Reconnaissance Mission #1

Today’s mission included getting out of the apartment, getting some exercise, and more importantly trying to figure out what is around me. The mission was a really a glorified walk. After a lovely breakfast with my other new roomies, and two quick calls to mom and Anna; I put on my walking shoes, grabbed my key, and headed out the door.

Adam told me the beach was about 1.5km down the road, whatever that means. 1Km= .62 miles so roughly a mile to the beach from the apartment. I thought it would be fun to walk to the beach on my first reconnaissance mission. It wasn’t a bad walk either because it was mostly downhill. I passed two women on the way down, one of which corrected my walking. Seeing as Australia is upside down and backwards, not only do you drive on the left side of the road, you also walk on the left side of the sidewalk. So yes, when I was walking this morning I instinctively walked on the right side of the sidewalk until the lady called me out. I didn’t even realize what she was talking about until I had already passed. I just thought she was an old crabby lady who didn’t want to move (and she kind of was, because she wasn’t so nice about it), but I laughed and corrected myself or tried to at least. Throughout my walk I kept finding myself on the right side, just another thing to get used to.

It took me about twenty minutes to get to my beachy destination, and once I got there I found some rocks to walk around on. Some surfers were in the water and I thought I’d take a moment to sit and watch them. I found a nice little rock bench and started looking around. Not too far from my little rocky perch I saw some belongings and thought to myself “oh a surfer must have stowed his stuff there while he is in the water,” then my eyes focused a little more and I saw that a person was sleeping under a blanket with all of those belongings. Yes, of all the places that I could have chosen to sit and watch surfers on my fourth day in Australia, I sit next to a sleeping homeless person. Needless to say I left and continued my walk.

All in all it was a good first reconnaissance mission. I got rained on a little, but it was totally worth it because I saw a full rainbow. Too bad I didn’t have my camera. I learned where to walk on a sidewalk in Australia, and also to look before you sit on any beachside walks. At least the homeless person doesn’t need a machine to make the sound of the ocean to help him sleep!