Proper Update

Hello all. Today marks three weeks that I have been in Sydney. I spent a week hanging out and doing some touristy things before starting the job and flat search. I had my first week of work last week at a company called IPMG. It is pretty much a big Print and Media company that is family owned. I work in the Treasury/Finance department with a couple other people. Most of whom are not Australian. There are lots of poms (is this term deragatory?) and kiwis working here. Aside from a few other people in my program, I have not met too many people from the US. I am pretty excited to have this job because it is definitely much more along the lines of what I want to do career wise than what I have been doing the past 2 years. It will look really good on my resume and the pay is pretty good to boot! Basically what I do is handle a lot of banking tasks and responsibilities for the company as a whole, plus a bit of foreign currency work as well. I have a big office and it makes me feel important =)

A bit over a week ago I moved into a share house in a subrub called Newtown. It is pretty hip and trendy and I'd compare it to Uptown of Minneapolis or Grand Ave in St. Paul. I live with two Aussies and a dude from Boston in a terraced house on a pretty quiet street. It really isn't all that quiet though. Not only do I live about 100 metres from the train tracks, I am right under the flight path for Kingsford Smith airport (the big one here). It really is quite nice though and my flatmates are cool. I live in a tiny little room that is completely unfurnished. I have been sleeping on the floor for the last 8 or 9 days! It isn't so bad, especially now that I know a bed is coming in a couple of days - 80 bucks delivered! My rent is incredibly cheap and I have almosst no transportation costs because I can catch a free shuttle to work not far from my house so this means lots of disposable income, meaning more travelling! I think maybe the oply complaint I have is that the washing machine is shit. And I guess this is common in OZ. You put dirty clothes in and you take out somewhat cleaner clothes that are completely soaked (no spin function?) have fuzz and detergent residue all over them. It also rained on my socks that were trying to dry this afternoon.

Ive started running again finally and have been searching out where the pick up ultimate games are but with no luck. I think most of my weekends will be spent on or around the beach. Or at the bar, but the beach is a lot cheaper! The address to my house is now on my facebook profile and my mobile number is there too, if you ever need to reach me other than by email - which I don't check that often anymore.

So there you have it. I have settled into a routine pretty quickly and am really enjoying myself down here! I think I am incredibly lucky to have everything fall into place the way it did and so quickly as well. Apparently this is not the case for a lot of people who move to Sydney.

Keep the emails comin! Go Democrats!