First Day

Well, here I am! I finally made it, after lots of talk and not too much planning. Only a 14 hour plane ride in which the woman in front of me must have swallowed her entire bottle of sleeping pills. She had her chair pushed back the entire time, which in itself is not a problem. my personal problem was that MY chair did not push back. This made eating the 3 meals served a tad difficult considering the tray was almost touching my stomach and manuevering the food from there to my mouth without hitting her chair became difficult. After getting off the plane I wandered around the Sydney airport for about 20 minutes trying to figure out what I was going to do. Being homeless at that moment, the first priority was finding a place to stay that night. A girl I met in SFO who was on my plane caught up with me in the airport and told me to book at her hostel, gave me her name and said I should request that we be in the same room! Did I make a best friend already? She is from Chicago and has school starting in 2 weeks about 90 kilometers South of Sydney. She is very chatty, mom thought she was just drunk. She was going to drop her bags off at the University and I said I would wait for her at the hostel. Perfect! slight glitch in the plan though. When I went to the airport concierge to book the room it was all sold out. So was the hostel that the boy on the plane next to me was staying at. Drats.
oh well
They are both staying in the city and I am now at Bondi Beach. Kind of. More like Tamarama, which is just as beautiful and only about 4 times smaller. I landed at 8 and after all the wandering and confusion at the airport took a shuttle to arrive at my hostel, Bondi BeachHouse, at 11. Check-in isn't until 1 so I needed to find something to do--without hefting my huge backpack around. So I've rented a locker and then went on a walk. Down to Tamarama and wanted to come straight to Bondi. Good thing I asked for directions because I was headed in the opposite direction. Only a 15 minute walk along a beautiful beach path and I made it to the actual Bondi Beach! I'm still tired and desparately need to shower but I just ate so I'm decently happy. I'm currently sitting at an outside table at a cafe where there are some very feisty pigeons. One just took a french fry off my plate so I grabbed my fork to scare. It didn't work. I just ended up hitting a pigeon with a fork while he stole my food. Oh well, the view makes it worth it. Its now 12:30 so I think I'll make my way back to the hostel for a shower and a nap. I need to make sure I don't sleep too long though because I heard rumor from some Tazmania girls that there is a free movie on the beach tonight.