The second leg of my journey

We flew late at night, we left around 11PM, on January 30th, 2009. We were in the plane for 15 hours. That is a very long time! We slept a little, watched movies, slept some more, watched more movies, read, slept some more, ate, slept…. Once I decided that we certainly must be getting close to landing and only 7 hours had passed! It was a very long flight.

But…we eventually made it to Melbourne, Australia. We arrived at noon on Sunday, February 1, 2009. Hmmm, did you notice something? If my flight was 15 hours, and I left at 11PM on Friday, January 30th, why isn’t it 2:00PM on Saturday, January 31st? Well, it has to do with the international dateline and time zones and I really don’t want to go into the details. If you really want to know, ask someone in Maine!

Anyway, when it is 9AM my time, it is 5 PM your time the day before. There are 16 hours difference between us! Right now it is noon here on February 4th. That means it would be 8PM on February 3rd for you. I get a bit confused working this out, but I’m going to have lots of practice so I should get good at it, right?

So what have I been doing since I got here to Melbourne?

First, I caught up on my sleep!! It took me a couple of days to really get onto Australia time but now I am.

We live in a one bedroom apartment around the corner from the University of Melbourne. We are about a 20 minute walk from Harlan’s office. I often walk him to work before I start my day.

Here is a picture of our apartment house. We live on the bottom floor. You can see the windows of my bedroom but to the right of that is my living room. It looks out on a big park. There are eucalyptus trees (they are often called gum trees here because of the sticky sap) scattered throughout the park and the zoo is located there as well. It is a natural park, so the grass is brown with gorgeous eucalyptus tress scattered around, it’s really quite foreign looking

Here are some pictures of eucalypts.

Notice that the bark is very shaggy. Often it falls off and leaves the tree very smooth.

























In the morning and evening there is always a cacophony of birds. We have a tree nearby full of Rainbow Lorikeets and they make a huge racket. But this morning, there was the strangest sounding bird, almost like a flute. I have no idea what it was.
I tried to take a picture of the Rainbow Lorikeets, but they kept hiding in the leaves, can you see them?

February 8, 2009

The weather has been very changeable. Hot and humid when we got here, then hot and not humid, then very very very hot!! It was 46.4C on Saturday, breaking the existing record(it had never been so hot in Melbourne since they started recording the temps in the 1860’s!) That’s around 115F. After a morning walk, Harlan and I settled in the apartment for the day, with the drapes drawn and the fan on. The winds were outrageous! Unfortunately, there were bushfires and a lot of lives and property were lost in Victoria (Victoria is a state in Australia(just like Maine is a state in the USA, and Bangor is a city in that state) and where the city of Melbourne is located). We are safe in Melbourne, the bushfires are near, but not too near.

The temperatures here are measured in degrees Centigrade while in the US, we measure our temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. So I am learning the think in Centigrade! This is the conversion:
0C=32F
10C=50F
20C = 68F
30C= 86 F
40C= 104F

This is how I think of it!
0C= cold
10C= chilly
20C= nice
25C= just about perfect
30C= hot
40C= HOT!