Greetings from Straya sans Vegemite

It's about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday the 11th. I completely missed Tuesday somewhere across the International Date Line and slept on/off (as comfortably as one can on a plane) for 10 of the 16 hours on my flight. I'm currently sitting in a gate at Sydney's airport waiting to board my last flight (yoiks) to Christchurch, New Zealand.

We landed around 6 a.m. Sydney time and had a 13-hour layover--naturally we decided to explore.

Things I've learned in the past 24 hours:

1. Leaving home is hard--but it gets easier once you're up in the air. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad--I still miss you even though I'm very quickly falling in love with the southern hemisphere.)

2. Mondays in February are a GREAT time to fly. I got away with having an aisle seat and no one beside us on both flights from Charlotte to Dallas and Dallas to Sydney, and even had back row reclining seats on the way Down Under. Needless to say, I basically got three seats for the price of one and my own personal bed on the way down here.

3. Rain Man was right--Qantas, definitely, definitely Qantas. They make a 16-hour flight much more bearable. And there is SO MUCH FOOD.

4. When you have a 13-hour layover in Sydney...you explore. There is nothing like that first glance of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's unbelievably huge. And there are probably people climbing it. Granted, it's 7 a.m. and I'm amazed by everything because I've just had a strong cup of Australian dark roast. Walk a little farther, shift your vision and boom--the Opera House. It's equally stunning and even more brilliant against the incredibly blue water in the Harbour.

5. Sydney is huge. I mean HUGE. We walked around the Botanical Gardens and took a ferry to Manly Beach and couldn't believe the city's sprawl.

6. The Aussie sun is no joke. It's summer, the sun is high and when you're lugging around a small child on your back (in this case, a 20-lb. backpack), the heat will get to you. I'm WIPED. Also a little sunburnt (oops).

7. The accents! I dig them. You could say moist in an Australian accent (aka the worst word in the English vernacular) and I probably wouldn't hate it.

8. Maybe it's because it's a Wednesday and kids have school/adults are at work, but it's really, really quiet here. I'm not complaining--I'm just surprised. It's definitely not at all what I expected.

9. It's still hard to register that I'm in a new country, continent and hemisphere. Cue the "pinch me I'm dreaming" cliché, but seriously, it's unreal. It's about 11 p.m. yesterday at home and it's hard to believe that my family, friends and fur babies are 8,500+ miles away. For all I know, I may be having an incredibly vivid and pleasant dream from my bed in Chapel Hill.

10. This is the longest, strangest and most non-Wednesday Wednesday I've ever had. Beginning with an airplane breakfast at 3 a.m., adventures in Sydney from 7 a.m. through the early afternoon, and now on to my last flight to New Zealand, I can't say I've ever experienced anything like it--and I wouldn't change any of it. Except buying sunscreen. In hindsight, that would have been smart.

11. There is one Australian airline worker who sings the boarding flight numbers over the intercom. No, it's not philosophical, but when I'm this tired it's the best I've got.

Signing off for now and probably for awhile because I'm not banking on having wifi in NZ. Here's hoping my bag made it safely from America (no, I haven't seen it since Monday), the flight to Christchurch is as pleasant as the past two have been (seriously, how did I get this lucky?) and I remembered to pack my shower shoes. And in case I don't see you...