One day in!

So far, so good, I think!

The flight was pretty average in my opinion. Seats weren't comfortable, food sucked, I slept about 3 hours in total! They had a pretty good choice of films tho, so at least that made up for it!

Got into Sydney airport around 10am as expected, customs seemed pretty relaxed, quarantine even more so. As evey single person of asian origin was having all their luggage scanned or searched, the quarantine official took one look at my passport and told me walk straight out of the airport!

Managed to somehow get to the hostel without getting lost! All in all pretty impressed, its certainly clean, which was obviously one of the main worries, the staff were extemely friendly, and there were hordes of scantily clad girls floating around, which is always a good sign!

When I checked into my dorm, there was noone else in for me to try and befriend, so I decided to head out and explore the city a bit. Only got as far as Darling harbour, and the shoppping precincts, but I was pretty excited with how it all looked.

After I was all walked out, I returned to the hostel for a change of clothes (it's hot!) There were a couple of french girls in there who are staying in the same room. They turned out to be pretty friendly and invited me to join them in going to Bondi beach. Never one to turn down a sight seeing opportunity, I joined them and we ended up walking from Bronte beach to Bondi, which was pretty nice. The whole feeling of the area made me think I might like to spend a month or so living by the beach.

The rest of the night went by pretty slowly as the tiredness kicked in (fell asleep twice on the beach and repeatedly on the bus back!) We had a few beers by the beach then came into the city for pizza which was decent enough.

No idea what the plans are for tomorrow yet, gonna see who is in my room when I wake up, and try and tag along with whatever theyre doing! Hopefully in a few days I will have taken enough pictures to start posting a few.

Until then, stay warm.

John

23 hours to go!

Welcome to my blog of 2009. As you will know, Im John, male, 26, Halifax, etc etc. I'm flying to Australia tomorrow evening for a year and I'm going to try my best to record the next 12 months of my life, for a few reasons.

• To give me something organised to look back on
• To help people keep in touch with my exploits and experiences
• To entertain
• Because Im addicted to taking photos!

As I write, I feel Im pretty close to being ready to leave, my bags are nearly packed, the loose ends have pretty much been tied up, and I've said the temporary goodbyes to most of my friends and family.

Saying goodbye has probably been easier than I thought it would, or should have been. This isn't because these people aren't extremely important to me, they really are, it just doesnt quite seem final or real yet. Knowing myself, it will be in the next few days that I realise how much I'm gonna miss everyone. To those I have said bye to in the last few days, and think that I might be apathetic regrading them and others close to me, I promise you this isn't the case, theres a certain number of friends (you know who you are) who I will miss like a fat kid misses chocolate!

The plan for the next couple of days looks a little like this:

• Get to Manchester airport around 3pm tomorrow (cheers Woody :-) )
• 16.50 flight Manchester to Heathrow, arrive ~18.00
• Check in at Heathrow, this involves doing anything humanly possible in an effort to get an upgrade for the longhaul flight!
• Depart from Heathrow at 22.10
• Fly for around 12 hours, arrive for refuelling at Hong Kong around Thursday 18:00 local time
• depart HK at 21.25
• 10 hour flight to Sydney
• arrive 09.40 local time

From there its straight to www.wakeup.com.au where I am booked in for two weeks. The next couple of days will be spent alternating between sleep and drink!

Ok I think that's enough for know. This is the first time I've kept a blog, so I hope everyone will be patient with my incoherent ramblings initially.

As I post more I would to see as many comments as possible from people, whatever you feel like saying!

Bye for now, wish me luck! I'll catch you all in a few days!