If you notice that the writing is in BLUE, then you can rest assured that Brian is finally blogging! Summer will continue to write in black text, and my posts will be blue.

Summer is a great writer, and is wonderful when conveying what we are doing, experiencing and feeling. I will certainly touch on these aspects from time to time, but my writing focus will generally be on the differences in day to day life and culture. I came here to experience the differences, even though I will be in love with the same girl, work in the same sort of job, and hopefully pursue the same sort of hobbies. Of course I will stay open to all of the new things that Australia has to offer, but it’s the small things that intrigue me. I find myself comparing the ways here vs. the ways in America, and so far I am quite impressed, though I miss some of the comforts back home. Lastly you will notice that I am going a bit back in time. My plan was to work hard at finding a place to live, then getting on the job hunt, and then worrying about the blog. I figured by this time we would have internet setup in some sort of study at home and I could spend some time working on this in comfort. As I found out a bit later, those “simple” things like getting internet aren’t so simple.

Arrival

Arriving in Australia was such a great feeling. We had no idea what was going on, where we were or how we would be accepted. Knowing nothing, though a bit scary, was a sort of refreshing thought because it gave me the opportunity to do or be whatever I want. We met Mel and Jacob at the airport and they immediately took us to their Indoor Soccer League game. This is the first time we noticed that sports here aren’t the same as back home. The indoor soccer is played differently than soccer at home, and though it looked like basketball, NetBall is an entirely different (woman’s) game. We had convinced ourselves that for the first portion of our trip we would treat it as a sort of vacation, but we all knew that the “to-do” list was gigantic and growing. Though we did enjoy ourselves, there was a lot of work going on every day. Seemingly simple tasks such as purchasing a cell phone (from here on referenced as a “mobile”) was quite difficult because everything is done differently down under. More on this to come tomorrow.

Today's post is sort of an introduction to let everyone know that Brian is finally blogging. My blogs will regularly be lengthy, and may jump around from one topic to the next. I try my best to stay on track, but one topic always leads to another. Many times in my blog I will touch on a subject without really expanding on what I mean. I encourage you to use the comment feature of this blog to ask questions, and I will happily tailor my future postings to answer any questions or curiosities that you have. In order to use the comment feature, I believe all you need is a GMail account.