Sydney, Australia!

Good day everybody!

This is my first post from the land down under. The local time is about 6:45 a.m. Monday morning. We got up at about 3:30 this morning to watch the Australia vs. Germany game. There is a huge setup down at Darling Harbour called International FIFA Fan Fest which is 1 of 7 locations around the world. People from all over the place are here to watch the World Cup; it's crazy. There might have been a quarter of a million people down there this morning. Unfortunately Australia got smashed 4-0. We left after halftime to go to a pub to finsih out because it is pretty cold out today.

The plane ride in was pretty decent, around 14 hours long. I wasn't able to get a lot of sleep, but not really a big deal. It was great to have all the Aussies on board...I love there accent and they had good insight into where we were going to be. When we landed wew had to figure out 2 things: 1) Where we were going to stay for the night, and 2) how we were going to get to Hillsong Church. Trains from the airport cost too much so we called in a backpacker hostel shuttle to bring us in for free. That meant that we had to stay at the hostel for 3 nights, but we decided that would be the best option. So we are at the West End Backpackers hostel off of Pitt Street near Sydney Central Station. It is decent, pretty dirty, really crowded. We are staying in a 32 person room...mostly young people, guys and girls. 

We discovered in the airport that Hillsong's main campus was pretty far away, but we found their city campus, and a free bus ride there and back from Central station. Hillsong was pretty cool...great worship, great people, incredibly multicultural. There were certainly things about the service that we all disagreed with but overall a good experience. Coll to see what was happening in the church here. We met a lot of neat people too. So far we've talked to people from England, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Germany, Korea, China, Japan, Netherlands...Sydney is so much more diverse then I expected. We are staying in a very oriental focused area., which has just been weird coming in thinking that I wzas going to see blonde, white people everywhere...not the case at all.

After church yesterday we were able to go visit Darling Harbor and see the World Cup craze. It was that inded. And it was beautiful down there. There is an aquarium and wildlife area down there, a Maritime Museum, and lots of cool resturaunts. There are tons of pubs around too. Sports are just really big here. So far Sydney has exceeded my expectations, beautiful, diverse, large. Today we are going down to the Opera House, the harbor bridge, and the Manly Beach. It looks like it will be a clear and beautiful day. There could be so much more to write about, like all the cool lingo I am learning, but I don't have the time.

One cool thing that happened before we left California was going to Laguna Beach for a bit of time, then going up to the Ritz Carlton and getting treated like kings. We met one of the Hagopians friends, Ryan, Thursday night who told us to stop by and we ended up getting free chips and salsa, free lemonades, free drinks, and ice cream sundaes. Sweet pool and pool area, and a beautiful view of the beach. It was a really great send off.  

Well, so long for now...

-b garrison