Sydney

We've made our way to Sydney. While the weather hasn't impressed, the city definitely has. We're staying with a friend of a friend, who's generously letting us sleep on the floor for free (and put up with Shandelle's constant antics). We do have couch cushions on the floor, but only enough for Shandelle. So, my trip to Sydney so far has been better than a trip to the chiropractor.

The area we're in is called Cooge Bay (pronounced KOO-GEE). It's just another in the huge spread of Sydney suburbs that eminate from the downtown area to fancy beaches on the bay and ocean. As we've only been here for three days, I thought I'd take a moment to recap the idiosyncrasies of this place:

1) The Aussies love to shorten everything. Instead of "biscuit," the word used is "bikkie." Instead of "Australian," it's "Aussie" and so on and on. Everyone also has their name shortened. So, I've taken to calling Shandelle by "Elle" and she's okay with that because it reminds us all of Elle Macpherson.

2) They don't eat bagels here like in the States. I walked about 4 kilometers this morning looking for bagels. And lox? Forget it.

3) Swimming and lifesaving (sports relegated to weirdos and lazy high school students) are the most popular sports here. A lifesaving compeition (where the guys do things like lay on the sand and then sprint to capture a flag) were the main selection of TV for the day.

4)_They play their own version of rugby relative to the rest of the world. So, in that regards they're similar to the Americans because they take normal sports and convulote them for their own needs. What we've done to Cricket in creating baseball, they did to Rugby by creating several versions. To make things more confusing, they also have Australian Rules Football, which was described to us as "aerial pingpong" and we'd better not confuse our little American heads by worrying about that either.

Hopefully, we'll have some more exciting events in the coming days.