Dad

Dear Dad,

I have an apartment!!

I just made the deposit payment (they call it "bond" here) as well as two weeks' rent on a room in an apartment (I should really start calling it "flat"). Yay!!! I feel like I just got a job I really wanted. I had completely forgotten how stressful it is looking for a place to live. Actually, I've never really experienced that stress, because I've never done it on my own--I've always had a friend/roommate who has taken the lead, and I've just gone along and okayed or vetoed their finds. This one was 100% me. Booya.

This week has been consumed by apartment-hunting. For the most part, it's been amazing. It's forced me to learn to make my way around the city and see corners I might not have explored otherwise. And more importantly, it's forced me to do it on my own.

As you know, I have a pretty impressive ability to get dramatically, illogically lost (remember when Den and Paige and I tried to go to the beach in San Diego and we ended up in the desert?). If I walk around with someone, there's no chance I'll retain any knowledge of where things are. I'll walk and talk with blinders on. But when I'm by myself, it's basically survival mode. I mean, I could end up anywhere. So I have to be vigilant about paying attention to my surroundings, I have to carry around maps that I discreetly pull from my bag and take peeks at in worst case scenarios, and, most importantly, I have to write specific directions to everywhere I plan to go in this little notebook before I leave the house. I would be nothing without this little guy.

When I started looking for places to live, I had no idea what area I wanted to be in. Most Americans and other tourists are drawn to the eastern beaches, specifically Bondi. It's laidback and bohemian, and in the summer it's supposed to be a massive party. All my friends who came to Sydney for a semester abroad during college live there. The very few people I've been introduced to through mutual friends who live here are there. So initially, I thought it was where I wanted to live. However, see the map below.

Point A is Bondi Beach, over there on the east coast. See where Macquarie is at Point B? Across the harbor (sorry, HARBOUR), north, and allll the way west over there in a suburb called North Ryde. The commute would include a walk, a bus, and two trains, adding up to an hour and a half of travel time. I don't mind a long commute, but three hours a day of travel time on several different modes of public transportation is just not happening.

So, I started exploring my options. I wanted to find somewhere that was sort of a compromise between school and the beach. I've been told that the area where Macquarie is located is very suburban and really sort of out in the boonies,* so I didn't want to live there. People suggested various areas to me and I plugged countless locations into a website here that tells you how to travel using public transportation (in case you're interested, it's http://www.131500.com) as I navigated the treacherous unknown of gumtree.com.au, which is essentially craigslist in Australia, and domain.com.au, which is a similar website just for real estate. A lot of the ads are easy to weed out. Here are a couple examples:

(Only free bread sometimes?? What are they thinking?)

(Good to know that no one is staying in the living room / sunny room. If only there weren't those simply rules complicating things.)

...I could go on, but you get the idea.

Eventually I concluded that downtown Sydney would be a good option, because if I could walk to a train station there I could just take trains to Macquarie rather than dealing with an extra leg of the trip on a bus every day. The beach areas are also pretty accessible, with lots of direct bus routes. And, as I started to explore downtown, I realized how much I liked it. It's a fairly small downtown area, easy to get around on foot, and busy, but slower-paced than an American city like New York or San Francisco. It has a good feel. Plus, as you're walking, you hit harbors with gorgeous views, like Darling Harbor, which I stumbled across one afternoon.

I also had lunch at a place with local cuisine...kangaroo and emu pizza!! Both were delicious. Here I am with my new friend Kyle, who works at a bank downtown and met me for lunch. I guess I really should have take a close-up of the pizza.

Finding an apartment downtown didn't turn out to be easy. There are some strange things going on. First of all, there is seldom an ad for a room for just one person. Whether they mention it in the ad or not, most of the rooms have 2, 3, or even 4 people living in them. It's insane. I guess the apartments are so expensive that that's the only way people can afford them. I quickly picked up on this and realized I needed to ask up front whether the room advertised was a single.

The funniest one I actually went to see was advertised as a room for a single person in a nice building, for a low price. I should have known something wasn't right, and truthfully I kind of did, but I was curious so I went anyway. This lady had literally put paper over the windows of this glassed-in balcony/sunroom kind of thing and put a futon in there and was trying to rent it out. I laughed out loud when she showed it to me. Now THAT is what the Aussies call "dodgy."

I was advised to look in Surry Hills, which is a cool, young area in the southern part of downtown. I felt out the area and liked it--lots of restaurants, cafes, shops, bars, and still very central. So I went to see a couple places there, and last night I saw one I liked. Both the apartment and the room are spacious, clean, and in a nice, new building. It's a three-bedroom with a guy and girl who have just moved into the other two rooms--both nice, normal people. And it has the best location: access to all the good things in Surry Hills, and a two-minute walk to Central Station. That means instead of taking buses, trains, etc. for an hour and half to get to classes, I can jump on one train for about 40 minutes and it will take me straight to school.

I took a night to think about it, and this morning when I woke up I was terrified of losing it. I put down the payment and got the keys today, and I'll move in on Saturday. I'll be able to get out of the way of the Williamsons (who are so unbelievably welcoming and wonderful but can't want me here forever), and get settled and hang out in the area before orientation for school starts next Friday.

Mom told me how well you did at the meet last weekend. Not that I'm surprised, but I'm always so proud of you :) How was the All-Star game with Den?

I've Skyped with Mom a couple times, but I want to see you too! Let's do it this weekend. Miss you and love you.

Soooooo much,

Peepers

*I can't remember their term for that here, although I did learn it recently.