Turning onto the Home Stretch...

Today, I returned to Melbourne after a whirlwind tour of Queensland and New South Wales. In the 2 weeks that I was away from Melbourne, I slept in 8 different hotels, flew 5 times, and spent a few hours on trains and in the car while seeing Hamilton Island, Coogee Beach, UNSW, Brisbane, U of Queensland, Wollongong, and Sydney. So needless to say, it has been great, but it is nice to be back 'home' in Melbourne.

I am still a little more than 2 weeks away from my return to the U.S., but I feel as though this is definitely the start of the final stretch. The first 8 weeks have flown by in so many ways and they have been outstanding! I'm really looking forward to the last few weeks here!

Today started in Sydney at Darling Harbour. I attended a few lectures this morning before I had to return to the hotel to check-out. Afterward, I tried to find the Sydney fish market, thinking I would have lunch there. I found the fish market (I could smell it before I saw it). However, I decided against having lunch there because I just couldn't get over the mix of seafood and saltwater smell that overpowered the place. I did walk around a bit and saw a lot of restaurants and seafood cafes as well as the big warehouses where the 'real' fish trading takes place. I was a bit disappointed in the experience, but I was glad that I made the trip.

I made it to the airport in plenty of time and arranged to sit next to Anita on the flight from Sydney to Melbourne so that we could take a look at the PALS data that I had summarized yesterday morning. I sat with Cara and Aurelia at the airport until their earlier flight to Melbourne left. I have been very impressed by the Qantas 'City-Flyer' system. Qantas runs several flights every day between the major cities in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth). During peak times, there are literally 3 or 4 flights to Melbourne (on Boeing 767s) every hour. It makes scheduling flights very easy because there are so many times to pick from. I guess you can do that when you have a country that predominately resides in or very near major metropolitan areas. The same model would never work in the U.S. because the population is so spread out.

After a productive flight with a lot of PALS talk, it was nice to land in Melbourne and get back to the Graduate House. The first order of business here was to do laundry and I promptly took care of that. Unfortunately, one of the dryers was not working so I have had clothes strewn all around my room all evening to let them air-dry since I only had enough $1 coins to do one wash and one dry cycle for 2 loads of laundry. Oh well, it worked out okay and the second load dried just fine in a different machine.

I haven't decided what I am going to do tomorrow, but I think the day will start with a continuation of the unpacking process and then I need to work on some 'administrative business' to make sure that everything is in order going into these last few weeks.

Well, I feel better knowing that the blog has been updated for the past week and I think it is just about time for me to call it a night!