Tuesday morning 7am, depart for airport; Thursday morning 7am arrive in Sydney.  DC and San Francisco were in the middle there somewhere, in that order I think, but it's all a blur now. Short and skinny, it's a long few days of traveling to get to Australia, but well worth it. 

We hit a few minor glitches along the way. One of my participants wasn't able to take the flight with the group, but was able to get the same flight the very next day, so, no worries. On the flight from San Fran to Sydney the audio part of our audio visual presentation didn't work ... slight worries there, but hey, go with it man. Then the lights didn't work as they were trying to fix the audio ... so, we are sitting with our 200+ closest new friends, in the dark for many, many hours. Hooray for sleep!

We arrived safely in Sydney to the smiling face of Kate Smart from Macquarie University and quickly had our first language lesson: coffee. Drip coffee isn't really consumed in the fashion it is back home, and so, time to roll with the international experience. We learned about short blacks, long blacks, and flat whites; you also have your assortment of lattes and other espresso drinks, plus chai and of course tea. I've yet to move past a long black, as it's a tall cup of wonderfully black coffee (espresso) that his a nice kick to it. Fortunatly, while the actual coffe is different, the love of the beverage and the availability of great coffee shops is not lacking!

We also learned some Ozzie slang (naughty words as Kate said) so that no one would unintentionally say something off-color.  There will be more than enough intentional off-color with this group! We also learned about budgie smugglers and a quick history lesson of the Sydney Opera House. It was a truly instructional drive from the airport to Macquarie.

From our quick look at the opera house and harbor bridge we drove up to North Ryde, a suburb of Sydney where Macquarie Uni is located. North Ryde is a quick drive from the city; 20-30 minutes in good traffic ... good traffic meaning not at rush hour, which is when we were driving; so it was more like 45 minutes from city center, which still isn't bad!