First Day in Sydney

One result of hours and hours in airports and on airplanes.

Waiting in Auckland airport.













(As you can see the kids have fun while they wait in airports. This is from the wait in Anchorage)







We arrived on our last plane at 8:30 a.m. Australian time. This is about 19 hours ahead of Alaska. That means, right now, here in Australia it is 8:12 p.m. Friday and in Homer, if I am not mistaken it is 1:12 a.m. on Friday. This time issue did not have much of an effect on the kids.













Getting through customs was about as smooth as it could get. While the lines were long, the traffic moved along at a quick pace and we were on the bus in short order.













Our bus driver got us loaded up quickly while he listened to comments like, "look the steering wheel is on the wrong side." He is filled with humor and truly knows his way around the city.

Once we were on the road, our first stop was Bondi beach. It has sand that caused my shoes to squeek. Yes, I am not exagerating, it was soft and warm and squeeky. Anyway, the first one in the surf was Alex. By the time 10 minutes had passed the majority had either waded or gone in for a nice swim in the warm water.

We moved along to downtown Sydney where we took pictures of the Opera House, the Sydney bridge that the locals call "the Big Hanger" for its shape, and a wonder around areas called "Circle Quay" and "The Rocks". While we did this, we saw Ibis, amazing numbers of trees, wild cockateels, and other strange birds. By 3:30 p.m. it was time to take the chaperones to their hotel and the kids to Pittwater High School.

The high school is a 7th-12th grade school with about 900 students. Hospitality is the word of the day. Our receptionsl, no matter where we were, were great. One of the chaperones had a local person in one of the airports compliment our kids as the best group of young people they had ever seen. Of course we already knew that.

By 5:30 our time here, the kids were off with their homestay groups and we were winding down the day.