The one where I'm in Australia again

G'day!

After seriously considering extending my New Zealand trip, in the end I decided to follow through on my original plan to head over here for New Year's Eve.

Thanks to the lack of any available beds anywhere near Sydney, the persistence of Becca and Brian, and the generosity of their friend Jenny's friend Corinna (and the fact that Corinna didn't realize I'm from the States), I've got a couch all my own for a coupla nights.

So far, I've spent a coupla days wandering the city, which seems like...a city. It's much smaller than I thought, but it could still take me a couple more to see all the highlights. Right now I'm at the famous Bondi beach, which is, uh, underwhelming.

My plans for the rest of my time in Australia are mostly tentative: I'll stay in Sydney until Tuesday or Wednesday (and watch some fireworks along the way), then maybe head over to the Blue Mountains for the rest of the week. Friday I'll leave for Canberra to play in an Ultimate tournament next weekend, assuming there's still room for me. I'll be in Melbourne roughly January 16-28 to hang around the Australian Open and see some Laura Veirs shows.

Other than that, probably some combination of traveling the coast from Melbourne to Adelaide, heading up to Alice Springs/Uluru/the Outback, maybe down to Tasmania, maybe something else someone tells me I should do. I'll make my way back to Sydney to fly off to Africa in mid-February.

Sometime in the very near future, maybe the next rainy day, I'll spend some time catching up on my backlog of posts and loading some of my ~1000 pictures or so from New Zealand (and setting up some favourites so only the diehards among you need to look at ~1000 pictures). In the meantime, I hope your holidays, whatever they were, went well. And if you want to celebrate New Year's with me, most of you may have to remember to start pretty early.

Hasta,
sg