Hello World!!!

Miracle of miracles, we are FINALLY online at our apartment. It's been excruciating not having real access to the internet. There is no such thing as free WiFi in Australia. You have to pay for it everywhere, EXCEPT the library -- which we finally became members of last week. Anyway, it took them 10 days to get around to connecting us, then they didn't send us the hardware until after we were connected. Add to the mix a couple of public holidays (Saturday was Australia Day, but it was also observed on Monday, so no mail on either day) and we finally got the stuff yesterday.

So, yes, we have an apartment. We met our goal of finding an apartment before Susan was to start work on January 14th. Unfortunately, the day that we got the keys to the apartment was the day that Susan got admitted to the hospital. She contracted a case of Brucellosis, which is a blood-borne bacterial infection. Basically, she had constant headaches and a fever until she started her treatment of three different antibiotics (one by injection), which immediately caused her extreme nausea (apparently her liver went a bit haywire for awhile) and she spent nearly a week in the hospital to receive IV fluids and anti-nausea meds. She needs to take the antibiotics for a total of six weeks. Anyway, it was a bit ironic that she ended up a patient in the hospital the weekend that she was supposed to start work there. Her doctor keeps suggesting that she should write up a case study on herself -- she doesn't seem too keen on that prospect. Thankfully, Susan is feeling better (tho not quite up to her usual self yet -- still gets tired easily) and she started work yesterday.

Anyway, we've got a little two-bedroom apartment that's about a 15 minute walk to the Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, and a short jaunt to the train station and various bus stops. It's about a 10-15 minute bus ride into the city, so it will be easy for me to get to school when I start at the end of February. Now, we just need some furniture. We have a sofa, a dining room table & chairs and two chests of drawers (which we'll use as bedside tables) on order. Luckily, we happen to live across the road from a shopping center full of furniture stores. Right now we have a bed (thankfully no more air mattress) a coffee table and two folding camping chairs. The camping chairs have taken their toll on our lower backs, but at least we have something to sit on. We ordered our sofa from a place called Freedom, so Susan's been singing "Freedom's just another word for f*cking hurry up and give us our sofa..." for the past week.

I was pleasantly surprised with a $3500 scholarship from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which is now the school I've decided to attend. I was going to go to Central Queensland University until I realized that it's campus consists of one building and it caters to international students. This was what first attracted me to the school, since I am an international student, but then I realized that I would be stuck in one building with a bunch of foreign students and I would rather be immersed in the Australian culture on a real university campus. I'll be going to the QUT campus in the Central Business District (CBD, i.e. downtown) right next to the Botanical Gardens, which are quite lovely. I've enrolled (paid) at QUT, but haven't done the student visa stuff yet. I have to do it online and couldn't do it until I got a Certificate of Enrollment from them anyway. Now I'm good to go and plan to start on that this week.

Well, that's all for now -- I'll try to write more soon! For now, here's a pic of the view of Brisbane from our apartment balcony. The Royal Brisbane hospital is in the right side of photo (just beyond the telephone pole in the lower corner).

Last Stop: Brisbane

Hello World!

Susan and I made it to Brisbane on Tuesday -- it's been pouring with rain the whole time (which is a good thing, since there's been a drought here) and we haven't really had easy access to the internet. We've been trying to get around to look for a place to live, but it's been a bit messy waiting for buses in the rain! We've been staying with Susan's friend's father who has the big family home to himself and he seems quite glad to have our company. He's been very generous for opening his home to us. They don't observe daylight savings here, so it gets light very early in the morning and there are lots of different sounding birds, so poor Susan has been waking up way earlier than she wants to, but hopefully she'll get back to a better sleep schedule soon.

Last night, we had dinner at Susan's colleague's (David) house -- he's the guy that picked up all our stuff that we shipped from the U.S. We met him and his wife and two of his colleagues -- they were all very nice and I felt right at home with them. David and his family lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years, so it was fun talking with them about my home town. We were reunited with our U.S. shipment and I checked to make sure that one of my bass guitars arrived in one piece (it did) and we retrieved some of our summer clothes so that we have more clothes to wear.

I've been visiting the schools that I applied to -- I decided that I'm not so crazy about Central Queensland University and may go to Queensland University of Technology or University of Queensland instead. I went to QUT to talk to the folks there today and I like it much better. I haven't gone to UQ yet to check it out, but will probably do that on Monday.

Currently, we have very limited access to the internet, so I will keep this update short, but just wanted to let folks know we're here and doing fine -- the Aussies are very friendly and have been quite generous. Hopefully, we will be able to find our own place to live soon so that we can get settled in.