at some time, and their priorities are just as important to them as yours are to you. I guess it shouldn’t have been an eye opener to me, maybe I am a bit selfish sometimes, but there’s my little word of wisdom.
We have arrived at the Sunshine Coast in Australia!! Rose and I lugged our over packed bags up three flights of stairs to our new apartment -that did not seem to be very handicap accessible might I add- and shuffled into what would be home for the next five months. The complex is called Uni Central, and has a very Cali vibe to it- sky blue and white is the overlying color scheme. White tile floors and white walls with two canvas photos hanging made the place feel more like a hotel instead of two people having already lived here for a year. Oh- we are also moving in with two Australian girls who rent out the other two rooms to study abroad students. The kitchen moves into the living room, and the living room moves out onto a balcony kept private by palm trees.
I could get used to this.
My room is huge. I think it might be bigger than my room at home in Pittsburgh, and even my apartment in Buffalo. The bed is certainly bigger. A huge desk takes up an entire wall, and two large closets were waiting to be filled. I was pleasantly surprised by having my very own bathroom as well. I plopped down my suit cases and took a deep breath in.
We were still dizzy and stumbling, being on planes for thirty some odd hours does something to your head. Unpacking would have to come later, because immediately we had to go down to the pavilion and go over paperwork.
I was not too keen to go over paper work right away because of my dizzy head, and there was so much visual stimuli around that made me want to explore ASAP. The pavilion we met in had large sliding glass doors on all sides, with a wrap around porch that looked out onto a pool on one side, and a tennis court on the other. The landscaping was brilliant as well. Inside the pavilion were three super comfy couches, and huge tv with all sorts of gaming systems, a ping pong table, pool, shuffle board, and a second hand table.
Peia came in a little later with the paper work from the front desk. We asked her about a hundred more questions that we probably could have just googled, but we had no SIM cards and no wifi. Wifi is different in Australia because there are no public wifi services, it is all private, and we were eventually going to have to buy our own routers. She pointed us to the bus station, and told us to get on a bus going to the Sunshine Plaza where we would find a Target, a phone service station, and food. It was pretty nice that we had arrived on a Thursday because that is the only day that stores are open later than five- it’s called the late night trading day.
The bus ride was stunning. We definitely sounded like such tourists, gasping at everything we passed by, but it really was so beautiful. The houses weren’t extravagant, they were quaint and appropriate, and there was patches of fauna between each of them. The road winded up and down and past scenic vistas, cafes, restaurants, and more. I saw wild parrots flying by and I was shocked! I forgot that literally ALL the wildlife was going to be different here, and the nature nerd inside me was beaming. We passed Mooloolaba Beach and saw tons and TONS of surfers bobbing around in the waves.
Side note- Australians say “heaps” instead of tons. So we saw heaps of surfers.
