Sydney and Settling in!

Sorry for not writing sooner but I just set up my internet in Australia.  On this continent you have to pay by the giga-byte and because of how "out wop-wop" we are (out in teh middle of no where) we have to buy a USB modem to have wifi. 
Anyways, I arrived in Sydney on Friday the 9th, we completely lost the 8th by crossing the date-line in the air.  Once we arrived in Sydney, at 7:30 in the morning, we were driven to Sydney Sports Academy, which is some kind of motel surrounded by fields and mountains and ropes courses.  We had a walk-about, a lunch, an info session and got settled in before missing the organized group walk about and creating our own before a real Australian dinner.  I guess they wanted to wear us out with enough activities so that we could delay the jat-lag and fall asleep promptly at around 8:00. The next morning we woke up early to bus to the Taronga zoo! The most amazing exibit was the one of the nocturnal animals, which conveniently does not allow flash on cameras and there, I have no pictures. We then rode the ferry across the harbor to Sydney to the Opera house and the Botanical Gardens! After an exhausting day we were bused back to the Sports Academy to enjoy an authentic bush band and were taught folk dances. It was quite amusing and got rather sweaty.  The third and last day of orientation was filled with "whale spotting", we actually did see several whale spouts, along the coast and some more in depth introduction into out particular programs.
On our final day we bused to the airport in our "party bus" and said several hurried goodbyes, all the while promising to visit each other, mainly people promising to visit us in Cairns, as we are the northern most city and already quite tropical in the dead of winter.  After a three hour flight which included a lunch of sweet curry or terryaki beef with rice and a mango ice cream bar, we arrived in beautiful Cairns.
Our "villa" had three bedrooms a kitchen, a living room, a dining room and a backyard, two bathrooms, a garage, and an office.  I somehow ended up with the "master suite", which has it's own bathroom and a walk-in closet.  The giant room allows me plenty of room to dance (shout out Laura madden!).  Today we walked to the smithfield mall to get our internet sticks and lunch at McDonald's utilize the free-wifi.  After the long walk back we finally got home and basically collapsed around the house to set-up our internet and read.  Here are a few pictures to give of an idea of how  I've been living the last few days, there is a serious lack of food and bugs so far, I apologize, but blame the rain forest! Not me!

Our House! Hit me up for the address!